001Director Harris: Good afternoon. Welcome to The Seattle School Board board of director legislative meeting for September 4th 2019 first day of school. And before we began. We'd like to acknowledge and honor the first peoples of the Puget Sound territories by acknowledging that we are on land of the Coast Salish tribes. Roll Call. Please. School Board Office Staff: Director Geary here. Director Burke here. Director Harris present Director Pinkham Director Mack here. Director DeWolf. Director Harris: And if everyone who chooses to would like to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance please [pledge.] Given that it is the first day of school we have no student performance today Madam Superintendent. Technical difficulties. The floor is yours. Superintendent Juneau: right. Thank you. And welcome back to school was a great great day. I'll talk about that in a bit.
002But before I start I do want to welcome our new chief legal counsel Greg Narver to our team as Greg is another great steal from the City of Seattle. And we're so fortunate to have his leadership and wealth of experience so thank you Greg for joining us and being a part of the team. We get to have start of the school with the launch of the strategic plan. Today our tens of thousands of students entered our classrooms. Families shared their most valuable resource with us their sons daughters grandkids nieces and nephews. And so we're so honored to have their trust in our system. Each and every day the importance of this work is never lost on me. We help build the hopes and dreams of these families and we have the obligation to do right
003by each of them. Their futures are counting on it. On us as you all know these are the three areas of focus going into this year third grade reading welcoming environments culturally responsive professional practice. We opened the doors to one hundred and four schools across Seattle today all including the middle and high schools have been charged with supporting the work to make certain that all of our third graders are reading at or above grade level by third grade. And this is a big lift for our district. But everybody's been asked to find their place in that goal. A team made up of central office and school staff worked all summer on start of school issues and I want to thank Wyeth Jessee and Fred Podesta and their teams for their collaboration on this project. It's
004a huge huge lift to make sure they're meeting every day and it's just important to know that the silos in central office continue to come down around a lot of different types of work particularly with this team made up of staff from facilities capital transportation H.R. budget school ops CAI all work through a punch list of over one hundred items to make sure all classrooms were ready. All right Nemo they work through a punch list of over 100 items to make sure all classrooms are ready for learning today. Members of this team are also responsible for opening Magnolia Lincoln Ingraham and Queen Anne. Thank you to all who helped create those spaces to ensure that learning could happen. I know a lot of you were at those ribbon cuttings. They were really awesome community turning
005out so happy about their new learning spaces Our wonderful. Oh I gotta do this our wonderful director of nutrition services Aaron Smith. All of you have seen he's been getting some great accolades across the city which means that we continue to hire the very best. He invited Fred Podesta and me to speak to his team as they prepared to greet students. Mr. Smith grounded the nutrition services providers day of training in racial equity and welcoming environments. I shared how important their role is to support our students well-being. And Mr. Podesta expressed his gratitude to them for teaching students how to be and just be like in the lunchroom and with each other which is just as important as knowing how to read. Their work is tied to the strategic plan. All staff across this district
006know that they we must all find our place in that. And so I'm excited to see the changes Mr. Smith has planned for the upcoming school year. As you know our educators returned to work this week. Gail Sehlhorst the arts manager invited me and Parker who is an eighth grader from Pathfinder to kick off the event for all visual and performing arts teachers. Parker was a super hard act to follow. Parker was there to talk about making sure that we are making transgender students visible in our system and the importance of that. Students like Parker continue to speak their truth and we must listen learn and act. The rest of the day was focused on the strategic plan. And third including third grade reading. And throughout the day Ms. Sehlhorst grounded the work in racial
007equity and I just want to thank Gail and her team as well. Now one thing that I was fortunate to do last week was meet Superintendent Forbes Forbes Bottomly. He was the first sales superintendent from Montana who served in Seattle Public Schools and he served from 1965 to 1973. He's 98 years old. According to archives he was confronting similar issues in 1968 that we are trying to address today in 2019. He and some teacher colleagues introduced a publication called the role of racial minorities in the United States. It was a book aimed to correct general ignorance about how people of color participated in and contributed to American society. The book was prepared specifically for the Seattle Post public school district's desegregation program points developed in the book included the fact that an African-American was the
