Seattle Schools Board Meeting Dec 14, 2022

001[Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] ladies and gentlemen uh we are about to get started here in just a moment y'all could wrap up your conversations good afternoon we will be calling the board meeting to order in a moment STS TV will begin broadcasting for those joining by phone please remain muted until we reach the testimony period and your name is called okay this is President Hersey I am now calling the December 14th 2022 regular board meeting to order at 4 17 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 Miss Wilson Jones the roll call please director Crone Barone present director song Moritz the director Rivera Smith present director sarju present director Harris director Rankin here

002vice president hampson here and president Hersey all right I will now hand it over to superintendent Jones for his comments uh good evening board members president Hersey and public this is the last meeting of 2022 before winter break and as I reflect on the year I'm very proud and excited and grateful for the exceptional work of our Educators and staff it's been tremendous and at the same time I'm troubled I'm troubled by the challenges that have been posed by Community violence particularly at Ingram and Rainer Beach today our Rainer Beach Community is dealing with a threat and as we speak my team and I are taking precautions to make the best safety choices for our students and staff we know there are no easy solutions but we have to stay diligent in our efforts to

003keep schools safe and open for students to actually learn daily we're working on ways to mitigate harm for from our students and staff but this is this is a challenge that we have I know that this time of the year over over the last several years we've seen some some challenges but this feels unprecedented and we must come together I want to give kudos to the city of Seattle Seattle SPD for working with us and trying to be solution oriented but again there are no easy solutions so with that said and uh in an awkward transition here but uh we do have something to celebrate uh from our from our board and our board was honored last week with the national school board associations Council of urban Boards of Education School Board of Excellence a

004national award and you can see that Award right here and president Hersey was in attendance to accept the ward on behalf of the board and I am proud that I nominated this board because this board is very deserving deserving by the policy work you do by your Champion you being champions for the the racial Equity work that we do for the social justice work that we do and being courageous in really pushing for goals that are ambitious and really focused on where needs are greatest and so we have a brief video to highlight the work that was shown at the ceremony and I'd like to to show that but here's the here's the word right here so if you get a chance come up and take a look at it cue the video please while

005we're waiting for the video I want to uh ask maybe president Hersey to talk a little bit about um what he experienced as he received the award on our behalf so uh absolutely as Dr Jones stated um got to travel to the conference to accept the award and there was no short of I would say probably somewhere between five seven hundred maybe even 850 people in attendance during the ceremony and got an opportunity to say a few words and reflect on the work that this board particularly has done that you'll see highlighted so eloquently in the video in the moment and this was on the day before the conference ended and for the next 24 hours I felt as though I was a celebrity in this conference I couldn't go uh two or three steps

006without folks coming up to me and saying what a wonderful job we were doing how we are setting a standard how they wish that other districts could be taking place or excuse me taking part in some of the work that we are doing and I think particularly for us who are trying to drive the district in the best Direction possible um we see a lot of what is not working and there is a lot of that don't get me wrong but when you put it into a national context Seattle really is leading in many ways and it is not going unnoticed and so I just want to be you know one of what I think will be many folks to tell you congratulations and thank you for all the work that y'all have been putting

007up here for free away from your families and while it might not necessarily seem like you're making big strides and moves um individually from your personal perspectives the rest of the country is really looking to us for guidance in so many other districts of our size for guidance and I think that that is adequately reflected in the award that we received but also in a call for us to be more participatory in organizations like Cube like Nazi like capsi like so many others that are really really hungry for our presence in a multitude of ways and so just thank you to all the work that y'all have put in and I think the video is queued up and thanks for the opportunity system in Washington Seattle Public Schools is the largest K-12 school system in

008Washington state with 50 000 students across 106 schools our diverse student body represents 151 countries of origin with 147 languages or dialects being spoken in their homes more than 30 percent of students qualify for free and reduced lunch Services Seattle Public Schools School Board is made up of seven elected directors that represent the community's ethnic and Geographic diversity SPS committed to dismantling systemic racism and discrimination particularly for those who are furthest from educational Justice the district is among the first in the nation to acknowledge the failure of Educational Systems to serve students of color these students are furthest away from educational Justice we are actively working to disrupt the legacies of racism and become an anti-racist educational system at core of the Strategic plan is the adoption of a targeted universalism approach if we Center

009our work and our budget decisions centering our master schedule our budget priorities are our building leadership team or Senate decisions on African-American males it's going to benefit every student actions speak louder than words and in 2021 after reflection the Seattle School Board began implementing a new governance model that focuses on student outcomes everything you build whether it be just the way you treat children and talk to children to the way of like the way that policies are made and just like going back and saying okay this is great how can we fix it okay these are the things that didn't go well how can we fix those graduation rates for all students have increased more than 10 percentage points over the last three years we expanded access to preschool including Head Start and special needs

010programs established a new Department of territory education with a growing body of nearly a dozen courses the center of our work here at AMA is just to make sure that this educational system supports the Brilliance and Excellence of our young black boys and teens since 2019 SPS has doubled the number of black boys and teens participating in advanced learning and highly capable Services the district provides financial support to our students by covering the cost of AP exam fees and hosting no-cost PSAT and SAT exams the Seattle promise program in partnership with the city of Seattle and Seattle colleges guarantees free tuition and access to SPS graduates in three local Seattle colleges the number of SPS graduates enrolled in the colleges has more than tripled since 2018. 65 percent of enrollees are students of color and

011more than 30 percent are first generation college students SPS practices three levels of Engagement with its Community one-way information consultation and collaboration for each of these the district provides translation or interpretation in the five most used non-english languages it means building up students to soar both in and out of the classroom all of these things work in tandem to uplift our students especially those students of color who are furthest through educational Justice so once again I want to have a warm thank you to our board and uh congratulations on receiving thecube national award for excellence appreciate it and then and one quick thing I want to have everybody in the room give yourselves a round of applause because like we can sit up here all day and Pat ourselves on the back but really the

012work that is being done is mostly by folks who aren't even here and this is a team effort right so to our Educators to our staff to everyone in our buildings our families our parents and most importantly our students this is a representation of the work that y'all put in every single day that we have the honor of working with you all for us so I just want to say thank you to y'all and appreciate y'all's hard work advocacy however you show up for our district and this is really a proud moment for me then I hope that we can all share it thank you so transitioning um tonight we'll have uh at our meeting the board will be electing new officers oh one sec sorry we do have comments from our student uh director

013Chrome Baron oh those are included in your comments I'm so sorry I just wanted to make sure that we did not miss our Student please forgive me please take it away thank you president Hersey uh tonight we will be electing uh new officers I want to again thank president Hersey vice president hampson and member at large Rivera Smith for their dedication and leadership as shown in the video we are able to achieve great things with a strong partnership with the board and the superintendent another item that we're going to be talking about tonight is transportation and this partnership is also incredibly important as we navigate challenging decisions together we are in the midst of budget season here at central office and my staff are making recommendations on how to best deploy resources to support our

014schools and students this includes difficult discussions on how to reduce and shift in central office this board will also be hearing tonight about transportation services and some of the critical questions on how we transport students more effectively and more efficiently and lastly around safety as I alluded to in my opening remarks this partnership extends outside of our districts and allows us to better support our students to be focused on safety last week we were joined by Governor Inslee and mayor Harrell at Ingram High School to hear from our students about what they need in the in the wake of the tragic events there I look forward to their continued partnership to provide resources to our students tonight's meeting will also include a progress monitoring session on 7th grade math and this will be an opportunity

015for the board to dig into the data that was previewed in October and it's and this is part of our regular Cadence of discussions discussing student outcomes as we Implement student outcomes focused governance and that concludes my remarks thank you president Hersey thank you superintendent Jones without further Ado we will now turn it over to director Chrome Barone for her comments thank you president Hersey um all right well hello all here joining us today and joining us virtually um for a quick update uh of something that my fellow student directors uh nasira and Jenna have mentioned before there is a student board member newsletter in the works this will include updates from the board updates from our meetings that would otherwise be somewhat inaccessible to students although posted online I know that some students just

016don't want to put in the extra work to find those things so our goal is to create a really open uh means of communication from what's going on policy wise in the district to our students because that's really important and again to highlight a nasira Jenna and I are working on finding tools and Pathways to increase communication between the board and students because at the end of the day we all serve students and transparency is really important and serves a our community and not only serves our community it strengthens our community and we need to be able to figure out how we're building bridges with our students for problem solving rather than thinking about being on different sides because at the end of the day we are here to serve our students and as those

017in power it is really our job to remove those barriers to students and see how we can best serve them to highlight the power of student Voice through the work of Ingram students and Seattle student union we will now receive four million dollars from the Seattle City council for mental health supports in schools can I get a round of applause for mental health supports in schools uh that is the power of student voice y'all that is why that is the stuff that students get done in weeks mere weeks students were able to achieve this massive accomplishment um and further nasira Jenna and I want to partner and build on this momentum of advocacy around mental health supports for students and make sure as a board those are some of our top priorities because one of

018the most vital parts of student safety is student health and one of the most vital parts of student health is student mental health uh with that I wish everyone in our community a safe happy relaxing winter break thank you president Hersey thank you director Chrome Barone yeah big claps we should celebrate that is totally fine okay we have now come to the board comments section of the agenda I will open with updates on our implementation of the ad hoc governance committee recommendations and we'll then call for additional reports we have continued to refine the new question process which is meant to give us the student outcomes focused information needed to be more informed in our decision making we again received materials earlier for today's meeting and we I have already received a number of emails

019from constituents that are incredibly excited to have those materials earlier and have been utilizing them to ask really thoughtful questions of board directors I'm sure in their individual capacities and with that added time directors have submitted nearly 100 items for staffs review and response at the last meeting directors gave feedback about posting questions and answers publicly to the agenda this is something that we've now accomplished with the Q a posted as an informational item I've also heard multiple perspectives on what to include in the compiled materials I've heard concerns about focusing on who the questions have come from and alignment with student outcomes Focus governance best practices and I've also heard feedback about having complete information and we've got conflicting perspectives and that is A-Okay and we know in our collaboration with boards across the

020country that this is common and so with that being said this is an iterative of process which means that we will continue to refine and improve our process as we go but continue to bring your concerns to me as they arise and we will do our best to make sure that they are aligned with our new governance structure and be moving forward in a direction that is best for children and getting the outcomes that we see for them we've had just two meetings since accepting these recommendations from the ad hoc governance committee and we've made leaps in our already in position to continue transforming our practices and we have a lot of ground to cover in 2023. as I said before our work to implement student outcomes Focus governance best practices will continue to be

021iterative and we will continue to engage in discussion as a board to check in on what's working for us and where we may have gaps or unintended consequences so again just a huge congratulations to this board for taking on such an immense amount of work thank you to all the members of this board for the work that you um do to push us forward together doing everything within our power as board directors to support student outcomes we have the board officer elections coming up tonight following approval of the consent agenda items following that we will need board directors to reach out to whoever is elected as a board president to share your committee and liaison priorities for the next year as a reminder assignments are annual with the expectation of or excuse me with the

022exception of the legislative liaison which director Rankin will be continuing in that role for a second year per our policy the board president will need feedback on request any requested changes to assignments though we do have three or four standing committees currently suspended finally looking ahead to January and February I want to remind directors of upcoming deadlines please submit any agenda items requests or requests through the new online submission tool form as soon as possible and no later than December 27th for our next two regular board meetings agenda setting will happen right after the beginning of the year and we'll need to receive the materials for January 18 soon after so if you do not have the link and you want to get something in the hopper for submission just chat with Board office staff

023and they'll make sure that it gets to you we will now move on to our other reports for tonight do we have a Bex and BTA Capital programs oversight committee report thank you president Hersey um we did have our Bex PTA oversight committee meeting um just last Friday December 9th um myself and director songwrits are the board members are Representatives sit on that committee it's always uh super robust meetings these are the meetings where I remember going to them when I first started on the board and everything was way over my head because it's so in-depth about the capital projects everything from the budget update in great detail by Melissa Cohen to the project status reports given by director Richard best it's it's all very insightful I can't even summarize it in these comments but

024I can just say that um that that are those are the things that are regularly gone over in those meetings it's the um and also we have expiring terms of certain committee members so that they are actually looking for new applicants to fill a couple positions on the Bex PTA oversight committee you can find the application for that online and we welcome any applications of people who are interested and have um you know some skills set to bring to that committee we'll be over and over that I believe in the next few months to get those positions filled there was also an update from the clean energy task force which is really exciting because they are a task force formed by our resolution that this board approved in and they've been working diligently since and

025for I believe about 13 months of meetings and now they are coming they had their last meeting actually yesterday and I had the opportunity to attend and thank them all for their service they will be bringing those recommendations of the implementation plan for the goal of fossil free by 2040 to our board in January February for us to accept their recommendations their implementation plan recommendation and to move forward with that in the many ways that will come from it so that's a discussion we can all be having as we get towards that I'm excited to see those recommended the implementation plans they have put together thank you to all the staff members who worked hard with them over the last year also I'm Jen Lincoln for Bethesda Richard best and so many others who have

026been walking alongside them to get that work done um I'm personally very excited about this and look forward to any conversations you guys have as we get towards that too to discuss this next steps and our next meeting is when is it doesn't say this on here do you know where the next one is it'll be probably January yeah that was December obviously so I think it's the second Friday of the month usually we'll see but Friday the 13th 8 30 a.m and they're in person now too we've made those ones in person so that's really nice great awesome thank you uh do we have a report for the December 13 audit quarterly committee meeting we do it was a good one awesome lots of content uh I'm sad to report that there was a

027teams issue and so it wasn't able to be recorded so my apologies uh if anyone there are extensive materials and we had a pretty robust uh presentations by staff responsible for each of those audit areas which ran the gamut from transport and audit 2019 audit that was long overdue for audit response on Transportation Services culinary services um the actual reconfiguration of the internal audit Department itself some work that's been going on for a long time in HR as well as well as some smaller audits such as um stipends which needed to be cleaned up so that is all represented in the agenda um though they're worse their uh all board members I would encourage you to remove that to a time that we hope is better for everybody's schedule and I would encourage you to

028come everyone is welcome I personally think which should be a committee of the entire board because it is such such important work we talked a lot about the function of internal audit and what a rich opportunity it provides to support through this independent review the superintendent and his staff in assessing risk and then providing us that feedback about what risk really needs to be better mitigated through the audit process and and thereby creating a truly high value internal audit department so that we are addressing all of the highest risks associated with um you know our number one goal which is to provide outcomes towards students of what might get in our in our way of that so appreciate everybody's time it was a long meeting probably the longest audit meeting we've had it was a

029full two hours but we did have a big backlog of audit response presentations and uh there is there are a number of things that will still be followed up on at the next meeting which is on March 7th at the same time which was four o'clock not 4 15. and so I encourage folks who are interested in what our evolving high value internal audit function in Seattle Public Schools looks like and and what that conversation looks like between the board and internal audit director the superintendent and then individual staff members that are responsible for providing those responses and there are some really important audits around student safety and and at least two different buckets currently scheduled to we have an RFP out for one of those and that's related to student safety as it pertains

030to the adults that are in the buildings and then superintendent is and staff are responsible for another any audit just for clarity any audit that whether it's um determined that it needs to be done be through ospi through the state auditor through internal processes all of those come in by policy through internal audit so that there is a function that ensures that those that there is a management corrective action that is taken to make sure that those recommendations are addressed that's not something that Seattle public schools has done before so I'm really proud of the the staff and the hard work of all the the board members including our legal counsel and early days to make sure that that this function was created in a much more robust fashion so please join us on March

0317th and and if anybody has questions that wasn't able to attend um I do know that they're they took more detailed notes than usual to make up for the lack of recording thank you awesome thank you director hampson uh do we have a report from our legislative liaison take it away yes we do and I also I feel like vice president Hampton undersold herself a little bit with that audit um that uh I just have to take the opportunity to give some some props that having that having all audits come through there is a hugely positive shift in terms of practice and desiloing and the transportation audit that was done in 2019 is now we could see in the meeting yesterday the the findings all being addressed know what the schedule is and that's something

032that you know as far as I know hadn't come forward without this new mechanism and also uh there's an annual special education audit that ospi does um and that has historically been something that has come through and been the purview of the special education department under Cai which is not a bad thing obviously but there was also that's not easily as easily accessible without this additional function and there's not as much accountability so now we have that now that all audits will come through we had a clear table and timeline of what audits had been out where they were in timing and um so I just you undersold your role in that a little bit so I wanted to give credit where it's too because it's I think really really impactful and important uh both

033for us to do our job as a board and for the public to understand what's what's going on okay so um legislative session is going to be Fast and Furious I think there's going to be a ton of bills if you look online you can see the pre-filing period is right now there are a lot of bills on the wah.ledge.gov site that have been pre-filed some of them are not surprises some of them are concerning for various reasons some of them have nothing to do with our platform so we won't be talking about them but just for anybody who's interested in advocacy stuff there is some opportunity to get a little little preview of what uh you may be wanting to look at by looking at those pre-filed bills I sent an email yesterday to

034directors um just a last session it was a short session but I uh coordinated with directors based on legislative district where we all live to bring you know a director at least to meetings with legislators um uh that was for the wasda Washington State School director Association day on the hill where they set up a bunch of meetings that was virtual last year this year I will be in Olympia for waza day on the hill in person at the end of February so that specific opportunity won't be as easy to connect into with the online thing but the email that I sent to everybody is just a check in on who wants to be kind of pressed into duty when appropriate um what areas you might be interested in what existing relationships you might have

035I'm I have a whole Matrix of the committee roles and such of the various Seattle delegation who which director lives in which area relationships for the most part during session you know we've given our direction to the district via our adopted platform and so for the most part we will rely on our lobbyists to you know sign in follow those bills make make Seattle's voice known but there will be times where it um uh may be really important or helpful for a legislator to get an additional you know nudge or have question answered by someone they know and in that case I want to be able to just like Ping people and it's going to happen all really quickly um the governor's budget dropped just a couple hours ago it does show I haven't had

036a chance to look in detail but it does show like some increase in spending for K-12 um whether or not that's going to uh reflect spending on the things aligned with our priorities I'm not sure yet because I haven't a chance to look at it but so that's a positive and again the governor's budget is not the final budget but it's you know it's an indication of what's going to what we're going to see um so uh and I can't remember if I said before really positive thing is there's a lot of alignment across the state and in the I don't know six or seven legislative sessions that I have been involved in in one way or another I'm seeing more alignment between districts on priorities than I have seen before so I think that's

037really positive there's a lot of momentum in need and interest in addressing shortfalls in special education the transportation funding formula that really underserved Seattle underserves other districts as well a lot of districts are leaning into that pretty looking at that pretty hard as um you know an area that's uh significant impact to their budget every year that um this we need the states to step in and address um so yes oh so in addition to serving as the liaison for legislative issues for our board I also serve as a liaison to wazda for legislation and then through that I've been asked to join a small group specifically on planning around special education advocacy so that's really great because that's a mix of um it's a you know we're the largest district and then we've got

038like Spokane and Evergreen and some smaller districts and there's a lot that we have in common a lot of issues that we want to face together but there also are different different challenges at play and um as the largest District in the state I think it's really important that as we are advocating we're clear on not doing so at the expense of other districts um and and I think that's what I've heard from you all and and what we feel like is important um at the same time there's going to be some things that may uh negatively impact Seattle that might not impact others so it's obviously important to have our perspective in their um wasda you know in addition to our own legislative team and financial analysis as things go on wazda does a

039continuous you know evaluation of different bills um and looks at how those impact all of their districts wazda is not going to be in a position of of throwing one District under a bus for another they're advocating for all districts together um so that's uh you know I feel really glad to have the opportunity to both represent us but also to kind of lend um the weight of the largest District to some smaller districts that have been facing considerable challenges and whose students um they may be struggling to serve just because they don't have you know we have University of Washington Children's Hospital if we have um unique needs and more remote districts you know not only do the is the funding not ample to provide those services but there's not there's not a provider

040or a expert necessarily right there for them to access so anyway it's you know in some ways frustrating and sad because these things have gone on for so long but it's also exciting to have um special education be at the Forefront and have a lot of people um talking about how important this is not only for the children who receive those services but for all of our students and and the overall health of our of our system as a whole so um please reply to email and let me know when you get a chance um I have I think probably over the next couple weeks people are kind of taking a breath and pausing so no pressure but January 9th is the first day of session and it's just gonna It's Just Gonna Fly um

