001will begin broadcasting for those joining by phone please remain muted until we reach the testimony period and your name is call hey crowd today this is president hersey i'm now calling the june 22 2022 regular board meeting to order at 4 15 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 uh miss wilson jones the roll call please vice president hampson here director harris in the parking lot here director song ritz and president hersey good evening thank you very much i will now turn it over to superintendent jones for his comments which will include a budget work session today this work session is scheduled for 90 minutes uh public testimony is scheduled to begin at 6
002pm today for those of you who might be listening so superintendent jones please take it away thank you president hersey board members i know we have a full agenda this evening but i want to acknowledge the joy and celebration many of us experienced last week at the graduation of the class of 2022. this class completed a markedly unprecedented set of circumstances and challenges and they persevered with grace fortitude and we can't wait to see what they do next so congratulations again to the class of 2022. regarding student outcome focused governance several of the agenda items that the board will consider tonight are the culmination of months of planning preparation and practice thanks to the leadership of this school board the district is implementing a framework to support the board's focus on accountability for student outcomes
003on the agenda this evening you will consider introduction of progress monitoring calendar and this follows progress monitoring training we've done together and lays out the cadence of regular review of our progress towards our academic goals and behavioral guard rails i've also recommended that the board approve our district's use of the measurements of academic progress this is an assessment tool that will help track our progress toward those student outcomes that recommendation will be introduced this evening tomorrow evening we meet again to consider proposed changes to the goals and guard rails and once the language and the goals and guardrails is final my leadership team and i will revise the interim metrics to ensure alignment with where we're going and how we're tracking our progress finally i want to acknowledge the time and consideration this board has
004put into the 2022-23 school year budget we spent hours looking at the difficult decisions that go into allocating resources that support academic outcomes and the guidelines that create the environment where students can thrive assistant superintendent joellen bergie and her team are going to uh have done actually done a phenomenal job of working through each line item to make sure our limited resources are aligned with the goals and guardrails in our in our top priorities thank you to the team and without further ado i'll hand it over to assistant bergy and her team to walk us through the budget the 2223 budget superintendent joellen bergie assistant superintendent for business and finance and i'm joined by deputy superintendent rob cannon linda sebring budget director all right much of this information is the culmination of our discussions throughout
005the year so on the next slide as we move through the agenda we can see that we'll be talking about our recommended 2223 and budget we'll have a summary of that we'll have some summary information about the enrollment that plays a critical role on our budget projections we'll then talk about the general fund resources and expenditures some information about our other funds how we have aligned our budget for student outcome focused governance and our goals and guardrails and then the appendix there's some other information that we'll share with you briefly each board director should have received a hard copy of the budget book that in their mailbox here at the john stanford center and the budget book is online externally under departments business and finance and budget so with that i'm going to turn it
006over to budget director linda sebring one moment before we begin i want to acknowledge that director revere smith has joined us remotely thank you so what you're going to be uh we're going to be walking through tonight is some excerpts from the budget books so as assistant superintendent bergey mentioned the district's 2223 recommended budget book is online for the community to take a chance to go through there we've made some expansions to the book that we'll talk about a little bit later part of that is the alignment with the goals and guard rails we've also put in additional information on the strategic plan and some more information on our nursing resources at our buildings so we're excited that we've got the same detailed content we've had in the past and we've expanded it even further
007so this first slide is the budgets in a nutshell we're bringing to the school board the there's four budgets that you are voting on they all come in the package as the district budget but there's the general fund which we think of as the operating budget the associated student body fund which is the students fundraising and is managed at each of our secondary schools and some elementary schools our debt service fund which payments for bonds go through and we only have one we're very fortunate as a district to have very little debt and that's just for this building and our capital program fund which is what we use for our major remodeling and activities out in the buildings so in total we'll be bringing forward a recommended budget of total expenditures of 1.6 billion dollars
008and you see that on the details here so the next slide is we mentioned our enrollment and this is something we've been looking at in the past a couple of times we have the blue line is our actual enrollment and the orange line is our [Music] budgeted enrollment so for those not looking at color the line on the top is the budgeted and the longer line is the actual enrollment and it's just demonstrating that we've had a reduction in student actual enrollment we've dialed the budget back down for staffing but our actual is continuing to go lower than what we're planning so that's something for us to be aware of as we continue to plan going forward next slide is another view of enrollment next slide please yes thank you all right so this is
009a bar chart um and to the left is our budgeted enrollment going back to 2015-16 compared to what um actually we experienced in those years so what this is demonstrating is you know i it may not always seem like it but we usually have been budgeting much higher than what's been coming in enrollment with the exception of the 2019-20 school year where actual enrollment surprised us and did a big jump up so we are at we have a recommended budget of 48 thousand 748 students and i know we uh talked about we do a review in june to see if we're trending um on target or if we have more kids coming and need to make adjustments or if we should um one way or the other and unfortunately our trend right now is is
010still down in kindergarten in particular so we are not adjusting any of our staffing at this time and hoping that there's just light enrollment coming forward next slide so what you have here is a view of the general fund budget so this is the resources and looking at over time between the 2021 school years the actual revenues we experienced from the state local taxes rev federal other revenues other resources and our use of fund balance and then this year's budget for 21 22 and the recommended budget we're bringing forward for 22.23 there's a few changes um that we're seeing in particular and state is revenue is down slightly that trends with enrollment and it also um it goes up with inflationary costs and it goes down with the number of students that we are anticipating
011to serve our property taxes are up slightly they do inflate from year to year they're also driven by student enrollment federal funds is the biggest change you see on this screen and that's mostly a reflection of our anticipated federal esser funds which we'll talk about a little bit later in this presentation and this is can also be found for those who would like to on page 22 of the budget book next slide so we get into a little bit more detail here the state recommends and actually has us report to the state our budget in different slices of how you look at things one of them is state program so what you're seeing here is how the state has us you know take all of our expenditures and put them into these categories of regular
012education they'll see the federal recovery esther has its own program at the state level now special education vocational education skills center and so on transportation has its own category food services has its own category all of these slides you're going to be seeing going forward are lined up the way the previous one was which is you have the 20 20 21 actual and then the adopted budget for this school year and then the recommended budget for what we're bringing forward for next school year and you'll see the changes on this slide so you're going to see some themes as we go through the different ways of looking at the budget the esther federal recovery funds we plan to spend a significant amount this year because we were heavy into the pandemic and we're dialing that
013back for our plan for next year as we work through those funds so next slide this is just a visual presentation of what i just went through of sometimes charts can be very overwhelming because there's a lot of numbers on them so what this is showing you is the expenditures by state program showing that 44.7 percent of our expenditures are in what we call regular education general education then there's support services or 19.6 special education 17.8 compensatory education 7.8 excuse me special education 17.8 compensatory education 7.8 and then so on there's more detail in the budget book this is on page 31 this chart that will go into you know what are these different categories when people say what are support services we have charts in there that go into specifically what falls into these
014different categories so next slide please so the next um set of data is expenditures by state activity so this is another way the state slices the data and it's more along the lines of well what are we doing so there's a program and we have expenditures that go across the program and another way in the dimensions is it's an activity such as teaching the principal's office central and other student supports so what you're seeing here is the actuals for 2021 adopted recommended most of our expenditures are planned to have increases the only decrease you're seeing is in the other student supports and some of these you'll see there's some anomalies between 2021 and where we're going with 2223 and i know some board members in questions brought that forward 2021 was our basically our shutdown
015year so a lot of expenses that we would typically incur when we run our program we didn't do in that school year so the 2223 budget that we're bringing forward is an anticipated return to basically normal operations so when you see changes in other support services has one of the biggest you know changes that's occurring it jumped up significantly from 2021 to 2122 and now it's going down slightly 2223 so that there's an artificial jump between 2021 actuals and 2122 because again for the actual expenditures for 2021 there were a lot of activities that the district just didn't do because it wasn't something during the pandemic that would work so the most significant um drop down in that other student supports actually is for lack of a better term a tech bubble when in 2122
016we had budgeted to do a lot of technology investments for laptops for students and staff and we're going back down to where we are now there are other things flowing through there ups and downs which is why for more details i would go to page 34 of the budget book and see that you know transportation is going up food services is going down slightly because the federal government is not paying for it at the same level so there's there's a lot of changes in the budget so next slide please so again like the other um slide this is a just a follow up of a visual presentation of what i went through that also gives you some percentages and i have you know i i wander around with both copies of budget books this year
017and recommended um because a lot of questions people ask us is how how are we changing how are things evolving and if you do the similar tasks you'll see that our percentages are staying about the same i mean we're very well aligned with you know even as the you know teaching activities are going down slightly because of the enrollment decrease the total percentages across the system are about where they're at because costs are going up for compensation issues benefit issues while total fte is going down in some categories next slide and i apologize this is just a lot of little details but state activities is one of the areas that people um usually have the most questions on so what this is helping people see is what are some of the specific things that are
018in these different categories so when people talk about well what's teaching well it's not just teachers it's you know a whole bunch of other things to provide that support for teachers and then there's teaching support and it's like okay well you just told me teaching was support but this is like the counseling safety the nurses professional development so there are there are layers in these different categories that the state directs us as to how to code this that help try to provide comparables across districts across the state so we're all reporting in a similar fashion next slide so this next data set is expenditures by state object this is the third way the state has us record things and it's a very simple simple way in some ways it's you know how much do we
019pay for certificated salaries classified salaries employee benefits being everything from you know taxes to medical to pension costs what do we pay for supplies materials purchasing which is contract services our biggest expense there is our bus contract travel very small amount for the district capital outlay is a category the state uses for what they consider longer term purchases so some of the vehicles that we've been slowly replacing for the fleet have gone through that category and then debit and credit transfer is what we call you know inter-district services mostly things like copier charges where the schools pay a copier um charge and it goes to pay the publishing services who pay the contract for the copiers out in the schools so it's just within the district certain charges move back and forth so next slide
020is probably the more telling and more interesting one that people really um like is this breaks out similar to the other slides this is a visual of the expenditures by state object but i totaled up on this and put in some text boxes over to the right that show you total compensation costs so we talk about how you know when we look at the budget it's people that's that's what we're doing and that's what we're the people business to support our kids but 84.6 of our budget is certificated staff classified staff and the benefits related to those staff when we overlay on top of that transportation because a lot of districts have in-house they do the transportation they don't outsource it to a contractor so they bring their transportation in-house and would have people instead
021of paying a contract for seattle that would bring us up to almost 89 of our budget is people or policy people equivalent with the buses in the system that that's a very large percentage when you start thinking about the budget and it's like now you're down to 11 left well what's left utilities is our next big expense food services food for the kids not the people insurance these are some of our bigger expenses once you get out of these categories of people so next slide please and the next slide is and uh this is not um the slide is not in the budget book but the data is on page 35 and this is showing over time that in our actual expenditures for the 2021 2020 2021 budget our total salary and benefits were 87.4
022they added on transportation recognizing we weren't doing a lot of bus transportation in that year and we were up to 89.3 this year's budget is total salaries of 83.2 with transportation added on 87 percent and the budget we're bringing forward is 84.6 and 88.9 so the the point of this slide is more to look at in the actuals when the percentage came down to it i mean we kept staff employed during this we a lot of purchase services stopped a lot of contracted services stopped because we just weren't doing those activities so there's a little anomaly a very large anomaly going through the 20 20 21 year but what we're seeing in the 21 22 to the 22-23 is things are starting to creep up again of what the percentage of our budget is people
023and we'll continue to point that out as we have conversations about looking at how we might restructure things as we continue to move forward so next slide this is one of the slides we started several years ago which is helping people understand our budget we look at it in so many different ways but this is a very popular way of looking at it which is what are our direct services to students and when we look at direct services to students that's an adult in front of the student whether that's a teacher a custodian a food services worker they're out in the school building or they're the bus driver riding them to the bus and then support services are more as it says here the running of the district the management of all these activities the
024coordination and if you go to page seven in the budget book it's up very near the front excuse me we go into details about how we determine what goes into these categories so this is just a percentage that we just kind of picked up and said hey this is a good percentage we'll say it's 85.5 percent direct and we actually go through a very detailed math process to figure out okay what what is direct what is indirect and how does it look from prior years so we're still in the same category which someone once told me that john stanford said if we had 80 of our budget going directly to support students we were doing good and i'm like well we're doing better than that um which is something to be proud of we i
025know we all want more but when you look at your overhead and our next slide is again just a visual presentation of that of the 85.5 of the 1.14 billion and the support services so i believe there's one more slide for me and then i will stop talking for a while and let someone else so oops we lost the presentation sorry experiencing technical difficulties so once we get the presentation back our next slide is a legislative requirement and it's also interesting information but the state provides us funding through a couple different methodologies well lots of different methodologies one is the prototypical school model where they look at our number of kids next slide please they look at our number of kids and they provide us with staffing units where they give us a compensation level
026for those staffing units and a number of staffing units the other way they provide us money is what we're seeing on the slide right now which is what's called msox also known as maintenance supplies and operating cost funding so the technical requirement that we're providing here is the state says we need you to list how you're getting msoc funding from the state for the next school year and how you're planning on spending it and if you're not spending it in these categories or completely if you don't spend it all what are you spending it on and in the past we have had situations where it appears the state is giving us more in this area which is basically helping us in another area where we have shortfalls some of our programmatic funds so what was
027kind of odd this year is it does line up we are re planning to receive based on our current enrollment um forecast 68.9 million of state funding in these categories and we have expenditures that are lining up at 68.9 million as well there is a little bit of rounding in there but as you see the categories don't perfectly line up with the state we have we used to have utilities and insurance used to be a lower cost than what the state's revenue was and we directed those funds in other places but now our utilities insurance is exceeding the state's msoc allocation and there's a lot of reasons for that but technology is slightly less curriculum and instruction we have other ways that we're funding it than through these funds so that is msox in a
028nutshell i'm going to take a breath now and i don't know if we want to take questions here or keep going we have just a couple more slides and then we would be done and we could take questions at the end is that okay okay all right moving on to the next slide the next slide talks about our esther expenditures and our budget this is a question that we i we understand that board directors are getting and that we often get and so what we've displayed on this chart is we've kind of condensed some of the categories because esser one and two dollars have all been spent so now we're in the process of spending s or three dollars so the first column shows the category of spending the second column will show the total
029expenditures prior to this current school year so what we spend in 1920 and and then we have our current expenditures through this school year so what we've spent in the 21-22 school year and then finally we've totaled those up and said here's what we've spent today on each of these categories across all years and then finally what we're budgeting for each of these line items whether it be the rest of this school year 22 23 school year and in a couple cases some dollars remaining in the 23-24 school year now you'll see that our expenditures might look a little bit low i will note that we have many expenditures that have not been yet been moved over to be put against the esser funds at this point where we have expenditures that have not yet
030hit our books so those will be coming as we close the year and remember we go all the way through august 31st so we are expecting our total expenditures for this school year to significantly increase we have had some good news you'll notice in the first set the safe operations of schools we have maintenance of equity crossed off we were very successful in working with the federal government working that requirement so that as long as they were going to direct how we were to spend certain dollars if you did not have an increase in your spending per pupil year-over-year we do have an increase in spending per pupil year over year in this district and most sisters across the nation had that as well but they were very concerned that if you didn't have those
031that you needed to put those dollars into certain schools into certain places but for us we've met the initial requirement and so we did not have to budget any remaining dollars for maintenance of equity and we were able to put those in other areas moving on to the next slide this is where we go over our other funds so as linda talked about at the beginning we have the general fund which she covered in some detail which is the bulk of our expenditures but we do have three other funds that we'll just touch on briefly we have the asb fund set up the same way as the general fund was where we show the actual expenditures for 2021 the budget for 2122 or this current year and then the proposed budget for 22.23 this is
032the account for student support and their extracurricular activities and students are the ones who vote on how to use these dollars and what they want to budget as far as revenue and expenditures on the next slide we talk about the debt service fund and again this is just breaking those numbers out we have one transaction that rolls through this fund every year and that is the bond payment for the john stanford center we have that for about another three or four years and then we'll be done moving on to the next slide the capital fund uh so again we have the actual total revenue that we estimate coming in at 348 682 518 for the budget for 22.23 and we have expenditures at just uh not quite 492 million dollars so sometimes what happens and
033what's happened in our capital fund is oftentimes we'll budget for certain activities but if the project slows down or we have supply issues or whatever you might see not see all of those expenditure all of the expenditure authority used but we do budget hoping that all of our projects are right on track but you can see that we're planning a spin down of that fund balance for our projects over time sometimes that has to do also with the size of the project that we're running in those years finally the next few slides are going to talk about our student or student outcome folks focused governance so on slide 22 and 23 we've talked about what the goals and the guard rails are that we're working on aligning our budgets to and then if we move
034to slide 24 this is on slide 24 this is where we start to provide those specific details in the budget book and there's more information about each section and these are the major departments or the major function areas of the district and so conci do you want to talk a little bit about the first couple of the schools and continuous improvement slide and the alignment with the goals and guardrails thanks um so this has been work that we've been working on all year in alignment to this uh work initiative so we've been spending time with all of our departments to ensure that all of the alignment work happens um for the goals and guardrails specifically around school improvement processes um school improvement and the continuous improvement model is what we're utilizing as our through line
035for the work that we are doing and we've had all of the departments actually go through all of their goals um and ensuring making sure they crossed out initiatives that aren't aligned with the goals and guardrails work and then we've resubmitted that work and then we've had sessions with budget to go through that process we're also working with our school improvement plans that we have for the fall for this year coming for the fall a one targeted goal as the headline goal for each school especially like for example when you think of elementary school of course that's simple to think about the third grade goal but in terms of the guard rail work we're looking at one specific guardrail that we're going to be targeted for for the fall there may be other guard rails
036listed on the school improvement plans but that's the work that we are initiating with the school improvement plans and processes and then also with our departments in alignment to that work so there's been a lot of meetings and revamping and realigning our plans um but the goal is to be solvent and aligned for the fall that all the work we're initiating and and the money and the budgets that are in our line items are in direct correlation to what we're trying to do in service of schools so just under the section that talks about alignment with the goals and guardrails building off of what dr petroza had spoken about we've taken some primary examples so not every example not all of the work that aligns in each of these divisions with every goal and guardrail