008first to die in the Boston Massacre of 1770 and that 2000 African-Americans fought in the American Revolution. Dr. Bottomly said it is just the beginning but it should be based used by all teachers to supplement and correct the inadequacies of present courses and texts in recognition of the contributions of persons of all minority races and so I just thought it was really phenomenal to sit down with him and hear his story and just reflect on the idea that we are still fighting these same fights and even though we have a bold new strategic plan these issues continue and that we are you know it's that true statement of the arc of history is long and here was a guy who was doing that similar work. And so it was just really nice to hear him
009and sit down with him and the kind of talk with a piece of living history. He has some good stories about Montana and his transition to Seattle as well. Director Harris: Will you be meeting with someone when you're 98. School Board Office Staff: Hopefully I'll be 98 someday and still be able to meet with somebody someday. that concludes my remarks. Thank you. President Harris. Director Harris: Okay we are at board committee reports. However most of our committees reported out just a week ago. But perhaps the chair of A&F can report on the quarterly audit meeting of yesterday. Kind sir. Director Pinkham: That I can. A&F did have their quarterly. Meeting. Last night. Board members. Geary Mack and Harris were in attendance I appreciate that President Harris definitely showing up. She is not on the assigned
010committee but having her there. Be part of the conversation is much appreciated. I want you to know that. During the meeting we did have our. Everybody and our internal auditor present his internal audit update. We did. Say we approve of that but he did notice that notify us that he will make some additions because he still wants to meet some with some of those small cabinet members to look at some issues and but then again as the Audit and Finance Committee. Members we can accept any changes that he makes and he'll present them to us and we'll make sure we do that in the. Proper order that needs to be done. Most of the stuff that we discussed at A&F were actually things that we're looking at closing appreciate all the work of our. Staff
011here at the. John Stanford building. Guess the one thing for me that kind of stood out were still some ongoing issues about site councils PTAs PTOs we're looking at addressing how the communication between those organizations and the schools that they work with go. Making sure transactions are following. Proper protocols and procedures and. I see this hopefully leading to that we do have something that. Schools will know to follow so we can track how funds sometimes flow into schools through those organizations and. Again for the benefit of everyone that's involved. We also had some discussion with. I'm. Sorry. blanking here. The issue that we're looking at. Fiber optics. Yes. And how we try looking at the money coming in there because we do get a credit through the Seattle. City of Seattle and that. Where does
012that credit go to and stuff and. We. Are looking to get some more feedback on that. Hopefully. As soon as the October meeting to see what we can do with and making sure those funds are being tracked. Correctly. Others I. Just. Feel like our again good projects that we're closing out some things that we feel that we need to be addressed and the agenda is online if there's anything that people have questions about. And it's a public document please look at it and make some. Comments. Director Harris: Director Mack. You had some updates. Director Mack: Yeah. I just wanted to quickly touch on we we have our Ops meeting. Tomorrow and the agenda is now posted. There's a lot of construction. BARS coming through because we have a lot of. Work going on which is
013great. But I also just wanted to mention that we're gonna be having an update on the start of school including current enrollment numbers. Et cetera. So that'll be interesting and also an update on. How transportation went and. The initial report that I'm hearing is that. We've had. Less than 1 percent. Late buses. So out of. 600 and some odd buses. Only 7 were late. This morning. And I know there's still which is this is huge success. And I'm super excited about that. It sounds like there. That we're not suffering from the same driver shortage we were before and. I'm sure you know I kept hearing on social media that there's little glitches where maybe people weren't. Catching the stop or you know there's still glitches that folks are dealing with. But my understanding is that
014those are. Getting resolved through customer service and being handled really well some really I just. Major. Shout out to our team for a great start of school with the buses. Additionally tomorrow we're going to be. Talking about. The. Process and timeline for community engagement around student assignment and boundaries. So to give a context for. The timeline for that process for the. Next school year. This one's already adopted but it'll be for the next school year and I think our goal is to adopt that those by November and we're also getting an update on the advanced learning task force and their work and how that ties into the student assignment planning around. Those topics. And additionally just for FYI there is a work session two work sessions of the board related to both of those topics