041the you know somebody's guess was was like three thousand bills will drop I mean a lot of them won't go anywhere but people were holding on people were holding on to bills in the remote and hybrid years just because that was a new thing to navigate and so now um I don't know floodgates may be opening we'll see and we've also gotten a lot of new people which is great so like some New Perspectives or issues might be coming up but um I will uh you know stay focused on our platform and update you all as regularly as I can and we'll be in weekly meetings with wasda and other legislative reps and weekly meetings with our team and um yes yes that's that's that it's going to be um exciting um uh as to

042uh let's see from from district one I just um want to thank mayor Harrell and governor insleaf and their staff for the time and care they spent with our students and of course superintendent Jones and staff here as well um I had the opportunity to to be in the room and um I guess I shouldn't have been surprised but the students that were there I had already known several of them so that was um they're incredible student leaders um they adults could learn a lot from them they were so well prepared um really knew what they were asking for at the same time um as impressive as they were and as as driven and as leadership focused as they were we can't leave this to kids to solve these these problems is kind of what

043I walked away with is like I really appreciated the the support and the presence of leaders and what they asked me after the event was you know okay it was great to have our voices heard but what are the adults going to do because work were kids we're kids and um and so yeah something uh else really quickly I'll just note is that something that Governor Inslee said that I thought was really important was that um this incident doesn't Define them as a school and they still have every right to feel proud and happy about being a part of the Ingram community and I thought that was really powerful and it also made me think that um you know tangentially connected that happened at Ingram and that's where things were catalyzed but as we know

044from your comments and you know there was that my own kids school there was an incident um last week this our students are being impacted by violence everywhere and this presence was given and voice time was given at Ingram and Ingram's not the only place this has happened and these are not the only students who are impacted by by violence and so um I just I want to make sure that we're not only that we're elevating those voices we're also connecting students to each other and being the adults who show up for for all of them because um you know the students today at Rainer Beach didn't get the opportunity to talk to the governor for example um so how do we how do we get you know how do we get them um their

045voice word and and make sure they know that you know it really matters what what they're dealing with every day um and uh yes that's it thank you for that robust update director Rankin are there any additional liaison reports um that directors would like to offer or finally any additional board engagement for us to discuss tonight are my directors um that try to keep the updates if you can so any other announcements or things like that go ahead director Rankin then we'll go to director Harris I forgot one thing briefly which is that at tomorrow's c-sec meeting um South wait Southeast yeah Southeast Seattle education Coalition um uh I was asked to come talk about student outcomes focused governance and so I asked uh president Hersey to come along and so we will be that's

046a I think that their meetings are open to everybody so that's a community meeting where we have some um questions that were gathered ahead of time and we'll be meeting there virtually and and sharing that yeah director Harris take it away January 21 2023 it's a Saturday we'll be doing a community meeting from two to five do not know which Library as yet the system is down but there will in fact be lasagna I am well not above bribery and I invite two of my fellow board directors to share in a good Rowdy time and Senior staff including the superintendent to show up to engage and to listen thank you so keep an eye on the board Paige fantastic any other engagement announcements anything like that okay we will now move on to the public

047testimony portion of tonight's agenda we will begin 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 parts of this procedure first testimony will be taken today from those individuals called from our public testimony list and if applicable the waiting list which are included on today's agenda posting on the School Board website only those who are called by name should mute 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 the listed speaker's name is called the total amount of time allowed will not exceed two minutes for the combined

048number 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 testimonial list or waiting list those who do not wish to have time seated to them may Decline and retain their place on the testimony or wait list the majority of the speaker's time should be spent on the topic they have indicated they wish to speak about finally the board expects the same standard of Civility for those participating in public comment as the board expects of itself Miss Wilson Jones will read off the testimony speakers first Speaker today is Sarah de Silva Jackson hello my name is Sarah and I'm a junior at Middle College High School to start off I believe that we all know and acknowledge that

049no student is the same and we all learn differently some of us are more visual Learners and some of us learn better physically at middle college the main goal is to earn credits for a high school diploma and to prepare for a higher education in a small caring environment I've spent three years at middle college and I can say with confidence that my experience here has taught me the value of a small school education in a smaller school one of the biggest advantages is the sense of community due to the smaller Community students are able to form tight-knit bonds with their fellow students and have an increased sense of community among both students and teachers not only that but the strong Community has allowed me to make potential lifelong friendships with not only students but

050also teachers this sense of community has allowed our school to create multiple different clubs that are all student-led at middle college there was always support available thanks to the low teacher to student ratio students have always been able to get the help they need when they need it in bigger schools students are often afraid to ask questions in class however at middle college because of how tight the community is students have a more comfortable time asking questions without Middle College I wouldn't be the leader that I am today before Middle College I was more of a person who was observant and would often be watching in the background however once I got settled into the environment at middle college I came to find that there were other people who had the same passions and aspirations

051towards social justice as I do when I graduate I want to take the leadership that I gained from middle college and use it to be able to get involved in my community more and understand their wants and needs so I can enter the world of politics and try and make a difference middle college has made me realize that the importance of a small school education is the growth that it provides for students teachers in the community as a whole small school education is something that's often overlooked but the community still continuing to grow the next speaker is Chris jackins my name is Chris jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98124 on proposed construction projects at hamont Lake John Rogers Alki and Madison each project is too big for its site loss of playground space loss of trees

052Building height that is over City Zoning code distracting electronic changing image signs parks department use that would eject Neighborhood use zero parking not even for Ada please change these plans on amendments to school board policies Five Points number one current language refers to public comment on items before the board the amendment proposes to drop the phrase on items before the board number two a little history some years ago the board had two sections of public comment one for General topics and one for items before the board number three each public speaker was provided three minutes now it is two minutes with only one public comment section number four the documents cite to state law which states quote even when not required by law public agencies are encouraged to incorporate and accept public comment during their

053decision-making process unquote number five this might be something for the board to keep in mind the next time the board has a high profile process like hiring a superintendent on progress monitoring goals two points number one on page one the report states that the seventh grade math goal is quote unlikely to be delivered unquote number two on page seven the district asks the board to support extending the timeline to meet the goals thank you very much the next speaker is Alex Zimmerman however we do not yet um have anybody who has called in for public testimony so I am going to move to the next speaker um Cheryl Lynn Crowther Sherilyn Crowther I'm Sherilyn Crowther president of the Seattle special education and parent teacher student student Association the PTSA and today I get to say

054thank you to the district on October 26th I asked on behalf of families for an organizational chart of the special education department while I called it a small action it is a big deal as I said then families don't know what they don't know they can't reach out to a regional special education supervisor if they don't know such a role exists the work done to create the org chart matters to family and I want to thank you if it's not already on the Seattle schools website and I couldn't find it please post it and share the link in the next communication to families that brings me to asking again for the district to post or post a link to our family guide to special education more than 30 ptas and ptsas across the district have

055hosted us for an introduction to the guide and the feedback is positive especially because the guide is in the top 10 languages spoken at homes of students with a disability transparency matters and we see that in the Seattle Times and propublica investigation into one of the non-public agencies that is supposed to be the last hope for some students with disabilities the reporting reveals that the system is failing students the reporting also reveals the system is working as designed when accountability is the responsibility of 40 different school districts is it a surprise that accountability fails you can help this system change by helping families hold it accountable and post or link Seattle school's website to our guide on special education thank you the final speaker on today's list is Christy Robertson my fifth grader gave me

056a fidget to help with being nervous um my name is Christy Robertson I have two kids in Seattle public schools and I'm testifying for the first time today as open enrollment approaches to ask you to ask to act on behalf of some of our most vulnerable kids those who struggle in traditional classrooms especially those who communicate this through challenging behaviors I'm asking for two changes that can happen now one recognize schools in our district many choice schools that are successful with inclusion two remove the effective quota on disabled students at these schools the SPs Community has thought a lot this past year about what it means to include disabled students my autistic 8th grader is living through the system while we think most of his experiences around the district none of us would wish on

057a child but this year he finally feels like an equal member of his school Community what's the difference most everybody at the school school admins special ed and Jenna teachers and staff and the rest of the school Community authentically believe that all children belong in the classroom relationships are built even with the tough kids who feel belonging are more regulated and then they can learn we lucked out this year but only because the school was under enrolled for years we sat on access program wait lists for schools we hoped would be more welcoming meanwhile our child face daily expectations he wasn't able to meet followed by an onslaught of Correction punishment ostracizing and exclusion until finally he simply refused to go it would not take changing the CBA or the program ratios to fix this

058special ed teachers simply need to be assigned to option schools based on enrollment rather than capping program enrollment based on teachers I'll be working with our IEP team School leaders enrollment and special education to try for a spot at a high school that will sustain the sense of self and community my kid is finally experiencing but I don't want a spot just for my kid and neither do you all students deserve a school where they feel valued and seen please act Elevate and promote schools that do inclusion well and allow kids who need these schools to access them the kids are worth it [Applause] president Hersey there are no more speakers waiting online so that concludes today's testimony list thank you Miss Wilson Jones thank you everyone for joining us this evening and sharing your

059comments with us uh it is greatly appreciated we cannot do our jobs without it we have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda may I have a motion for the consent agenda I'm of approval of the consent agenda approval of the consent agenda has been moved but uh by vice president Hanson and seconded by director Vera Smith do directors have any items they would like to remove from the consensual agenda this evening okay seeing none uh may I have uh the roll call please or all those in favor of the consent agenda please signify by saying aye aye aye aye aye aye those opposed oops yep not opposed abstain yeah thank you yeah that's fine abstentions and director Harris abstain so thank you for that clarification okay this uh passes by a vote of

060six two six yay zero Nays and one extension all right I will now turn the meeting over to superintendent Jones who will preside over the election process uh as the secretary of the board because we are now moving into the election of the 2023 board officers superintendent Jones please take it away thank you president Hersey uh before I open the floor for nominations I would like to review the election process for each officer position president vice president and member at large I will take nominations from the board a second is not required for the nomination but can be made after all the nominations are made for a position there will be an opportunity for directors to provide comment before but before voting after comments have been concluded the board will vote for each position in

061the order of the nominations in order the nominations were made by law and board policy the voting will be conducted by a roll call vote the voting will conclude at the point when one nominee gets four or more votes after the president has been elected we will move to the vice president and then the member at Large in summary for each position there will be nominations then discussion then voting at the conclusion of the election process for all three positions each new officer will have the opportunity to provide remarks yes please I would like to ask a clarifying question before we start um and I've I've asked this to staff before but I just wanted to ask it on the record or for anybody else who's maybe benefit from the answer my question had been

062um member at large typically has been to elect the third member of the executive committee that committee is temporarily suspended so is the member what is their expectation for the member the member at large has a role during meetings um but I guess I just want to state or get confirmation because we're all really at Large um so that the the duties associated with member at large would be duties of the president in the invent the President and Vice President are not available um and then duties within uh board meetings is there anything else that I'm missing that I'm forgetting about I think that's a tremendous question and Miss Wilson Jones if you have some clarification on that please the one piece that I would add is that your current policy suspensions which include your

063suspension of board committees um they are set to sunset on June 31st and so if the board were to not take action to more permanently revise your committee policy those would sort of snap back into place and you would have um your executive committee would continue to operate as it had in the past okay cool thank you is that is that satisfactory okay thank you all right nominations are now in order for the office of president director Rankin uh I would like to nominate our current president Brandon Hersey are there other nominations for president therefore if there are no more nominations I close the nomination for president when any directors like to make any comments at this time thank you for your service I'll just add that I'm happy to nominate president Hersey um for

064both and to I am assuming his willingness to continue in the role um uh that you know there's we got we got a lot of personalities up here and it's really important that we have uh someone leading our meetings who can you know find a way to see eye to eye with everybody and keep things moving and um especially in light of the uh a word that was received I think it's also really as I said I think last year it's really powerful to have two black men leading our district and I'm very very proud to serve with both of you thank you Miss Wilson Jones please call the roll for the vote for director Hersey director hampson aye director Harris director Rankin aye director Rivera Smith aye director Sergio I director song Moritz hi

065president or director Hersey I haven't heard a person with director in front of it for a minute um I the nomination of director Hersey is for uh presidency is approved unanimously wow congratulations on your election as president director Hersey [Applause] nominations are now in order for the office of Vice President are there nominations for vice president I nominate Vivian song Moritz for vice president are there other nominations for vice president I nominate uh director Eliza Rankin are there other nominations for vice president if there are no more nominations I close the nominations for vice president would any directors like to make any comments at this time director Harris thank you and I will um preface this with having a thoughtful elegant conversation with my friend and respected colleague director Rankin this afternoon but I don't

066think it's a big secret that this board is somewhat polarized and I think that director song Moritz brings forth perhaps a more neutral perspective and I think that's healthy I also think that having one of the first Asian women serving in leadership makes a whole lot of a sense and I think that her Harvard MBA and her attention to detail and especially monetary and budget issues when we are looking at a cliff of over what are we up to now about 160 million dollars two years from now and we don't really truly need or want the state taking over our school district and her intellect and her tenaciousness is sorely needed um and that is no slight on the hard work that the good director Rankin is doing especially on legislative advocacy and issues for

067our children that need special services but in terms of balance and in terms of politics I've put forth her name for election and I do so proudly thank you director Revere Smith I would like to Echo a lot of what director Harris just said um I'm really excited about the idea of Dr samuritz serving as a vice president I yeah I know it's only she's been a year on the board but but has proven her well self so Adept and so um he's in touch with the community I I don't know how you do it and I want to steal your your contact book because you have so many contacts in the community throughout the area even other you'll just talk about other other boards you're talking to other directors from other districts and it's

068amazing the network you have and the insights that that brings I am excited to you know have such a to maintain our diversity of our top two that we have had this year and continue that would be amazing and I just appreciate Dr Harris's nomination for her because I I think that and I'm thinking about the board too in the long run I know that um I hope not spilling the beans I think the director song Ritz would make a fine present someday and I I would see this as a great opportunity to build up to that role um because she is you know she's guaranteed to be here in two in a year and a year to assume that the rest of us who knows um but I I in thinking about the future

069of this board I like to look at the long term too and that respect and and what that could mean for the sport so thank you director hersen I think we're in a position to where we have um an immense amount of potential in everyone on this board for any of these leadership positions I think that we'll see I think that um why I'm excited about uh the potential for director Rankin to serve in this uh vice presidency role is you know having served in this role under President Hampton and having now had the opportunity to serve as president you know these leadership positions are leadership positions and in name and title only mostly um but what I am really excited about uh for director Rankin's leadership is having had the opportunity to work with

070her for the past oh my god it feels like forever but three years um I have seen her work expand boundaries right whether it comes from the work that we did together on isolation and restraint whether it comes from the supporting the transition of student outcomes Focus governance on um the ad hoc committee whether it has been uh chairing you know a number of committees whether it has been um not only being a parent in this district for a number of years which I know that I can't speak to I think that director Rankin comes with a wealth of not only expertise in so many of the areas that we are focused on right now that I think her leadership would help us really complete the cycle of what we're in that's not to say

071that director song Moritz is not going to be a fantastic board director in some capacity of leadership and would do even my job handily um whenever the opportunity presents itself to her what I will say is that in this season of the board I am excited about director Rankin's leadership in this capacity for all of the reasons that I just mentioned and um you know it was it's just going to be an honor to serve with whoever matriculates into this spot so director Rankin um thank you for your willingness to put your name into the ring and saying to director song Moritz and we will let the voting proceed unless there is more comments are there other comments please uh I just want to note both about director Rankin and uh now president Hersey in

072terms of uh collegial uh leadership one of the things I value the most and I believe is the thing that we are meant to Value the most in our success with student outcomes is self-reflection and growth and you've both shown tremendous willingness tremend tremendous humility vulnerability um and stick-to-itiveness I know people like to say grit but I hate that term um it's really about knowing that there is a level of self-sacrifice and and that same humility necessary in order to do what's right by kids and it's really hard sometimes and I've watched you both dig really really deep and we've had really really hard conversations and you allowed me to push you very hard uh in bringing on in the midst of a pandemic an entirely new governance model and are ready to charge ahead

073with it and I'm so excited um that that you were all excited and of course every time there's a legislative session I get excited to watch Liza get excited because she kicks ass with um keeping us all up to date on what is what we need to be aware of the way in ways in which we really need to have have the capacity to have our attention focused at the legislative level and stand up for for kids there that is a big part of our responsibility so this is a big year and I think it's going to be really important to have her front and center with that VP title to to get out there and and work even harder for us so support your nomination more comments about directors Miss Wilson Jones please call

074the role for the vote for director Vivian song Moritz director sergeant abstain director no I don't know um so I do this crossed my mind and I would like some clarification before we get too deep in it how would an abstention impact the outcome of a vote like do we need to abstain or can we vote or do we have to vote in a Ford needs to get for a nomination on got it if your officers to move forward good to know thank you I had a mic here too I guess but uh got got mics to spare um going back to the roll call um director song Moritz hi director hampson hey director Harris director Rankin nay director Rivera Smith aye president Hersey abstain the nomination of director songrits fails by a vote of

075three yes to to no to two abstentions Miss Wilson Jones please call the role for director Liz Liza Rankin director song Moritz director hampson aye director Harris director Rankin aye director Rivera Smith nay director sarju I president Hersey aye the nomination of director Rankin is approved by a vote of four yes to three no congratulations on your election as vice president director Rankin nominations are now in order for the office of member at large who serves the president with the president and vice president on the executive committee and we had a clarification of that earlier are there nominations for member at Large I nominate director sung Moritz for the same reasons as I nominated her before and and I just want to say that democracy is a good thing standing up and getting counted is

076a good thing and as many of us know folks that serve on the school board with the exception may be of Patty Murray who served in Shoreline couldn't get elected dog catcher later on but if you run for dog catcher you're not coming from my Luna other nominations for member at Large please I nominate director sargu I was giving my speech an hour after after if there are no more nominations I close the nomination for member at large when any directors like to make any comments at this time um this is well it is it is related to member at large but it's a i since director Harris and I very um agreeably disagree at times um I I don't think that this board is polarized and especially uh uh you know interacting with boards

077from around the state and around the country like oh my gosh the I mean the the disagreements that we do have we're so fortunate that they are what they are because I mean you know there's as we'll see in the legislative session some of the bills that come up there is some like profound beliefs and viewpoints about children and education that I feel pretty sure would be unacceptable to everybody sitting up here that other school boards have people on them who hold both and um so it you know in addition to wanting to voice my support for Dr sargu um as uh someone who ran for and came to this board specifically for and to serve black students um and has has held to that every step of the way and I think that's you

078know that to me is not a time that to me is not a time to equivocate um or be uh I don't know neutral and I think neutral and um camaraderie are not the same and we we do have a lot of really positive interactions between everybody up here and a lot of stuff that we very much agree on um and I would argue that where we don't agree it's actually more to do with just personalities and I'm including myself in that completely um than about actual issues um and I so I just I don't know I kind of wanted to say that that I think you know being uh uh yeah I think picking uh yeah yeah you should go I don't yeah yeah sorry uh director sargio is an extremely important important voice

079on this board and one of uh the goals that I believe we are obligated as as a full board as directors to do in terms of and that we haven't quite gotten to yet but are I think are at the precipice of making some good progress on is making sure that our role is accessible and equitably accessible and I watched the varying degrees of ability to contribute and participate simply based on the inequity that is represented by the role it's not unique to school boards it is there are other elected positions that are similar but I have don't think I've met a stronger advocate for children than director sarju who is so clear and passionate not just about moving to um a more focused governance model so that we can spend our time together talking

080about outcomes for kids but so that people who have the same restrictions on their time as she does can also see that that this is a role that they can do as well and be here and represent their community in the way that she does day after day after day and particularly as we in 2023 is when we're going to have to start really thinking about the transition from this strategic plan focused on black males and start talking about when do we give black females a voice in that and personally I want um uh Michelle to be one of director Sergey to be one of the people at the at the head of that table as we start making that transition because she knows this community inside and out if you ever walk around town

081with her you're going to get stopped a lot um because she knows when she says she's caught a lot of babies she has caught a lot of babies and she has been part of this community and advocating for kids um the entirety of her of her family's time here so I'm really honored to even be able to to speak on behalf of my nomination for her yeah absolutely I'm not this this is not going to be speaking about myself but I agree with uh director Rankin that I do not think this board is told I know this board is not polarized because I have colleagues around the country who have been forced out of their positions I know what polarization looks like and it's nasty it's ugly and it's nasty and it's hurtful um for