037but some of the primary examples of how their work aligns with the goals and guardrails and we've really tried to highlight what those are for each division through that work that concie talked about that we've gone through as far as really investing in how does every department's work support goals and guardrails because every component of our work in this district is directed to supporting those goals and guard rails these are just specific callouts as examples and we'll continue to build off of this as we go through time so on the next slide it's really the operations example so operations really is foundational to supporting a strategic plan priority area for predictable and consistent operations that makes sense this is the operations section but a couple of specific examples that assistant superintendent podesta had given us
038were really providing student safety services which attaches to go and supports guardrails four and five and then providing clean and fully functioning buildings and food guardrail five so really it's about how does every custodian food service worker payroll worker person and budget analyst understand that their work is supporting those goals and guard rails for student focused outcomes moving on to the next slide we have student support services again this is those departments that are providing specific supports to students with ieps or highly capable students or students in multi lingual students it's also where we have our emotional support for students guard well four and then working on safe and welcoming environments which speaks to guardrail five next we have academics this is probably the one that most people are familiar with because their work attaches
039straight on to each of the goals third grade reading seventh grade math college and career readiness much of that centers around academics the assessments the curriculum and instruction so those are things that everyone is probably more familiar with and it's easier to make that direct connection but each of the areas has direct and support has direct support and connection to goals and guardrails throughout finally district-wide leadership this is the area where we have the board of directors the superintendent's expenditures the office of african-american mail achievement the budgets for equity partnerships and engagement racial equity advancement and the strategic goals actually live in this part of the budget and so we're more familiar with that as well funding for aama which represents and focuses on students at the center of our work and then there's major
040areas of work support on guardrails one two and three to make sure that our initiatives have followed engagement principles implementation of only programs that prioritize educational and racial equity and oversight and expectation for adult behaviors that's where this district-wide leadership is attaching to those goals and guardrails and supporting those and of course stakeholder engagement also guardrail one their work is reflected in this area of the budget as well two more areas human resources again this is supporting our expectation for adult behavior in alignment with guardrail 3 and then the workers foundation also supporting the strategic plan area for culturally responsive workforce so hr's work is supporting those initiatives and then finally finance so similar to operations division we are supporting consistent and predictable operations but we also have budget work and grant work that supports
041guardrail 2 of helping to prioritize programming that supports educational and racial equity and then as the board is familiar with we have participatory budgeting that's supporting guardrail one regarding engaging students and families furthest from educational justice and inviting their voice into our process finally in conclusion we have appendix we have two things that i'll let you look at at your leisure in the budget book but we have a district-wide staff fte summary it really breaks down each type of staff and and that is on page 223 of the budget book and then also a big chunk of the budget book is each school's funding allocation and those start by school on page 75 and you can look by school at the overtime amounts for those schools the per pupil amounts and their staffing levels so
042at this point that would conclude my remarks and we're happy to take questions thank you team for that wonderful presentation you know it took a lot of work and we really appreciate you putting it together um directors do you have any questions i wanted to see if director hanson had anything to say before we press on to other directors can we plea this is completely inappropriate can we please add a better mic system into this budget dr jones um just quickly so the district wide staff fte summary online it's on page 223 is that on 2 18 in the is that what you're referencing in the hard copy of the budget book no it's on page 223 of the budget at the very very back it will list out how many superintendents we have each
043year how many deputy superintendents how many teachers we have how many instructional assistants i'm just saying it's not on page 223. oh okay um 217. i think i wrote the wrong number down sorry okay 217. thank you at the very very back yeah okay um so that just that clarification um i i really want to um say how much i appreciate the the direction that this budget presentation is heading the the ending um work around student outcomes focus the goals the guard rails staying connected to the strategic plan uh is uh in all honesty i think it's the best that you could get to given the amount of guidance and leadership that we've provided as a board to make sure that we're we're getting the information we need to hear how these expenditures planned expenditures
044are aligned with the stated goals of the district and the strategic plan and so [Music] i think it's an excellent step in our progression towards really clear delineation uh that that demonstrates how it is that our our expenditures are supporting us getting towards outcomes for kids um and i won't go into any specific um questions i have one that i neglected to send you in advance that has to do with our enrollment projections but um i'll give that to superintendent jones off offline it's just a notice about our um uh in how our projection enrollment projection has um been off over time the rate at which it's been off or or you know and then of course during this last couple of years is is not at all um able to be projected in any
045kind of reasonable fashion but um there's just some interesting trends there that i wanted to point out but other than that i don't have any additional questions i feel uh that over the past months we've been had the opportunity to ask a lot of really deep and hard questions and i really appreciate the presentation here and i'm interested to hear what other directors what questions other directors have about um the budget so go ahead directory thank you i will um second the comments from vice president hampson on especially the last several pages going item by item and tying it directly to goals and guardrails i find that very very helpful and i hope it will make um you know it in addition to laying it out really clearly for us as a board i i
046really hope that um community members who are interested will look at that and see and start to understand more about the power of the goals and guard rails and the importance of having alignment across the system so i really thank you for that breakdown um i have uh one quick comment and then a question a quick question the comment is about enrollment projections that i've you know hearing people talk about kindergarten declining kindergarten enrollment declining because people are not enrolling in sps and i just i i believe it's not that there are kindergartners out there that aren't enrolling it's that this city is becoming so unaffordable for families that we don't have new young children new young families and new children um coming into this system because people are moving leaving seattle and that's the
047case in a lot of other urban or urban districts too so i just kind of wanted to to say that because i think there's a sense of like oh people are waiting for some magical thing to happen and then they'll come back but i think it's actually you know looking at city data and county data people are not having kids here right now because it's so expensive um and hard to find a place to live my question is very specific about the increase in the special education between uh 20 21 22 adopted and 20 22 23 recommended um my question is if that is due to an anticipated increase in the number of students that will receive services or if there is some other factor that is leading to that increase because i would assume
048if we're losing enrollment that it's generally proportional as to what services or um yeah just so having that go up i'm not complaining about that at all but i'm curious what the you know what the difference can be attributed to i think there's just there's an overall cost increase um our teacher salaries did increase by five percent in the 21-22 school year so that's reflected there the enrollment loss is is not proportional so we're not losing children in special education the other thing that we know is that children who receive special education services are not the children who go to private school or leave our district we have an extraordinarily strong special education program and those children are staying at a higher rate than our general ed students are saying to your previous comment the
049districts around us are not getting our kids they are assuring me that they're in the same place as we are and they do not know where these children are going but they're not going to those districts around us they're not going to kent they're not going to better away they're not going to highlight no one around us and we're all experiencing the same types of issues and we may have it slightly more magnified because we are seattle and the cost of living but overall there was an expected decrease in birth rates and those children are now matriculating and should be in the cohort for kindergarten but those cohorts are just smaller we've had our bubble that's our large classes that are currently going through maybe high school end of middle school beginning of high school
050but the codes that are coming in to replace them are much smaller and that was anticipated thank you and i'll just note too that our percentage of total budget for special education projected is 17.8 which is 4.8 percent higher than the state cap special education expenses just saying where it's thank you i want to echo um vice president hampson's gratitude because um this actually i did read the entire budget book and it was very easy to follow and i did follow up with a lengthy list of questions that were answered in the timely fashion um i and this presentation a lot of the questions that i asked have been incorporated including the esser table um i do have a couple of follow-up questions um on page seven the pupil transportation uh what accounts for the
05121.8 million dollar increase um and the 2223 recommendation um transportation is a really interesting line there because 2020 2021 was when we weren't providing a lot of services so the actual expenses are extremely low then in 2122 we had the benefit of using the federal ester funds so from a program perspective you'll see federal recovery esser up above the second line down when the ester funds paid for the transportation the costs move from the transportation program into the esther program and the anticipation is next year with the bulk of those program costs are coming back into the general fund do you have an overall increase in transportation costs that we anticipate at this point our transportation costs have been growing over time and just the gap between what the state's funding is and what we're
052actually spending continues to grow as that transportation formula continues to have a larger and larger disconnect for seattle and for just across the state that transportation formula funding formula is broken and it has got to be fixed just as a side note i share that sentiment um my second question is um so page 18 on the esser table so um for the virtual program is that the full is that the cost of setting up the virtual program or is that the entire cost of operating the program and what is the plan um beyond 22 to 23 school years when that we no longer have lesser money so it is partially recognizing staff as we start this up it was also recognizing our ingenuity contract costs and some of those some of those specific things as
053we stood up the program when it when esser is gone we will move it to baseline that is the current okay uh director revere smith are you back with us okay uh just as a hit up it looks like we're having some issues with teams i'm not sure if that's on our end or on director of airsmiths and um just keep an eye on it so director smith take it away can you hear me yeah you're choppy but we can hear you okay yeah i don't know what's going on um but i'm in i think so thank you um if you can hear me my first my first question or observation here is that the uh on the last slide here the appendix the district-wide stop fte and the school funding allocations those links don't
054work so um not able to do that just fyi did you hear that can you hear me and we will we will correct that thank you for that information okay thank you and you might be clicking on the links sorry those links thank you for clicking on the links okay that'll again i hear you okay yes um i wanted to see um my my other question then was um and thank you yes thank you also for getting responses to our questions um earlier this week um that we had submitted um i had a follow-up one of those my question um regarding because i i like how again i appreciate like the directors how you've laid out how the budget is aligned to the goals and guardrails and my question i was trying to get a
055sense of what did we not do well we're not not so much what do we not do what did we cut like what do we used to do that we're not doing now to make the budget aligned that way my question was uh what's in investment area that that did not support goals and guardrails that was cut from this budget and you talked about something we didn't do that we were maybe going to do but you didn't tell me like what was cut that we used to do that was my question was more like what are we not going to keep doing to make this more aligned do you have any example for that so i think that when we answered the question or we tried to answer the question was we did have some
056adjustments about some things that we didn't feel were aligned to goals and guardrails that primarily was the bell time alignment but we did get feedback that that needed to stay in so there wasn't a large investment area that we that we amended in this budget that didn't that didn't happen so there there wasn't an investment area the budget that did not support the goals and guardrails that was cut from the proposed budget i think that when we brought those proposals forward those were things that the community was not um wanting to support and and the feedback that we got were to not move those forward so those did not happen okay okay i just yeah i mean i just find it like you know if everything we were doing before still aligns with the goals
057of guard roles that's that's awesome i guess but i kind of find that a little hard to believe in a way um and i know i it probably gets into the minutia of like you know certain classroom projects i don't know i suppose you can get really into the weeds i'm sure but i was just trying to you know get an idea of how are we really strategically doing away with stuff that was not in line with this to make room for investigating things to align with it so i it's pretty big question i guess but anyhow that's what i was trying to make another point i guess i would make director rivera smith is when when konzi talked about how we've met with our divisions what we've done is we've taken the current resources
058that we have in our divisions and we've really refocused them specifically on supporting those goals and guardrails so much of it was not a budget reduction but it well there was a central office cut but the rest of it was really a budget realignment of the work that you're doing has to be supporting goals and guardrails that has to be our one main focus of all of our work gotcha okay no thank you for that you thank you for the explanation there um and you definitely see those links when they're ready so thank you thank you director rivera smith just checking director harris have you joined us yet i don't see her name but i want to make sure okay great any other questions going once going twice great job thank you very much sincerely
059appreciate it okay they definitely deserve an applause so thank you for that um let's see where we are at we have now reached the consent portion of today's agenda may i have a motion for the consent agenda i move approval of the consent agenda thank you approval of the consent agenda has been moved by vice president hampson and seconded by director of aerosmith do directors have any items they would like to remove from the consent agenda i do go ahead director of smith i'd like to remove six seven and eight okay fantastic any other items all right i would move the consent agenda as amended file a second okay approval of the consent agenda has amended has been removed or excuse me has been moved by vice president hampson and seconded by director vera smith
060all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye any opposition abstention all right seeing none thank you this does pass uh we will now turn our attention to items number six we have a motion for item number six i move that the board approved the highly capable program plan as attached to the board action report for submission to the office of superintendent of public instruction for school year 2021-22 to support highly capable services the district's eligibility identification process and development of improved services and that the school board authorized the superintendent to apply for the allocation of funds from the office of superintendent which one is construction we have a different no you're good immediate action is in the best interest of the district you're good sorry about that she was looking at the wrong
061page okay all right thank you uh did i miss anything critical on making that motion it does need to be official okay did you get your second yep i got a second thank you um okay so director smith we'll go to you well actually we'll go to the chair of the committee first director rankin and then we'll go to direct reversement sure um uh let's see i guess i'll just note that uh a reminder that this is um required to be reimbursed by uh the state for highly capable services which is a required service as part of the state's basic education and that it's for consideration not because the committee had any issues with it but because we we moved it forward without discussion seeing as how we had the chance to review it and
062it is an annual item and there were no outstanding questions or concerns so it's for consideration not because it it was unfavorable to the committee but because um uh we didn't we just didn't feel the need to discuss it and wanted to move it forward to the full board great thank you director revere smith thank you no and i think that's one of the big one a good reason why i pulled it um i think that i don't so six seven and eight just to be clear are all interaction items which i personally don't feel should go to consent because they have not come to us first for introduction and especially ones like this where the committee is choosing to not really discuss it it doesn't get a chance to really be discussed with us
063because if we go straight to consent you know no discussion so anyhow i'm i i think that you should establish uh an uh guideline or a rule or whatever we're going to call it that we don't put in we don't put interaction on to consent um and i know i mean that i think we're gonna talk about that more later in exec committee but um but that's why i took this down um i appreciate that from um director franken i don't personally have um more questions right now i believe that the directors might so i'll leave them for that now okay thanks um do any directors have questions at this time good thank you dr petruzza um thank you dr petroza um i have a question um my first question is um [Music] how does
064ospi determine the funding allocation to sps and is this money intended to support central operations of the highly capable program or is it intended to be spent within the schools um so i think the intention is both for operational and instructional purposes in the past though i will state that the pac the previous policy um and the requirements for testing that were outlined in the policy the majority of the funds were spent on identification and so we have repurposed some of that money to focus on identification also on instructional practices there is a plan in place to provide stipends to schools so that they can have somebody to coach and support teachers in neighborhood programming and also our the department staff it also supplements the department staff with the profes program specialists and some of
065the compliance work so that we are aligned with ospi guidelines so it's a mix of both that's helpful okay um i think it's my understanding that um in previous years the money was largely spent for testing for id for identification yep and we've changed how we're doing the id process now so um while uh ospi is giving us the same amount yeah um is it the case that the new process for identification of students is similar in cost and that is why we're able to free up some of the money for the schools we are actually using existing data and actually using our teachers and our our students and our profiles of the of the learner that is part of the identification process so it's a more robust process it's a multi-service prong so we're
066using a variety of assessments including the dibbles the map assessments s back assessments and then there's performance tasks as aligned to that so we are doing different things we're dealing at the school level using a team's approach uh a multidisciplinary approach for looking at students and so that what we were doing in the previous time is actually having kids come on saturdays having to pay extra time um purchasing those tests and then taking them to be screened which was a huge cost as you know with the contractors of work so now we're using our own staffing and our own data that we're currently using as part of the profile of assess of of the identification process i think my understanding is that the amount of money that ospi gives our district is tied to a
067certain percentage of our student environment yeah and how does that percentage compare to our actual identified i will so i don't have that data for you so that's a more specific information we can get that for you but i will say that's true um it's not neces we are probably have identified more students um typically than what's proportionate and the average of the state um however that is why we are really working hard with our general education curriculum and the cni folks so that they can actually the resources for example give an example in the past in addition to this special education and advanced learning were responsible for all of the extracurricular supports and supplements and what we've been doing now is with for example our math adoption we've actually carefully chosen math materials that
068actually have differentiation for students who need extra support and might need some enhanced instructional strategies to support them so the central office curriculum and instruction department has been doing a lot of work to ensure that what we purchase and we support students moving forward can support the needs of multiple learners in the classroom i understand this as an annual item but there was a significant program transit i wanted to understand how that would be reflected and understandable thank you all right fantastic thank you uh dr pedroza and thank you dr excuse me director songwriter it's i want to acknowledge that uh director harris has joined us hello leslie uh we will now move to number seven approval oh we need to vote sorry um miss wilson jones will you please call the roll for item
069number six director song writes vice president hampson aye director harris abstain director rankin aye director rivera smith hi i just so you know i did not hear director sandwich's vote it was not audible on teams i voted i and director vera smith you said i as well correct i did yes i said director sergio all right and president hersey this motion has passed with a vote of six yes and one abstention thank you thank you all right we will now move to item number seven approval of the amendment to community care services uh i move that the school board authorized the superintendent to amend the contract with community care and in the additional amount of two million one hundred and seventy eight thousand dollars for a revised total contract amount of 2 million 2 million
070583 000 for placement of approximately 110 students who require recovery services and programming with any minor additions deletions and modifications deemed necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement this contract immediate action is in the best interest of the district second great um let's go to director rankin first do you have anything you want to share on this um i can share why it's intro and action um there was a question about alignment between this provider and um district policy that we discussed in um in committee and so that's so we didn't have the complete item to to vote on in committee but we did discuss it and um i'll just note too that it is an existing partnership and we had a site visit i believe and resolve to the
071question and or not a site visit sorry because it's a provider not a site but the question was resolved um and that it's the the increase is to reflect the need for recovery services from over the pandemic that we don't have staffing capacity for and so community care services is somebody that sps has contracted with in the past this is just to approve an increase in that contract to serve students and i had a couple questions from some folks who are really eager to start their kids in accessing this um and we're concerned that it hadn't been approved yet and i said don't worry we're talking about it tonight so um that's part of also why it's interim action is that there is a timing contingent with a start date for summer services thank you
072director rankin um we will now go to executive director dr torres if directors have any questions anybody phoning it in questions i do have questions did you want dr torres to talk to speak first no you can go ahead okay um yeah so like thank you thank you again dr rankin for the explanation there um it's good to know why it was interaction um and i i do have a couple questions on this one myself um i was looking at the bar and the bar says in there that the dishes provides oversight and monitoring of all recovery services uh regular consultation and emergency response protocols including isolation and restraint but that is inconsistent with our board policy 3246 that says isolation is prohibited under all circumstances so i wanted to clarify do the service writers