015advanced learning and student assignment transition plan and boundaries. On September 25th and work sessions are here. They are public that they don't have testimony provided we don't have public testimony at those. Meetings. And also brief update on legislative work that we are starting to talk about our legislative agenda. For the Seattle School District additionally WSSDA is having their legislative assembly both Jill and I plan to be there that's in a couple of weeks on the twenty sixth of September. And so we'll be moving forward on those things. Oh it'll be coming. Our legislative agenda will be coming through the executive committee in the October meeting. So if you're interested in that. That's where it’ll be. Thanks. Director Harris: Director Geary Please. Director Geary: OK C&I’s next meeting will be on September 10th four thirty to
016six thirty. A lot of the same things that we're still trying to finalize. From last spring we're going to be looking at a board action report around the selection and adoption of instructional materials policy 2015. Yay. It's been a long time coming. I'm going to give a lot of thanks to Director Burke for his continued input and work and. To. Former Chief Kyle Kinoshita who up until his very last day here helped to work on that policy and of course current Chief Diane DeBacker So it's been definitely a group effort. To try and address. Many of the. Holes perhaps that we saw in our last adoption. Process so that. Our next one will go more smoothly and everybody will feel that they participated and ultimately ruled upon a process that they believe in. So I
017hope that everybody will take a look at that closely and provide us their feedback maybe last minute but it's it's coming for a vote. So hopefully that will. Be smooth sailing. Special attention items for the meeting will be the Summer Staircase report. As. Director Mack. Indicated the Advanced Learning update and there's been a year and a half of hard work from the advanced learning task force around the recommendations that are being put forth and so there's a lot of good information online to be presented in committee and this is gonna be something that is going to start being we're going to start taking this hopefully taking those recommendations and seeing them put into action in our district in respect for all the work that has gone into that very important issue. I have presented a
018draft of the anti-racism policy to Keisha Scarlett and so at this point I don't want to make it public until we get some input from our expert but that is also moving forward and so I look forward to getting a draft that can be presented to everybody and get input on that our standing agenda items the strategic plan priority high quality instruction learning experiences we'll be talking about third grade reading levels and on track graduation and college and career readiness. I did note that yesterday on KUOW that it was mentioned that as that is part of our new strategic plan. But they seem to think that we weren't clear on our strategies on how to get there. So I hope that we as a district will put forth quickly to the media the strategies that
019I do know we have. With regard to meeting our goal because. We need to be as. President Harris would. Say loud and proud about the work that we're doing on our strategic plan. We'll be talking about graduation. College and Career Readiness and then the instructional material updates will be the science instructional material adoption. How that is going forward. We're moving forward on ethnic studies and since time immemorial and I know it feels like we keep saying the same thing over and over. But in order to do something well we need to do it carefully and they are moving forward. So hopefully we'll see those implemented at our schools. So I welcome anybody to come. Listen. And. Provide feedback to the board through e-mail as you see fit. Thanks. Director Harris: Okay last. The next exec
020committee meeting will be a week from today September 11. Those are from 8 to 10. And at 10 o'clock everybody gets up and leaves. We'll be talking about our SEA. Collective bargaining agreement that will be coming back. We'll be talking about compensation for non-represented staff. We'll be talking about these happy legislative meetings. The timing of them whether or not we reserve spaces for our 20 speakers for particular topics how we identify student comments and whether or not we ask our students to declare that they are their comments not someone else's written comments that they have been assigned to speak of and to address timing so that we don't have this big gap between when we start at 4:15 then we take a very long break and we start our public testimony at five thirty and