082the public record my my abstention for vice president was exactly that I chose to vote abstain because I'm not against and this is not a statement about any other board member if you know me you know I vote transparently and I mean what I say so for the public record that wasn't a crisis of conscience or wanting to look good or not wanting to hurt director song where it's his feelings by a neighbor I met I'm abstaining um and so I think that's important I think we have to model for uh our student board members what it looks like to move in this position with integrity and transparency and that's what I I try to do um I when I say I'm about kids I'm about kids I got three years and a little less

083than 300 and some odd days to get things done for kids I'm not here for the Showmanship I'm not here to build a popularity contest or to have people like me um you know in life just because the decision doesn't go my way doesn't mean I haven't been heard and that's true on this board every decision that's been made I haven't agreed with but that doesn't mean I haven't been heard and I think we have to begin to be transparent with the public we need to model for our young people I wish the two young people from middle college were still here because I really wanted to speak with them um about standing up for what matters that young person got up and stood up for what matters and she or they may have been

084I'm trying not to gender people because I have no idea what their pronouns are they may have thought they were speaking for themselves but they were actually speaking for people just like them um because I do not get a vote when it comes to this I would like to um take some time to voice my support in this case for this position for director sarju um and when I say that I just want to first of all state that I have an immense amount of respect and admiration for each and every person on this board and even if there are disagreements I think that there is a way in which we all show each other that kind of respect and admiration and I and I really I really think it's pretty amazing so to add

085on to what director Rankin um and director hampson were saying or I'm sorry vice president Rankin and director who lives and were saying nice um I really don't think our board and director Sergio as well I don't think our board is polarized at all I think that in fact our board is imperfectually working to show to be a role model for how we get through disagreements and how we talk about problems and how we Face conflict head on without having it be nasty um and I know that that's something that I have to work on I know that I've made mistakes and I'm imperfect and I know that everybody is um but I think that the willingness to put in that work is incredible and so I don't think our board is polarized I think

086our board is imperfectly beautiful um and I think that director sargu has in in the brief time that I have known her has shown me to so many levels that she loves her community she loves her constituents and she loves kids and at the end of the day this is about kids and I'm a kid and I really truly feel that kind of that I talked about on my um on my very first day being sworn and I talked about those radical actions of Love um and I and I really really see those from director sarju and I think that for myself director sargi was a role model uh as well as almost like absolutely every director every person in this room I see as a role model for for myself um but I think

087that director sargu has shown us how she will put in the work to show her love to show her respect and admiration for the students and all the people in our community and I think that I'm excited and honored to be able to talk about uh to speak for her to speak in support of her um and whoever secures this position within the next few minutes I am so excited to work with and I am so excited to continue to work with you all thank you any more comments hearing saying none Miss Wilson Jones please call the roll for director Vivian song Moritz director Harris vice president Rankin abstain director Rivera Smith aye director sarju abstain director song Moritz aye director hampson abstain president Hersey abstain the nomination of director song Moritz does not pass

088by a vote of three yes and four abstentions Miss Wilson Jones please call the roll for excuse me I'm sorry point of clarification and maybe we need legal on this would it be appropriate to vote acclimation for the next candidate or do we have to have a role called vote sir foreign I'm sorry I did not hear you sir the statute requires a role got it thank you okay Miss Wilson Jones please call the role for director Michelle sargu director or vice president Rankin yes director Rivera Smith aye director sarju yes director song Moritz director hampson aye director Harris president Hersey probably I the nomination of director Sergio is approved unanimously congratulations on your election as member at large director Sergey one more thing Mr President I would like to report that the officers for

089the board of directors for 2023 are President Hersey vice president Rankin and member at large sardu I would now like to invite our newly elected officers beginning with the president to offer any remarks that they would like to make okay well all I can honestly say is thank you and I'm going to try incredibly hard to keep this super brief uh as I was considering you know what three years on this board looks like and what another three years is going to look like I'm halfway through my turn and when I started on this board director Harris was president and I remember having several conversations throughout the process and a completely public way it's for all the people that might be listening um and really just getting an understanding for what this role is and

090that was in August of 2019. six short months before all of our worlds changed forever and I've had the opportunity to watch three different presidents operate in different ways and I take elements of all those things from you in in different situations you know I've had the honor of serving under President Harris president DeWolf president hampson and what I have wholly learned is that in this role you're not going to get far with an iron fist you're not going to get far with um trying to lead this board in a way that is centered in self as opposed to students um and as I look at the next three years and my next year as president here I want to continue to embody so many of the various leadership qualities that all of you especially

091our student board directors have shown me time and time again we got a lot of work ahead of us but what I want you to think about is this moment when we were in last year and the reason I want to think about it is because I was wearing this exact same outfit when I was elected president last year this is now my lucky president's sweater my hair was a little bit shorter and it was a little less gray but it's been one hell of a year and we have accomplished a great deal and when I say we I'm not just talking about this board I'm talking about everybody in this room this entire District and it seems like the more that we accomplish the more challenges present themselves and I know that we as

092this board everybody's name on this thing as I talked to y'all a year ago I asked y'all a question are we going to make the commitments necessary to get this done are we going to work together and y'all emphatically answered that question yes you know and to some people we might appear polarized I think for many of us what we appear is working we're working on it we're getting it done we're getting National recognitions for what we are getting done and with that being said that's what work looks like coming together bringing a difference of opinions and not being afraid to still support and like each other when those differences occur and so what I just want to say is thank you all for heeding my call last year are we prepared to make this

093District what we really want it to be and y'all have said yes in your own different ways but emphatically yes and so as we look at this next year with this next leadership team and even years beyond all I can say is that I'm incredibly excited and I am incredibly hopeful for what we are going to be able to do and the progress that we have made in the short amount of time has been nothing short of extraordinary I'm excited to serve with the new newly elected leadership and I'm excited to serve with this entire board because regardless if you're serving in the presidency the vice presidency member at large liaison position all of you bring such unique and valuable qualities to this space that if you weren't here would be absent and greatly missed

094so with that being said I'ma shut up and hand it to the new people that have been elected and hopefully will somebody will take this from me next year and I will pass it over to newly elected vice president Rankin thank you all for the confidence in me and I hope to continue to serve you with the same level of rigor that I have in the past 12 months um and I don't feel they need to make a lot of comments um but I think I want to just reiterate what what president Hersey said about um well what he said in earlier comments about the you know if you look at our policy and in practice the role of the president vice president member at large is primarily to be elected to the executive board

095and the president if you look you know in policy the president's role is as the designated spokesperson who is authorized on behalf of all of us to speak on behalf of the board for on issues that have come before the board and been voted on um and to run meetings and um as important that those roles are the president vice president remember like nobody's vote are all votes all count the same and um I guess I just want to kind of publicly make the commitment to you all that uh the goal that I have in this position and on the board for the rest of my term is to continue to embed best practices and how we operate and to model and hopefully through board superintendent relationship and the other things associated with deliverables five

096and six which you guys might be tired of me talking about um to give us a framework to allow us all to put into practice what's aligned to best practice and also codify it because for whatever reason we have decided that we're willing to do not only the work of the board but the work of implementing best practices of board governance which is a lot and it's uncomfortable and messy and complex and a lot um but uh the that we are willing to do this or maybe not so willing I don't know but once it's go to the board it's about the board so um is going to serve us now and also boards into the future to hopefully you know we have amazing students some of the best teachers you will find anywhere in

097the country if not the world dedicated administrators and if we can all continue to model our imperfect Beauty as we grapple with these issues we can create this framework for new people to step into and follow and and lead the district together into the place that we want it to be and into a place that truly reflects the vision and values of the community that we serve um and so that's my commitment to you as vice president is to focus on supporting our president communicating with the rest of the board and staying focused on the things that I've committed to such as legislative liaison and the so far the deliverables associated with five and six which again I'm totally open to any open and would like any feedback on those um before we go into

098uh eventually re-adopting or reviewing and accepting those because that's really uh the foundational document for how we all want to work together um and so it's important that everybody's voice is represented in there and that it's all it's something we can all agree to um so that's my my focus and commitment and I don't have to be the vice president to be able to do that but I'm proud to be and um yeah it's gonna be a wild year beautifully imperfect if that wasn't some dropping of some serious wisdom that has to be one of the most profound things that has been articulated this evening thank you director Crone Barone it is an honor and a privilege to serve alongside you I'm just blown away every time you open your mouth and I I literally

099mean that um for the public I'm not sure exactly what member at large does other than probably meet early in the morning huh say it again oh yeah no I know that but what time do you meet oh good okay great so I don't have to get up early I'm a night owl so having eight o'clock meetings is hard for me um yeah so I think I can do that job I think you can do that adequately um but more importantly um many of you know I if you live in King County I work for your King County government and not only do I work for your King County government I work for King County Public Health and if you've been paying attention for the last three years we have been in a pandemic and

100your King County government has been the national leader in in the pandemic response and that means we've all been working excessively and that includes me I have a very demanding job I'm on the leadership team at Public Health luckily I live alone because all I do is work um and I want other people in the community to be able to see themselves in this position people who are not in the privileged position that I'm in because it is a privilege to be in the position that I'm in that doesn't mean I have like white privilege I just have some privilege to be able to flex my schedule on occasion and serve in this position and what's important to me is that others be able to see themselves on the Deus if they too want to

101accept this very large and can I even say not well compensated is that even accurately represent because we get a stipend but if you break it down we make less than minimum wage we make less than minimum wage in King County and that should not be the case we should be like Alaska you know they get they get a monthly the the president gets 2 800 a month that's the president that is a demonstration of the value the value of that position a public servant decision on the behalf of kids and so I just I I hope that coming into 2023 My Hope first is that we really emerge from this pandemic with it in our rearview mirror it wasn't in our rearview mirror this year um our children are still impacted by what happened

102the last couple of years we've now experienced what other schools have experienced in the nation with a with the you know the loss of one of our students actually the loss of two of our students if we're being honest about it and you know for the public we are we have adopted this framework called student outcomes focused governance and you know what that's a fancy phrase for we are going to focus on students because some students in our district are not doing well and have never done well they should be able to do well in our Public School System but because of structural foundations like Cheryl Lynn Crowther says this system's not broken it's working exactly the way it was designed to work and yes we haven't we have a department of African-American Male Achievement

103that was a heroic effort on the part of many administrators in this room and they're barely scratching the surface our problems are not sub black male problems in this District are not solved because of that department we have a long way to go to make up for the 300 year marginalization of May well 400 years for for my native brothers and sisters we have a long way to go and so I hope that um that we can really Double Down and ask ourselves at every juncture is this going to impact whether or not our students are getting a high quality public school education there are some things stroke of the pen we're going to have to just decide on and vote on but those things that matter like Transportation like bell times um we've got

104to double down and the question has to be in every single case is this going to make a difference and outcomes for our students that's the question I'm asking myself which is why I said earlier sometimes these decisions I'm not in agreement with that doesn't mean I wasn't heard right it just didn't go my way and I have to be okay with that um and just keep advocating for a hundred percent laser focus on all of our students but particularly those who are not getting what they need in this District and so thank you I'm a little bit surprised and overwhelmed by the unanimous decision and I'm going to accept that even though it's just seconding whatever I think that's what you do um I have a feeling that on occasion it'll be a little

105bit more than that like things are going to come up and I as I did in my campaign I made no promises but I made commitments and my commitment still stands I stand committed to serving the students in Seattle Public Schools this place that I call my home and now turn the meeting over to our 2023 board president director president Brandon Hersey thank you superintendent Jones all right do we need to do the recess okay all right yeah my bad y'all I'll give y'all a break uh how long y'all need five minutes 10 minutes I should have just left it at five all right the board stands recess for the next 10 minutes please promptly be back in your seats at 609 so that we can start at 6 10. remember your integrity and I

106better have pennies if y'all are late thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] I'm not mad about it [Music] um I would Now call the board meeting back to order we will now move on to the next item on the agenda which is Introduction item which of which we only have one uh which is approval of the 2022-23 superintendent evaluation instrument as the sponsor of this item I will be introducing it tonight and we'll then open it up for discussion and take any questions along with Dr Jones okay well done I have my talking points right here do we have the printed talking points for this one I'm not saying

107them all right about that oh perfect yeah this is working uh yes either way okay okay perfect thank you everyone for your patience while we get a couple of little details sorted no all right so sponsor this item I'll be introducing it as I mentioned before um and we'll open it up for discussion and take any questions along with Dr Jones this tool reflects where we are in our transition to student outcomes Focus governance the tool includes metrics for all three of the academic goals as well as metrics for two guard rails and two areas for student outcomes Focus governance implementation once we've adopted the tool we will schedule up to four executive session check-ins with the superintendent to discuss progress as indicated in policy 1630 and board procedure 1630 BP evaluation of the superintendent

108public process monitoring excuse me public progress monitoring sessions also cover the goal and guard rail metrics used in this tool the final evaluation of the superintendent will be posted publicly before the last board meeting of the year with that Dr Jones and I are happy to take any questions um and so we will go ahead and open it up at this time do board directors have any questions about the superintendent evaluation tool good say hi thank you and um I appreciate that a lot of the questions we got to ask beforehand yeah and got those back and those are available on the website so thank you for the uh the responses there that uh came back for this item um I separately of this I would like I wanted to just ask um is is

109there opportunity and even should there be opportunity for public input like for engagement on this on the evaluation of the superintendent I know that's people are going to ask that and so I just kind of want to just and again like I don't know I'm not arguing one way or the other I'm just trying to gauge what that would be what that would look like if that is something that's appropriate do you have an immediate response to that um yes I think it's it's possible but I would love to uh have a iterative process with the board a little back and forth around what that might look like um public process it can go it can be wide ranging um but I I feel like we do get a lot of public input around what's

110happening but to codify that some type of way I'd be open to it with a dialogue with the board okay um I do so there is a 360 component to the sofg model that wouldn't that would um fold that in and then that's what we discussed that and that's the same for us as well 360 review for both the board and the superintendent and then we discuss those with each other do you want to explain what that is for people I mean I've read about it but I oh a 360 evaluation meaning that you um used an impartial party to check in with various constituent groups and such as the community as well as staff so anybody that the superintendent or the board connects or intersects with has the opportunity to give feedback and then

111those things are discussed but in terms of the contract and the evaluation it's what we have agreed to and the public facing discussion is around specifically around the the actual evaluation of the outcomes that um superintendent Jose is producing for students within the bounds of the guard rails and they've that evaluation but so the answer to your question I I believe is yes and that the 360 approach is the best way to do it because otherwise um you would be inappropriately subjecting a staff person to a public Personnel evaluation which is not appropriate yeah and that's why I was not you know that's why I asked um and also so there's a lot this is very specific to the goals and guardrails um is there room is there any other areas in which we should

112also be you know because obviously we interact with the superintendent you know on one-on-one and in in like communicate regularly are there areas outside of this that he that we would look to for any type of evaluation or is this strictly like what you hear is that's it's there's like you know I'm not superintendo's but some of the superintendent going to do without doing you know we see them do something nefarious right yeah that's not something that we can even this is not in here I know the contract his contract has places for that too um but as far as the evaluation this is strictly on this work as superintendent yes and any sort of other nuanced something that we might want to bring into our conversation about his evaluation is there a place for

113that um I would have to have a deeper conversation to get a full understanding of what you mean and then we can always report out through comments or something the result of that conversation immediately I do not believe so which is like one of the components of student outcomes Focus governance where we're trying to like get really clear about what is in the evaluation and what's not right um but I do hear your question is like okay how do we capture things that might not necessarily be in the evaluation and so that I don't I don't think that there is based on my understanding of the framework and correct me if I'm wrong there's actually was a there's actually a session on this um during the trip that we were in in Orlando uh my

114group actually presented on it um it was Houston's School District that did kind of like a narrative piece where folks could give whatever feedback they wanted and by folks I meant board directors could give whatever feedback they wanted um and attach it to the document even though it wasn't necessarily included in the actual evaluation they found that that to be more problematic than just sticking to the evaluation and we can talk more about like making sure that that's actually what you meant a and then B if not how do we you know square that but on the first listen to what your question is I don't think that we have um a space to go outside of what we have included on the evaluation but excited to continue that conversation okay yeah director Harris thank

115you going back to our compilation of questions and answers for us to um base our questions and eventually our votes yeah number 23 I believe it was vice president Rankin that asked for it three for the information implementation goals how is quote prompt being determined for interim 7.2 blah blah blah keeps abreast quote significant quote I imagine there may be mutually defined in the superintendent board relationship policy and procedure the staff response was this will be addressed at introduction on December 14th I believe that's today how will that be addressed yes so thank you so to quantify what prompt would be I would say 24 to 48 hours and it could change given the magnitude of the situation but to put a finer point on it I'd say 24 to 48 hours to keep abreast

116would be of any item that could substantially impact student student outcomes or impact a policy or or a superintendent procedure and so those are the things that I would say to keep abreast on those those issues a sense of how we'll be kept abreast not at this time um however I do believe so the questions are lending itself to one mechanism but I think this is probably most in response to the type of questions that you all asked me via email or phone calls or things of that nature I think I hear where you're coming from director Harris and it's like figuring out a way to make sure that the way in which we are communicated with these things is predictable and consistent is would that be a fair characterization of what you're asking for

117I I think so okay um and and it's not new news certainly to the superintendent and yourself Etc that the communication from the superintendent I for one would like to have more of it I would like to be highlighting your hard work and the hard work of the staff and again I don't care what the hell you call it doesn't have to be the Friday memo but more communication is a high goal for myself and I suspect other board members but I don't speak for other board members thank you yeah and so what would be an interesting conversation for you and I to have is like when we're making or when I go back with superintendent Jones to figure out what that looks like uh getting some ideas about like like what would you like

118to see like is there a preference for written phone calls video messages carrier pigeon like we'll figure those pieces out but it's heard loud and clear that there are or rather there is a desire for there to be some structure around how we receive those Communications Cadence things like that okay cool directory also the communication Audits and process perfect yeah and to add to that the reason I asked this and nudged in there the superintendent board relationship policy and procedure is that as we will discuss after break because um are requested some work session time for us as a full board to look at those because I know I've sent stuff out of email but it's hard to do that one directional you know one directionally when we can't all just discuss but so I

119guess this is my my ask or nudge related to this question is if you have the chance and want to look at any of the things that I've sent regarding that if you if individual directors have things that they would prefer or like to see send it to me and I'll compile them as we make recommendations on on that policy and then also uh um codify you know getting that codified as a mutual agreement between the superintendent and the board in either that policy or a you know accompanying procedure that can be changed by Future boards and future suits for attendance if people have preferences in different ways but I think it's important for this item and also just in general for us all to know that we all get the same information in the

120same way at the same time it doesn't it's not dependent on individual relationships or texting or whatever and that we know um you know prompt could mean to one person within an hour you know and so like we need to define those and make sure that we all have that same agreement so any thoughts that you have on that just um you know send it to me as you have them I vote for a carrier pigeon you're training them director Hanson uh unfortunately I have some confusion related to the answers to questions on um around the change in language on guardrail 5 uh did we actually vote to include a double negative as opposed to just stating it clearly I'm very confused about that I I do recall the as defined in board policy zero

121zero three zero but it was then redlined this is uh question number 16. what I do remember is we didn't like unwelcome and so when we didn't like unwelcome I think we put a knot in there and so it kind of goes is this the you know the the Commandments version of of setting the the boundaries and so um yeah I'm just so for clarity purposes if if the board wants to make that that clerical change I'm I'm certainly well if it's clerical staff can make it right I mean I I that's why I'm wondering like is that what we actually said or was that because we kind of had a general agreement about this and then miss Wharf do you have any Clarity on this one I wasn't sure like when I'd have to

122go back and find the video and see like what did we actually say and I don't to a double negative I don't think it reads well I think it's harder to understand um so I would think that staff could make that change and if we sometimes our environments are unwelcoming is the reality um Julia worth director of board relations and strategic initiatives when the board added in the language around defined in board policy number zero zero three zero unwelcoming is not defined in zero zero three zero welcoming is defined and so in order to align with that language that the board desired for it to reference the definitions of zero zero three zero as well as other policies welcoming is defined unwelcoming is not so we needed to change the word to be the definition

123of welcoming and then change the structure up top so that the schools are not providing schools are not not providing welcoming environments laughs so it's a it's it's against the rules of a guard rail to do that to say to not not do something right like that's a No-No because then you're just pretending that you're doing the opposite of what you're you're supposed to Define it in terms of what you cannot do and so adding the UN to the front of welcoming I mean this just sounds like such a stereotypical bureaucratic moment right now I can't even I really feel like we can handle the risk of saying unwelcoming I guess is what I'm saying in the guardrail that there's some legal risk there that I I think we can take on given that it's