073here use it or do they not to make sure they're in line with our um a policy so from my understanding no they do not and additionally in our contract with them under section 8.7 it specifically notes that they are to follow all of our procedures and policies up to and including our isolation and restraint policy okay yeah because i did see that later it did say they follow our policies and procedures but then that was in there so it was kind of contradictory but that's good to clarify that they are not using isolation um there was a question from community about it and so we made we wanted to make sure that it was captured in the bar is all say again sorry that there was a question from community about that so we
074wanted to make sure that it was captured in the bar that was the only reason it was noted in there at all honestly okay but we could probably take out isolation then because the bars makes it sound like they do use isolation um anyways neither here nor there at this point but that's just maybe next time this comes because it sounds like it's going to probably come again in a year maybe or whenever we renew it so um anyway um also i was wondering what are the services nothing in this bar or the attachment really said what the services are so i mean just as services and programming recovery services and programming what is that what is that so community care works with some of our students who are most profoundly impacted by their disabilities
075and so they will do pretty much all the services that we need for students and similar to what director rankin was saying we in many ways don't have the capacity to serve all the students that are requiring the recovery services due to the pandemic so specifically for this contract it's 110 students that we're looking at providing the services for but it would be everything aligned to what the student's iep was so essentially when we developed the recovery services plan what happens is there's a data dive based on what those students goals were and then there's a plan that's created aligned to what those goals are so to say specifically what they're going to do it depends it's individualized depend on dependent on the student but it could be something up to including services from a
076behavior tech to do some behavior up mod work some academic goals all those sort of things but it is individualized in determination with families and iep teams as to what those services are going to look like yeah and i assumed as much i just was wondering like again what are some examples of what that means for the students yeah and you give a couple there so is there anything else to add on to that what's that that's a question could you ask it again just slow down just a little bit all right um my question he gave a couple examples i was looking for examples because i understand they are very very specific to the student i was just looking at what what some examples were and i think he gave a couple in there
077but was there something more you could say about the examples of what it is it would be it would be aligned to the student goals so let's say it's an academic goal for reading or or the like those are the services they would provide let's say that a student needs some assistance with behavior modification would need the assistance of a behavior tech that is a service that they'd be able to provide as well okay and um i also saw that this is supposed to be one if not the only agency around that could provide these services who else is there i mean it was kind of left to open like one of the few or maybe only is it the only or is there more places like so we're not doing an rfp for this
078we're kind of just adding on to the existing contract is it based purely on the prior relationship or is there really just nobody else it's we're currently contracting with most every provider that's going to be able to do the recovery services just based on the number of students that are requiring recovery services so we are also contracting with other providers that are going to do similar things specifically with community care they do some more intense services so that's why certain groups of kids have been are going to be getting their services from community care specifically no further questions thank you so much all right we're next going to go to director sergio and director harris is your hand up for this item it is indeed thank you okay hi good evening i apologize if this
079is a a repeat question but i didn't quite catch what uh director rivera smith's question was um and this is related to the isolation and constraint um and it's pretty much a yes no question have you actually had a direct conversation with this entity community care services about the inappropriateness of that type of engagement with children and have you made it clear that those tactics are not to be used in a conversation thank you for the question me personally if not the team has because just given when they were going into the contracting process they were sure to make sure that they highlighted that just given concerns that we've heard from community in general and work with the non-public agencies and what are the consequences if they choose to violate that so we would have
080to follow what our procedures are they are they're bound by that and we would end up having to cancel our contract with them okay i just wanted that clear for the public director harris i'm gonna lower my hand because i was asking legal counsel for a point of clarification so i withdraw my question thank you okay uh miss wilson jones seeing that there are no other questions will you please call the role on this item vice president hampson aye director harris aye director rankin aye director rivera smith aye director sarju aye director song moretz aye president hersey aye this motion is passed unanimously thank you ms wilson jones and thank you executive director dr torres okay we will now be moving on to item number eight uh may i have a motion for this item
081i move that the school board authorized the superintendent to enter into a project services agreement with the city of seattle to accept funding of up to five hundred and one thousand seven hundred and seventy five dollars to provide breakfast lunch and afternoon snacks for the city of seattle's summer food service program with any minor additions deletions and modifications seem necessary by the superintendent and to take any necessary actions to implement the contract immediate action is in the best interest of the district second okay we have um assistant superintendent podesta at the podium director rare smith you had questions on this item all right thank you um i did and this did go through my committee it was through operations um and so i believe and maybe assistant superintendent can professional memory this is interaction because
082of a timely miss factor is that correct um this is a contract where the city engages the district to be the provider of meals for the city summer meals program and there's a timing challenge getting that contract um from the city at the start of summer gotcha todd what i wanted to give the um the board opportunities to weigh in have any questions they might have um i know that's just one question i i had still remaining was regarding the um i see that the menus will be agreed upon with the city are there going to be uh vegan gluten-free options for students who have other dietary restrictions yes okay um and then it says that they'll be they'll come in what is it called economical packaging so like we'll also be consistent with our
083use um of combustibles or will that just be like the cheapest possible you can find um they will be as consistent as can be a lot of these are grab-and-go meals so the packaging is a bit different gotcha okay and again i wanted to see if any other directors have questions too i'm done thank you any other directors of questions on this item all right seeing none thank you mr podesta miss wilson jones will you please call the roll on this item director harris thank you glass i thank you director rankin aye director rivera smith aye director sarju aye director song moritz hey vice president hampson aye president hersey aye this motion is passed unanimously thank you very much um okay we have now reached the public testimony portion of today's agenda but we have
084not yet reached six o'clock uh we could do that i'm trying to see what i want to do give me a second to make a decision we could do yeah say again the committee report oh the audit committee okay let's go ahead and move on to committee reports and then we will move into introduction items how does that sound okay fantastic so we will first go to vice president hampson according to board procedure 6550bp internal audit requires an announcement of completed internal audits and as the audit and finance chair i'm announcing that at the june 7th quarterly audit and finance committee meeting the office of internal audit presented the culinary services advisory engagement report all findings and recommendations are discussed at public audit and finance committee meetings and the completed report is posted for public
085viewing on the agenda and is available on the internal audit website thank you um do we have to have committees met since the last time we had i don't i don't think so so doing feels unnecessary by all means um this is related to an item that's up for introduction tonight but i just wanted folks to know that uh regarding the approval of amendment to board policy zero zero one zero instructional philosophy and special education and 504 policy we have been trying to figure out timing with a draft of that and getting some community engagement and since it's really uh based on engagement that has taken place um i'm working with seattle council ptsa and the special education ptsa to host two kind of quick sort of preview open house engagements um which uh i
086will be probably next week one during the day and one in the evening it's no pressure it's just sort of an opportunity before everybody goes off for the summer to if if folks are have questions or are wanting to to dig into it a little bit more before fall i will let you all know when those are happening so that um no more than two other directors can can join for those but just as an opportunity to just talk about it more what it means um and i've gotten some really really positive feedback already from some one-on-one engagement and engagement with the seattle the special education ptsa board um so that has come through committee we've been talking about it a lot it is for intro tonight but uh um we'll get those posted on
087the uh school board website as soon as possible for folks who may be able to join us great thank you director rankin okay let's go ahead and move into introduction items um give everybody a second to adjust we've got about 25 minutes for this before we move to public comment so just an fyi for those who might be listening and we will begin with introduction item number one approval of the student outcomes focused governance progress monitoring calendar this came through exec on june 8th for approval good evening directors i am julia warth the director of board relations and strategic initiatives before you this evening for introduction is the approval of the student outcomes focused governance progress monitoring calendar the adoption of this progress monitoring calendar is required under the student outcomes focused governance model the
088calendar itself provides the dates or rather provides the schedule on which each goal and guardrail will be monitored by the board and data for each of the interim metrics will be discussed the calendar attached to the board action report does go through the end of the current strategic plan so it includes dates for the upcoming 22-23 school year the 23-24 school year and then a final data review in the fall of 2024 at the closeout of our strategic plan you will see that there are two types of data presentations um in the calendar itself there is a summative review as well as the progress monitoring sessions the summative review will be kind of a high level level setting and review of the summative data that is available for the board adopted goals so in the
089fall of 2022 this will be a review of the smarter balanced assessment data as well as graduation plus course completion rates from the end of this current school year then beginning in december the board will engage in pro formal progress monitoring sessions and that will be on the interim metrics so beginning with looking at the measurements of academic progress data the calendar was developed based on the timing of data availability so at full implementation the board will conduct progress monitoring sessions um three times a year on each of the goals and then once a year on the guard rails this will allow the data to be reviewed as close as possible to when it is available given the structure of our interim measures we're not able to monitor four times a year unless you are
090looking at data really far out so in consultation with mr a.j crabill from the council of great city schools it was recommended that we stick with monitoring the goals three times a year um i also wanted to note that the summative data review in the fall and then the progress monitoring beginning in december allows time for the board to continue to adjust your board meeting structures um to make space for the full progress monitoring and so that's why the 22-23 school year looks slightly different than full implementation in 2324. also wanted to note that tomorrow evening you all will be discussing potential revisions to the board adopted goals and guardrails depending on what language changes are discussed and decided on in that meeting it may impact the intra metrics that staff would propose if there
091are needed adjustments to the intrametrics that may impact data availability so the calendar attached this bar may be amended depending on that discussion tomorrow um prior to approval on july 6. and with that i would be happy to take any questions okay thank you miss worth any questions from directors go ahead what go ahead director rankin thanks um uh yeah i just had a question about tomorrow's meeting related to this so assuming that there may be some tweaks whether or not and this is a technical question i guess whether or not it impacts the interim measures if there are any language changes is it anticipated that we would have this be an individual action item again just to go over that or is that not decided or just be updated okay all thanks thank you
092director songwriters thank you i'm curious if uh mr crabble had any feedback on how we could align the budget process calendar to the progress monitoring calendar so that our departments are using this feedback to give us recommendations how they would like to reallocate resources um that's an excellent question i have not had a specific discussion uh with him about how we would align the the progress monitoring and and the data availability with the um budget uh but staff can certainly follow up on that okay fantastic thank you director songberets any other questions from directors all right sing none thank you mr morris thank you we will now move on to introduction item number two approval of the international union of operating engineers iuo local 302 unit a salary schedules and article 15 effective february 1st
0932022 please take it away good evening i'm lance king director of labor relations i know there's a really full agenda and the bar packet you received has all the details so i promise i'll be very brief i'm here to recommend the board approved the new salary schedule for custodians and changes to article 15 of the local 302 a collective bargaining agreement the proposed changes will help solve the problem the district has had for some time now with the recruitment and retention of custodians and i know everybody knows through the pandemic how what an important job that was by increasing custodian wages significantly and by changing some of the custodial license requirements uh that'll help operations fill positions i'd also like to point out that i had a lot of help with this fred's group in
094operations was great and joanne's group in the budget was great with this i'm pretty good with math but what we did with salary schedules which are very the concerning salary schedules i don't know if you've ever looked at them are very complicated we've simplified those and uh they were jolin's group really gave me a lot of help with this i also want to thank the representatives for local 302 josh solorio and shelly felipe for their professionalism and working with the district to mutually agree on this new new provisions i i know they're coming they wanted to speak with the board but they're they they're in uh they're coming at six yeah is there any quick questions uh i mean we're not voting so if we want to have some we will make sure that we
095get back to give them an opportunity to uh share if they have some things that they want to share the board um do individuals have any questions on this particular item sorry i i do have a question on the fiscal impact it says that for the current year it is um the increase would be coming from a combination of esther and general fund and then the following year it would be general funds so do we anticipate that going forward it's just part of the general fund and is sustainable great great thank you hello looks like we have our reps from 302 so okay thank you yep hello members of the school board first i just want to thank you guys for giving us the opportunity to speak here today i'm one of the reps with
096local 302 also have a couple of our other reps here and our district rep yeah we just wanted to come and speak on the custodial wage agreement that we made with the district super grateful right that you know i know we've come here before we've spoken about it president hersey we've met with you personally over this happy to say that we reached a deal um lance king was very instrumental in this the reps at local 302 super grateful that our custodians are going to get this wage increase um as i've shared before some of our custodians range anywhere from six percent to 28 below market in their respective positions this agreement in no way fixes that but we think it's a very good start right so we're super excited about this these folks are the
097definition of essential workers they've kept the school district running during one of the worst pandemics we've ever seen while most of us got to stay home and work uh from the comfort of our own homes these people put their lives and the lives of their family in significant danger i really respect these guys they do a good job school district quite frankly wouldn't be able to function without those members doing their job well this is a great start there's still much more work to do we have three other bargain units that are also seeing the same discrepancies in their market rate so looking forward to finishing up that work with the district and working with you guys collaboratively as we always do it's always our goal we appreciate the relationships we've built here and yeah
098we're just looking forward to continuing this movement so thank you guys very much really appreciate it thank you as well okay we will now move on to uh item number three renewal let's see what time it is time check renewal of washington schools risk management pool coverage for fiscal year can i confirm real fast if you guys can hear me yeah go for it i got it i questioned the last one but you didn't hear me so it's okay it wasn't a big deal question i just want to make sure you guys can hear me at all yep we can hear you and if you have an issue you can always message ellie let us know and then we will make sure because we do not want to move ahead without making sure that every
099director has the opportunity to ask questions okay so miss bergen good evening directors joe lindbergh assistant superintendent for business and finance this board action report is for the renewal of the district's property and liability insurance with the washington school's risk management pool for the third year in a row they are requiring a substantial increase in the premium for this coverage we are looking at alternatives including direct pers purchase of insurance or joining the only other pool that serves districts in our state however under the membership agreement that was signed back in 2002 we are required to provide the pool with a three-year notice of our intent to withdraw from the pool we have done this already so that the change that we could make would be at september 1 2023 at the earliest we will
100present the options and have a recommendation for the board and that's estimated to be available in january of so for the 2223 coverage period we're contractually bound to continue with the washington risk management pool so the renewal coverage proposal is what's before you in the current board action report and i'm happy to take any questions thank you miss bergie any questions on item number three okay i see director harris and i see director rankin so director harris go ahead um assistant superintendent bergie can you talk a little bit about where those uh increases are coming from is it a question of claims made is it a question of inflation is it a question of more complicated litigation uh more expensive outside counsel can you can you give us a nutshell view please sure uh it's
101i think it's a combination of all of those so all the members of the pool are seeing large increases and of course our share is the largest we're the largest school district by far in this state so it is question of settled cases specifically around inappropriate employee behavior there are some cases like that that they have settled that we have insurance for but it also is resulting remember last year we had to move to a higher self-insurance retention amount and that's increasing from 250 to 500 000 and they had told us that they had a technical calculation correction that's what's driving part of their increase in the coverage rates and then just overall inflationary increases in insurance coverage costs and if we leveled uh proportionately claims made and lined them up side by side would
102seattle public schools have a higher percentage per capita than the other districts that's not my understanding but i'd have to get back to you with specifics appreciate that thank you director rankin actually fine i found the answer to my question that i had forgotten thanks nice okay uh thank you miss berg we will now be moving on to number four excuse me item number four resolution 2021-22 or excuse me slash 22-23 fixing and adopting the 2022-23 budget and miss berkey is already at the podium um take it away thank you i'm happy to present the board action report for the 2223 recommended budget so we went through a lot of the information at the work session just a little bit earlier this evening but i'll note a couple highlights the recommended budget before you has
103four distinct funds our general fund the capital fund the associated student body fund and the debt service fund the combined expenditures across all of these funds is planned at 1.6 billion dollars included in the board action report is an estimated four-year outlook required by the state for each fund based on our current programs and legislative funding formulas all the 22 although the 2223 budget we are bringing to you is a balanced budget we continue to be aware of our structural deficit and future challenges the recommended budget book is currently online on the district's website and in the budget book you will find expanded details on how our activities align with the district's goals and guard rails i want to express my gratitude for my staff who worked so incredibly hard to put the book together
104and the collaboration that i had across divisions in the district that concludes my remarks i'm happy to take questions thank you any questions from directors on this item okay director smith hi thank you um i had a question about the asb portion of the budget there who oversees that because as i understood it like that's overseen by the students but is there like a certain because it's many schools is there like one student liaison with us is this something that our student board members might have some sort of role in or how does the asb portion of that work there's an elected asb student body those students work with the fiscal person at each of the secondary schools to format the budget balance their budget generally have some oversight over the technicalities of what they're
105submitting and then those all roll up to the central office where we have two positions and all they do is asb fiscal work and accounting and and provide guidelines and information to schools okay so nothing really happens at the district level with these budgets they it's all out of the schools it is all out of the schools and do we i mean i'm trying to ask do we have any requirements of them in that respect or they just kind of get to have however they decide to do it there there are a lot of rules and regulations surrounding how asb money must be spent and the proper internal controls there's a whole manual that we have on our website about asb internal control procedures for fundraising and activities and clubs and sports and things like
106that they are to follow those rules along with the guidance of their coach their asb advisor there's a there's a club advisor so there's someone there's an adult in the school helping each population of students their class advisor things like that so they're working in concert together i'll look up that manual thank you very much now the questions thank you miss burgundy and thank you director over smith uh we will now let's see still got time um we will now move on to item number five approval of the 2022-23 student rights and responsibilities take it away whenever you are ready dr patrick hello everybody um so i'm here to have this motion in front of you to approve the 20 22 23 student rights and responsibilities which contains rules and regulations for student conduct the
107student rights and responsibilities is annually brought before the board for approval based upon the washington administrative codes and policy three two zero zero zero two zeros and this year's proposed document contains changes that aligns to seattle public schools behavioral codes with state behavioral codes from ospi and um and it demonstrates our continued um commitment for racial equity authentic family and student engagement and welcoming environment for all students especially black boys and teens some of the revisions for the 21 21-22 school year included aligning district codes to state behavior codes to provide transparency in how district maps and reports disciplinary data to the state um and we've also aligned identified and eliminated behavior codes no longer being used based on district data the number of possible behavior violations was reduced from 53 to 47. it makes