124in zero zero three zero defined as welcoming and that un then qualifies that as the opposite of that um in some legal future where that is called to question I guess is what I'm saying oh sorry um I I agree like you know getting rid of a double negative would probably be ideal but I get I think I understand what what Julia's saying here if we said will not allow unwelcoming School environments you can't then say as defined in support policy terms of Reserve because unwelcoming isn't defined um so we'd have to then change the part that says as defined um so I mean because yeah because I I get the what you were trying to achieve and you did and um but so to um Rectify this again we couldn't say unwelcoming as defined

125since that's not so it would just mean changing a little more than that yeah okay so the will not allow anyone to provide unwelcoming environments already for me sounded like a little bit of pushing again it already is a double negative but I think could you say you know uh will not allow unwelcoming blah blah blah parentheses welcoming is defined in policy zero zero three zero yeah I think we can make that clerical change if there's consensus on that thank you all right thank you yeah it seems like there's consensus okay fantastic thank you yep glad we could word Smith that out um any other questions on this item yeah go for it all right I actually wanted to go back to director Rivera Smith's question just for clarification or just for understanding if you're

126asking about the uh you know public input or feedback did you were you asking about it in terms of what criteria we're using or for public input on what criteria we're using to evaluate or in terms of how the public would evaluate that's a good question yeah I was gonna say I feel like the evaluation tool is one of the main parts yeah it's not like the primary part of our job as a board so right we should be doing that based on what we were elected to do vision and values all these other things that do have public components and so that's really helpful clarification so you're talking about the The public's perception or evaluation of the superintendent thank you all right fantastic any other questions great discussion great questions great work okay well

127this is an item for introduction and so we'll see it in the new year um okay so we also have a 60-minute progress monitoring session today on goals 2.1 and 2.2 uh I will pass it over to superintendent Jones now to begin the progress monitoring session oh so we'll be relocating okay we will also be relocating to that setup take your mic foreign so just as um a precursor to oh here we go so when we get close just as a precursor to tonight's progress monitoring session I'd like to announce that we have AJ Crable with us on the line he will be listening and providing feedback uh as necessary more likely to me after the fact but if there's some glaring mistake that we make AJ please help um with that being said I'm

128going to go ahead and pass it over to superintendent Jones and Senior staff to lead us through the progress monitoring session take it away thank you president Hersey and I have doctors Perkins and Scarlett with me today and uh this is a complex memo and I I think they'll help us to do more learning and understand where we're going and what the possibilities are uh before we get started I'd like to know does everyone have uh their copy of the of the memo so it's electronic it's it's electronic and I know uh director Chrome Barone may not have it uh teed up either so good evening everyone uh tonight we engage in our next progress monitoring conversation as we take the next step in implementing our student outcome focused governance in Seattle Public Schools and

129we're grateful for the time that we have to discuss this important work that we're doing to promote our African-American male students achievement and their ability to succeed in mathematics and ultimately gain access to the stem-based pathways that we know are plentiful in the Seattle area and frankly across the world I want to note that we continue to be in a learning stance with progress monitoring and I look forward to continuing to learn with you School Board directors and we are grateful to have AJ cray bill again with us this this evening uh we'll follow the same sequence that we did for our review of seventh grade of the seventh grade math goal memo in late June uh we'll spend the first 10 minutes doing an independent close read of this important memo and to refresh

130our memories and to ensure we are all coming into the discussion with the same information at the same time I want to remind you that this goal is different than the other two goals and that we just started this this past summer to implement the strategies and interventions to improve outcomes and as you may notice we've included in this latest memo graphic demographic groups that the board inquires about frequently such as multilingual students and students with IEPs so that's a new feature once you've included Your independent read I will spend a few minutes providing some suggestions for questions for our conversations uh any questions if not let's go ahead and do an independent close read for for five to ten minutes foreign how close are we are we are you ready to come back or

131you need another minute or two okay do we feel ready to begin directors oh Lisa needs more time I'm so sorry please take all the time you need all right thank you for reorienting yourselves to the math memo and I know that you've all read it because you've sent in some really really good questions so now that you've concluded reading the memo I'll take a few minutes to orient us to the to the conversation on the data as a reminder the percentage of African-American boys and teens reach in proficiency on the state Smarter Balance assessment SBA in math 7th grade is our Top Line measure and if you recall we chose this measure because it's correlated with access to and success and advanced coursework in math and high school and post-secondary success so remember it's

132correlated to success in advanced coursework and math and high school and post-secondary success that said we're developing a portfolio of measures to tell us how well we're doing on the intermediate outcomes that precede student learning measures like teacher knowledge and practice and student and family sense of belonging and confidence so before we dig into the specific student outcome measures let me briefly provide some reminders on the different assessments we're using for you and the public watching this discussion number one this memo has two new data points the spring Smarter Balance assessment uh and fall measures of academic progress we also call that map and that that's an interim assessment and that those results were in in that results in math two the smarter balance assessment which you are all familiar with uh and this assesses

133seventh grade math standards and as our Top Line measure and third uh the fall 22 administration of the map of the math MAP assessment is the first data point that we have for sixth and seventh graders and we'll be sharing the projected testing proficiency at this time in the future we'll be able to begin to look at measures of growth using the map assessment data so turning back to the data in the memo as you saw on the top of the first page we are not on track to meet our Target for seventh grade math goal so if you look at the first page that's where we talked about where it's orange and orange is the interimetrics indicate results are unlikely to be delivered without significant changes so we're off track to meet our 2023

134strategic plan Target for 35 percent of 7th grade African-American males to score proficient or above on the spring 2023 Mass Smarter Balance assessment second the board the boat excuse me the board voted to approve the required administration of the math measure of academic progress map in part so that we would have a clear district-wide measure for determining progress towards our larger 7th grade math goal so if you look at figures three and four which are on page five on the seventh grade math interims and figure five on page five these have both the sixth and seventh grade interims so thank you for the support for approving Matt so now we have interim measures that we're looking at third point I want to make is the results of the Fall 2022 measures of academic progress map

135interim assessment indicate that 19.1 percent of black boys in seventh grade are projected to score proficient or above in math on the spring 2023 7th grade math Smarter Balance assessment you can see this in figure three which is also on page four you all with me so far okay uh and to walk you through other data figures in the memo I will note that figure one shows that in Spring 2022 24.4 percent of African-American males in seventh grade in SPS score proficient or above in math on the smarter balance assessment so all the data points in these figures reflect new more inclusive definitions of African-American males and students of color for this educational Justice these definitions are they the updates include multi-racial students and middle eastern North African students on page four in figure four

136you can see the distribution of projected spring 2023 Smarter Balance assessment proficiency levels consistent with spring 2022 SBA data from figure two there are high proportions of our students that are projected to test at level one and level two proficiency and there are higher proportions of our students with IEPs who did not test on the map assessment figure five on page five shows the most recent data for each of our Top Line and interim measures for each of our student groups of focus and lastly in figure six on page six we have new data from our fall 22 administration of our climates student climate survey where we see that a majority of our students expecting to do fairly well on math on any math class that I take this is consistent across all student groups

137so given the urgency to better support our students so they can realize their goals in math I'm pleased to share that we've launched initiatives across five areas that are described in the memo so at this point I will pause to see if there are any clarify clarifying questions on the overall statement on our progress for lack thereof any questions directors um well I have a question but I think it's it's probably best covered in the next section in terms of strategies I mean it relates to the data but I think I can yeah so this is just forecasting if this is about the uh six schools and versus the two point excuse me the two-thirds of our our students and what's going to happen with the other thirds we'll cover that in the next okay

138thanks so let's spend a minute on why we're seeing these outcomes and what we can do about it as I shared in June in addition to the challenges of the last couple years our system has historically not provided math instruction that is research based and meets the needs of every child in the classroom which is true of many districts across the country moreover we have just started to systematically invest in this strategy this spring uh we need to take a hard detail and long-term uh in the long-term look at the work that we're doing to build and strengthen our systems of instructional and operational excellence so as you know this data has led us to take specific actions over the past several years and to launch particular strategies that you have endorsed in particular I'm

139proud and grateful that you've approved our new K5 math adoption which has already been enormously helpful in getting us on track to meet our targets so when it comes to middle school math and supporting our black youth we believe that we know what needs to be done in the classroom specifically we believe that we are now heading in the right direction given our investments in in five strategies as noted in the memo so let me walk you through the five strategies one is the area in the area of excellent teaching and joyful learning in so doing we've launched teacher professional development and ongoing job embedded coaching and this is focused on Equitable math teaching practices such as the strategy for developing the mathematical Brilliance of African-American males through the program through the framework of ICU

140care and this was developed by doctors Pamela Seda and Kendall Brown the second strategy that we're championing is in the area of strong relationships and connected families this is where we're increasing the capacity of school family Partnerships to support the mathematical learning and mathematical identity of African-American boys and teens and their families and this be this is where we began one one hour home visits for incoming sixth grade African-American males at the city at six schools this summer the third strategy that we're using is in the area of Equitable measures and student supports this is where we've begun to implement the map uh the measure academic progress in Fall 2022 in grades k through eight and have begun to study examples of African-American male Student Success the fourth strategy is an opportunity Pathways and this

141is where middle schools are collaborating with their feeder schools to support African-American boys and teens to have the opportunity to enroll in algebra one in eighth grade and advanced coursework in math and lastly number five it's in expanded learning and enrichment this is where we're working on systematizing Summer Bridge programs with our expanded learning colleagues at the city of Seattle our partners for they're partnering with us for incoming sixth grade African-American male students and connecting these opportunities to our larger District pre-k through 12 stem plan so these are strategies are grounded in the research and engagement with students and families and as Illustrated in figure seven in the memo we've also thought through how each of these strategies and initiatives will lead to improved student outcomes in specific ways so I've said a lot and

142now we turn to our discussion uh as AJ has shared there are many types of questions that we can discuss there are technical questions tactical questions and strategic questions so we ask for your questions ahead of time so that we can address the technical and Tactical before this meeting and in other venues thank you very much for the robust response hopefully you saw that we got back to you on many of those questions but before we move to strategic questions I want to see if you have any clarifying questions on the data in the memo please thank you um I did not get my questions in on time I Was A Day Late by a technical error I I was cutting and facing from my Dock and I missed this section so I sent them

143in a day late but I don't know that you've received them because oh you did okay um so I was gonna ask them as we have this discussion but maybe I don't have to or maybe we can address some of them I do have some that I would like to talk about tonight um but regardless I was just clarifying that um and one of them is so as far as technical I just asked like if we can put the in future sessions if we can put the goal on the top of the page that's clear what what the Top Line goal was um I figured what else I asked regarding like technical Atlas technicalities regarding the actual memo um also asked to State the authors of the memo so that we know who this is

144coming from um and there was a link that wasn't working so but well I'll get more into the rest of the questions as we proceed thank you the director Rivera Smith did you want to ask her to were you asking a question or no oh okay I just wanted to speak to that last one do other folks have their mics on is that why we're having feedback because they're just generally because we're close okay all right I think we're good now um specifically for the piece around the author of the memo so technically all of it comes from the superintendent so if you have a question specifically you could direct it to him and then like if you there was a piece that you were interested about that you think that maybe Dr Scarlett has

145some impact on you could direct that question and Route it through the superintendent but just for clarification whenever we receive these the author is technically always for our purpose as a superintendent yep great question so just in terms of the way the data is presented and as we go through this we're talking about primarily strategies that are related to six schools but the in all cases right I just want to be super clear then all cases we're looking at data for all students in those categories right and the reason I ask that is that and that is part of that strategic question and the if we're not looking at um those schools separately are we really seeing the impact that we're having if we're only looking at you know so if we were throwing in

146another third that's going to have some sort of weighted impact one way or the other um that's something I would like to see us get a little more clear on because it's confusing to understand how to make decisions um or how you're making decisions about strategy if we're using data that's holistic but we're only taking action in a small group and so is it at some point necessary to look at how are things changing or moving in that smaller system and maybe you are and you're not presenting it here but I think it's it's confusing in the in the presentation that's my one question about the data I think yeah so the the six schools are represent two-thirds of the African-American males uh and then there's a another third that are not in these schools

147uh we're doing specific strategies in these six schools but uh I I hope you all would be comfortable in knowing that other components of work are available to all middle schools for example all middle school students and Educators have the opportunity to participate in the in the map assessment as well as the math seven and eight uh Compact and the math empowerment courses and so they're they're having the benefit of being able to participate in those programs as well um I don't know Dr Scarlett or Dr Perkins if you have anything to add to that but I think this is a really important question because we we talk about the targeted applying to the universal and we really need to be clear on how we're spreading the the good things that we're learning at these

148six schools Beyond um Beyond it's not just housed in the sick so we're trying to make sure we're spreading that and with just before we open that box I want to be clear that my question was actually about the data the data okay I'm sorry um maybe that's what you're going to answer so let's start with that because that other piece of it I want to get to as well but um and I think other directors had the same question but uh or want more follow-up on that but yeah I want to know about that before we dive in just for the point of clarification as I understood your question um it would and tell me if I'm wrong but it would be good to see the broken out impact of only those six schools

149as opposed to looping in the other third when you know that's not a fair characterization of the impact of the work that y'all are putting in yeah so that that's what I heard that's correct it doesn't change the goal but it is confusing in reading it in this and there's all kinds of great stuff in there and awesome answers to you know everybody's questions and we still have to figure you know there's still the goal to be met so um yeah I think that's a great piece of feedback I think it isn't as clear as it could be but absolutely you know you all set the goal for all students for all of our African-American male students in particular but all students ultimately through the lens of targeted universalism and we need to spell out

150um that be clear that that's what the data is about it's about all of our African-American male students in in the Middle School grades so uh but in terms of you know one more piece related to what Dr Jones is sharing we are committing to using our Friday School leader engagement sessions as a way to socialize what we're learning in these six schools and I think that's been a common theme from the board as well wanting to know more about the theory about how we go from the six schools to the entire uh piece but the data is for all and and we should be clear on that but is it possible to see the data on the six questions absolutely okay well just because sometimes there's you know and values and whatnot that might

151cause problems so I just want to make sure that that's something that is yeah okay I manage this feedback any more uh clarifying questions on the data in the memo and I know you asked a question about the data in the memo and I asked I was talking about strategy so uh data any more data questions director Rankin uh I guess I'm just I wanted some to make sure that I understand what the conversation that was just had um because we're we're monitoring for all students and then we want to see the broken out data for the impact of these interventions and supports at these six schools and the in Okay so internally I'm assuming I'm hoping I guess confirm for me that you are looking at the impact of those things on data at

152those schools but then our goal is for all students to be reporting that okay so um can we are we thinking that we see that data Broken Out by strategy by school or and when I I wasn't putting that fine of a you know detail on it I I just think that it needs to be clarified in terms of the communication as it comes back to us in the future okay so that we can in fact see the directly what's happening at this six schools I mean every school is responsible for doing this work yeah and should be looking at this data so yeah so um if you look at figure two we we broke that out African-American male students of color first and educational Justice bilingual Learners students with IEPs I think we could

153add another line for those at the sixth the six schools right okay uh so that we'll we'll add that as a feature for the for the next the next session appreciate all those other data points yeah because what that's gonna or at least the way that I'm looking at this is like as we do these interim check-ins having that data will then like let us know what interim measures you're putting in place are working right and I think that there would be a fairer characterization of all the work you all are putting in to just see that broken out subset of students one more data question um uh because yes I think having that separate line of students at the six goals would be great but now are we talking about all students at the

154six schools or students at the six schools that fall into one of these other four categories now you're asking for a lot director Mike I think we should think about that but I want to just yeah I'm not expecting you to have an answer right now but that well I I am actually curious can can either of you speak to how well our our six schools students are doing compared to other school other students I I can't uh with this the exact data points but what's interesting you know there are past studies of deniaki Mercer for example which is three of the six that had some um stronger growth in math so but again it's a great point we should I think that the challenge is obviously not overwhelming with too many different pieces but

155I think what uh Dr Jones suggested for figure two makes a lot of sense um and then the other question I think I can't remember if I asked this in relationship to this data or other data in general but students who may fall into more than one of these categories they are counted individually in each category is that correct so an African-American male student who is a multilingual learner who has an IEP would be in each okay because you know maybe someday down the road we would want to look at within the categories if there's disparities but um but I think that's important to know that that we're considering the needs of what but considering so students with IEPs I said take it easy cowgirl I'm I said I said some sometime down the road

156um but yeah I think it is important that uh that those students are represented for each of the categories that they they fall into so thanks uh let me preface this by saying I'm not asking to see the data but I'm curious I think I'm surprised by how predictive some of these early tests are of future performance and I'm wondering if you are looking at previous grades and just kind of making any observations like particularly in elementary school so I looked up the seventh grade math standards and I think I was I I'm not an educator so I was a little bit surprised to know what seventh grade math is and it's um but it is truly um you know I think if you were a struggling math student in earlier grades I could see

157absolutely how you would be struggling in seventh grade because it is adding and subtracting integers decimals multiplication and so I'm just curious if your team is looking at data in previous grades and just you know are there any patterns that you're noticing like is there like a point where the kids are really struggling and that can be predictive of later performance that's why um the K5 math adoption is so vital and key having that Missing Link didn't give us a good opportunity to have a Continuum of you know from K5 mathematics in that transition you know beyond that into middle school as well so having that aligned curricular material allows us to be able to look at practice across and to be able to see the alignment between the instructional practices within that as well

158so that's what we're so excited about having that online curriculum know that this is true for seventh grade but um director samuritz actually jogged a memory that I have from my own classroom experience where uh we had our standards but then we also have priority standards right like the most important of those standards and so I don't know uh I guess my question in there is are we measuring all the standards within the seventh grade range for mathematics is there also an ability to break out data by the well that's assuming that priority standards for seventh grade math even exists I just don't know for a fact if they do or don't but it might be an interesting facet to look at you know there are all of these things but like in the core

159competencies are we seeing any difference as opposed to the full subset for seventh grade but again assuming that seventh grade has priority standards within the common core standards if I could Dr Jones says just so um you're absolutely what's still accurate is that you know we're following basically the Common Core in math and math had that the greens and the blues and things and those still apply because they signal what is going to be most assessed in particular on the on the SBA so that that still is there where we have struggled recently is that the SBA hasn't been broken out by that level of of strand but I agree with you that that's what we want to get to so that we can have even more precise understanding of which strategies are moving which

160pieces um so that's something that that you know we anticipate having more data in the future but this last round was was just high level but but um Dr Perkins the map does measure the strands so the so the map the interim assessment that does measure the strands is that correct it has some of additional information but it can and it will have to see how it matches what you're thinking in turn not not all the way down to those individual standards but uh if there's other no yes okay very good see Dr Jones is spot on and I well that's good to know um because that might also be a conversation that we need to have as a team around because I know like just first hand uh priority standards while they are also

161included in the like Full Slate of standards in general priority standards are really where the meat of the competencies for that particular grade are um and I just think it would be interesting and if it doesn't necessarily fit into the framework one of the folks on the ad hoc committee tell me if that is a question that is outside of the bounds but it might give us some indication of like okay in our core competencies our kids are doing X and all of these things where they're assessed less frequently and less efficiently they could be doing why which might you know give us a better understanding of what strategies are working and what we should invest in versus you know the antithesis of that I think that well I think that might be getting into

162a level yeah I was gonna say that's under what the like our goals are about grade level proficiency based on an agreed upon assessment yeah so then both below that you know we would want you all to be I think our expectation would be that that is the kind of conversation that we want to support the superintendent and getting administrators and teachers too that that I mean I've heard other districts have those conversations and between schools where they're focusing in different areas and therefore having different outcomes and sometimes with different groups of students and because they're doing things differently in another building just based on exactly what you're saying um and but we haven't supported as a board getting access to that data right because that's a that sorry I'm getting in the weeds um

163right now we're here to serve any any other questions about about data if not we'll get into some strategic questions that you posed um one of the questions that you posed was really around um short-term strategies and so in addition to the long-term strategy what is your short-term plan for addressing student needs that require immediate interventions now and so uh let me reference figure seven the on the on the back page uh we like we we really like this figure actually because it shows a real comprehensive view of what we're trying to get done um and so uh this is these are the steps we're taking in our first year as implementation as well as our longer term approach to The Continuous Improvement expectations uh the immediate intervention supports available to Middle Schools uh our

164math empowerment courses for sixth grade students professional development for math empowerment Educators the success maker program which provides students with an intervention to develop areas of needs and school-based intervention programs so we're going to continue to learn from the school-based intervention programs at our six priority schools as we talked about and share our best practices and share those best practices at school leader sessions so those are my initial thoughts on that question what does this raise for you all in response no I was uh just thank you for all this good work because it's exciting that we get to talk about our student outcomes at this level um it's just I'm excited that we're we're getting to this point so much more to go but um so uh the I I like this as well

165um and I think that the answers to um the questions around you know what are the immediate strategies and it sounds like they are substantive particularly at the six priority schools my Wonder is about um I want to say this in the most I was I learned something at the Council of great City Schools conference around what it means to support teachers and buildings with data without hitting them over the head with it and making them feel at fault for the these very students who we are not serving um in terms of supporting them and getting to the knowledge and the the know-how that they that they need in life and at the same time and that was related to the other one of the other questions um there's the belief Gap that um students

166who are who are at this level the L1 or the L2 of not meeting standard um that we um it's not somehow we have to to bring those teachers and administrators into um wanting to have the belief that those students need the support to get to the higher level of achievement which is I know much of what is in here um and not just sort of helping them remediately right to get sort of limping along and so in in this interim space that we're in you know my I think my my question is what kind of strategy do you have to message out to teachers and administrators hey you know this is new for all of us we've got some really good preliminary work that we're doing really focused on these six schools this is

167what we're seeing that's working we want to make sure that you all get the benefit of this here's what you need to do some things you should be thinking about you know right now that's kind of what I was wondering about what are what are those sort of emergent things because we're heading into the end of you know this is kind of our last shot right for this year to make any um Improvement for the for the spring I know we're projecting not great strides but this is the ideal time for I believe I preferred that you know check-in with students before we get too far into this next um the second part of the first semester and then you've got you have to tee up to get to that second semester to potentially get

168some of that learning um so I and so I didn't know if like for example math empowerment is that like this class is now going to be um offer we know it's offered at every school right it's a fantastic class I don't know if anyone who's had kids or knows of what this class is but it's it's generally a really really successful class I I believe um so I was happy to see that is that um Howard how are buildings and teachers being supported and understanding they need to look not just at kids grade which great grades which goes to these some of the other questions but they're deeper understanding of these Concepts and their ability to apply them in another situation um and to look at look at their map scores how did they

169perform are are they being asked to do that analysis within their buildings and take glean something from this the six schools that they can do to support students for some educational Justice I sort of wrapped all my questions into one that's that's fine so the so we believe the belief Gap is real and one of the ways we're trying to address that to scale is in the IC ICU care framework and that framework we're doing training across uh our middle schools on that to really give teachers the tools to how do you deal with that how do you how do you manage through that we also believe there's a belief Gap in how do you utilize uh the assessments how do you utilize map assessments and whatnot and so we're trying to provide training to

170scale on that as well so we can't just uh hope and wish that the belief Gap changes so we need to make sure that we provide ongoing job embedded coaching professional development so that we can do that there's another tool a success maker that we're using and I'd like maybe uh Dr Scarlett or Dr Perkins to maybe tell a little give a little uh commercial for what SuccessMaker does yeah in brief it's a computer adaptive tool that allows students to to learn from basic assessment data kind of to your point to kind of identify needs and then provide supports that are go beyond the tier one curriculum go beyond and and so it's just another uh companion and I think addresses I think a theme of many of your questions is what are we doing

171now like we need we need to help students right now um so I just wanted to to call that out as well as another piece that that's kind of more than the technical side and then on the belief side it's the ICU care work and it's these larger conversations around the use of assessment which I think Eric Jackson our director of assessment has been doing great work in leading the idea of we need to address the beliefs about assessment because they're they're they're more complex than you might think in terms of Seattle there's actually a lot number of teachers have been using standardized assessments for very good reasons and others who are not and so you know we have a lot to work with I think there I really appreciate the I had I had

172to figure out how I could read it because it was so little in there but I did it for I mean it's scary that particular graphic that you provided but that that is really good to know that that's something that you're all thinking about because [Music] um there's some great information and training out there about the complexities and the the issues and the benefits of Assessments without any form of Assessments we don't have any accountability for how we're supporting students I mean um and to for that to not I just I'm curious how we get to that messaging or what strategies around the messaging we can even employ right like how should we be talking about it in these sessions so that um yes it's about accountability and transparency but like hey partner with us

173and supporting these kids because it is our responsibility as a district within the confines of the school day because that's the thing that you know there's people say oh there's tutoring after or there's that you know it's like well no we're supposed to be support they've got Sports they've got music they've got family they've got jobs within the context of the school day we need to be providing that and every just every school has mtss on there csip their uh continuous School Improvement um plan multi-tiered systems of support I'm looking at you Michelle but then what about the you know can think of how do we support how do we get teachers to to partner with us and applying targeted universalism and you know in the classroom like it just can be mirrored everywhere um

174and I think to Great impact but without again heading them over the head and I I feel like you know we as a board don't even necessarily have that language yet talk about that effectively just the app maybe one part of that thank you um director Hansen I'm super helpful um you know that acknowledgment of having imperfect um metrics you know you know measures is really um there but we think about how um identity for Learners is co-created between a family that student and that educator as well and so when Educators hold implicit biases about um students and what their abilities are then it really impacts that so um sort of that default that oh the standardized tests are racist is not really the case it's actually data that's in the hands of people who

175hold implicit biases about students so one of the things that we're really doing is thinking about how do we build racial data Literacy for students how do we ensure that we have good data that we apply compassionate understanding and also thoughtful analysis that we really think about the conditions the supports and the opportunities the support that surround students the work that we've done around our Gap closing schools even previously when you think of the work of those middle schools of Aki didn't immerser it wasn't just what was happening in that classroom at a technical level around instruction it was also about the relationships all we need to do is look at the call to action sort of things from the office of African-American Male Achievement you know around targeted universalism to think about how all

176of those help to support that identity development between you know the student the you know the educator and their family as well and our Community Partners you know within that um part as well so that is a challenge you know as we move forward but as we really start to move from symbolic racial Equity to really what this looks like in the classroom at the instructional level that's where the ICU care framework is really helping us to think about how does this look specifically in math mathematics because mathematics is a Battleground that is where people are sorted into being intelligent or unintelligent and particularly around black and brown people and the attributions of who has access to being a mathematician or having intelligence in this country um as well as really important and we heard

177about the disproportionality of the identification of black students into the behavioral IEP category where other kids who are not black Maybe seen as needing more you know intense challenge in math or the I the IC [Music] ICU care oh I I had it all wrong in my head I was saying if you care and I was like that's not very sexy okay um I see okay sometimes the brain just doesn't quite put it together so that's available just in the six schools right now is at a cost thing in terms of making it available to other schools in short yes it's just available to the six schools we're doing sort of intensive work to Trill it to really learn how it can be implemented but I think that the idea is that yes it will

178expand to the other middle schools as we learn and figure out what's what's resonating most what's interesting is that already our six School leaders are are already pushing into shape this to to kind of which aspects of the ICU care framework are the ones that are most critical and so we want to take that time to learn with them before expanding it out to the other middle schools and then you said that this is part of your um administrator like weekly is it a call or we have school leaders that get together weekly and um they do professional development trade um best practices and talk about how to how to advance the uh our map proficiency and our school counselors ever are they is any of this being pushed down to their circles I don't

179know if we've we've employed that strategy but correctly if I'm wrong okay not directly but again we do work for the counselors on a fair amount so that's because aren't they responsible for identifying kids that are below standard yeah so what one of the strategies around the idea of opportunity Pathways to make sure for example that a lot more students are getting access to the opportunity to take algebra by 8th grade to take Advanced coursework that's absolutely where the counselors are playing a huge role in helping think through how what are the barriers there that yeah and that's the other because wanting to make sure that they have time in their schedule whether it's math empowerment or you know being able to waive PE for example because you can't waive it in sixth I forget

180you have to take it at least one semester uh seventh and eighth grade maybe sixth grade but that math empowerment you know so yeah I was curious if the counselors are involved in making sure that they're creating that flexibility within the the school day but without taking away important electives for students I think correct me if I'm wrong we're looking at Master schedules as well as as part of the strategy absolutely and and you know just a shout out to Alyssa farmer who's been who's our lead architect of the the math work along with many others and she's uh you know a close colleague with Tara McFarland who's the head of School counseling and they are you know the idea of how do we expand the number of schools offering math 7 8 that combined

181class so that students can actually take algebra in eighth grade or um uh Advanced coursework when they get to high school so that is a collaboration that needs to happen uh director Rankin director Vera Smith and then director song Moritz but actually we're going to go to director Chrome Barone first and so then we prioritize our student voice here so uh we will go to Luna first and then we will follow the order previously so take it away Luna so I have an educational consult ants so deeply into the ICU care whole framework which is really interesting uh and there was one piece that I was wondering about and how it's being connected into the excellent teaching and joyful learning piece is it the one of them is used culturally relevant curricula use instructional materials

182in ways that help students see themselves as doers of mathematics and help them overcome the negative stereotypes and messages regarding who is and who isn't mathematically smart and I was just wondering if with the enVision Math curricula which is currently what's adopted as the six through eight materials is that something that you would say aligns with the the culture as culturally relevant curricula in combating stereotypes and representation and that kind of kind of tremendous question and wow and uh I I know we did I know we went when we when we selected um Envision we looked at it from from a racial Equity lens and if it was culturally responsive uh but can you elaborate on some of the detail of what we did to make sure it met those targets that director Chrome Barone

183just mentioned yeah again I think an incredibly astute question because yes we did look at cultural relevancy of course when the the materials were adopted it it rates very highly in terms of the options that we have at the same time we do need the ICU care framework we do need uh doctors Brown and and SATA who are and and that work to really kind of let you know include within the lessons how do you call out those pieces so as an example as you read that one aspect is having students develop their own understanding honoring different ways of getting at the same uh Concept in math and so um we do we need both it's and and there's ways to strengthen it and the ICU care is one of one of those ways but

184again great question and the curriculum in and of itself was not enough it has to be also implemented and culturally responsive ways so I just want to add that add that piece too I'm assuming but just to clarify and the ways that we'd make sure that it's implemented and culturally responsive ways would be through that um job embedded coaching in Equitable math teaching practices and stuff like that for educators okay fantastic thank you okay awesome thank you it's over yeah okay so um she asked what I was going to ask so no just kidding um uh so my question really is about sort of what Dr Hanson referenced and you know what I I I asked very specifically in the questions that were submitted ahead of time about goals in IEPs um and that I

185understand that is super tactical and super individual level um but so my my question on the strategy map is these feel important and impactful and the most impactful piece of this math instruction is going to be in the classroom between the teacher and the student um so all of these things sound really great and are I think supportive of like shifting mindset Shifting the belief Gap um we have six thousand teachers I don't know how are we or what is the strategy to supporting or holding building leaders either supporting building leaders too or holding a building leaders accountable for really setting these expectations in their classroom that may be different than people are used to like we're talking about a shift and I think we have you know um there's a wide range of experience

186and approach that teachers have which is awesome because we it's the you know diversity of our classrooms and and you know neither students nor educators are robots and you know that's part of the the messy the beautiful and perfectness of all of this is that it's it's human at every level at the same time if we're really trying to set an expectation that hasn't necessarily been set before about who is like responsible for for supporting students certain students and and showing progress on that um the thing that I'm my Wonder is what's the strategy at the building level to provide adequate collaboration time between instructors to um for principals to be really clear about what the ex what you know their instructional leadership so that um we're not um you know we have this distributed

187model from Central offices out but also even within building sometimes there is the principle that's really just operational and teachers are in their classrooms doing doing their thing um so how are we kind of I guess aligning and supporting everybody I understand that this is all of our job I think is where is I think we're in getting at because like this sounds great at this level and I know that by it's like the worst game of Telephone by the time it gets down to it you know I our Educators going to feel supported and empowered or are they going to feel criticized um because you know we want the first one so let me take a shot at it um whether we're talking about multilingual Learners I students with IEPs students of color for

188this from educational Justice African-American males our first strategy is to have high quality tier one instruction these other pieces that are the job embedded coaching and the professional development are supplemental to that but we we want to one of our key strategies is tier one and making sure that's done with Fidelity almost like a service level guarantee the other elements that we talk we're talking about in terms of targeted strategies are supplemental to that but tier one is where we want we're replacing the emphasis and so that's where you should be able to go across the six schools and the 13 schools and see high quality tier one instruction first and foremost I don't know if that answers your question but that's that's where we're placing our emphasis stronger we have the stronger the tier

189one and the more inclusive tier one is the less need for tier two and tier three like tier one needs to be the strongest but I know that on a theoretical level I also don't have a classroom of 30 kids in front of me who need a ton of different things right um so I guess this is to me like building capacity and understanding and shifting mindsets in a in a broader way and in any given a given classroom on any given day there is probably a kid or two that is struggling and maybe he's not I mean I mean in terms of math too like beliefs is one thing but also like you were sick on the the first day of fractions and so then like the next few days it's not making sense

190because you weren't there the first day and you may or may not be able to advocate for yourself or you know instruction may have been sent home and not you know who knows who knows but like at some point we have to stop and say hey you know what's like I mean and with the IEPs are a really extreme example I would I know I said this on my questions I would love to see sometime and I know this would be a really big data ask to to have you know what goals are in every single IEP but my assumption and from what we see in the data here and from what I I know is that unfortunately IEPs have been a codified lowering of standards that we have that we're not going to ever

191see students with IEPs achieve at the same level of students without IEPs because like purposefully their goals are not at grade level standards so you're aiming for a Target that is below what other students in your grade are achieving and that is um so that's just sort of the water that we swim in we haven't thought we haven't I'm not saying that to like slam anybody but it's it's been it's an accepted practice that this dude needs more support this student is behind when in reality the IEP is a tool to accommodate for a disability to allow a student the support that they need to access the grade level curriculum that their peers are accessing and unfortunately I think you know probably nationally that has not been the case the IEP is a way to

192codify lower expectations for this student and so um that's a very blatant piece of information where standards are lowers I think that happens in more subtle ways other places so I guess my question is about at the individual student level how are we encouraging or what's the strategy to go after that mindset where our belief Gap is not just something that we have to overcome in our the way we see people but it's actually like and what what kind of my aha moment was seeing a presentation from Spokane School District where they had this whole they had this moment themselves of of lowering standards IEP goals to a lower level and started doing a co-teaching model and and you know veteran Educators that had been special education teachers for years like suddenly realized that they

193hadn't realized that they were lowering their Expectations by practice and I know that's that's specific but I guess I'm I'm thinking about how do we get what's the strategy to get on an individual level that examination of the ways in which things reinforce these um disparities in achievement and to actually you know I'm changing this IEP goal to make it a grade level Target because the student is an eighth grader they should have an eighth grade goal I don't know if this will be satisfactory but we're doing some Universal Design work the ICU care framework addresses this it's it's embedded in that but maybe Dr Scarlett can can speak to this I know that this is this is part of our Central strategy to address exactly what you said so I want maybe get a

194little technical on what we're trying to do here because I that's that's our entire goal so thank you you know um one of the things that you said at the onset you asked questions so I just wanted to answer that um about this um strategy and how it started and um you know when we were first charged with thinking about a middle school math strategy the first person I went to go meet with um in August of last year was Jeff Clark at Denny he's a math leader he had been working on this he's one of the most senior leaders so we know we needed leadership amongst the prince of core that credibility then the next people who came were the directors of schools and they have been part of this planning with um with

195the school leaders very early on to build out this strategy so that accountability is the accountability of having colleagues working together that have professional communities they've created but also having the directors of schools as a part of that and helping to architect this strategy along with you know Educators you know to really think about the best practices around that the other part of what you're I'm speaking about it really is about our inclusionary and cultural responsive practices our partnership with Novak and Universal Design for Learning that is how we create that access we know that student that if you get students and you say okay we're going to start again in multiplication you know and they're still in ninth grade that just doesn't work right and so it's about reducing barriers so the students can

196have great level expectations I know yeah I'm thinking about the the a few board meetings ago you talked about the lowering the standards and having great level of specific school or I'm sorry IEP goals and um and having those you know at a level that actually meets that we know that by lowering standards we don't actually ever accelerate achievement and we know that for students whether they have IEPs or not at all but how does the system kind of move and evolve with that so the work that we're doing um Dr Torres just LED extended cabinet and we had our Consultants from Novak helping the support everywhere I looked there's been a school leadership session on Friday was the same thing with our um you know Consultants really helping us and so what you named

197you named every single lever in the system that needs to be touched you know by this but we have multiple levers that are happening and there are a whole lot of adults before you ever get the children in a classroom so our central office everyone understanding what um you know inclusionary and culturally responsive practices and how all of us on senior leadership are a part of this our staff team within our extended cabinet the school leaders so multiple different and lovers you know as we move forward and keep building capacity around this but that is exactly what you've been advocating for when many of us have been advocating for at a policy level policy zero zero one zero right and so um I'm excited about on the direction that we're going um through and how

198we can use this work that we're doing visibly you know for the public to really be accountable for policy implementation where we don't just have symbolic policy but you can actually see it activated in ways that are um endorsed by our superintendent he said that the this is the direction we're going so everyone understands um you know how we're moving forward with our leadership on that well and as we continue to monitor this goal we should be able to see progress or not hi thank you um I I'm going to talk about specifically to this to the status of the school and you've seen this question already that the orange goal status indicates interim metrics so it says intermetrics indicate results are unlikely to be delivered without significant change so my question is I've seen

199the strategy map and I've compared it to the June memo which the link didn't work but I dug it up so and I do I see changes which of these are the significant changes that you feel are going to be necessary to to bring bring this up to work you know the level where we need our students achievement to reach um and I'll connect that to another question I had which was of the strategies you know what evidence you have that that these are going to equal increase in student outcomes um because you know I hear I hear things like our new curriculum has helped but we haven't met our Target so how where's the data that it's that shows it's helped where are the data that shows that these new um strategies and specifics

200like ICU care and math empowerment are going to correlate to improve student outcomes let me just address a couple things a couple things that we need to highlight as challenges are we have turnover we have turnover in the math with our math instructors we have turnover with some of our math Specialists and so there's a there's a talent acquisition Talent recruitment challenge that we need to shore up that's a gap so if we want to try to implement these things with Fidelity and we do all this great training job and credit coaching and then we lose the people who are actually doing that that's that's preventing us from from moving forward but also just in general I think we need to stay the course we have uh we have good practices research based evidence-based practices

201that we've studied that we've adopted and we need some time to allow those to to take hold but there are some specific things that we can do along the way that we've that we've kind of talked about but I I I'd offer a Caleb in in Keisha to talk about some of the more specific strategies but bottom line I think we need to stay the course we have some good strategies here we have a strong curriculum and then we then we need to address some of the challenges because we can't uh Implement again with Fidelity if we don't have the right uh people in place in terms of uh Educators if we have turnover at the leadership level turnover at the technical level that that impedes us from making progress any add to that real

202fast you know obviously the goal it's the the status itself says it needs significant changes to achieve so I hear state of the course but I also see that it says we need significant changes so how do we reconcile those two so address some of the specifics on what we're trying to do please so um the orange piece just does have a bit of a technical answer so this this is language that we're adopting as part of student Act of sokus governance as part of the Council of great City schools that that red is really about what we saw at the end of the year and since we're so we're not read because you know we still have an opportunity to work as hard as we can with those uh with all of our students

203and to with all of our systems so I know that's that's not at the core of what matters what so it's not meant to Signal we think we have the wrong strategies and we need to change the strategies it's it's to sort of to direct a Rankin's point we need to really start following through with the expectations piece and getting and and that's where I want to stress as as Dr Scarlett pointed out and she's really been helpful in in guiding this we're going to have to do this with these six schools to really learn specifically how it plays out with our Educators because there's a number of Educators and a number of plcs at these buildings that are are doing wonderful things and but we need to figure out how to socialize that and

204spread that so that's that's where in terms of if we have to make a prediction right now which is what the alcohol student outcomes Focus governance on December 14th we're predicting that we we're not gonna We're not gonna get there to the 35 percent that we said so uh but the changes are about again I know that sounds not like a change but staying in the course is in some ways a change from what we've been doing we've been we've been moving around in too many different initiatives trying to do too many different things the sort of radical ideas is that we're going to stick to this and really uh work on getting all levels of buy-in uh to make sure it actually has has the results that we want the last piece I'll share