108minor grammatical and formatting changes with hyperlinks updated it updates the language around school culture and climate to align with the 2019-24 strategic plan seattle excellence and then alliance implementation tools including tiered fidelity inventory which serves as a guiding document to support school teams in establishing safe restorative supportive and welcoming environments it also guides secondary school staff to welcome back and help re-engage students who are returning from long-term suspensions and expulsions or expulsions staff from student schools of original work with staff from interagency academy and behavioral health and discipline departments to assess student needs and identify culturally appropriate community-based services to meet those identified needs the resource also guides elementary school staff to consider alternative options to short-term suspensions and provides guidance on threat assessment case management collaborations between students parents guardian school staff and central
109office staff the people that have been listed in support of the engagement work are also listed within the document plans for moving forward because as you know this is a document that counts annually but we always come with updates and revisions to keep improving we plan to pilot advisory lessons for on the ss and our and basic rules continuing to partner with community in order to share the students rights and responsibilities with families a lighting data review to goals and guardrails of student outcomes focused governance coaching school leaders on with for student and staff supports communicating with the board regarding discipline data and policy and ensuring that a student rights and responsibilities meet state mandated requirements and that's all i have thank you dr petrova do directors have any questions on this particular item director
110handsome director rankin thank you and this this has come through the sscni committee as a special attention item and because it has come through iteratively over the past year we decided as a committee that we didn't need to officially vote it vote it through because we had discussed it enough uh one thing i will note that i imagine director handsome i have questions about too or is it going to bring up is that there's so much packed into this that i understand there are a lot of the legal requirements that have to be there but in terms of um who it's for it's not very student accessible i know this is something we've discussed about in discussed in committee that we've seen really great collaboration between staff and the board on updating language and sort
111of priorities based on policy changes and things but it still is a very cumbersome document and so i don't know how we can meet the legal requirements and make it something that's more useful for students but that's something that i know we've discussed and that is important um yeah i was uh my questions about this are how do we create the conditions as a board and our whatever it is that we need to approve even if it's just simply the providing the superintendent the administrative uh responsibility for um working on and approving the the students rights and responsibilities because i wonder if part of the reason why this is a kitchen sink of what of administrative guidelines for students rights and responsibilities it's not a communication to students for their rights and responsibilities it's a
112communication to administrators and even then it's mostly about expulsion whether in school or out of school and you know i can see where there's some additional work that's gone in and a lot of collaboration and i don't think that this document is yet honoring that my first thought when i read it this year and this is you know dr pedrosa and um uh what's your name again dr jones um long coveted i'm still coming out of it um this is actually very near and dear to my heart and and you know i i don't know what your vision is for it dr jones but i i know that we've had conversations there i've heard you both express that you do want this to be a document where students can have it use it to navigate
113when something comes up and it doesn't feel that way at all right now and um and so my question is is this what you want to is this really what you want to put forward to student and and i have not yet met a student advocate um throughout the entire school district who actually knows about this and has read it and i don't know why we would want them to read it because it needs to be translated first into english i mean i know it's in english but it's not actually accessible in any way shape or form um i'm pretty sure i fell asleep reading it and this is no criticism to the fact that that there is this legal requirement that we have to meet but can we make it a document that actually
114is meaningful to students regarding their rights and responsibilities isn't it that important um and then i also just as one specific note notice that the sexual assault um because at the end thank you for providing the red line version at the end the um sexual assault i only saw one sort of how-to you know if you experience sexual assault but that didn't wasn't updated based on our new policy updates and i mean that's okay because i know we're gonna have to do another set of updates probably next year but my question was just did it need some updates and then why are we only talking about sexual harassment and assault i didn't see any and i know there's work that you all have done um on trying to create these pathways for for students so
115again i i'm it's i don't want to approve this because it feels like it's not what the title is which is student rights and responsibilities so the only thing i was going to say when you was speaking about all of that um commentary about the student focused and then the student rights and responsibility i agree on some level and so my wonder is how can we get to yes and yeah yeah versus either or so there's there has to be i believe some when we can work with legal on some of those pieces but some compliance pieces and some legality pieces i do believe and actually guidance for school leaders in schools on students rights and responsibilities in school so that has to be there right and it has to be really clear but then
116i do wonder the yes and piece is maybe we need something different for students that's a little and that's going to take more work i have christine matfield here who's now taking over that piece of work for uh aaron monik who's left but i just wonder how we can get to yes and in creating a student you know version that actually makes sense to them so when they're navigate believe me as the principal seattle world school right and having students have issues that come up and translating and translating it all and making sure that we navigate it so i wonder how we can get to yes and with saying this is one step but um maybe our project is actually developing that student-centered guidance and using students and maybe the student advisory board as as
117advisory for that just there's some work that has to be done around it though and it is so much an administrative document that can we actually just delegate this to the superintendent annually so that you're not stuck on this board time frame of having to get this approved in june and then you don't really get to do the real work that you need to for students you're on this sort of bad cycle that's my query director hanson i'm i'm in agreement with you we definitely want to make sure that this is accessible we want to make sure that this is student-friendly um and getting advice actually from the student advisory board they talked about the pathway to clarity around issues like this and so if we can make sure that we are able to recognize
118issues and then subsequently reconcile them through this document then we've achieved our goal so i'm in agreement with dr pedro so i think we can uh have a both hand document that's that's really clear but also is comprehensive and i also just want to know that in addition to the student advisory board we got three board members that are about to join us in a very short amount of time who i know would likely be chomping at the bit to give input on a document like that so just a pin in that any other questions on this item before we move into public testimony okay see you none thank you dr pedro all right we will be taking public okay sorry we have now reached the public testimony portion of the agenda we will be
119taking 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 be respectful of these rules i will summarize some of the 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 unmute their phones or step forward to the podium and only one person should speak at a time speakers from the list may cede their time to another person when the listed speaker's name is called the total amount of time of allowed or excuse me the total amount of time allowed will not exceed two
120minutes for the combined number of speakers time will not be restarted after the new speaker begins and the new speaker will not be called again later if they are on the testimony list or waiting list those who do not wish to have the 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 topics that 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 ms wilson jones will read off the testimony speakers for those who have joined by phone today when i call your name please press star six to unmute and listen for a beep that will sound when your
121testimony period is over the first speaker on today's testimony list is dana louis dina louie good evening my name is dana louis and i'm currently a junior at cleveland stem high school i'm the new asb president i'm a student leader who cares about my school and my community the cleveland community is heavily involved in what we want our school to look like in voicing our needs my freshman year i felt positive energy around me i was confident in my administrators and supported by cleveland staff it was difficult being remote due to covid during the end of the year in the majority of sophomore year i felt disconnected from my school community this year my junior year i was my class as asb president it was my goal to help create school events to restore the
122cleveland i knew freshman year we have experienced many hardships that have had a huge impact on us as a community for over half of the school year we didn't have our principal miss brown here to lead us during one of the most difficult school years it was unsettling to find out through an email that miss brown will not be able to return to be our principal next year on may 20th us students organized a walkout and rally in front of this building students had a space to express their emotions and concerns regarding the change in principles it is hard to cope and understand when we don't have full details and transparency of what is happening with miss brown and we're unsure who our next principal will be i'm not able to feel hopeful for my
123senior year next year when our school's leadership is uncertain and many staff members are leaving these last few days of school have felt confusing not knowing what level of support will be in place next year we need a principal who will bring us back together and we need to restore what has been taken away from us cleveland students families and staff request that superintendent jones joins us in a restorative circle so that we may communicate directly with you regarding our concerns and the harm that our school's community is experiencing currently it is important for us to hear from you directly i hope i hope this message in our request is received well thank you for your time next the next speaker is chris jackins my name is chris jackins box 84063 seattle 98124 on three
124food contracts please provide fresh food products without preservatives on the disposal and recycling contract this item was posted without naming the contractor or citing the contract amount on the solar schedules agreement with the operating engineers 302 union this item was posted for board action on july 7th but the next board meeting is listed for july 6th on not demolishing rainier beach high school the board should take action to retain some history at the school on the mont lake racial imbalance resolution two points number one capacity at the school would more than double 251-530 families can choose to attend a school other than their attendance area school and state law requires certifying that the project will not create or aggravate racial imbalance within the district not just at one school number two the analysis should have
125included effects from increased capacity and effects on nearby schools on the 2022-23 budget five points number one the previous board discussion indicated that families on as many as 50 bus routes would remain unserved next year number two the board should not accept this outcome number three has the board examined using more of the capital fund to cover eligible general fund costs before has the board looked at using interest earnings from the capital fund number five has the board looked at interfund borrowing compliments to the board and staff and all the speakers tonight thank you very much okay about that um the next speaker is cheryl lynn crowther sherilyn crother hello the seattle special education ptsa is thrilled to see our district recognize the need for more inclusive classroom and school experiences in 2020 2021 our
126ptsa focused our advocacy work in three areas one of which was working to increase inclusionary practices throughout the district during disability history and awareness month last october some of you attended our community conversation about inclusion some of you have also attended programs about inclusion we have presented with speakers from the office of superintendent of public instruction the office of the education ombuds the herring center at university of washington the arc of king county seattle university center for change and transition services and more throughout all these conversations and programs we've heard and learned two things one it's critical to include and center student voice and student needs in making the kind of system change called for in moving to inclusive classrooms members of our board met last week with directors rankin and riviera smith we followed
127up our conversation with proposed language to add to the policy amendments that would make it policy to include student voices second is the need for a shared understanding of the benefits of inclusion for all students this shared understanding creating a why to take on this work would involve everyone in the process administrators teachers students and families respectfully we hope that you will create an anti-ableism policy for the district an anti-ableism policy that sees the connection between anti-ableism and anti-racism work a policy that makes clear the community values behind the push to adopt inclusive educational strategies like universal design for learning and anti-ableism policy to ensure the most marginalized students in the system are fully supported our ptsa hopes to continue collaborating with staff and the school board as this inclusion work continues the next speaker
128is alex zimmerman lady why you move out i'm not your husband and we're not in bedroom each time after that comes this woman move out we elect her for business no more pleasure zika my dory damn nazi fascist map and bandita psychopath i want to speak about something what is i have number 5207 and i don't know what does this mean because seattle is the number one for sweet city in america and i live in the city for 35 years is my personal opinion not because i prosecute me three times and i have 12 trespasses for 1200 a day it's a pure psychopath with nazi gustavo principle is a problem what is we have children mentality and i remember myself my soviet union friends terrorize me from second grade to end of the school you
129know what this mean only because i have different opinions i try understand guys what is you doing with us children is a nightmare you more dangerous a nazi earth communist because it's america everybody have right of different opinions new cultures and cultures and cultures so we have right now see you at the number one pursuit almost hundred percentage what only for democrat is no analogy in this planet this is a problem what has i come for this i come to here because i want to speak to 55 000 baby this is a parents stand up stop and freaking acting like a idiot it's america everybody have different opinion seattle not boston will be a fascist city seven year percentage educate people with college degree bring fascism it's no analogy in this planet so i spoke
130right now children before eighteen supposed to be treat very gentle it's not with political or nazi gestapo principle stand up america stand up seattle the next speaker is claude lodd i'll wait for the rest of the border return before i begin really reasonable in what i yeah there's just a level of tolerance for certain things that we will uh especially set in a space like this that we will not tolerate so we need to have a conversation around comments that get made um especially when we're referencing things like bedrooms and whatnot that's highly inappropriate so i don't know if we have a representative from legal counsel here this evening or one can be contacted but i would really appreciate if we could follow up on that is there anyone else returning yes there is uh
131one board director who is still outstanding who will be returning in just a moment all right hello my name is claude laude i use helium pronouns i'm a teacher at cleveland high school for one more day public schools are exhausting places to be so i recently resigned from teaching i'm feeling pessimistic in the direction public schooling is headed after these notably challenging two and a half years of pandemic schooling in which we have been grossly under supported and underfunded and beyond covid the compounded trauma felt with every school shooting occurring nationally and every false alarm causing worry locally is a reminder of how little has changed and how woefully ill-equipped we are in responding to trauma public schooling institutions are far more concerned with meeting compliance than they are with the collective well-being of our
132school communities the interests of our community has not been centered in decision making where our school leader katherine brown sends students staff and families by communicating to families that contract tracing basically wasn't happening anymore the district called it insubordination transparency is paramount to building trust with the community we need leaders like catherine brown who uphold these values the burnout right now is tremendous ms brown provides a reliable foundation of building level stability amidst rampant systemic instability her 18 years of working at cleveland positions her as a holder of deep knowledge that can only be attained after engaging with the community over a long period of time but this school year closes we have around 30 staff members leaving cleveland and many have credited the firing of ms brown as a major reason why trust has
133been broken and the pillars of our community are effectively being displaced dr jones start rebuilding trust by engaging in a restorative circle that's been proposed by cleveland students and i know all the district bureaucrats don't want to call it firing because ms brown's situation isn't technically firing but we all see through the bureaucratic jargon miss brown's firing reflects the values of the carceral state that prioritizes punishment over safety i have little faith that these conditions will improve given the unjust treatment of one of the most well-respected and qualified administrators this district has ever seen root statements brown the next speaker is claire sabetsky claire savetsky good evening my name is claire sabetsky and i'm a teacher at cleveland high school i'm here today to add my voice to those of my fellow staff members students
134and families continuing to express frustration with the way the principal situation at cleveland high school has been handled as people who have worked alongside catherine brown we know her to be a remarkably deliberate and intentional leader she is not prone to rash decision-making or hot-headedness katherine is a principal who is unfailing in her dedication to cleveland students not afraid to do what is right even when it is hard what we know makes it very difficult to understand why the superintendent has removed her as the leader of our school removing catherine brown as principal of chs has left us all wondering is this a political move are we as a staff being punished for standing in solidarity with student organizers this year does the superintendent want to fundamentally change the culture of our school and stifle
135teacher and student activism was the goal in the original appointment of marty campbell to get the cleveland community to fall in line if so it is important for superintendent jones and the board to understand that at cleveland our differences are a point of pride we will continue to uplift the work of student activists and press for structural changes that make our school the place our students deserve the cleveland community deserves a proper explanation about the removal of principal brown staff and students have both requested repeatedly that superintendent jones speak to us he has ignored these requests faith and district leadership continues to erode superintendent jones it seems clear that you intend to run out the clock on this school year before signing an interim principal for next year or responding to our request for a
136meeting perhaps you think we won't be able to organize as effectively over the summer but we will continue to be vigilant about decisions regarding school leadership i'll end with two requests superintendent jones find the courage to engage in a restorative conversation with the cleveland community and reinstate principal brown the next speaker is paige wilson good evening i'm speaking here today to inform dr jones and the board of how the decisions made around the demotion of catherine brown have impacted myself and the cleveland high school community first i'd like to share a little bit about myself as a committed educator at sps this year marks my 13th year in education nine of those years were spent at barbara moore's south lake high school and the last four at cleveland high school due to the treatment of
137catherine brown i am leaving the district my resignation may be of no consequence to you but it is of great consequence to the cleveland community for the past 10 years i have volunteered most of my saturdays to tutor south lake and cleveland students at public libraries hundreds of students have benefited from my saturday math tutorials i did this out of my deep commitment to the students a former student was incarcerated in clown bay penitentiary and their mother was unable to drive i drove the mother and younger siblings to clallum from seattle four hours each way so they could see their loved one i visited my students in juvenile hall i provided emotional and legal support at their court hearings and all of this was done on my own time and at my own expense some
138years back i completed my admin credentials and had aspirations of someday becoming a leader like barbara moore dr keisha scarlett and catherine brown i had the opportunity to apply at south lake but the day of my interview dr laura davis brown informed me that someone was being placed in the position this event along with what has happened to catherine brown has led me to ask who makes the ultimate decision for administrative replacement and why have an interview process if sps does not follow through on the interview team's decision i have two requests for your team my first is to stop appointing administrators to roles for community voice is not heard i have the utmost respect for dr powell at south lake high school but i would have appreciated the chance to interview let schools and
139communities choose who their leaders are through a transparent process my second request is for sps to strongly consider the potential impact of removing a building leader who is rooted in the school community please reconsider the process in which sps selects its school administrators thank you the next speaker is shay gary thanks thank you in a recent all-staff meeting led by dr laura davis brown and rainey hartford swan we learned that while the superintendent has the power to assign or reassign which school an administrator serves at it's the school board that has the power to demote or not demote an administrator our staff were also told that there was only one eligible candidate who applied for the position of principal at cleveland during the recent job posting with such a low turnout for the position i'm
140surprised the school board can afford to demote such a great school leader with a proven track record for cultivating student success policy number reporting improper governmental action and protecting whistleblowers against retaliation it is the policy of the seattle school board to encourage the reporting by its employees of improper governmental action taken by district officers or employees and to protect employees who have reported improper governmental actions in accordance with this policy from retaliation it looks like principal catherine brown is being removed and demoted as retaliation for the act of whistleblowing notifying families about misinformation they were receiving from the school district pertaining to contact tracing some might say she should have waited a few more days instead of sending that email to our families i'll refrain from telling you how every day matters when lies are
141at stake all this happening against the backdrop of students and staff requesting to go remote out of concerns of their safety similar to how school board meetings and many other positions here at the stanford center were remote during the pandemic you all still have a chance to get on the right side of this please reinstate catherine brown and remind our families why they should trust seattle public schools the next speaker is asara sorry sarah jimenez guerra i'd like to see my time to enrico aberdesco hello i'm enrique vadesco i'm a special education teacher at cleveland high school i think in this past two years i'm a new educator i started in the midst of the pandemic firstly online and then coming back into this year through a really difficult time and i think in this
142learning from students and our leadership one thing that came out is the dedication and care from our community coming together that took years to build and i'm thinking now as a new educator and thinking of catherine brown spending 18 years in in one in a place and dedicating time and to be easily removed and moved away from a community that is needing leadership needing community in a time where that's really kept us through and really holding people together and we're seeing the impact of taking our our key leaders our key community folks in our at cleveland high school and the impact of many teachers leaving who have stated that they're leaving because of this the harm that it causes the hurt that causes the pain the mistrust everything that's broken um and so with that
143i want to highlight and honor the ask of having a restorative circle um being highlighted by students i want to affirm that ask with dr jones and i also uh want to inform reinstating katherine we we need to have this community stay strong and to keep moving when we're losing so many amazing educators who our students love our families care for and we need that leadership we need to know that we can stay together and so i'm gonna leave with that and honor those two asks and to push those forward thank you then the next speaker is timoni keegan good evening dr jones president hersey vice president hampson directors harris rankin sargo smith song ritz and rivera smith my name is tiffany keegan i was and still am incredibly proud to teach black studies at
144cleveland stem an opportunity extended to me specifically by catherine brown i'm an unapologetically mixed race black and white queer abolitionist educator and seattle native and as the late great bell hook shared with us in her book teaching to transgress for black folks teaching educating is fundamentally political because it is rooted in anti-racist struggle so i'm no stranger to standing up for what i believe is just and right i am absolutely floored about a phenomenal and long time leader being stripped away from a community they have spent countless hours of label labor and resources cultivating however what seems most pertinent to me in this moment is our communities yet to be responded to request to meet with you dr jones and anyone else who is willing to honestly address what's happening and genuinely partner with the
145cleveland community to repair harm preferably in a way that isn't shielded by bureaucracy so i'm here today to share with you a letter from the cleveland community dear superintendent jones by now you are well aware of the impact that removing principal catherine brown has had on cleveland stem students families and staff what you may not be aware of is we are still reeling as a community and we continue to use profound amounts of emotional and intellectual labor as we navigate the feelings and impacts of harm done to our community harm that may not have been intended but is a huge part of our lived experiences this year is of course been one for the books many of us has felt challenged since we weren't in 2020 we are tired we are hurting and we want
146to move forward with dignity in order to do that we need access to space where our voices can be heard in ways that we deem meaningful we request that you join us in a restorative circle so that we may communicate directly with you regarding our concerns and we look forward to your timely response the next speaker is francis lynn francis lin good evening school board members my name is francis lin and i am a science teacher finishing my fourth year at cleveland high school and i'd like to speak to you today on reinstating katherine brown as principal of cleveland stem high school one of my first interactions with principal brown was when she voluntarily observed a lesson i was giving as a student teacher for a young teacher of color i was so touched that
147an administrator would take the time to not only come observe me but to give me such generous thoughtful and constructive feedback if principal brown would offer such kindness to a student teacher with no promise of long-term commitment to the community imagine what sort of ferocity and devotion and love she would give to his school she has been a leader up for 18 years sbs gave us copies of dr goldie muhammad's cultivating genius to every staff member in the district in it she urges educators to teach the skill of criticality to students meaning not to just passively take in information but to question what they hear in the news given the terrifyingly high levels of covid principal brown made the impossibly courageous decision to apply that framework and email a desperate clean community looking for transparency
148on contact tracing for using dr mohamed's teachings she has been demoted and barred from returning to cleveland next year in looking for a replacement we have seen an applicant pull crescendo to a paltry four candidates and quickly evaporate to one when a search failed to bear fruitful results we agreed to an interpret principle so we may continue our search in earnest next year no one has been named to date during that time we have seen tidal waves of disillusionment rapidly erode the long time and beloved staff members from our cleveland family many citing the leadership changes at cleveland as a driving force as we face into an abyss of uncertainty with no leader or prospect of one to ferry us through i believe that occam's razor is most appropriate here the only a logical replacement
149for principal catherine brown is principal catherine brown she has charged the course for cleveland to be a thriving joy-filled welcoming learning environment that the mayor and the superintendent saw fit for their children to attend and she can do it again appoint catherine brown to be principal of cleveland high school for the 2022-2023 school year and dr jones please join us at cleveland for a restorative circle concerning the leadership change process i like to close with one last anecdote after completing my first full year of teaching at columbia high school catherine came up to me and congratulated me and said we're glad you came back here you belong here i hope to return the favor principal brown you belong here thank you the next speaker is christy devader christie devader christy if you're on the phone
150you need to press star six to unmute not seeing that phone number moving on to our next speaker sabrina burr good evening my name is sabrina burr and i'm a parent of a seattle public school graduate i thought being at this point would be a place of celebration i literally went back to my school with my daughter from pre-k to 8th grade some weeks i was in the building 60 hours because i wanted to make sure that my daughter's sense of self and love for learning did not die in this institution i found too many students that that happened to and as you know the first knife that killed my brother came from seattle public schools my daughter left out of pre-k-8 fighting for a principal to make sure those she left behind had a
151right leader what i know from my experience in seattle public schools two things matter the leader who leads a building who engages with student staff in the community and how we authentically engage and partner that didn't happen at cleveland and i'm really sad because catherine brown cared about my life before more than you guys did i lost a family member that came from south shore to covet christmas eve i was diagnosed with covet the only reason why i didn't go to the hospital is because my doctor lets me have his cell number and called me back 20 minutes later and i was able to get what i needed i know cleveland and franklin have the highest numbers but you care more about what we got to start telling the truth cleveland staff have been holding
152it down they've been holding it down with no leadership how we do things make a difference and what we've done to cleveland is wrong and i beg you dr jones do the right thing and get some restorative justice bring in some healing there are resources there but get with those students and get with that staff bring some healing because whoever you bring in will not get set right until you bring them into an art an environment that will lead them and like the other people said the best person is for cleveland is katherine brown and i don't know what your policies are but i'm glad she cared about my life more than you did the next speaker is joe donahoe good evening members of the board my name is joe donahoe i'm a science teacher
153at cleveland high school i was here a month ago to express to you how much catherine means to me personally as an educator and as you've heard from so many other people already you can see how much he means to everybody in the cleveland community students family members staff she is the the cornerstone of our entire community um you heard from paige wilson on the phone a literal superhero of a teacher and she's leaving us in big part because of this leadership change you heard from claude another super educator he's leaving because of this you're about to hear from john hughes our athletic director who also means so much to our community beyond just education he's leaving as well i realize that with the pandemic and the burnout in our profession all buildings are losing
154staff members beloved staff members but they're not losing them for this reason and these people who are leaving have said specifically that's why and i am so sad and worried for our future as a school if we continue to lose these quality educators and i'm worried about who will leave next if we don't get catherine back or have a leader we can trust so i want to echo the two asks that you've heard time and time again the first i couldn't have said it better than miss burr we need healing and that healing starts with the restorative practice of direct conversation the second is to reinstate katherine brown thank you the next speaker is john hughes good evening my name is john hughes i left my law practice over a decade ago to come teach
155in seattle public schools because i saw the inequities that were happening in the central and south end of seattle i've had the fortune to teach at madrona south shore and for the last four years as athletic director at cleveland high school i have two issues for you today the first one is the plight of athletic directors and i have some exhibits there for you to review um i don't know if you're aware of this but athletic directors in seattle public schools are considered just part-time half-time employees despite 60 hours plus in work hours to make a livable wage the sale public schools asks us to take another job maybe it's taking on three classes which is what happens in cleveland so a full half day of curriculum surrounding public schools do not do this metro
156league private schools do not do this they fully fund their athletic directors because athletics is a huge and important part of high school we can all remember our high school experience and if you played sports or you went to games you knew about school spirit about your community leadership skills and some kids in seattle they come to school for one reason that the athletics keeps them engaged some more affluent schools in seattle public schools have the ability to fund through their booster clubs and their ptsas leaving a have-and-have-not situation to fill the gap in this area change is needed you need to fully fund seattle public school athletic directors and i again i have more information and job description and details in the handouts next is cleveland leadership you've heard about it all night you
157need to reinstate miss brown let me put it in context covet hit cleveland hard we had two staff members die one on christmas day during the surge our numbers were so high we had to shut down and go remote many of our families live in multi-generational households the fear of grandma dying was real as an adult i was required to test athletes three times a week our numbers were off the charts contra contact racing couldn't keep up miss brown did what seattle public schools promised to keep their families safe and informed i realized central staff was doing their best but they were remote learning on the zoom disconnected miss brown was in the trenches every day with our families and she knew best it's a pandemic show some grace let's make a change here let's
158fix this problem and reinstate miss brown thank you the next speaker is lee simpson lee simpson hello hello my name is lee and i'm a parent to two seattle public school students i'm also a science teacher in our community and we place a lot of value as i know many families do on out of school time enrichment opportunities when i enrolled my kids in after school programs at their school i found six crickets and since the pandemic i've worked in partnership with six crickets we help schools and districts connect with community enrichment providers to bring after after-school learning opportunities to our sps campuses in our district the work to organize this after-school enrichment effort is done largely by our ptas my concern is that ptas trying to restart after school programs for the 2022-23 school
159year will face challenges possibly insurmountable challenges revolving around the district's policies on the need for a covid site coordinator in after school time i understand the department of health won't release final guidelines until early august but that right now it's the responsibility of the group organizing the after-school program so our ptas to arrange for a site coordinator to monitor and handle any students exhibiting symptoms of covid in after school time my concern is that this requirement will undermine some schools ability to have after-school programs at all and this will ultimately widen the opportunity gap we see in student access to out-of-school time enrichment the schools that struggle to find the manpower to put together a pta and an after-school program at all will undoubtedly also struggle to fill this additional requirement of a covid site
160coordinator i'm asking for the district to recognize this this hardship on the ptas and consider solutions that don't over tax the ptas trying to bring these important enrichment programs back to sps thank you so much the next speaker is april sorry april chris jansen april chris janssen my name is april christensen and i'm both an employee of seattle public schools and a parent i work as a sped one on one i am para at gatewood elementary and my daughter is a student at cleveland high school refuse to believe that anyone that works in education does not want for the best of our students and for the broader compute community i refuse to believe and blame all of our problems of the district as our district has a long and complicated history i believe we're all
161actively trying to work to get things right but that does not happen yesterday and sometimes we get in our own way i'm not perfect and i'm sure none of you are either our family has been deeply affected by the removal of catherine brown as principal at cleveland principal brown has always been responsive responsible compassionate dedicated and a person of immense trust and leadership we could all count on this year was unrelenting and educational staff however for all educational staff however building principles have endured deep sacrifices and stressors even through it all principal brown through a very tumultuous time when no one got everything right and during a time when sometimes there was no palpable decision or directions laid before us this was a year of conflicting messages and competing priorities catherine brown was simply sharing
162information not in a manipulative or divisive way but simply as a tool that our community continue could could continue to use to protect themselves i'm also here for a second reason i want to talk briefly about a change at gatewood elementary school involving the special education social and emotional learning program formerly known as the ebd program at our school that has been run for years due partly to circumstances through the year which our school tried to do but also moving forward our school has been informed that our sped sel classrooms k through two and three through five separate classrooms will have b will be combined moving forward this is an extreme change from the way these classrooms have been structured for many many years we have always had lower and upper elementary classrooms i do
163not work directly with our sel program i do work in sped but as a parent of this school community for the past 11 years and now for three three years as an sps employee i have helped in the periphery for dealing with the needs involving these classes i do not understand how it is developmentally appropriate endorsed or recommended trauma-informed care or education to put a kindergartner or first grader in the same classroom as a third or fourth grader who may be exhibiting highly escalated behaviors on a daily or sometimes hourly basis i'm wondering who the director of the sped sel program is and if there is documentation that this is the best path forward and in the best interest of these children who sometimes already have experienced traumas whose families may or may not be
164in need of high level of support and some of them have either undiagnosed or diagnosed needs that highly trained and very special staff are needed to support i've been thankful to sps and the ebd sel program for many years for some of these families an s a sped sel classroom it may be their last resource to be served by public schools in this way we've personally had neighbors who've children whose children have been in this program and if it were not for gateway and thoughtful programming they were out of public schools options however serving these students the right way requires a very low to staff to student ratio and special attention to trauma-informed care and education and the work is beautiful and life-changing but it's also long and hard every hour every day if this
165is being done for budgetary purposes as truly some of these are our very most vulnerable students in sps i ask that you please deeply reconsider the configuration of these classrooms where lower elementary and upper elementary have their own spaces until we can be in a world where we have enough staff time and resources to move to a place of true inclusion even in a world of true inclusion first graders would not be placed with fifth graders if we were taking general education students from k first second third fourth and fifth and combine them into classrooms across the board in a bunch of schools you can guarantee that parents with mega horns would be letting us hear about it however in this instance these children and some of these families on some days don't have the
166energy or time to come to a meeting like this i have worked at both the state and federal federal government levels this is also a career change for me i understand budgets however in both of these instances at gatewood and at cleveland one is budget neutral and the other is an investment in changing the course of lives for students who truly are in need the right thing to do is not always the easiest but by abiding to the others before self we exemplify true leadership and if we still tell the truth we cannot lose ourselves in this process but this is how we create sustain and better true community i believe each one of you makes our communities better and i'd like to thank you for your time the next speaker is samantha fogg samantha
167fogg my name is samantha fogg and i'm a parent in seattle public schools and i am here to testify on the approval of amendment to board policy zero zero one zero instructional philosophy 2161 special education nt-162 education of students with disabilities under section 504 of the rehabilitation act of 1973. all students have strengths and needs that must be met these strengths and needs and differences are what make learning communities vibrant students working together learn that there are different ways to learn to communicate to be in community and to succeed in our existing system we segregate students based on the false idea that in order to meet the needs of students some students need to be together in general education and some students need to be elsewhere this was done with the best intentions but we
168now know that segregation causes harm diminishes our communities and worsens outcomes for all students both those removed from the general education classroom and those who have never been removed we say when we know better do better but it is also true that it is often hard to do better particularly when doing better requires systems change i want to thank dr pedroza and director rankin for their leadership on this issue for looking broadly across policies and removing barriers to inclusion i leave you with my enthusiastic support for to quote from the updated language for zero zero one zero quote environments where all students feel seen heard and welcomed in all schools and spaces including general education classrooms regardless of race gender ethnicity disability socioeconomic status religious affiliation lgbtqia plus sexual orientation and gender identity primary language
169and any other identifier so that every student is fully included member of their community thank you the final speaker on today's testimony list is cliff meyer cliff meyer you need to press star six to unmute if you're on the conference line hello i am sorry not to be appearing in person but thank you for listening i'm very worried that the board is not spending adequate time overseeing critical areas of the district that the highly capable program plan appeared on today's consent agenda is demonstrative of a lack of judgment i think first of all the plan should not have been presented to this board at this late date it is a plan for 21 22. it's not an end-of-year report the board needed to be aware of this and asked the staff to present this plan
170much earlier second in the board action report this state mandated plan is disrespected as being merely a technical step necessary to receive state funding well maybe i'd agree if the district offered accurate and complete explanations of its identification process of highly capable students and also how it's providing the services that they need instead for many families the past year has been one of confusion as the process was vaguely described and delayed to late in the year my third concern the errors that are in this plan that you earlier today approved did you realize that it's actually saying that there is a highly capable program parent organization in our district the committee that is referred to is not a parent organization it's a committee run by staff and it does not have very much parent representation
171in fact about two-thirds of the members are not parents and very few people actually attended meetings at this point have you read the definition of a highly capable student in this plan it actually doesn't define a student have you taken a look at the fact that there is supposed to be a documented procedure for delivering services and identifying students it's normally called superintendence procedure 2190. however the procedure that on the website of the district is from 2016 and in no way reflects the realities of how the district is operating this is another example of why there was such confusion this year there is a lack of documentation that the state's laws require will the state take any action on this no you're right this is a technical step the district will get its money and
172families will continue to feel that the district is not providing services and not being upfront with the way it handles highly capable services i urge you to look more closely next year get this plan approved in the beginning of the school year not the end and do your duty to the students who so desperately often need these services thank you very much that was the final speaker on today's testimony list thank you very much that concludes our public testimony for this meeting thank you for your comments and your time spent with her excuse me here with us tonight we sincerely appreciate it we will now move to items uh on our action items agenda tonight our first action item is selection of the school board student members may i have a motion for this item
173i move that the board select luna cron baron nasir hassan and gia lee jenna yuan as the three school board members for the 2022-23 school year immediate action is in the best interest of the district second this item has been moved by vice president hampson and seconded by director rivera smith this item is on the agenda for introduction in action today and did not move through committee ask the sponsor i will speak to this item today we have the honor of appointing three students to serve as school board student members in the 2022-23 school year this is a culmination of a process started last year led by the naacp youth council former director pullen and myself with the passage of board policy 1250 we are incredibly grateful to the students that have led in this
174process from policy development to the selection committee and for contributing their time and their brilliance we are also grateful for an and in awe of the exceptional students who stepped up to apply to serve as student members and we are thrilled to welcome our three finalists luna nasira and jenna we will be voting on this item this evening to confirm their appointment as student members i'll now pass it over to our selection committee representatives tuck uh tuck nguyen and ryan [Music] wayne is add did i pronounce that correctly okay close please correct me thank you for your work and for joining us this evening hi everyone i'm here today with the selection committee about two months ago we saw this opportunity to as a chance to grow as a leader meet different peers and see
175the interesting ideas and perspectives our students across the district had so we all decided to embark on a long journey that was very new and came with a lot of hurdles we also had the opportunity to create something new at the district by designing the process for selecting applicants and including diverse student perspectives into every decision despite our short deadlines all of us ensured we put in our hard work and prioritized tasks even though it sometimes meant putting hours into our weekends or cramming time we had at school we stuck together as a team and showed true dedication as a team we know all these seats are important because they give students a seat at the table and decisions that will eventually impact them by keeping the significance of these positions in mind we were
176motivated and inspired as we envisioned the possibilities these students impact have on the school board and on student voice on our district uh thank you for that um my name is ryan moynizod um our community or sorry our committee looked for the best fit candidates that are passionate equity focused and committed to community especially ones that had previous experience in leadership advocacy and knew how to both lead and represent the students in this district in a meaningful responsible and level-headed way the students that are being represented are just as important as the ones doing the representing and our final recommendation came after hours of thoughtful deliberation and application review we reviewed seattle excellence and policy number 1215 so we were aware of what we were working with and what we were looking for our processes
177for selecting students were very meticulous in the sense that we had multiple gatherings to discuss and thoroughly review any external documents so we knew exactly what was expected not only by staff and district employees but also the 50 000 students across this district who deserve to be heard we also took anti-bias training to ensure that there was no advantage no advantage between the students throughout the selection process when and when making our final decisions as a selection committee we'd like to extend our gratitude to the board for their commitment to prioritizing student voice at decision making levels as well as for uplifting voices furthest from educational justice part of creating an environment in schools where students feel welcome is creating a system that makes them feel heard by giving students positions on the board sps