205is that we do have a robust research base thanks to Dr Anderson and his team connected to each of these strategies we've only implemented things that have gone through a rigorous review uh in that sense so with that I'll turn it back to Dr Jones just like really quick note there um during my time as a teacher in Federal Way We went through a similar process when we were adopting uh earlier from the American reading company um and essentially erla in my experience was really great um had an online component very clear and detailed about like what skill acquisition was necessary for students I mean as the son of a teacher it was something that my mom would have loved to have back in the Gap the problem was is that for many of folks

206in our system regardless if you're a principal or teacher if you didn't have the buying in that first year a lot of that curriculum sat in the corner but it was sticking the course and not bouncing from thing to thing that at the end of my time with Federal Way which is like all told by five and a half years it had been fully adopted parents loved it and we actually started to see results took a minute though right and so and and we've had this conversation before public education has this problem where when we realize that we can't solve a problem we call it something different and have a new initiative and we move on and now we've got something new and shiny instead of doing what we're doing here tonight and clearly saying

207yo we're not on track to meet this goal I can't remember the last time that we had a conversation that started off with that and I mean especially in Seattle Public Schools where we get beat over the head for trying to sweep stuff under the rug this is the kind of conversation that we don't need to be afraid of data that is data you know what I'm saying and having these iterative conversations where we can figure out like okay what do we do in the near term the short term X Y and Z is is I think a huge leap forward for what we are doing and especially for what I am I as a director I'm used to so you know great work on that piece yeah please thank you for that thank you

208for that um that response um and for clarifying what that means um because I think that's what I was looking for just understand better how stay in the course May and significant change because they sound like opposites um but um so I guess my question then I'll come to one of my questions in here was to what extent could we have the list of challenges to an extent do we expect these challenges to continue and what is being done to prevent them from continuing to the Future yeah we we are um particular when we're talking about uh staff turnover we're working with our HR department uh the benefit and the in the bane of probably director uh excuse me uh Dr pritchett's existence as I used to be in HR uh and so we're we're

209gonna we're being really aggressive on our strategies to recruit um you know and we call these hard to feel Physicians and so uh there's partnership with CA and I around this specific skills competencies that we need and we're actually sending our HR folks out to really be be assertive and aggressive in recruiting those folks but we also have to uh spend some time thinking about retention uh these these folks are highly sought after we have some of our neighboring districts that will do whatever they have to to to to to steal some of our talent and to poach right so that that's one that's one of the major things and and I I think that you know again uh broken record here is to to get to some of these challenges we need to be

210honest with with our current situation we wanted to as president Hershey talked about we want to be forthright with where we are in terms of our assessment uh and we not we don't need the sugarcoat where we are we're behind and so the Fidelity of implementation of these things from our job embedded coaching our professional our professional development and our collaboration amongst our school leaders is really going to I think move the needle and we and since I've been around see all public schools we have jumped from thing to thing to thing without uh seeing it take hold so those are the main challenges I I see is keeping our talent keeping our talent in place staying the course Fidelity of implementation and keeping the the coaching and the job embedded the job embedded coaching

211and professional development in place uh these Frameworks are only as good as how much we uh buy into them and how how much we have Fidelity of implementation of them uh thank you Dr Jones for answering the questions around the teacher recruitment because I had the same intention I had the similar questions um I'm curious about uh success factors is that something that is available through K-5 now that we have adopted envisioned as our K-5 curriculum and was that a consideration for the adoption committee the what kind of intervention materials there were please I'm pleased to share and I can get more details from the math team on that but thanks to some of my colleagues not mine but a vision that when we did the adoption we leveraged some of the tech Levy funding

212to ensure that we were going to have the tier two electronic resources digital resources to accompany the tier one main curriculum so that that is something that we're working it's good we don't want to overwhelm our K-5 schools with everything all at once but so we're rolling that out slowly and deliberately but we will have access to that so we're excited to add that second question is there's mention of working with the city to do some of the summer learning for example so I did reach out to the Department of Education Early Learning because I noticed that four of these schools happen to be Levy schools and I wanted to learn more about um you know from their perspective um you know how are they working with building leaders so I'm curious to hear from

213you are the the building leaders wrote their grants so they include asks related to um seventh grade math goals or are there grants related to other projects I'm going to defer I don't know what the specificity is that of that yeah you know we um work in partnership with deal constantly and as things have evolved like our college career Readiness goals they're coming alongside of us and are um tremendous partners and you know um these um goals that were set are not synchronized necessary to the cycle of you know a seven year Levy you know plan or that Levy cycle around that so um I would say that some of the schools that has have historically had those Investments they've worked alongside of deal that has been a big part of what's helped them to

214synergize the professional learning communities that are fostered through deal with something that really I think helped the Aki Daniel immerser to have some really similar ways around their standard space instruction and assessment and um you know and the sort of think tank that is um created around that so those are the benefits I don't know if those that we haven't quite codified all of that in sort of the next phase of partnership but deal is already getting ready to get ready for the next you know Levy and moving together so um I would say in this round because some of the other goals are just um they've been around for a lot longer we've been able to synergize and move things you know different aspects forward within that I think that this one will increasingly

215become more aligned because that is an area of investment for them around that so that's what I would say and they're tracking data you know the same data like the work that we did that our board did to ensure that we have these interim measures that is part of our data sharing agreement and they're holding that same accountability for their schools when they're looking at achievement as well so I think it's really helpful I I want to take a different tact and that's that we're looking at a budget Cliff from hell and that these things are expensive so I don't have a sense of I see you care how much that costs success makers I see reference to hiring more math coaches I believe the number was 165 ftes from central office and we've talked

216a lot about Synergy between departments and collaboration lifting all boats um does that mean then that we as a board and as an Administration are going to hold portions of our budget as sacrosanct Untouchable if you will if we're going to meet some of these goals because nothing is free and I don't mean to be direct or wet blanket but I think I need I think we need to be terribly terribly candid and forthright about this and and say the nest homes or the Satterfield foundations decide you know we've given these people a ton of money over the years but we are not obligated by any way shape or form to continue to give us that money and and how we run this District in a non-sustainable wishing a prayer concerns me greatly and and

217I y'all have heard me moan about curriculum adoption in years past not recently proud to say curriculum adoption being one of the first things that has come historically in this darn District right off the top of the budget so I don't have and and Dr Jones and I had a really thoughtful and robust conversation about this yesterday I don't have a sense and maybe I don't need to but I think I do need to know how you have charged your cabinet with reductions given what we know today on our bottom line and our looming as the nicest word I can come up with deficit um assistant superintendent Scarlett you need to cut you know 10 percent out of your budget of X point million dollars associate superintendent Pedrosa you need to cut X number of

218dollars out of your ex million dollar budget and what does that look like so that whatever progress we have made doesn't come to a screeching halt and if we want to talk about retention I I think it would be a terrifying place to be in this very expensive city to think well cool uh I can't stand my family and my kids and their tuition later up to you know Everett school district coming down and poaching our best folks I I'm very very concerned about the price tags and what our philosophy is if we are going to protect certain segments of our budget and I'll leave it there thank you so my colleagues to my left and Dr perjosa have have had the task of balancing our budget but staying wedded to these ideals and goals

219of third grade reading 7th grade math College and Career Readiness our strategies are protected if you will the core of those strategies will not be good at Dr Scarlett has presented a preliminary kind of list and ideation of what she wants to put forward and she's been extraordinary skilled it's been difficult for her to protect all these elements that we're going to have going forward that means other elements uh are gonna it's gonna be painful but other elements are going to go first if we get to the point where we're cutting the core out of these these strategies then then we're just done you know that that can't that can't happen and so uh she's been up at night I know looking at the ceiling like how are we going to do this it's been

220stressful for all of us but she and we have been wedded to protect these things that you saw saw today there may not be as many any as many people um uh providing the support people are going to have to quote unquote double up if you will but that's where we're protecting the The Core Essence of curriculum if you will all right so uh with that being said keep in mind we're a little over time so thank you for engaging with us we we learn a lot every time that we do this progress monitoring I know thank you AJ might have some some counsel to us as we move forward but uh I just want to leave you with we have I believe we have the right strategies these are research based and we're going

221to try to stay the course but I just appreciate the the level of questions that you all asked and give us a lot to think about as we go forward and thank you for your support so you want to tear it up with AJ to give us uh his peace I'm not sure uh go ahead good evening hear me yeah we can hear you well man any feedback no it's perfect great to be with you all the um first Kudos um I am so excited for this team and the work that you all are doing uh I really appreciate the thorough monitoring report that the administration's put together um how you have clear data that is part of the board's goals but then also additional data that helps explain and give more context around the

222direction you're all doing I think you all put a lot of thoughtfulness into how are we helping articulate uh what's uh what does the data mean I think it's also helpful that you have made it really clear what your interpretation is um uh you've got multiple uh colors in the color scheme that identify and let your board members know no actually this this isn't actually on track and it's not going to get on track Without Really significant changes I think that level of clarity around your interpretation is really valuable to the board side you all came uh loaded up and prepared to ask a lot of questions I was writing down all the questions and I have put them into an evaluation spreadsheet and we'll send that off to you so you can see all

223the questions and you can see um how I evaluate the questions but it's all based on the rubric that I provided to you um Julia has it she'll send it out again so you'll have it again because there's a to some of you may have the version that you received uh last year but we've just updated again and sent out a new version of the monitoring guidance um about two months ago so I want to make sure that you all have that and so what I'll send you is a spreadsheet that has all the questions that you all asked in it and then how they stack up in the monitoring guidance but the fact that you all are really digging in and being really curious uh is valuable and curious across a wide variety of

224domains always a big fan of board member wet blanket um but I but I think it's important that the board collectively is asking questions across the variety of domains not all centered in one area so bringing Financial questions into a strategic conversation is 100 in alignment with what you're supposed to be doing in an activity like this and so just the way that you all jumped in uh um as usual making space for your colleagues of the days who are students to make sure that they you know participating in the process as well just Big Love on all of that I want to read through some of the questions again I won't go through all of this because you'll get my detailed report um I want to read through a few of the questions um

225I don't want you to hear any of this as these are things to remove from your process the only thing I want to highlight because there is so much richness and what you all did I just want to highlight things that you will uh want to add to your process and so keep what you've got but then just how do we take it to the next level is I'm listening to all this by the way I think part of uh the the unexpected weakness and why some of the questions I'm going to highlight word ask is because I actually think you all are so aligned um as a board and as a board with your Administration that there are some things that you are taking for granted um and I would encourage you to ask

226questions about them even though you're already Enlightenment around them just to test them and so if there's have any weakness in this monitoring conversation I'm about to highlight I think the weakness is just an abundance of alignment um but I'm going to encourage you to test that alignment to make sure that it's actually producing the results you want not just matching your assumptions about what should be producing the results you want so that's that's what you should hear in this not take away anything you asked but what's that next level of thing that you need to add at inquiry so for example one of the questions that was asked was what is the strategy for supporting building uh leaders or holding them accountable for setting these expectations in the classroom uh what's the strategy at

227the building level to provide adequate collaboration time um so part of the thing that I want you to get curious about before you ask a question like this this question is doing a few things it's asking really something that's almost at a tactical level rather than a strategic level it's also asking about what you're going to do going forward what I would encourage you to get curious about before you ever ask a question like this is what evidence do we have that this is actually the right strategy to begin with um that that more collaboration time is the right strategy what uh if that's what the administration is putting forward and I'm not clear that it is but let's say that it is what evidence do you have that that is the lever that's going

228to make the difference before you because of the the danger that you have if you don't ask that question first the danger you have is that you are anchoring your Administration around strategies that they have not provided you evidence or working um and so that's why before you get super curious about what are the strategies we're going to implement going forward for almost every single question I wrote down and you'll see this in the reviews spreadsheet they're all talking about what are you going to do going forward but this and this is what I mean when I say I think you're assuming that because there's so much alignment you're making assumptions around what's working and what's not working I test these things and so before I ask questions about what's going to happen next I'd

229be layering in some questions about what evidence do you have that we actually got here a perfect example of that came up where a board member asked a question very much like that you indicate this goal is orange unlikely to be accomplished without significant change which of these are significant changes that you feel are going to be necessary and what evidence you have that these changes are actually going to move student outcomes that type of question needs to be showing up a lot more often that question was spot on and that it it ques it brought in the question hey you're saying this particular change is necessary but you're also saying that you need significant change in order to pull it off why do you consider this a significant change totally fair question spot on

230and what evidence you have that this particular change has actually gotten as results in the past so that's a that's the one example that I wrote the entire evening that really leans into the types of questions that I would encourage you to uh ask more of so don't remove the questions that you asked but make sure you're asking the questions to get at how do we know that the strategies are actually working um and so again that's the kind of the one high level thing uh I think it's born out of just an abundance of uh alignment and so that's a beautiful thing for it to be born out of it just means you have to be vigilant about your own uh biases around the strategies that you believe are going to work uh you

231know get questions about them uh one other coaching piece and you all can go back and replay the video yourself to test me on this one much of the time you spent more time asking your question kind of kind of adding all kinds of preliminary statements and hemming and hawing and so on and so forth most of the time you actually spend more time asking a question than your administration's been answering the question um that's just something that the the way I see boards get better at that show up with the questions written down not even questions that you necessarily provided to the superintendent in advance but like have a list for you know as you've gone through it here are five questions that I'm definitely going to ask and then just be prepared to

232read it but that way you're not kind of having to work to organize your thoughts because here's the thing that you'll see if you go back and replay this video when you spent three minutes trying to figure out how to get your question out the first question that you asked in a series of three-minute kind of discussion uh three-minute monologue the superintendent only ever answered the last question that you got out and so even if the first question even if you ask like three questions of the sequence while you were busy trying to get your thoughts together the superintendent generally only answered the last one I think largely because unlike me he probably was not writing them downward for word and so he probably lost track of it because if I wasn't writing about I

233would have definitely lost track of the first one you asked and so that's what I mean by I think if you write down your questions uh you know at the start of this conversation like I want to ask this one I want to ask this one out then just ask the question don't add a bunch preliminaries and I think you'll get more of the answers that you're wanting because another thing that happened there are a number of times when because you could have bumbled around with some of the questions the superintendent never actually got around to giving you the answer that I think you wanted but I don't hold him accountable for that I hold you all accountable for that in your question uh style and so that's something that's easy to easy for you

234all to handle uh just um you know come prepared the other thing that I would off offer that I always offer is I'm happy to meet with you in advance to just have a on one session to kind of hammer things out to figure out kind of what's the question you're trying to get at and what are you you know what do you want to know I want to give you one more example before I hang this up um actually I'll go back to an example I called on what was the strategy for supporting building leaders or holding them accountable for setting these expectations in the classroom what's the strategy at the building level to provide adequate collaboration time so this was an example of where it took a really long time to get to

235the final question and so the first part of it I think got missed the superintendent tried to take a swing at the second part of it uh but this is where his board members I think be when it takes you so long to get to your question I think you may be struggling to remember what you asked and what and struggling then to test for did I get my question answered because here's the answer the superintendent gave let me read the question again what's the strategy of the building level to provide adequate collaboration time and the superintendent's response essentially was our strategies to provide high quality tier one instruction that is as valuable um that that's an accurate answer but it's not a particularly valuable answer that's kind of like saying um where are we

236going on this trip and the superintendent saying we will be driving on the right side of the road rather than the left side of the road it is accurate but it's just not particularly helpful and I think part of the reason you get answers like that again if you give you know a four minute long intro then the superintendent is kind of struggling to synthesize what do they want to know and you wind up with a more generalized answer rather than a more specific answer and again I put that on the questioner more than the the answer and I think if you just get really clear and precise with your questions instead of you know a long intro and multiple compound questions it'll be easier for the superintendent to give you answers that are both

237accurate and useful so that's the feedback I wanted to provide I certainly want to open it to any questions you have or clarification and like I said I'll follow up with both a spreadsheet that the performance on these uh the way I um the way that we're training people to identify performance on these questions and uh invitation for you all to make some one-on-one time so any uh any questions or or anything that I can clarify before uh get out of your way they're really burning because we're already 20 minutes past and we have another work session so if it's something that can be emailed consider that uh well again as I want to close out uh just really really excited about where you all are in this journey um the work the administration is

238doing but then the the quality of questions that you all are asking is a board and the way you're digging into it uh don't stop anything you're doing uh All I'm gonna do is add some coaching on let's add on let's keep getting stronger and stronger and stronger uh keep up the great work follow me anytime uh chair back to you thank you have a wonderful evening okay we gotta go back oh that I don't think we need to go back let's go ahead and knock this out great yeah thank you great job is this it's it's the week before winter parade oh it's a entertaining time well we're getting there all right for those of you who might be watching at home uh we are about to transition into a transportation work session this

239work session will be short hopefully uh we are scheduled for 30 minutes obviously directors if you have questions you have questions and I will turn it over to superintendent Jones who will turn it over to staff great thank you uh Fred podesta interim Deputy superintendent um my colleague Dr Campbell will give the most of the presentation but I'd like to make a few introductory remarks um I think the last kind of budget related work session was on November 16th or the risk management pool and just the general fiscal update was provided at that time we said we'd come back to start talking about transportation we want to really at our goal this evening is really to set the context I think it's not an overstatement to say that you know Transportation has been through a

240very tumultuous time in the last few years but as much as any Department in the district um uh you know we were getting through ongoing labor shortages prior to the pandemic we had some improvements in the fall of 2019 but just a few months later we ceased having in-person learning and I would say in the scheme of kind of Staffing and operations in Seattle Public Schools transportation shut down harder if you will than any other department I mean because we you know we weren't providing much transportation we were providing some but not much Transportation during that time that was a work you know considerably a large Workforce that was laid off during the time of the pandemic and again was a Workforce that was hard to recruit before the pandemic so when we returned in-person

241learning you know we really needed to completely stand up uh new operations and had a very challenging year in the prior school year as you know we weren't able to ever through the whole course of the Year deliver on our service standards to provide transportation completely and really had large heartfalls at the at the beginning of that year we're also faced our legal obligation to reward our as since we Outsource most of our transportation operations to compete for a new Transportation Partners in the middle of that and while that was a challenging and difficult process I think we landed on a really good outcome and uh and this year exceeded our expectations of really being able to start the school year providing full service and fine and providing good operations I really want to thank

242the board for support of a two Vendor model which um and and frankly just going into that the fact that we had competition for the first time in many many years was a good problem to have it made it hard to sort out I think we landed in the right place with splitting the work among with two partners who have brought a lot of innovation are have brought new drivers which is our chronic problem into the system but you know I had a little bit of a concern or they just really going to be competing for each the same pool of drivers and trying to recruit from each other I think we've got a model where they are actually bringing new players into the system and new types of operations into the system so again

243I want to thank the team and thank Dr Jones and this board for supporting that model so it is really great um that our operations have improved and are actually this year operating better than they have in in several years but this is coming at a cost um and um where uh transportation is an area um where uh chronically the district's expenses have exceeded our state funding by a large amount so it's really an area as we try to find a path to a balanced budget it really just Bears some examination so um uh I'll turn it over to Dr Campbell who can really describe kind of where we are and set the context and at this point again we're really just trying to set the table of the major moves we're going to be

244evaluating um to try to see if we can find significant efficiencies in our transportation system this is not to present those options I would um uh to strongly advise if you would are willing to take advice from me is to think about Transportation when you see our whole balancing package because um you um you asked a very good question in last work session director Harris about you know what how are we setting priorities if we make decisions too early about well we can't touch this in transportation then you're not doing that you you've you this is not the time to make anything in operation sacred until you see the whole package and what the trade-offs truly are because we are facing a very challenging set of circumstances to balance the whole District's budget so with

245that I will shut up and turn it over to my amazing colleague Dr Monty Campbell good evening everybody uh it's nice to be here with you um I want to say hello to our student representative it's wonderful to to see you here I just want to say first off if I may just should I said okay I mean it's a little muffled um I was brought on in mid to late August as an interim director executive director and um and in the ensuing time some things have happened in transportation I'm now actually leading transportation and honestly learning and I I like to think I'm a pretty fast learner but there's a lot to learn so I want to give you that caveat I have educated myself and I believe have actually acquired maybe another Doctorate

246in Education at this point in the amount of time I put in to this but I do it because I care so very much this is essential to our district I've never seen and I've played a lot of roles in the district it's my 21st year in the district as a School leader later in special education executive director of schools executive director of curriculum instruction now in operations so all of these things I very much see how they all coalesce and how they all work together and I just want to start with that I also want to apologize because I I know a number of you wanted to see much more detailed analysis the intent of this is to really give you an update and I'm not a believer in pulling punches I mean I