178has not only reaffirmed its commitments to our district when it comes to listening and learning from students but it has also enabled students to engage their peers with the common goal of improving our district student voice was involved in every aspect of this selection process from the naacp youth council's work and crafting the application to the students on this selection committee who reviewed application materials and conducted interviews we hope that both the board and superintendent jones continue to create more opportunities for student voice at the district level and allow students to be part of the processes that directly impact them i'd also like to give a quick shout out to sabrine ali one of my fellow committee members who was scheduled to testify but unable to attend this meeting due to an unexpected emergency at
179this time i'd like to yield to our first student board member finalist luna crone baron thank you so much hello hold on let me move this up a little bit hello my name is luna chrome baron i use she her pronouns and i am a rising junior at the center school here in seattle public school district i am also a queer trans latina neurodivergent student here in seattle public schools i am proud to not only bring my lived experiences and the unique needs of all my fellow students to action and to listen learn and take action on all the unique individual lived experiences of my peers in the school district i am also proud to be in the position to increase accountability of district officials in the creation of an anti-racist anti-ableist decolonized queer and
180trans affirming community in our district i am thrilled to work with nasira and jenna as well as you school board members and superintendent jones thank you i'm gonna move this hello my name is nasira hassan and i am a upcoming senior at chief self international high school and i use she her pronouns i applied for this position because as a young woman of color i know how important it is to have diverse perspectives in decision making for our school system in order to help build a system that helps put seattle public students of all races all backgrounds and all beliefs on a pathway to success i am excited for this position because being able to have student input on big decisions that impacts us as students within our district is so important as those decisions
181play a big role in our day-to-day life as students i'm also so excited to collaborate with my partners luna and jenna and students of our district to build a greater community and more positively impactful system for us all hi everyone my name is jenna yun and i'm a rising senior at franklin high school i use she her pronouns i applied for this position because i know what it feels like to be unheard to clarify by unheard i don't mean ignored but more so the lack of courage to speak up i have always been on the quieter side so the people i surround myself with are also similar and i've noticed that when you don't advocate for yourself no one will so i want to take on this role to not only represent those who are
182afraid of speaking up but also to represent our entire student body and give every student a voice as for what i'm excited for i'm excited to work with the other two student members luna and sierra and everyone here to put a mark on seattle public schools and make it the best that it can be thank you for listening thank you all very much and this is just an incredibly proud moment for me and i know the rest of our board members uh when i first transitioned onto the board one of the biggest things that i heard time and time again was the lack of student voice at the tables that matter the most and so i would also be remiss if i did not give a huge shout out to rita matajia burr who was
183one of the few folks who came together as this was just an idea right and working very closely with uh former director dewolfe and um the amazing staff that we have here miss worth and many others this is something that we are not necessarily piloting but just doesn't exist and you guys started from the beginning wrote the policy thought through all the hard questions and now it's materializing in a way that i don't think a lot of us could have really adequately envisioned this moment until now it is here so you should be incredibly proud of yourselves again you should be incredibly proud of yourselves because you innovated you connected two things that were previously disconnected us and true authentic consistent and meaningful student engagement so again i'm going to start crying up here if
184i keep talking thank you for all of the work that y'all have put in it is nothing short of incredible so with that being said i will now go to directors if they have any comments or questions please know that we will also be taking a short recess so that we can meet our students so if you have any personal things stuff like that to say you are more than welcome to do it here but you will also have an opportunity to do that you know a little bit closer than from the diocese that we are at right now so any questions from directors looking at the screen as well for our two that are joining remotely any questions comments specifically on this item yeah i see your hand director harris go ahead welcome aboard
185i wish i was there to greet you in person uh my office had a coveted outbreak i was advised of at 4 00 pm today you will work with some of the very best people on the planet you will stretch your minds you will stretch your capabilities and we really look forward to you joining us cannot wait thank you so very very much for stepping forward go ahead director revere smith thank you likewise i wish i was there um to see you guys and to be there for this moment tonight but uh definitely same i i welcome you guys i am so excited to start working together uh hopefully we can find a time to connect after the meeting or not tonight after the meeting but sometime soon it would be great to meet you
186all and to learn more about you thank you thank you go ahead director rankin i have actually a technical question on the item because i do have the benefit of being here and getting to talk to them in a few moments go for it um i am wondering about uh kind of how the role how the structure and time will be organized if that's something that's going to develop organically between the board and the students or if we have a framework of kind of you know what the just kind of the functionality of uh yeah the relationship and absolutely clear question uh i think you can go ahead ms work you probably got a clear answer than i do thank you director rankin uh julia warth director of board relations and strategic initiatives um so
187to your question uh the the current structure in the policy is that each of the three members will serve on one of the committees for the board and then there will be a rotation of students that attend the regular board meetings so there will be one student assigned to each regular board meeting and then the other students may attend as well given that the board is contemplating additional changes to the committee structure that may change in how the students participate in committees or you know which committees they're actually assigned to um the other uh note i would make about the board director student member relationship is that the student members and board directors will have or board directors will serve as mentors to the student members and so that will be another um structure for
188interaction my question really is related to to that just in terms of like shared expectations for for success for us and and for the students um because i could imagine a scenario where oh i thought you were doing that mentoring or i thought you were doing the thing and students going hey nobody's contacted us so i'm just kind of like trying to contextualize it for myself i think because i'm very very very enthusiastic and excited and and can't wait to work with with all of them um but yeah just in terms of like and maybe i'm jumping ahead but in kind of like foundational common expectations understanding what's you know yep i think no your question is clear and what i'll just offer is that you know there are some steps that need to happen
189first right so there are some trainings that we're going to be participating in in the coming weeks uh specifically around because a lot of our board members outside of working with their own children have not worked directly with students before right and so there are going to be some opportunities for us to do some level setting and some foundational work but then the idea of this while we did put some bones into the policy was we as people me being the youngest person on this board and somebody called me old the other day do not know exactly what the most efficient and effective relationship besides also what they need from us right so we wanted to make sure that there was a lot of room for interpretation for us to really allow the students to
190help create whatever this program will be in terms of the mentorship piece right and as ms worth said with the looming changes to many structures um how our students fit in and where we can make sure that their voices are at top priority and some of those conversations will obviously change over time so uh i know that that is not the most definite answer but i think that's a really good thing that's fine and i think it sounds like the expectation is that we would also be sort of in collaboration with students kind of building best practices as we go for future board directors and student members as well would that be accurate absolutely great excellent questions thank you miss worth you're good any other questions okay direct revere smith i see your hand is
191back up thank you i i correctly if i'm wrong there julia but i i thought i said they're in the the policy says that the committee chairs are the mentors and then it does also later say someone else could be a mentor too but i think it does explicitly say that committee chairs are their mentors um but maybe you can correct me if that was that was either the bar or the policy but i think there's a policy yep miss worth is approaching the podium um yes and so uh pending any changes to the committee structure that part of the policy would need to be changed and so that's uh why it is still kind of tbd who will be serving as the mentors and i want to also be clear i see your director
192hanson is that within the policy yes it says that the chairs are serving as the mentors right but all of us will have an opportunity to work directly with our students as they need us and as we see and identify opportunities to plug them in so yes that is what the policy says in practice it will not be limited just to the chairs of any particular committee and i and i want to make that very clear that this is an everybody thing right to the fullest extent of the policy so director hanson welcome and thank you for your willingness to be the guinea first of all thank you to uh naacp youth coalition for sticking with this all this time because that was a true labor of love among the many many other contributions that
193you all have made throughout the years and then the selection committee for putting all that time and effort in when you're not even going to serve is just it's phenomenal and your statements tonight were really um heartfelt and and well received from from my perspective and i'm tremendously grateful because i know how much time that you had to put in and it was a lot um and so you know i hope that uh you at least are able to craft that into a really nice statement for your resume and your college applications at minimum um and we will do whatever we can to support you in that because it is so you serve such a critical role in in working with staff to and uh uh director hersey president hersey to make sure that this
194happened and and then um i also want to apologize to you new directors that this is as unceremonious as it is right now and i mean we're um this is an action item and we're gonna vote on this and i wish it was a lot sexier because you deserve that and it's an improvement area for us and i know that you'll be part of that because when we utilize time community time student time we need to do it in a way that really honors those contributions and this district and this board have not yet learned how to do that well and while we will be your mentors in many cases because we've been grinding away at this um some of us for a few years and but really we have not been doing this all
195that long so we are learning together and we are doing our very best to adhere to best practices and there are tremendous resources both from the washington state school directors association because there's districts that are way ahead of us on student representation so you have really great partners out there in the state of washington who are serving on their school boards and then there are also opportunities nationally through council of great city schools because they do they have specialized programs that we would want to get you set up with so that you can start meeting students from around the country who are serving particularly in urban school districts which is important because we're about as urban as it gets in the state of washington so um and in addition to that uh because i always
196want to give people homework um is i have a reading list i'm going to ask julia to give you so that if you want to do some reading um about good governance because that's ultimately what the skill that you're going to learn here and it's going to serve you so well for the rest of your lives and you'll be such good um contributors to your communities from here on out and i just cannot wait to work with you all thank you all right let's go so any other questions comments before we move to the vote all right is it gonna be quick i hope you stay because i have some comments during the board director comments that i want you to hear all right was that quick enough that is very quick good job okay
197so miss wilson jones roll call please director rivera smith i director sergio absolutely positively yes director song moritz aye vice president hampson aye director harris aye director rankin i for myself and for former director dewolfe proudly proudly proudly proudly i this motion has passed unanimously yes now superintendent doesn't have a vote but i say i as well and we will have a ceremony for you to make sure we honor this this work and this is a monumental opportunity i want to say thank you to everyone for uh being great process stewards to get us to today and i want to say thank you in advance for your for your creativity for your authenticity for your focus for your strategy for all the great things you're going to bring to this to this district so thank
198you all right so to give our directors an opportunity to meet and um visit with our new board members we are going to take a brief 10 minute recess and so we will be back at 7 27 pm thank you very much [Music] um all right this item is on the jennifer introduction in action today and did not move through committee as a sponsor i'll speak to this item in alignment with the new governance structure i am recommending updates to the previously approved and amended evaluative criteria for the superintendent's performance when we approved the original superintendent evaluation documentation in november and amended in and amended them in february we had just begun our implementation of this new governance model since that time we've engaged in coaching and other professional development and we are now in
199place where we can more clearly discern the roles and responsibilities of the board and the superintendent under the student outcomes focused governance model in recognition of that progress i am proposing updates to the evaluation criteria that will more accurately reflect the superintendent's responsibilities with three performance goals representing year zero of our implementation monitoring and accountability and to room goals and guardrails and implementation okay now to directors for any comments or questions on the item and we will begin feel free to raise your hand either in person or virtually all right oh you almost missed it leslie go ahead you're on mute too you're killing me uh i'm sorry i had to take an emergency phone call on the covet office situation i vote yes for our student members with respect to this action item i
200believe that i have been quoted a couple of times now saying surviving is winning the superintendent with respect to his amended goals i um have often been times been a bit of a peta about some of these check mark issues and i really believe that if we give each other grace given this last year and if we work together it's fine by me and i appreciate that some people might be surprised by that perspective but you know what we're doing the best we can and we're all working together and i'm okay with it and they've been explained to me an executive session and my questions have been answered and obviously i can't talk about executive sessions so this frankly is a trust exercise and and and i'll stop there but you know these are very
201interesting times and not the one of us signed up for them thank you very much and and dr jones i hope you blow each of these goals the heck out of the water thank you so much all right thank you director harris any other questions on this item all right seeing none miss alison jones the roll call please director sergio yes director song moritz aye vice president hampson aye director harris aye director rankin aye director rivera smith i president hersey hi this motion is passed unanimously thank you directors we will now reconvene our introduction items i have my agenda right here give me a moment i believe we left off on item number six uh so item number six acceptance of the seattle university grant funding for the 2022-23 school year for the central and
202south seattle school and neighborhood network all right good afternoon board directors i'm james bush the assistant superintendent equity partnerships and engagement here with cashelle toner hi good evening i'm christelle toner executive director for curriculum assessment and instruction so at i share with the most recent cni committee this board action report is for the funding to continue the work of the learning for equity network the network a partnership with seattle university sunborg center for community engagement that staffs principals and families at seven schools in central and south seattle supported by sps staff from the math department and funded by the bill and melinda gates foundation in the amount of three hundred fifty thousand dollars this is the final year of a three-year grant originally approved by the board to support five elementary schools in in 2022
2032023 the grant will provide central office and family engagement support to six schools bayley gatzert john muir bless eye lowell thurgood marshall and rising star the goal of the network to support the culturally sustainable math instruction increase positive teacher family communication around math and align efforts with the adoption of the envisioned curriculum the focus of this initiative aims to use the lines of cultural responsive instruction where teachers are coached to one attend to students identities and social emotional growth and two engage in learning activities and opportunities that are relevant to how they learn this important work can be accomplished about the deep partnerships between epe equity partnerships and engagement and curriculum and instruction and thank you cashelle for your partnership gates foundation seattle university center for engagement sps rivka versing stern alyssa farmer sarah perez
204hamilton and a variety of other people that have supported the work through the last few years a lot of great work has happened let's just take a question any question any questions hey director ranking uh i just wanted to note as uh sscni chair that this is for consideration not because there were issues in committee but because um uh i requested that we move it forward and hear from um chief director bush doctor assistant superintendent james or jb or superintendent um james bush uh as a as a full board since this is a recurring item um we were given the chance to review the documents but rather than spend time discussing a committee asked to come here for presentations to the full board so that's why the consideration great thank you any other questions from
205directors seeing none thank you both thank you yup no problem all right moving on to item number seven annual renewal of the head start grant approval uh oh i actually don't need to read that part or do i need a repo probably any real thing no i didn't think so all right miss tonight um good evening kashel towner executive director for curriculum assessment instruction i'm happy to introduce this item to you this board action report if approved would support the renewal of the annual head start grant to provide programs and services in 18 preschool classrooms across the district for the 22-23 school years in alignment with a strategic plan in seattle excellence early learning's priorities include ensuring a safe warm and high quality early learning environments that develop our students talent identity voice joy and
206agency the program seeks to ensure that students furthest from educational justice specifically african-american boys are kindergarten ready we accomplish this through creating individualized goals talent development plans asset based instruction and culturally responsive family and student engagement this grant is about um i don't know 5.5 million dollars and it's a federal head start grant and this is an annual activity that we come to the board and ask for approval so with that i'll uh pause for questions miss toner any questions on this item does somebody else have their microphone or is it just me we really need that new system um okay any questions on this item i see director revere smith yay head start go ahead lisa yes definitely yay head start that's all i really want to say um because i'm always excited uh
207for us to be uh renewing our our funding our commitment to the program that i have the pleasure of meeting with um the leaders of monthly and i appreciate uh cash heather uh found all the work you guys do and all the stuff's work um i again i don't have any major questions just just want to uh thank you guys for everything you do i hope that we can work towards uh truly you know finding finding ways we can fold our head start and our preschool as a whole into our district i know we're a k-12 but we have a lot of preschoolers who we definitely need to invest in so that they can be successful uh k dwellers and and that part of that's even like aligning bell times right there's all sorts of
208things we can do and i wish hope we can see us i'll look towards those and thank you for the questions your comments thank you director of error smith okay we will now move on to item number eight approval of the university of washington experimental education unit eeu interagency agreement to provide special education services to students with individualized education plans or ieps ages three to six okay take it away this one's mine as well so good evening directors i'm pleased to present um this item for introduction um to you and to our community as shared at the june 7th student supports and curriculum and instruction committee meeting this board action report if approved would support the yearly renewal of the university of washington experimental education unit eeu and seattle public schools interagency agreement and professional
209development contract totaling about 1.4 million dollars this interagency agreement and contract will provide inclusive programming for 17 kindergartners and 30 preschoolers at the eu as many of you know the eu has been a long-standing partner of seattle public schools assisting with creating and implementing our inclusive preschool programming throughout professional development and in support of of our programming we are fortunate to learn from this national leader in early childhood interventions for students with and without disabilities the partnership with eeu has enabled the district to increase our offerings of inclusive programming replicating those same services that you see at eu across the district with that i'll pause and answer any questions thank you do directors have any questions are you motioning towards your microphone because you have a question go ahead director rank yeah i just want
210to note again this is for consideration instead of approval not because we didn't approve of it as a committee but because um we didn't we chose to move the time to the full board instead of in um discussion in committee i do have a question that i'm happy to take offline it's one of those things i've been meaning to ask and i kind of keep forgetting about it which is about the admissions process and how it has changed from years past um to a lottery system instead of it used to be it used to be that the special education team early learning and eu would sit together and look at all the eligible students and kind of make a determination of best fit for programming and now it's an open lottery and my understanding is
211that because of that change it's actually less racially diverse and less draws a less diverse um uh pool from um across the city because it does sort of like on the one hand you could think like well it's a lottery it's open to everybody everybody has a chance but you have to know to apply for it and know that it exists and all of these things so um it's not going to interfere with my vote on this item uh when it comes up for action but it's something i really would like to take another look at um or have staff consider about the the placement and i also wonder how you know potential future changes to our overall thoughts around inclusion might impact that as well so there may be other changes coming but um
212it is something i wanted to note that i think is worth taking another look at director rankin uh i see director harris thank you um i am as big a fan of the eu as i can be i also am wondering about how we are replicating our own services based on the model of the eeo eu and i'm wondering if at some point we could bring in dr schwartz eileen schwartz who is is a rock star country wide for these practices but i am hearing from some special ed practitioners that we are not doing pd with eu etc and i'm i'm i'm wondering about that and and i'd like a little more information if i can will i vote for this i will every time it comes up no question about it but if the
213idea is to do targeted universalism and the idea is to replicate then then i hope we have a little deeper discussion thank you very much do you have anything you'd like to say that miss toner um yeah sure we can add um we can provide a more comprehensive uh response to the full board if that would be helpful there's a lot of context and nuance to what director harris is asking in summary we do have professional development that's what this grant funds is professional development from the eu to seattle public schools that's on a limited basis though so there might be a perception or some feedback that that's not you know um as large as as some folks might like it to be we can also talk about um the replication of eeu services into
214sps but that might take a little bit more time than we have tonight so i'd be happy to provide a written response and send it your way is that satisfactory director harris that works for me as long as it's sent to the whole bird at the same time and we make it publicly available you betcha thanks very much dr toner thank you right on thank you um okay moving on to action item number nine review and approval of the 2022-23 school year career and technical education cte plan for board policy 2170. mr perkins take it away thank you very much uh president hersey caleb perkins executive director for college career readiness i'm excited to present to you to the bar for the cte plan improving our students access to career connected learning and helping students
215explore and prepare for careers in high demand high interest high-wage areas in fact this is my fifth year presenting the cte plan bar to the board and i've never been more excited for a number of reasons number one the board's focus on student outcomes focused governance and the connection to cte work number two the connection between our ccr goal and the ccr work and in particular the leadership of brian day our new cte and stem director given his track record in in everett and his emerging track record here in seattle his commitment to the targeted universalist approach and our work supporting our african-american male students in these areas i'll just highlight briefly the plan the plan is quite detailed but let's highlight a few things one the very explicit connection between the office of african-american
216mail achievement and cte which we're trying to make more explicit in particular in the connection to access to internships we're looking to dramatically expand the number of opportunities students have to engage in work-based learning and have already started that with partners like amazon over the summer we have also added to the the report a heat map of each school to show what progress we're making and where we need to make additional steps and provide better support centrally which mr day is leading and we're developing a more easy to use process for partners to engage with seattle public schools in ncte in terms of equity uh mr day has also with his team provided uh specific analysis around over and under enrollment to really make sure our pathways match our students interest and we're ensuring that
217there's equitable access across all of our pathways during the ssc and i presentation i appreciated the the strong support that was shared by the committee and the recommendation to make sure we engage in our with our labor partners in particular thank you director harris and then also that we update our chart to make sure we include our middle schools and our k-8s that a number of members brought which we have done for the introduction and with that i'll take your questions thank you very much do we have any questions on this item go ahead director ranking where did we find brian day and how do we make sure that he wants to stay at sbs he was uh he's had a 20 plus year career in everett and impressive track record of doing work and
218queer connected learning there um thanks to dr scarlett and many others including dr jones i think he's enjoying the challenge here so he he has come up in conversations at graduations i attended i went to the um uh alumni open house for the radio station for uh you know c89.5 at nathan hale and the director there talked about that he had already been working on you know increa i just was like he just got here how did he do that already so um yeah we did discuss this in committee and recommended it for approval and we're really excited about the possibilities and also very appreciative of the way that the data was shared like the heat map and um it's getting it's getting clearer and easier to see really what we have and and where
219it is and um super super helpful so thanks for that work thank you any other questions or comments all right thank you very much moving on to item number 10 approval of assessment tool for progress monitoring and continuous improvement in literacy and math take it away hello again i'm here to introduce this bar asking the board for approval to require the use of the map assessments in literacy for grades k-5 and in math grades k-8 for the 22-23 school year this bar is informed specifically by policy 2080 which is our board policy on assessment in a couple of us very specific ways one as you'll see in the engagement section this was connected to our joint assessment steering committee which included sca leadership and we shared the direct feedback on the various plans for next
220year's assessments with our ssc and i committee based on that committee including the sea's input secondly the policy requires that we come before the board and ask for approval of any new district required assessments which is true for these two k-5 literacy and k-8 math we want to just highlight four main reasons for asking for this approval first and foremost we want to continue the student outcomes focused governance work and respond to the board's call to have interim measures for progress monitoring for our third grade reading goal and seventh grade math goal in fact as you may recall we discussed this during the may 11th aboard work session on interim measures second we want to provide school leaders and educators with tools that they need and wanted to ask for third in the area of
221literacy we're glad to share that this approach will actually reduce the amount of instructional time needed for testing in the area of literacy and provide a more reliable assessment than what we currently use and finally we want to note we do see this as a transition plan that we're transitioning to a better approach for assessment in 2324 which will take time as you have met our director of assessment instructional improvement eric jackson is convening a cross-team effort to really try to rethink the future of assessment to ensure it's as culturally responsive and meets up uh with our goals and our guard rails unfortunately this bar was not fully routed for the june 7th sscni committee but that said there was a lengthy discussion on the item as well as assessment in general and i just
222wanted to share that my summary of what we heard was the committee's general support for this bar itself that there was uh an effort to send this ahead of time and ask for questions and that we have made a commitment to have a future conversation more deeply about assessment that i believe was alluded to earlier this meeting um so with that we're grateful and we hope that the conversation tonight can be focused on the specifics of this bar thank you that'll take your questions would you like to kick us off uh uh director perkins uh or dr perkins adequately um or more than adequately summed up for the conversation that we had in committee but yes it's not for approval or consideration because we discussed it as a special attention item and indicated um support
223of moving it moving it to the board even though the bar wasn't quite ready um my only question is well i have a few questions but i know that they are tactical and implementation so mainly i think you know what i've heard from educators in the past and what i know as a parent too is that if we have to have assessments map seems to be one of the ones that's the most useful you get fairly quick access to results it's aligned to what's being taught so it's helpful feedback for educators and for us as a district so a couple questions that don't necessarily have to be answered that go to you know speaking about assessment in the future is with this you know because this is aligned to state standards with the state ever
224is there a conversation or with the state consider eliminating the s back and using map so that we can reduce the number of assessments and and make them very useful to our educators so that's you don't have to answer that right now um and then the other tactical or implementation question is about um uh time like the shift in time and resources about managing the technology because i know that this is on on laptops which we have the one-to-one devices but a lot of schools you know the librarian might be the one kind of um managing the use of technology so i'm wondering about expectations for educators and how that's clear across you know who's kind of responsible for for this change and this added thing and it may be that that you know overall
225the time spent eliminating other assessments like fontenous fontes and pinell which is not um [Music] a culturally responsive or or a particularly useful tool for educators so i'm glad to see that going by the wayside um but i'm and and this is again this is a labor conversation really in a school-based conversation but i do want to uh at some point try to better understand just to make sure that this is something that's um uh practicable uh that that we have that we're not just saying oh we're not doing this anymore we're doing this but that we know who's responsible who's accountable and um how we communicate getting it out to all of the buildings in a way that's useful was there a question in there well they can be answered another time okay i
226don't need them to be answered for this specific item all good all good just trying to make sure that i was tracking director harris thank you um i am particularly curious about your transition statement and that we've got cross working groups together my question to you dr perkins is how are we in fact incorporating families and boots on the ground teachers and parents into the whole testing question as we i think all could agree testing is a very polarized issue it it is a betsy devos issue and and my question is is how are we sending that that that information into the into the stratosphere here or are we holding it tight to ourselves in the john stanford center and and folks don't know what's going on least of all us help thank you i
227appreciate the the question and i would just say that we agree that students and families need to be centered to this conversation this is what you know the data needs to be useful for students and families and that's where we're continuing to rely on things like our voice our vision the most recent report from the office of african american male achievement that uh director jackson is definitely consider consulting and considering uh we are working with dr kenosha as you might recall and also thinking about family and community engagement on this piece i would love to share more as we shared at the at the committee meeting we'd love to have a longer conversation with the board about the role of assessment what actually gets to director rankin's point about what is the relationship between s
228back this is something that is important to think about how these all connect because excuse me i'm sorry i don't mean to interrupt you but if i were to go on the web and our website right now what would i find in terms of bringing all those extraordinarily important strands and huge lifts on our staff together would i find something that would bring it together our playbook has a robust assessment page is particularly for our educators i think in terms of family facing that's something that i i need to follow up on appreciate your listening thank you so much thank you okay moving on to item number 11 approval of amendment to board policy zero zero one zero instructional philosophy 2161 special education and 2162 education of students with disabilities under section 504 of the
229rehabilitation act of 1973. mrs pedrosa take it away it's still on great so um i'm actually very proud to be here standing in front of all of you and i also want to share um that i'm excited to present this can you hold it a second i'd left my notes back on the um on my i just won't get the right ones i think there's eight or nine bars that my team had tonight so i thank you for your patience um it's a it's a it's a i just want to make sure first because i have some acknowledgement that i want to acknowledge first so i just first want to acknowledge dr director rankin's uh partnership and all of this when i became the chief of student support services over what two and a half
230years ago three years ago something like that we've been talking about this for a long time and lots of conversations around how do we get here how do we get here how do we get here so i want to acknowledge um those conversations i also want to acknowledge the conversations with seattle council ptsa special education ptsd families of color community groups and then also i also want to acknowledge our staff our staff have been doing deep dives around this work really thinking about all the intersectionality where these these policies intersect with our work in central office um so i just want to make sure i acknowledge that these are conversations been happening a long time and we are finally here the second thing i want to state and when we talk about these policy revisions
231and i'll pass it on to director rankin is that this is not just about special education this is a general education initiative and i'll say to that again this is a general education initiative that actually requires instructional and systemic and operational shifts in our system so that is a really important piece and it's multi-layered and as we all know this is going to take several years for us to move these shifts in in the right way so i want to acknowledge that too that this is going to be work we have the policy development but there has to be work in lots of areas in the system instructionally operationally to ensure that we continue to improve these processes processes for our students and i also want to just also give a big shout out to
232the schools that are already doing this we have a lot of schools that are already doing this well and they've been actually some of the people that i've had conversations with some of the star mentors the ones leading co-teaching development some of our sca folks have been at on the task force i also want to acknowledge the sca task force group says talking about inclusion in that work as well i'm the the special education task force group um along with the district and also want to thank dr torres for his leadership his co-leadership and development of some key thinking around what does inclusion really look like in our system and then i'm just going to personally shout out to two teachers that i love personally ms gadanski and mr lenny so it's still teachers like
233that that continue to push on inclusion practices in our schools and i just think it's really important we have so many we've highlighted them in the news brief if you haven't checked our news brief there's so many amazing teachers that are really focusing and doing inclusion at rainer beach we profiled greener beach we profiled other schools in our district um and i just think this is the word the right thing and the right work we should be doing and so with that i'm going to pass it on to director rankin because i'm sure she has a few thoughts and wants to share some things as well and then we'll move on to the the policy conversation with the entire board thank you thank you dr pedrosa um i don't want to take too much time
234but i i want to share my immense gratitude to dr pedrosa dr torres and dr scarlett for for the first time and dr jones under his leadership for for the first time connecting student services and curriculum and special education that there's there's that it is being seen as a general education initiative it's not about it's not the way that it's the way that it's been is is the idea that some students can only be can only learn with some teachers in some places and this is really saying this is really rejecting that and saying no and um as you uh will have ran in the bar and then the policy changes itself um there isn't there are not new ideas in this this isn't a a thing that consi and liza just thought of this
235is something that's happening other places and for whatever reason inertia habit contract who knows we have kind of forced a system that has reinforced exclusion instead of inclusion even for people who are trying very hard to be more inclusive there will be systemic barriers that get run up against or that the support's not there and so uh my hope with this policy change is again it's not we're not bringing a new idea this the idea of universal design targeted universalism culturally responsive inclusive um is something that we have been talking about as a board in a district and prioritizing and other policy changes and you can see it in our goals and guardrails and the data that we expect to see and what's important to me about putting it in our instructional philosophy instead of
236like well it maybe some of it exists other places in goals and guardrails but those are time limited and so is the strategic plan and i think that if we are listening to what community has been begging for for a long long time it's to put this in a place that will live beyond the time limited um goals and guardrails and and really say that like this is this is not opt in this is what every this is where we're headed this is what we want for the kids and our system and in our communities and so i sent uh the draft speaking of the eu it's a place that is near and dear to many of our hearts myself very much included um the first time i walked into the eu as a parent
237the smell of the building brought me right back to childhood me going in there with my dad who was a psychologist um and i hadn't particularly remembered i'd been in the building before but the something about the smell of the building reminded me that i've been going into that part of that community for 40 plus years um so as as a parent of two children who benefited from that program and as a school board director it feels uh like an obligation a responsibility to do better for all of our kids and it's it's also it's not actually about being ground breaking earth shattering we're actually as a state quite behind where a lot of other states and school districts are in terms of how they provide education to students and we can see through our
238data that um that the disproportionality that exists in our least inclusive enviro environment is specifically the most impactful for students of color especially our black and native students and so this is not only this is again not just about general not just about special education it's about accepting and teaching all students for who they are and the expectation that they're all everybody's students nobody belongs in a room down the hall and and isn't part of a community um so i sent this to the eu principal and dr eileen schwartz who was mentioned earlier who again i've known since i was about this tall um and uh just wanted to really briefly read uh from principal matsumoto he said as a parent of two children in seattle schools i want to thank you for your commitment
239to equity and inclusion i feel very proud to have my children in the district where you all are truly planning the path for change he says he is so impressed and hopeful and he's fully willing to support our effort any way that he can and then eileen schwartz says it is exciting to think of all the changes in the lives of children and families that will happen because of this change please know that we are behind you and we're here to help in any way that we can so thank you again and then on a technical side i think that the policy change that have been proposed can get more focused and more connected to um some of our the goals and guardrails and things and i've uh i'm in communication with aj crabill about
240uh supporting supporting me and making some edits between now and action and so i'm happy to take any feedback or and or let you all know as soon as um there have been changes made again it's no no major changes but just to really refine the language and make it uh very much focused on this instructional philosophy um and try to get it just yeah clear so more to come awesome thank you director ranking any questions on this item all right seeing none we will oh sorry go ahead director hanson okay uh i i'm gonna sound like a debbie downer so just apologies in advance um nobody's ever called me debbie because somebody called me wendy once but i've never actually been called debbie um this is so important and my frustration is that i
241feel that it gets lost in the instructional philosophy policy i had to go back and read it out loud with liza and try to pull out the pieces that were the in it you know we did it successfully but my question to you superintendent jones is is this our instructional philosophy and to you dr pedrosa is this our instructional philosophy right here is this i mean there's a lot of words in here and i and like part of me feels like even in the next two weeks could we at least just pare it down and get rid of some duplicative language so that the thing that matters is there um i think we're in an in-between place in terms of personally i think our theory of action is actually our theory of change which is
242targeted universalism and i love that i was starting to see these incredible threads of targeted universalism it wasn't spoken to directly in here but it was it was spoken to um the mtss piece like all these things are starting to align right they're starting to come together and but i had to really like pull it out of here because and i know that you you all did some editing of it but i'm like but not enough like there's because it's not strong enough in terms of of is this our instructional philosophy and then i think we need to push harder to give you more clarity so that these things are just unequivocal these are not questions and i appreciate the point about um having it in having the inclusion i do think it's part of
243our instructional philosophy i don't think it's just that one and i and i went out and i read every instructional philosophy policy i could find most of them were far shorter than ours not all of them but most of them were they were definitely more targeted and clear and so uh there's some strategic abandonment that needs to happen in this policy to to make sure that we're not just letting the excess gobbledygook sit there and not let all this hard work that you all did shine in here so that sorry that's my so vice president hanson when we talk about policy zero zero one zero this is one of our flagship policies we we've even articulated it on the board so we can keep our focus on that we've learned recently that clarity is kindness
244if we need to put some time into being precise about what this is we are willing to do that this is worthy of that and so until we get this pristine i think we can continue to work on it um but this is uh the utmost important policy and so to the extent that we need to do work so that we can get synergy and agreement uh i'm willing dr pedros is willing to to continue to work on that so just i just want to affirm my commitment uh to making sure that this policy is clear uh and unequivocal and we have the commitment in support of aj kravel as well because what you've added with this is like that to me is foundational and then i read that and by the way i just
245today noticed that that was there the things that are just in front of your eyes right sometimes and i'm like i can't even get through it right because it's got the brackets and the you know like what what are we doing here i don't there's some good stuff in there but can you go like yell that from the rift i have heard everybody in this room speak so much more passionately about instructional philosophy um and it's you know especially you clancy the like that's what i want to see on the page and it's something that's consistent with all these other the targeted universalism is baked into that and i do think that that's our theory of yes of change and then and then there's this whole other concept that is probably our theory of action
246which is more about managed instruction or or you know however it is that this gets done yeah we'll do the work that needs to happen to get it to the point um but just that first line it is our moral imperative and i'll just state it is our moral it is our moral imperative to have inclusive and culturally responsive that is our moral imperative right and are we there yet no that is our desire to be there but we have a lot of good educators in schools that are actually doing that work and that's the work we're really trying to lift up as the model for the system so that's work i'll commit to do i'm not i'm still working this summer you know but i believe in what i believe in you i believe
247in you and like the way what you just said i believe in that and that is clarity and focus and i want to be us to be brave enough to be that focused yeah we get it received okay yep okay any other questions wait hold on hold on there's one more question director revere smith go ahead hi thank you sorry about that um i i think it's great i i don't with whether or not it's got good gobbley quicker or more than it needs i whatever we decided to come out with here i just want to bring it back to um again i'm going to champion uh pre-k head start that we are applying it to that too i think we again we usually get tunnel vision of where k-12 so i want to make
248sure that whatever it comes to this it's written or it is in a state that we can it is still also going to be um applicable to our our pre-k our head start students because they are our students too and i just that's all i want to say thank you okay thank you director of air smith and there wasn't a just to clarify there wasn't a question in there right okay thank you um also could we increase the volume for folks joining in i'm finding it really difficult from the diocese to like hear everything that's coming through so thank you for that all right moving on to number 12 awarding refuse disposal and mixed waste recycling collection services bid number b zero three two two four eight directors uh fred podesta assistant superintendent of operations
249this action when we bring it to a vote uh at the next board meeting for action will be to authorize the district to enter into a new solid waste and recycled recycling contract these are the vendors that haul solid waste and recyclable materials away from our campuses the action before you has some blanks because we chose to extend the bid deadline we were concerned with the original deadline when we processed this started that we would not get as competitive a bid environment as we'd like to have so we added three weeks so it'll close um we'll receive bids on friday we expect given the interest in the intervening time we expect we will get bids but it's a kind of crazy market right now for a lot of um services and commodities this contract is
250fairly similar to our previous ones it make some operational changes with regard to the configuration of the containers and amends the fee structure to allow the district to incorporate fees into the into the billing if there are miscollections and constrains the vendor's ability to add fees for um fuel or other issues without a full-blown kind of rate case that they would need to make to us two years after award the contract so happy to take any questions you might have any questions from directors go ahead director referencement thank you so this came through um i'll try to speak a lot or two this came through operations this last month our committee meeting um i i i took uh time during that meeting to talk about our district's composting um for a bit of a program