247think we have to be real I did you know my intention was not to step in a hornet's nest about bell times but these are simply things that have come up before and I believe they need to come before us again these recommendations for example on efficiency and efficacy and I added the efficacy because I think efficiency without efficacy is is not the right way to think about how we operate as an organization but um these all come forward from Hunter multi so our last manager of Transportation these are not new so I I realized that it was alarming it's been alarming to some community members and I've recognized alarming to you I I promise you we will do detailed analysis but I don't want to get ahead of that I don't want to jump

248into that until we really have an idea of what we want to do that the idea about building efficiency existed has existed for a while as I said director Maltese our manager maltes had these ideas but it's even more intensified now and just wanted to put it out there but again I'm not intending to withhold work that work and Analysis will be done I just want to give you that caveat we can do that and I have some tools that I can share with you all right so tonight I just basically as an update want to do Transportation today December 2022 vision and goals a quick data update just a reminder about legal requirements and service guidelines for transportation and then some potential solutions for efficiency and Effectiveness or efficacy so if we can go

249to the next slide thank you and I don't know if you can see this but I went around into I just want everyone to see that human face of our transportation department it's a phenomenal Department they're tucked back in the in the back side of the building they are people who are here they cannot do their work remotely they're on phones they're out in the field they're right here doing the work and they're just a phenomenal group of people in the upper right hand side you can see those are vests that are crossing guards and bus monitors wear and then you can even see in the foreground some little dolls with a car seat that's for the um a special sort of five point I don't say harnesses but seat belts that we that certain

250students it's useful for them as they as they're on buses so and there's Evelyn if you know Evelyn up on the phone she's second in the top from the left she's phenomenal great customer service she leads our team of interventionists and I just really wanted to share that with you so you can see the human face of our department um the next slide um we I just wanted to make sure that you understand and I realize this is teeny tiny I always do this um that we align to our goals and so the goals we've just been talking about and we've been talking about the seventh grade mathematics goal but the third grade reading seventh grade math and students ready for College and Career with Advanced coursework I will read the vision statement to you

251since the tiny students will learn and Thrive when we see support and welcome every student and every family every day with respect care and consistency in their Journey and I really have I have seen that as a school leader how critical that journey is from home to school and school to home and I see it even more so now so that the Journey of learning Begins the minute they cross their home threshold head out into school so Transportation really is part of setting our students up for the success absolutely tied to our strategic plan and the next slide similarly the guardrails are a little more directed toward things we might think of as operational but I think that the second one is particularly relevant we will not allow operational systems to deliver unreliable service that

252was our primary goal as we launched into this school year so I just wanted to share that something did you want it okay feel free to stop me as I as I go forth I'm happy to be interrupted um so really I mean coming into this uh this work in the fall really we had some very simple goals and they might seem very Baseline but frankly you know the last few years and I was at a school where a large number of our bus routes were cut and I saw that very real impact and and lived with it throughout the course of the year so really coming as a practitioner into this role had somebody understood the impact district-wide our two service providers work in collaboration so that every route is running on time every

253day that was job one and guess what we did it like that I didn't want to promise that we sent out a memo saying we might not be able to do it because we wanted to under promise and over deliver but we did it and it took a little bit of work with our two service providers but they really authentically collaborated where they are still definitely competitors but we had an agreement and Fred and I sat down with him I said look the victory narrative we want here is that school buses are running frankly people are pretty agnostic as to whether it's Zoomer first they just wanted bus I almost said it I almost swore people just want a bus right they don't really care the competition I believe has created these conditions um and

254I don't always love competition as a as a necessary motivator but in this case I believe it is the reason why we are having the service we are having we are working hard to have a full roster of support staff including crossing guards and bus monitors we are still short crossing guards and bus monitors that is a group of people that we lost them during the pandemic and bringing them back has been very very hard bring them back vaccinated that last year was The Challenge our field staff supervisor went out door to door knocked on doors and all the people to help encourage them to get their vaccinations so that's that's been a piece of work the other challenge there is that the process for application was not um automated it was all on paper

255so some of the work I've done is to try to I've gotten that into neogov and to try to get more people applying on online so that we can follow our regular procedures we're working hard to have full Staffing in the transportation department so we have been we are adjusting and realigning and especially now but we it requires a special kind of person particularly uh the potential new director of Transportation unique set of skills we focus on responsiveness to phone calls emails and Communications and let's talk so that is really critical too and that is daily work that we do so these are again these things that I said these are immediate Baseline things we've got to do the things that I know I experienced as a school leader that families experience and we want

256to use digital tools so that families and schools have fast or faster access to more information in real time that um and and some of you I think ask questions about that and again please stop me if you have a specific question Zoom has an app that fam that they pushed out themselves to families that families have really enjoyed they are a ride-hailing company so they are that was a big part of their of their business model um and uh as it was a little bit of a time to get people acclimated to that but people are used to using apps of that type for a student is still building out it's it's family facing app we're doing some work with them to make sure it complies with our vpat with our ADA compliance and

257a few other things that we need them to fix so we would love for that to be accessible to families it would it would enable families to feel that much more confident and it would also enable us to maybe streamline a little bit did you have a question Leslie Dr Harris sorry Fern thank you very much so um my recollection of the contract and the RFP was it our good friends at first student promised us the family facing app and I in years past to spend some time with our friends at first student and I know that internationally they advertise because International conglomeration and we listen to senior corporate officers in this room promise US that so I guess I'm confused learn me up please they I've got a little bit of more background with

258this possibly Dr Campbell no absolutely um they have um in this contract in the prior made an app available to us it is in use in more than 200 districts around the country we have some specific requirements um here that require some integration work on our side to actually get it implemented you know both vendors were pushing hard to try to get us to do that work to have it ready for the start of school but we just had so many changes so it's it's really a partnership Zoom because of their ride hailing background I think were their design makes it that you know they can push they can make products available to families with or without us first student is kind of more integrated into our system so there's work that we need them

259to do and that we need to do to make that but but I think they fulfilled their contractual obligations um this is why we like competition I mean I I think on this front um one of our partners is more Adept than the other and so that that's one of the things we'll be looking at but I do believe that again for a student has delivered has made available what um they proposed we have work to do to integrate it with our data systems that is not complete yet yeah and I thank you for that Fred and I also there are just some technical pieces of it and I won't and I'm happy to follow up with you director Harris and some more specifics that um I have a meeting I've met several times with

260that team and I need to meet with them again to say here are some things from Majestic privacy and legal perspective that we need them to develop a little bit more it works but it doesn't mean just a few it requires some implementation on our part and also has some some potential data privacy issues I'll just say that I don't want to you know it's it's fine but it's we have some work we need to do before we're comfortable by saying that we're sponsoring this as a as a district um I will say that the the the school dashboard we are rolling out and that's actually a boon because if schools can look on a dashboard and see where the ride is that's huge I mean and so as much as families want to know

261it's also something when schools are waiting for buses to show up and or at the beginning or end of the day that that's also significant all right and I just wanted to share next slide just a little bit of family feedback just because we like to again yeah sorry it's completely not visible but uh this came from uh families uh our um student uh safe Traffic Safety Committee um so just sent these to me and said we've just heard such positive things I said Senate you know I'm sure the board would like to hear it this year has been an incredible Improvement uh we've had a bus from the beginning of the year with no issues our bus has been slightly late one time and the driver apologized and had a completely understandable explanation he's

262even reminded us about early releases and I'm a mother of a fourth grade student it is our fifth year or sorry I can't it's our fifth year in the school starting in kindergarten and our fifth year using SPS bus services compared to the last year and the year prior to the pandemic our bus service has vastly improved we have had a zero late and canceled buses since the beginning of the year and have had no complaints regarding the drivers or experience from our child now of course that we have had a few hiccups but this is by and large the feedback we're getting so I just wanted to really celebrate the positive things the fact that we were able to launch the year with our full roster of buses on Transportation so her rate of

263the transportation team into first student and zoom thank you all right next slide so the other thing I want to mention about 70 of our students do not use District transportation however um getting to school is still part of our mission so we do have a project manager say for us to Schools project manager who works with the city is funded by the city who sponsors things and there's our our own Dr Jones and our and our mayor and Laurie Dunn who is our leader in in PE walking Viking alternate routes to school safe routes to school so that is just I just wanted to really highlight that as well that we are also thinking about our overall health as a City physical health and environmental health that we also want to acknowledge that that's

264part of our work is really supporting alternate ways of getting to school so that's just a few highlights of data some on-time performance data and I want to clarify Zoom represents their data AM and PM and then overall so um that and the first student data is am the am is a harder Target to reach the am on time data and so that's why first student um that's how they've typically represented it but if you aggregate it it's it's that I should pull this up on my own screen I believe it's 95 percent yeah 95 overall on-time performance as of the week of November the 11th and 96.3 on time performance by first students so we aim for 97 to 98 on Time Performance um and part of our work is just analyzing you know

265where the holdups there's usually a few key routes um that are difficult sometimes we have to consolidate the route make it more efficient sometimes it's just a high traffic area so we have to think about um you know when when we pick up and drop off and those kinds of things so that's just one of our key performance indicators are really our main key performance indicator it might be worth noting that the on time the am on Time Performance is the key performance indicator built into the contract which is required to be reported monthly so what we see in these on these altering layouts between the two vendors is zoom is providing more detail for student in this case has provided what's in the contract that they're they're requiring thank you any questions about this

266all right next slide this is a slide of ridership for students I think we had them on yeah I know can we go to the next slide though yeah 96.3 all right ridership over time you've seen this some of you have noted that um as of today it's reported to me that we have 1400 699 writers overall in the district so not all of those writers are eligible for the state count and that's something I've learned for any number of reasons if they're not writing on a school bus they do not get counted on their state count so that the number of writers might not match the number of students reflected in the state count so that's just an important thing to note and the next slide so this is our fall period State count

267data average distance and these are the things that the state asked us to report three times a year we're just completing the winter State count 2.22 miles is the average distance and again some of you asked it was a great question because I researched it but it is basically if you take every single school bus or bus stop and and its distance to the school and average them out it's 2.22 miles 102 destinations 9 525 basic program writers and 31 191 special program writers so again those are ones that can be counted some of our uh some of the routes that Zoom has are currently being serviced by Vans versus school buses and that was um not optimal but that was a result of some supply issues for them um there are reasons why that's

268actually been good in a way because it's enabled them to train more drivers more quickly it creates a pipeline because they can be learning without yet having their commercial driver's license so it actually has been an interesting pipeline experiment sad that we cannot we cannot count those students on bands as for for the state count that's just what the state has decided nor can we count students just on any alternative service provider um yeah sorry for the students count that's okay um so the state count if there are they're still basic program writers but they're on a van not a bus the state doesn't include them correct okay yeah so and some of you have asked and I will just say again because I just you know if there were to be any change um

269in this state the way the state does their funding formula to include alternative service providers actually would be quite powerful and um even some of our alternative service providers that are driving smaller cars are actually operating electronic Vehicles hybrid vehicles like it might actually ultimately be a really smart choice especially where we're looking at some of our routes just having smaller riders for any number of reasons we don't have a lot of options so we put a you know a very few kids on a very large vehicle and it's not really great for anybody so if we could if we could count our kids on alternative service providers that would actually make a big difference for us because we just wind up putting a lot of kids on Alternate Vehicles because it it works better

270for them and it gets into where they need to go and that is our primary job even though we know we're not getting reimbursed for that yeah I totally understand that and think that that's a great idea the biggest complaint that I've heard about that particular model is that it's really or at least there has traditionally not been a density of Union represented members right that participate in those multimodal scenarios so what I'm wondering is is there a way well that might not necessarily fall under our jurisdiction but that would be a concern for sure yeah so if you have a response and whatever that might be absolutely and I'm again I'm just sharing with you what the kinds of information I've been getting I mean we have a couple of competing interests here but

271yes I think we the district as a policy leader I mean there have been various movements over the years to organize drivers in that business model and um you know perhaps if the board chooses views its Authority as a policy leader saying that those you know anything um that the legislature others can do to remove any barriers for those types of drivers to organize but and um you know we made it clearer our labor Harmony requirements with our vendors um you know and then and and actually you know like let them know that hey this model works for us it would work even better if all the drivers were represented um uh that we wouldn't have that split it would also probably you know make this an easier thing to accomplish in Olympia that's super

272helpful yeah um but you're also talking about like for example first student drivers Teamsters were not reimbursed if they drive a van they're not driving Vans oh okay so okay so the vans the Vans are being provided completely through a different sorry mostly through Zoom they're Zoom Vehicles okay and they are ramping up and and this has so it's it's provided you know that's how we've been able that's one way Zoom has been able to really get more drivers into the market is that they can um get them employed and um uh make money for the company but also paying the drivers right away as they go get their commercial driver's license and then get ready to drive a yellow bus but um again we'll use our are buying power and our policy authority to

273let everybody know that hey we we like having represented drivers right regardless of what kind of vehicle they're right thank you any further questions thank you yeah anything thus far okay all right someone had asked the question why the decrease in ridership um we and and that you know overall there's a inconsistent service last year the last couple of years some families have made other arrangements and this is from my department members I maintain those arrangements Orca cards so this is the first year that we have given Orchid cards to all we can no longer count students um with Orchid cards so we used to count them toward our state count and then we would buy the Orca cards but it was still a net gain for us we no longer count those students so

274that is a definite um shift in our numbers there's some shifts in some grandfathering of transportation we are using some more alternative service providers that again is just again to meet the needs of students to get the more they need to go so we also um last year when we lost routes more students opted for transportation maybe through their IEPs which then drove literally drove alternative service providers so we're working on adjusting that which I can talk more about in a moment so next slide so this is the one that I'm just sharing with you broad numbers we absolutely can get more specific this is our adopted budget minus what stars has told us that is the state reimbursement model in July what they anticipate they will reimburse so there's our there's our Gap um

275so and that we can talk about why that is what it is but it is what it is we may wind up spending less than 51 million um that was as that was you know projection and our budget analyst you know based it on we don't have a you know the last couple of years we don't have really good historical data we know that costs have gone up in terms of Labor and Fuel and other kinds of things but uh there are other reasons why this Gap has has widened um I think you have a question yeah I think it would be helpful to have some historical data on the number of buses that we have been using because that seems to be driving our actual cost um and so I think that was like

276one of my big questions between um what happened between last year and this year did we plan for a return to the original number of buses because now we have the two contracts and that's why we've got this budget estimate and how many buses are we actually using right um and so I'm just trying to like Drive in as to is this 52 million actually what we're expecting our transportation to cost this year right um or can we do we have any hope that this deficit is smaller than what it's being presented right now that's a really great question so I mean the quick answer is we run what we call controls so control means a bus and a driver a control a single control might run a number of routes so that's one way

277of thinking about expenditures we run 340 controls and I made a cool little tool that I'm happy to share with you that lets you kind of play around with the different variables so if you're estimating an average number of about 30 kids per bus which we're a little higher but we it's just an easier number to work with we're average 39. um at about a hundred grand per bus that's a little low but it's again it's a good number to work with um how many controls are required if we have if we're transporting kids in two batches three batches four batches just to kind of see that if we if we can change some of those variables we can change we can change the cost um so if you want to see that let me

278know I will send it to you I just made a little spreadsheet so over there over the past yes the years of our previous contract and um understanding that you know we weren't offering in-person service for a long period in there but when we when we had um full ridership are this has been a pretty stable number between 340 and 360 buses um this budget was built on an assumption of 355 controls and so it sounds like we have found some efficiencies here when we had to suspend some routes how do you know off the time we eliminated 80 controls and our goal at the time I believe was 353 so we're and that really has informed the when we start talking about the reductions we're trying to achieve we're trying to we're kind of

279using that as a benchmark to get to uh to look for models that get us back to that 280 control level all right just a reminder and you probably you all are if we can move on thank you our transition funding model I don't know is Linda Sebring still here did she leave okay we lost her okay I have spent and I have this binder is full of all the information about stars which is the the state transportation funding model but we are funded on the lesser of Prior years expenditures or the our expected cost based on a regression analysis um the funding is heavily weighted on two factors the number of writers and that's not individual students and that to wrap your head around that that means we're just counting writers on buses we're

280not saying this person rides at the beginning and end of the day that's not how it works it's just simply writers being transported to and from school the number of destinations that students destinations that buses take students to and from those are two those are two of the big factors the number of buses we use does not so basically it's up to us to move writers to places as efficiently as we can in order to meet the state's criteria there if you think about Seattle if you think about both our city and how we do school which I think is wonderful where we give lots of choice and lots of options it becomes a little less efficient because we are moving kids to lots of different places um and that's then that's why we see

281that Gap I mean that's that's a short answer to that Dr Rankin I was just going to channel uh Jillian burgie and add that there's another Factor that's used where they compare comparable districts yes and we don't have a comparable District correct so when that's being evaluated at the state level for if districts are spending appropriately or not according to the formula um that is something that is uniquely uh negatively impactful for Seattle I literally have a note right here director Rankin that I typed that says we don't have a peer District to model from so yes we are Suey generous in so many ways in Seattle but definitely transportation is where we see that bearing out um contractor costs have increased if you want to know um you know uh let's see if there's

282anything else any I have a lot of details here um if you have any additional we have uh some of our buses that are being run right now are leased um and just so you know that has an impact because while we can count Riders on leased buses we can't there's a depreciation factor that this state also gives us we can't count on that depreciation Factor if we're using a leased vehicle so that's just another thing that that we're facing right now yes Dr Harris was that taken into account in our rfps and our contracts assistant superintendent it was taken account as we um evaluated proposals and we're kind of negotiating prices um we we have allowed flexibility whether it's lease buses or Vans to try to get a second provider into the market understanding

283that you know it's a huge Capital lift for them on on up front so we're we're still having discussions about the flexibility we gave to the new partner so they could stand up a business you know has impacts on our reimbursement and so on do we have any kind of a guesstimate and I appreciate first year competition blah blah blah do we have any sense of how much money we're losing because of that um I think we can certainly provide that um I uh because that that feels like extraordinarily important new news to me and and then I think we should also add that this is something that we expect to be corrected over the course of this year I mean this is this is going on for a matter of months and it matters

284but um we've uh you felt you know to get another player into the market and get all the benefits that we were going to get it was it was worth taking the hit but it and I'm not suggesting it wasn't worth it I'm just frankly shot that's all yeah yeah and would like more information sure sure thank you sir yep we have a note about that and um thank you uh these are just our bus contract uh budgets so you can see the increases um any number of factors that Inc that you know impact the cost of the bus contracts yeah churches onwards I think I'm surprised that the number in 2122 is so close to the budgeted amount given that we had so many we had reduced the number of controls by it it

285sounded like a a third right so why did why were we only able to save four million dollars um I think the budget estimate was probably low that year and this ended up being roughly the equivalent of of going to three tiers as you know we only do over part of the year so we eliminated 80 controls we started bringing them back almost immediately we never got there but and and we'd estimate then that that was about a potential five million dollar savings so I I think it's in the ballpark we can drill down into these numbers a little bit more um whether the budget number was too small but we end you know we ended up um close to it and then um also uh in the remaining buses ended up paying for more

286extra time than we would have for the buses that we were using this fuel calculated into these costs as well or no uh no this is just um we we buy the fuel directly okay thank you next slide just a reminder of the legal requirements so we're we we are legally not that we would ever do this but only required to transport students um who have uh uh Transportation indicated in their special education IEP or students who are entitled to Transportation because they are unhoused or are covered by the mckinney-bento law so um just know that those are things that you know that are that we are legally required to do and then the next slide so these are our constraints those legal requirements our own transportation service standards which you are familiar with ride

287time so uh attendance area elementary and K-8 schools 45 minutes or less were feasible all other routes 60 Minutes or Less were feasible and we definition of right time the time the first student boards the bus until the bus arrives at school in the morning time the bus leaves the school to the law student is dropped off in the evening and transportation to option schools and other program schools is also part of our transportation service standards currently next slide so just again uh this was in in Fred's in my conversations and I'm probably you know coming out the gate a little early in terms of uh of the larger budget work that we're doing but in reality we in order to be responsible um in our system regardless of what other work we're doing with

288our budget this seemed like a reasonable reduction to shoot for about seven million dollars which would be about 70 controls it's not precise numbers but it's a good way to think about it so reducing 65 to 70 controls that's a bus plus a driver that's approximately a 20 reduction so that's what we're aiming for just as an initial start that I wanted to share with you and that's again just to bring us into alignment with um what we believe the state expects of us um we are in terms of our kpis with the state and again we do not have a peer or a like District in the state but we are ranked last in the key performance indicator of basic writers per bus out of about 23 districts we're about third or fourth from