251or our practices and um because we as you can see in this bar we spend a lot of money on throwing away things and recycling things and um mostly thrown away but anyway um and i wanted i would like to get us to a place where composting a lot more especially our bathroom paper towel waste which i think my lawn supposed to become posting but we're not doing that in every school and every building so um i had a good conversation with uh irina there and um and mr podesta so hopefully we'll be talking more about that so that we can figure out um how to make that happen otherwise this is a pretty straightforward bar uh thanks assistant superintendent podesta with questions okay any other questions from directors all right saying none we will
252move on to item number 13 authorization to extend contracts awarded under the rfp 112041 usda commodity foods processing and commercial pricing for seattle school district culinary services thank you earlier in tonight's meeting on the consent agenda the board approved an action to approve our contracts with u.s foods and cisco and in past years that's been our practice is to get these commodities through a distributor we talked a bit about that earlier but um we given supply chain issues that the district was working through in 2021 we also entered into a variety of contracts with direct providers um to allow us to get commodities uh condiments a variety of food products and this just really gives culinary services flexibility um in designing menus and also to react to supply chain issues when the main two distributors
253who normally would kind of gather these products for us aren't able to deliver that culinary services can go directly to the providers on an ad needed basis so this has been really helpful has kept us um have stability in our program in the past year and we're not seeing the supply chain issues completely going away plus we've seen some cost savings and other advantages to this approach so we'd like to extend these contracts director rare smith do you have anything to offer on this item yeah this came through committee this last month um it sounds like as assistant superintendent explained it um the services have been so you know been adequately provided we want to keep it going for students i think i do have one question though um if i may i'm wondering so
254if all the we do these large contracts obviously you get to get our food do we how much do we working with like local especially fruits and vegetables are we get are we sourcing locally outside of this is that is that encompassing this we are so uh sourcing locally for um a variety of products for some fresh fruits and vegetables for some baked goods and then there are some local products we get through some of these contracts as well as much as possible where providers can provide things to scale for culinary services we're trying to work as um as locally as as is practicable thank you i mean and this isn't quite in line with this bar here but are we doing any like school gardens that we use the foods or any vegetables anything
255from or they are community gardens that we that we source from at all i would i should probably not blurt out an answer there uh i know that topic has come up on a you know on an ad hoc basis but i don't know as a at a programmatic level how how much i really want to say about that that's okay i'm just curious and that's not quite online with this but i can't take the opportunity to ask so yeah maybe we can find out some time that'd be awesome to know otherwise no other questions thanks thank you and seeing no other questions we will now be moving on to item number 14. ospi study and survey grant adoption of the seattle public schools 2022 study and survey thank you to be eligible for state
256capital funding the office of the superintendent of public instruction requires school districts on a six-year basis to prepare a study and survey of their building conditions capacity issues enrollment forecasts and this is data that comes to the board in other formats often as we do levy planning and do other types of work this is a very specific um format that the state uses as they think about how they're going to allocate state uh capital funding um the so-called scap funding um and so we're required to do this uh you'll see that we've prepared information in the states format and have attached um our facility master plan which is kind of our internal way of answering these same questions what are the conditions of our buildings what are our capacity needs and what do we see
257as kind of the road map for long-range capital investment thank you director smith do you have anything to add to this item very much any questions on this item all right right on scene none moving on to item number 15. bex 5 resolution 2021-22-19 racial imbalance analysis from montlick elementary school modernization and edition project thank you again this is another requirement to receive state capital funding as we receive that for school replacements or modernizations um we're required to do analysis with some very prescribed parameters from the state about whether the project itself will could lead to racial imbalance as defined in the washington administrative code we've done that analysis with respect to the mall lake project and don't believe that it will either create or aggravate a racial imbalance with regard to enrollment and this
258action produces the resolution that is required by the state that the board adopt to that that asserts that anything to add director revere smith yeah real quickly um assistant superintendent podesta i think at the committee meeting i asked to have the the whack attached to this bar so if we could still get that um the reference that'll be great to see that and then we can get a little more viewpoint of is this actually approaching um what must be getting out of that so and then we can do that so thank you no other questions thank you director smith any other questions from directors all right um last one number 16 repeal board policy number 5207 harassment intimidation and bullying our new assistant superintendent of hr goodness good evening dr sarah pritchett and as of
259wednesday june 15th interim assistant superintendent for human resources um the board action report being presented tonight would repeal board policy policy prohibition of harassment intimidation and bullying so that it may be replaced with new administrative human resource guidelines governing workplace civility as a part of the background information the board action report contains data related to the typical number of cases the disposition of those cases and the staff hours dedicated to support this work and it can be found beginning at the bottom of page one on the bar to give context for the presentation of this motion replacing the current policy with the human resources administrative guidelines for governing workplace civility would allow us to be moved towards a more efficient and workable process by setting standards for positive workplace conduct and providing the flexibility to
260respond to problematic behaviors that may otherwise not be addressed we can begin to resolve complaints at the lowest organizational level addressing conflict more quickly without the need for lengthier investigations leading to prompt resolution of issues to ensure that adult issues do not continue to interfere with student learning and the work of seattle public schools and finally it is my understanding that director rankiness as the sponsor of this far is also interested in looking at the comprehensive picture of our policies and guidance and working in a partnership in the future to update and align our existing policies and guidance which of course we welcome director rankin is there anything that i may have missed that you'd like to share regarding this bar thank you yes mostly i just for those who were not present when we
261talked about this in the audit and finance committee or and or for a reminder for those who were um the proposal from staff was to repeal this board policy and replace with another board policy and um [Music] uh i i didn't think because this is about navigating conflicts between adults um that seemed to me to be really managerial um and not bored i didn't i was uncomfortable with the idea that the board should have a policy telling adults to behave like adults um when their uh the the state requirement for harassment intimidation bullying policy applies to students and that policy is not changing with this there is an existing one about students because students don't have other rights or protections but adults in a workplace do and so it has always been a little bit
262confusing to me about why we have this additional policy on top of whatever processes may be available to folks through union pathways and or hr and employer pathways i want to be super clear that in no way is is my understanding or intention of this to say that they're you can't you know you're out of options if you're having issues in the workplace um it's uh just that that really is a a workplace staff to staff issue and what we have now is uh you know in addition to from a like a non kind of if you take the humanness out of it the problem is too many complaints are coming to hr and they have to spend a lot of time and energy investigating and and that doesn't tend to yield anything that's a
263problem but the bigger problem to me is that we are not supporting adults in our buildings in creating positive work environments for themselves and therefore learning environments for students by helping people navigate conflict and so um the intention with the administrative replacement is that uh that yuck so right now what we have is you either have like an uncomfortable situation that dwindles for a long time if nobody's willing to uh resolve it unless it meets the level of harassment intimidation and bullying and then it's an investigation where you're still in this environment that's that's uncomfortable to unsafe um what this the intention of this is that it directs conflict to be resolved person to person supervisor to employee um however it may be and calling upon uh hr for mediation if it reaches that level
264and then the other policies in involving um discrimination sexual harassment those all still stand what we're just doing is this policy for prohibition harassment intimidation and bullying as it applies to adults is not a policy that exists in other districts it was at some point created an sps and as we can see from the attached material it's created um an environment where actual conflicts are not actually being resolved and and people are in you know uncomfortable to toxic to unsafe work environments and we need to have you know management address that um so i don't know the you know this is i think director harris said earlier something about a leap of trust and as with any other thing it's words on a page and we we don't have any guarantees about anything um but
265to me it's not appropriate for the board to govern this kind of interaction and it is imperative for the superintendent and staff to um manage conflict and help support employees manage conflict so that is why my my proposal was to instead of having a replacement policy at the board level to actually have it be administrative guidelines and with really clear understanding and expectations for people who have a conflict that needs to be navigated with the un shared understanding that managers are responsible for supporting employees etc etc because this does apply to everybody in sps all employees it's not just about um educators it's it's the whole system great thank you director rankin director harris i'm putting my hand down okay i agree with a lot of what my esteemed and valued colleague director rankin has
266to say and with our new hr assistant superintendent but i have grievous concerns about this without understanding the history as to why this came before us to start with i have grievance concerns with handing over accountability and responsibility to the superintendent to the administrative when we all seven have been elected i think that we could probably all agree that the system isn't working as the way we would like to see it work i i have some concerns and i hope that we are reaching out to outside third party really great uh personnel employment lawyers of whom we have many to reach out to to talk about the unintended consequences again i absolutely respect that the folks that put this policy together in the first place and i was there when some of that happened and
267the folks that are working at changing it have the world's best intents but because we don't see regular updates and dockets etc i have grievous concerns and i hope that we will slow down and that we will ask for outside expertise thank you director of smith thank you um yeah i attended the a f meeting where that this came through um so i i i've heard you know a lot of the the reasoning um and arguments for the position the direction this has gone um and i don't necessarily disagree with it i don't necessarily disagree with the idea of um creating sort of an administrative procedure for this instead of another policy that gets into the details about how these types of conflicts will be managed i do though i do agree though with the
268idea of having something in policy somewhere maybe not like a a civility policy if you want to call it that or or a you know head for staff an adult's policy but somewhere that does say how we should treat each other um because just like we talk about just a free snack code of conduct we talk about how students should conduct themselves um and everything like that so and especially in regards to board members because we're not going to cover it in a lot of we're not we don't have a cba we don't have a union um we don't have other protections so um i don't know again like i just feel like that that could exist in some policy somewhere if it already exists or a new one i think i would be valuable
269to have no further questions or comments thank you thank you director robert smith director summers thank you um i've had the pleasure of visiting a handful of schools in the last few months and then gone into classrooms and something that i'm very proud to see consistently in the classrooms that i visit is a classroom charter that that the students at the beginning of the year with their teacher come together and have an agreement about how they plan to interact with each other and i i really think that that is the kind of the spirit that we should be adopting with this that this is a sense a charter for how we plan to interact with each other so i i'm not overly hung up on exactly is it policy or a procedure but i think
270that there should be an understanding that this is the spirit where we're going towards and um i think in committee we had a really good conversation um about why tactically speaking we do need to repeal that so i i do think that this is a stuff that we need to take um and the second step would be something more about culture or classroom charter and i think that can be saved for a future conversation and i just want to also highlight that director rankin and i had a conversation with staff around some of the different pieces and that was definitely something that came up a clear place where we understand like whose realm some of these things are in and then making sure that we have something codified for board directors as well so those
271are definitely things that are in process um so thank you for lifting that up okay any other questions on the side lit so that was the last item on our introduction agenda we'll now move to board comments friends and family i will remind you that i didn't say 37 and i need to catch a red eye so if we could well because i am young and reckless so if we could no and i have no yes exactly one of those things um okay so more comments we'll go and i don't i don't have a real order so we'll start with director sumritz okay thank you um i want to start by saying much gratitude to the student selection committee i was absolutely blown away by the statements that they made and i really enjoyed talking
272to them one-on-one and what i shared with them is that they are truly process creators they are the very first group of people who have created this process and they should take tremendous pride in setting the establishing that um and you know i am a deep believer that process is important and um along those lines something that kind of came forward for me in the course of this meeting is the um the kind of the utilization of the introduction and action um and the consent agenda and i think the thought that i want to share around this right now is that um you know we've heard some reference to committee restructuring um and i have a concern that there could be an oversight gap so i have really enjoyed the very robust conversations that we've
273had in committee and that always gives me con confidence that we can put something in to intro and action especially when we have timely deadlines that we're trying to meet and so i think my ass with my colleagues as as we're having conversations about restructuring committees that we make sure to keep that in mind that the process of us using the consent agenda or using intro and action that we create an opportunity that there is robust conversation in committee so we can do that and not have an oversight gap the third comment i want to make is around the budget conversation we have today and i have some thoughts about enrollment and as a director we're making really high level decisions about this budget right and we're also having to triangulate that with really granular
274feedback that we're getting from schools i know that i'm getting and my colleagues are all getting emails from staff from family members who are really concerned about the changes to their school budgets and the impact to staffing changes and so i really do see a connection with enrollment and budget and what happens in our school communities and you know i think part of the problem is is that we don't have a overall district objective or goal around girl growing and enrollment and i think there are really critical reasons why we should be thinking about this but i just want to talk about the impact of individual school budgets so i'd like to give the example of a school in my director district which is lipton springs we spent a tremendous amount of capital money giving
275them a new school building with larger capacity but this year when their budget was planned there was a significant decline in projected enrollment and when i talked to the principal there that it made it very difficult for her to welcome students to essentially a brand new school building without having the adequate investment in the staffing and i think that if we had a district-wide objective around growing enrollment that we would create greater stability for our schools um so i'll just leave that at that um the capital projects committee is seeking a new member and the building excellence vex and building technology academics dta capital projects oversight committee specifically i think this is a great opportunity to serve our community and support work on critical public assets the application deadline is july 29th and um please
276contact me if you're interested for details and i'd happy to direct you to the application and finally it is through my time on this committee that i have met jeannette um she is not only a graduate of seattle public schools she is a key member of our capital projects team serving our district for more than 15 years jeanette is retiring in the coming weeks i'm really excited to close her time of seattle public schools with a tour of one of her favorite projects which is magnolia elementary school at our last committee meeting her colleagues shared really fond memories and appreciation for her and i'd like to add my own congratulations a tremendous appreciation jeanette for your long record of public service and on behalf of my fellow directors we wish you a happy retirement thank
277you to director songwrist uh any other go ahead director sergey you make your flight yeah it is late um first of all echo uh director vivian's comments about um the committee that uh led the process to select the new student board members i think they represent what strong adaptive leadership looks like even at a teenage level we can all take lessons from [Music] the leadership skills that they demonstrated to us i wanted to make a couple of comments around i had the fortunate opportunity of attending three graduations last week um and i didn't have any idea what to expect i did not follow the rules so if you heard rumors um that i did not keep the script those rumors are true and i will do that every single year those students don't need boring
278they need an infusion of excitement about what's happening for them i wanted to comment about uh in particular dr jones and i were at a graduation together and we both looked at each other and we said this is what student outcomes focus government this is the result of when adults are focused on student outcomes we saw an action what it looks like and granted it was a small school i recognize that that affords them some opportunities that larger schools may not have but it gave me hope that when we make a commitment to focus on student outcomes we can change the lives of students at a very profound and meaningful and life-long level at this particular school all of these students are going to community college every single graduate and i credit the staff and
279their investment in relationship and um and lots of other things but particularly the relationship because i think these students had a deep deep trust that the adults in their in their building actually were committed to the best outcome possible for them um and so i i feel like i have something to look forward to every year and that's graduations it was really magical and i will say at the last graduation i went to there were two babies that i caught 18 years ago who were walked across the stage and the last time i saw them they were three months old so i had no idea until their parents came up and said do you remember us um so it's like full circle for me and it also is a sign that i'm getting really old
280it's like oh my gosh last time i saw you for three months and now you're off to college um so i appreciate the staffs um wrangling of getting us to graduations letting us know what we needed to do it's not intuitive and i appreciate the investment and the time that they took to ensure that the students had our representation there thank you director sergey director rivera smith let's see your hands up thank you let me put that down um i'll try to be brief i want to just again also thank the student committee the selection committee for finding these three uh amazing candidates now to appear to be um serving with us on the board student student board member representatives um thank you for all that work hope that they will also continue to uh
281serve us in some capacities they are able the suction committee members i mean um because it'd be great to keep having their voice um in our work um speaking of student voice um for myself i can't center student voice and not not somehow acknowledge at least and appreciate the students who came to speak to us today um during testimony and the staff members the teachers who came also um your voice is heard i personally i do support your call for restorative uh work at your school i whatever the outcome of your principal placement or principle uh ends up being there is definitely some restorative work that needs to be done there it sounds like and i i do hope you get that if you hope that happens for you um i appreciate director sean works
282mentioning that we do have the opening on the dex pta oversight committee uh it's a fun group all right so hopefully we get some good candidates there please share a word of that and i'm sure i'm forgetting something but uh i want to keep it brief so thank you all i think this is our last no we have another meeting one more for this school year that's right not the last one so anyhow i hope to see you next time thank you good night thank you very much any other comments store to hers yeah i'll be as quick as i can i don't want you to miss your flight my friend um i i appreciate director sergio's comments about graduation they are indeed magical and they are as different as they can be from each
283other um and i'm glad you don't follow script i have a tendency not to do that as well so uh sisters in arms there uh i have to tell you though that those graduations keep me going for another six months with with some of the tediousness some of the dysfunctionality etc but but i guess when i sit up on the podium and i look out i wonder about all the students that haven't met it made it to graduation and frankly i worry very very much for those students and i and i hope we can figure out an effective way to reach back in and get them to the graduation podium and hopefully on to college or appropriate terrific training programs trades that make living wages um i do frankly support the restorative call at cleveland
284high school as folks know i am in fact a graduate and proud of it and and that's a community that is that is hurting and a recognition of that whether or not you agree with the decisions that are made or not there needs to be a coming together and a making of peace and we need to walk our talk on that and it's brave and it's fraught with peril but i hope that we have the courage to in fact do that um we also need to think about our summer workers there will be lunch ladies and custodians and groundskeepers and construction supervisors that will be working very very hard this summer and in fact they will be working in over 100 degree heat given our climate change issues and and hats off to them and
285what they've done in the last two years in terms of distributing meals is nothing short of amazing and and huge props to them for that the numbers of teachers and staff leaving the district are terrifying to me and as well they break my heart and and i appreciate that some of that is burnout that we don't have a lot to do with given the pandemic etc i am distressed that teachers are leaving for other districts i'm distressed that we're not asking teachers why they're leaving and where they're going nor are we asking families and students why they're leaving and where they're going and i extraordinarily appreciate that we have a very limited bandwidth to collect data and anecdotes but i'd really like to see us give that a try so that we can learn do
286the 360 uh learn our lessons etc etc and and and that's very simplistic and i will appreciate that there are far more brilliant minds at the john stanford center than myself but if we don't communicate with people we don't ask them the why or why we should care about them then we might be deserving some of what we get and and that distresses me because i do believe we're all better than that we did have a very rowdy very lengthy went over an hour uh saturday community meeting and yes we did serve lasagna and yes we sent it home with folks and stay tuned we'll do it again soon and and for those folks that are signing out for this summer be safe enjoy your children and kovit's not gone yet so let's let's be
287very aware thank you so much it's an honor and a privilege director here stuart rankin comments director hanson comments only comment for me congratulations to all of our sps graduates in everything that comes next for you uh seeing that there is no further business on the agenda the meeting stands adjourned at 8 53 pm safe travels president hersey you