289the last in terms of special ed that is the number of writers per bus so that just again is an Aggregate and what that means is that again I believe it's because of our commitment to getting kids to school to their programs to all of the things that we that we want to do it means that our buses just run not quite as full as they might in other in other districts so this gets us to the slide where we're just thinking and we're just um we're just imagining here some of the things that we might do this first one I think is is our our responsibility regardless is to return more students with IEPs to general education routes and create more inclusive communities that during the time when we first returned from the pandemic

290only students with IEP Services were getting bus routes and I know that I saw in my own school in order to really serve and meet the needs of families some decisions were made maybe to add transportation to that IEP so that student could get that service and we know that that's happened in a number of places so the first thing we want to do is take a pass at at some of our service model one iepc do they have transportation in them and is that something that it might be better and healthier for that student to move back to the Gen Ed route so that's that's something that we think we should do regardless it will result in savings potentially and getting more writers on those buses but it also will be the right thing

291to do for our students um there's a couple of models where we might think about a slight shift in what I'm calling a modified two tiers so if we shifted some bell times for a few programs that would enable us to piggyback a couple of routes and our and our transportation staff are you know they know which ones can fit together so um that might be one approach and I want to say up front the moving to three start times and again although we we frame this as a transportation issue we all know it's it's really a schooling issue right this changes just about everything about school for everybody and I'm not unmindful of that by any means but it happens to land in in transportation so here we are but I very much see

292how these things all come together this alone would probably get us to our 65 to 70 controls if we move to three tiers of start times we might and again and I I can and we'll model this out it might take perhaps a combination of all of the others to come even close to that impact so we really just want to think about all of the other shifts so we could do a couple of modified two-tier start times um again those those two second and third bullets are that an opt-in Transportation process we could we could look into that that's something that districts do so we would want to make sure that we were mindful of equity you know that we don't some families that might not proactively opt into transportation we would have to

293find a way to make sure that we're not leaving them out of that service that we want to provide similarly we could look at opt-in for option schools or there are some other models that we could do for option School transportation certainly not eliminating it but there are other Everett has an interesting idea that I've seen where they pick kids up at their neighborhood school and then take them to their options school so it just it makes the routes a little more efficient so that you don't have to drive all around to a lot of different places so there's a couple of ideas like that that we're investigating and and exploring right now and I actually have a project manager who's working on researching this right now yes given that all of this wonderful information

294because we have received quite a few emails there is not a proposal at this time to move the district to three-tier Bell systems is that correct correct and there is also not a proposal at this time to cut transportation to all option schools is that correct correct I mean these are thank you thank you no I I just if somebody could take that clip and blast it out I think that would be really really helpful because we've already started to receive a few emails and that clarification is super important I think it's probably worth noting that of all the analysis that Dr Campbell is talking about the thing we don't really need to do analysis into is three tiers we understand that system we know what it would do we've kind of set that up

295as an aspirational Target in this exercise to see so what combination of everything else on that list could save the equivalent amount yeah that that that's what this exercise is really about and again I I think the board you know would do itself a disservice to take any option off the table until you see the whole because you're going to be trading general fund dollars in transportation for things that are so critical that we really need to understand everything so we understand how difficult the conversation about we we were here we under we we paid attention we know how difficult that conversation is we are facing some very difficult choices we just didn't seem intellectually honest to say well here's something we know we could do and that we're just not even you know we're

296never going to talk about it again just did not seem like a good faith approach to this work so that that's why it's there but no there's no such option wow I'm sorry um no thank you thank you for that that uh president Hersey for um emphasizing that point there um and um one of my questions my community got about to die so hopefully I remember and wrote it down enough but um regarding this slide you know having an estimate of what the cost expected cost savings is from each of these I think is is what I personally would need to give the answer you gave which is you need to know the direction we want to go well I can't really give that direction until unless I knew what the what what the amounts

297were in this um the cost savings expected were because that you know that has to factor into it but then I also go back to one on a previous slide you had a thing about the goals of being not just cost savings but actually a reduction in controls so my question is which are those equal goals or is one more important than the other do we need to achieve both of those I mean I know that you kind of do what you both together but some things like you said like the reduction in option schools might not actually save money but it would reduce controls perhaps um so I'm trying to understand really what your goal is which of those is if there is a ranking of those two different goals and then again knowing

298what the cost Savings of these would be would be necessary for me to give the direction of like yeah that sounds like something to Pursuit versus not um I'm assuming they all have some amount of that but I would like to know what those are for sure and I will say for I think for the purposes of this it's not just a thought exercise it's just real but controls equal cost savings so in other words the way to think about cost savings is to reduce the number of buses on the road that's it so each one of these has the potential to reduce the number of control so for example if we modified adjust the transportation service standards and this is just speculative but let's say we increased that Elementary School ride to 55 minutes

299we might then be able to and this is the analysis we can do but it's going to take some you know we want to give you accurate analysis we might get five more kids per bus in elementary school that might then aggregate out to 20 controls right 20 buses so we think of that our costs primarily come in the form of buses on the road and the more we can get you know efficiency around a bus moving as many kids as possible the better so the cost savings really is we would reflect it in terms of controls that's what we can manage we can that's a variable that we can manage in terms of how we do our routing so does that help that's right and I know you can't predict quite yet but there's

300there could would you would you agree that there could be cost Savings in an increase in Revenue if the state was to reimburse for alternative transportation you wouldn't necessarily be lowering controls but you would be bringing you would have a cost savings per se because you're making more reimbursement sure I think that um right now it does not look likely in fact our analysis of the potential shifts to the state funding actually has us losing quite a bit of money and there are alternatives they said we can hold you harmless well as you can see by the basic Mass holding harmless is not going to help us so there's there's another factor in here as well we might lose writers like if we were to say just restrict Transportation overall as a move yes we

301lose revenue from the state however we're also just reducing our cost overall so I think there's two things for us to think about you know we we do get reimbursed by this state but we know that for the past little while it has not come near to our the our expenditures and our expenditures primarily Hang On Again choices we have made and their choices I understand why we've made them but we've made some choices that result in just more expenditures in terms of how how many buses we run to move how many kids it comes down to that basically but yeah and so regarding these suggestions again knowing what those cost savings would be is it would be Paramount to knowing but but just on her face you know I definitely I I appreciate the

302many options you have here um and definitely I know the first one that jumps out is just the um efficiency of opt-in transportation and are we close to that I know for a long time Ashley said we were working towards working towards it how close are we to that um not terribly close so I mean I mean I we we I mean we try to be but um I I don't have a figure for you but I mean if we were to say You must opt in in order to get transportation that would cut our ridership significantly which would then result in in that you know fewer expenditures yeah fewer Adventures I'm pure reimbursement yes I understand yeah um I like the idea of the effort and what you said about their options School Bus

303scene because option school is is interesting because you know people believe sometimes that wherever you live you get busy and you really don't there's like that that magic donut they call it in of where you get busting for option school so if those were neighborhood school children they would still get Transportation per se they would just be to their neighborhood school so that I don't that's necessarily like you said you admitted there's men I'd be a cost savings there um correct but but any kind of efficiency is you know is great to investigate um of course with walk zone changes I know we have a great safety School Safety Committee that investigates those right um adjusting transportation services for longer times it's already you said making it longer would be more than an hour because

304it's an hour right now correct for secondary yes but most of our writers are are Elementary age kids we don't yeah and there's our yeah there's is how long you said 45. so um and I think depending on this obviously the school start time that kind of makes a difference how feasible that is right when we were talking about exact years it was going to be like yeah five in the morning wake up time um but anyways again I'm I'm open I love the conversation we're gonna have about this um and if and when we can get if when we can get the estimates on that would be great absolutely absolutely absolutely yes quick follow-up question to director versus question on the opt-in process is there a plan as part of that costing cost savings

305estimation strategy to survey existing Transportation recipient families about and if we do that would we be asking about the implications of you know what's more important to tears versus having transportation um is that something that's come that thank you that's part of the analysis you know we've been talking about how to research this and working with other districts who've had Pilots um well we've heard from some districts is you opt in and you end up with a bit more swiss cheese in the routes that you have that you know so people opt in and doesn't reduce any buses it lowers the ridership in the buses so we're trying to figure out how to approach you know how to get some feedback and how to model what what that savings might be I you know to

306be perfectly honest some of this will be balancing that we're looking at for the 23 24 year and some of it will be balancing that we're looking for out years just because of the implementation that was why I asked that question about I think if that's to happen it needs to be what seems to me it would be important to be honest about the implications of not getting enough opt-outs I mean you know like when you're boarding a plane with your luggage or you know what you're going to have to yeah something's going to be much more uncomfortable yes or you might perceive it as being uncomfortable what's your perspective about that would you rather have two tears would you rather right you know um would dress up at the time we rather have the

307the convenience of the transportation so um thank you for having this conversation with us in this way at this time uh rather than being alarmed to see it incorporated into some other information um the Mike my question really is at this like what's the do we have a a timeline estimate of when we would need to narrow down on choosing something or uh what at what point look I guess what's the next what's the next step for this like when you come back to us with more information do you what do you need to include them in the overall balancing package that's going to get introduced to the board in late January oh okay okay and so um because you know is difficult as some of these things are it's really and we understand people

308you know need them costed but they also need to understand everything else right I mean that um these aren't just competing against um each other they're competing against every other choice that you have to make so I think our goal was just because transportation is such a big factor in um our expenses that exceed State funding is to let you know what we're that it's going to be a significant I mean it was you know for this year when when the um for the current school year you know it was again Transportation was called out as its own line item when there was a proposal around three tiers and so I think that will have a significant proposal around transportation and we just wanted to be a little bit more transparent director Harris asked questions

309so what are the kind of instructions the staff are getting to try to approach this ballasting package we wanted to give you insight into this one again Elite at the conceptual level just because it's going to be significant and the the balancing package you're talking about overall budget yeah okay so between now and January what factors are going to be considered as you approach a chosen solution here to include in the balancing package because that I know that January is January we approve a final budget in July legislative session we're not going to know really what changes might come out of legislative session until the end of April so everything is there there's we we don't we don't have a set it and forget it yeah position um until like we're ready to approve the

310budget you know but no okay see now I'm no okay so I've gotta I know that that was for me and that's a struggle that I have of and if we're talking about accepting um neurodiversity it's really struggle so understood and now I'm totally derailed sorry um so between now and January like it's great that this is now saying here like we have a problem we have a problem we need to solve here are some ways it could be solved for sure between now and January what factors will be taken into consideration before the the like I mean like I have opinions but I I guess I what I want to say right now is that I know from having advocated very strongly and worked with the city to get the money to go to

311two tiers in the first place after the flipped bell times for later times for high school students like I feel like I've a pretty good idea of the different feelings around bell times but also the different challenges and what I I just will say what I know is important to um community that has engaged on this topic is that late start time for the later start time for adolescence is and in terms of student outcomes there's a lot of data to support that being a healthier important thing to maintain is the later start time for adolescence um the challenge that that created in 2016 was splitting Elementary times on either side and uh so you'd have some elementary schools start it 750 and Summit 940. just really late but um I guess the the kind

312of the thing I'm wondering is as you're honing in on you know there's the financial analysis there's the the customer analysis of just like simply do people have a preference um and then there's also the impact on student outcomes for sure and so um the you know I know that the um reliability and being able to coordinate when you have multiple kids in the system and just kind of knowing that you can manage that schedule whatever it might be is really critical keeping that later start time for adolescence I heard from Educators and students and families parents about how important that has been so I just I guess I'm just stating that I think that's a really strong value as we're navigating all this um and people hate change but like this is the reality

313is this is a problem and it has to be solved so my sorry my my very specific question is I want to re because of last year and the way that this came forward and then didn't come forward I had an amendment to decouple making a decision about a change of bell times from the transportation service standards and I never had the opportunity to actually introduce that item and so it was misconstrued in various places the important thing that I want to reiterate here is that if there is a change in Bell time that we're very clear about how and when that decision is made um and that it's not tacked on to something else the service standards about who rides the bus got it the bell times I just I don't want those to

314get squished together again and lose track of um you know their their separate issues that deserve and need to be considered separately even though they're they're interacting um so just as much clarity as we can get on how and when those decisions will actually be made um and what to expect coming from before the board and when and then the other thing I wanted to ask is if you if there's any need based on uh if there's any policy level changes that should be looked at to provide better stronger direction from the board as you're approaching this that seems like something we should um talk about thank you then later no I appreciate that I apologize for the no I get I got to the end of the day is it is it's a beautiful

315thing um yeah um and I um I think it was just the way do you delineated it um you you talked about customer service impacts and other factors and student outcomes I think we're putting student outcomes first not just in transportation but for everything um and that's why you think it's important to not have this be a standalone topic that come in the comprehensive package because if those other things don't add up to seven million dollars and that's going to come out of some other program that may have be more impactful to student outcomes so we really just think it's important that that this not be a standalone topic even though it's a big one and it's big enough to talk about you know how we're approaching it because it's so much in one bucket

316but it's really hard to make decisions so would it be fair to say then that whatever comes forward in January shouldn't be thought of here's the package but here's all the information together and now we can all consider it together would that be fair to say yes in in we're hoping for you know some Consolidated option there's going to be a lot in there yeah if every line item gets looked at you'll be here for 100 years trying to figure it out um Dr Campbell I just want to say thank you so much for getting up to speed on this um based on my interactions with our building leaders I'm not surprised that a former building leader could jump in and just quickly learn like this and sort it out so thank you so much

317for your hard work on this um I um I think one of my kind of big feelings about this is that we've made so much progress on our reliability of our transportation and I'm feeling a little nervous about having to rock that boat but I unders I think interim superintendent Deputy superintendent for Desta for giving us the context for why we're going to have to make these difficult changes in terms of evaluating these options I think it's important yes you need to lay it all on the table and evaluate each one I think what would be helpful would be trying to understand if there are any combination of ideas that we can put together to kind of get us closer to the seven million dollar Target and also I know this this is I don't

318want this to be strictly driven as a financial decision I'd like to also understand the number of students that would be impacted with some of these options and which students absolutely so I just want to make sure that that is a consideration as we're weighing our decisions but thank you very much for this presentation and for having it right now oh absolutely and that thank you for that um that's why I added we often talk about efficiency in some of these operational things but again efficiency by itself does not get to what we're talking about it has to be effective it has to have efficacy it has to meet the needs of families and students in community and that's really critical part of it so again I just want to say these are all things

319that were mapped out previously two years ago in a presentation I think it was a winner of 21. these are not new things are not unique I didn't dream them all up although the HC decentralization is one and someone did ask will that result in some more efficiency yeah but if we do a year over year transition it might actually result in the opposite there might be a time when we have even more kids going opposite directions if they're rolling that up so that's just something to think about um and what what I will do and um and so some of you asked as well why is there why the uh revolving door someone said it's like the defense against the dark arts teacher I don't know if you know Harry Potter but um Transportation

320manager it's it's a really complex position and I think that it requires a level of technical ability and awareness as well as a finesse and frankly understanding Seattle Public Schools which is it which is a journey in of itself and so I'm confident that we can find someone and I would like to find someone I love it and I love the department but it's also you know it's it's it's you know they're it's a lot and um but I feel confident that a strong Transportation director will be able to help do this work I do have a project manager as I said what we're going to do is put together again in terms of thinking in terms of the core values that we have so these things that you've talked about making sure that we're

321giving rights to kids who need rides making sure that we're supporting the community and as and I already said I mean three bell times is not a transportation issue it's a school issue and I get that and so we want to make sure that we're aware that it it does have an impact on the schooling experience but also where that it's it's something that many many school districts do we're again a little singular in in that we we only run two tiers um but what we'll do is represent each one of these in terms of potential and our best analysis the impact it would have so it might be that one might only have two to three controls and again I think in that unit just because that's works for the way I can see

322that model running and it might be an aggregate of five plus another five that we haven't thought about yet that gets us to where we want to go so again as Fred said overall as responsible citizens stewards members of our community we we do have to look at some more efficiency and how we do our work without losing that Effectiveness and we all are also very aware of the need to not cut into other areas of service that you know we would have to pay for you know not that it's a one-to-one ratio but we are part of a system so we do have to do our part in the context of the larger budget conversation so we will have that ready very soon uh just not now but we will do that analysis I

323oh really quickly because I could talk all night on this issue as you might be surprised to know um so the next time we see the numbers on slide 20 the potential savings who it would affect unintended consequences will be wrapped into a potential budget session or we get a say an ETA with a different slide deck it has the big draft watermark on it so that we have more information attached to these options I think we'd like we'd like to get a little further in the analysis before we lay out those Milestones I mean some of these are going to come up just dry and you know they're not really going to be worth the effort and so um the the savings won't be there you know we are approaching this part of a

324larger budget exercise so if once we have those initial estimates of we think there's you know a need for some interim input and explaining how we got there again I think we want to see this in life I mean every member of Dr Jones cabinet is you know doing their own version of this right now or not I appreciate that not many are at that scale um and so if it ends up that it you know we're only end up two end up in Dr Jones recommendation to the board I think you'll just see it again um laid out as part of the overall com brands of package if um if it's more complicated than that um we can have we would you know devote dedicated time to this but I just I think it's

325a disservice to have these floating in space where you know the board can say this is you know not something we're really very supportive of without being known okay if we don't do this what is the thing that's going to affect another department I mean I just I just think you need to see it all the peace would be our goal I just wanted to follow up Professor um as I said earlier I really appreciate the options but I did one I I was a missed to not say that as far as the three-tier start time goes I I don't know the world in which that would go over uh well with families who were very taken by surprise last last time about it and we saw we a lot of the um issues with

326it came forward I I will say that I there was because I because I understand we never wanted to say roll this out immediately but again like that one was really disrupted it was going to show to be disruptive part of that was also because there was an insistent that the tears be a hour apart which made the first tier really early last year really really late so I don't know if there's a way to shrink that down if you had to if you had to give us a bottle for this um because that I think was I mean it doesn't cure it because you still have maybe a kid in one grade another grade I mean two different start times which is is incredibly deceptive all over the place um but again with the

327engagement and that would take obviously a lot of Engagement that we didn't have the first time and as you do that um we need to do we need to do that before our decision is made because usually we make a decision to engage on it right which is I it does not go over well because decisions been made it's more like how do we make people feel like they're having engagement now so if we are going to explore that one I just really want to see that that whoever's job is whether it's our boards or or your guys is on your part that has to happen before we start really going down that path because because then you don't got to take our word for it you can hear directly from the families who will

328be most effective most affected because again this isn't just these aren't just dollars these are students are affected on different levels and again I think we'll need to do that with a broad range of subjects um that that we understand you know some of these things might be difficult choices without knowing well if we don't do this this is what's going to happen you really you I I think we're gonna have to when we are facing a very daunting challenge in balancing this budget and I think engagement is going to be required on all of it um you know there there aren't I I don't believe you know a balanced budget is I mean there are going to be many difficult choices and and it seems like you really just you need to have the

329whole um you need to have all your cards in your hand you can't just make a choice about one thing in isolation without knowing well we've taken this off the table so that means we're going to have this impact on Staffing in schools for instance I don't I don't think you can do that in that order yeah but yeah and then um you know we also have a timeline that you're legally obligated to um uh live within and so our our need for engagement is going to have to fit into that timeline and be prioritized which are the which are the biggest issues that will be most impactful that we want to make sure we get the most um feedback from our constituents and we've given our direction to the superintendent regarding engagement so I

330feel like that's that's out there because I like director I said how can we help out with policy to make this clearer and we've we've done so far I think that part but obviously that might be more um but yeah I put that in your guys's hands thank you thank you all right fantastic I'm sorry directors I cannot entertain any more questions at this point so that being said we will have more opportunities to talk about this I promise it's also almost 10 o'clock so we will do you have any final thoughts that you want to share I just wanted to share that last slide that comes after the thank you it's not it's the after the any question slide has a lot more numbers on it that was if you're really interested in digging

331into the formula this is where I was going to have uh Linda Sebring here because she understands this better than I do I think I understand most of it that's if you're really curious about the star's formula that I didn't intend yeah it's after the question slide I tacked it on to the end all right yeah thank you so much team we really appreciate it thanks everybody no further business before the board this evening the meeting stands adjourned at 9 36 pm I know thank you I know of