021try to give some balance to the difficulties of getting to the John Stanford Center at 4:15 in the afternoon and given our happy construction out front et cetera and also to the folks that have worked here all day and we don't want to keep them here till midnight. So lots of balancing to be done. And then our usual updates regarding community engagement governmental relations strategic plan executive committee work plans etc. and this becomes all the more important as we run into the transition period of the next board that will be seated in December 2019. So of interest and again. In committees is where. Most of the mixing of the recipes is done by the time it gets to the dais Many hands have touched it and thoughtful robust communication sometimes rowdy is had so very
022much encourage your attendance at any community meet a committee meeting and it's a fascinating process. If if you appreciate public policy we do not have a student give us comments this evening. So now we move to roman 6 business action items A consent agenda. May I have a motion for the consent agenda please. Director Burke: I move approval of the consent agenda. Director DeWolf: Second Director Harris: Approval of the consent agenda has been moved and seconded do directors have any items they would like to remove from the consent agenda. This is just a simple request not debatable Director Pinkham. Director Pinkham: Yes. I for one actually given that one of them was saying it's updated since introduction like hopefully that we can share those updates under Number 6. BEX 5 and distressed school grant approval
023of four actions related to the West Woodland addition project and then down below says updated since introduction. I think it'd be good for us to share those updates rather than be on. The consent agenda and then we do have some commenters public testimony. Item number four the Loyal Heights. Elementary school modernization project. But the other ones. I'm. Not sure how to approach this because they just say school construction modernization and addition projects and that can include just about all that's on the consent agenda from item number. 4 through. 7. Director Harris: Would it would it assist you in making a choice to remove from the consent agenda. To hear from Chief Podesta. Director Pinkham: Yes I assume so. So right now I would say items 4 and 6 but then I'm concerned about number. Speaker
024number two. Director Harris: Sorry to put you on the spot. Chief Podesta but I think that. A few words might help us here. Director Pinkham: Four and six. But I was talking about Speaker number two. Just the schools construction modernization in addition projects and then all these are modernization additions projects that are listed in consent. Director Harris: I don't know that he can determine the intent of something so broad from a speaker. Director Pinkham: Yeah. Right now I'm just requesting number four and six. If that may be enough. Again I don't know what the speaker is going to address. Fred Podesta: Modified since introduction. We did talk about it the commissioning report. Maybe. And that's I think something the speaker wants to speak about. So I don't know what to say about that. And I
025have to confess the revision to item six since introduction escapes me and I don't see it on the BAR. Director Harris: Well you've got time then again. it’s been. moved. Fred Podesta: Yeah. if it’s been moved. We'll talk about it then and I'll try to chase that down. Director Harris: OK. Can I have a motion for the consent agenda as amended with numbers 4 and 6 pulled off. Director Burke: Move approval of consent agenda less items four and six. Director DeWolf: Second. Director Harris: All those in favor of the amended consent agenda please signify by saying aye [all say aye] it has been moved and passed number four and six will be. Inserted at C. And again my colleagues I'm sure will remind me if I forget. OK so time check. Here it is 4:40
026public testimony starts at five thirty. Let's go ahead and have our board director reports please. Who would like to go first. Director Mack: I think I had my coffee today. Not quite ready but. Well actually I'm just really excited about the start of school and it feels like it went really really well. My own kiddos buses were on time and kids were happy and yay everybody's back to school. So a very exciting day. I have put in requests for meetings for community meetings. Meeting rooms for my community meetings one in a couple weeks and one in October. I hadn't scheduled them for a long time. I have to wait to find out if I actually get the rooms before I post it. But those will be forthcoming. I have a Facebook page that you can
027search and I'll post there it'll also be on the board's Web site. Once I get it locked down and I just wanted to again thank everyone involved in the the the four buildings we opened those ribbon cuttings were really amazing. It was really wonderful to be a part of that. See all of the alumni that came back from for Lincoln. That building is just amazingly renovated it's it's wonderful. So thank you again for everyone. And hopefully you get to take a look at the pictures if you weren't present for the ribbon cuttings and. That's all I have. Happy started school. Director Harris: Next up is Director Burke. Director Burke: With a short time between meetings there's also short comments. So I want to begin by celebrating the Lincoln Lynx. Yay. Not wearing a jacket today
028not wearing a tie. Just go in with the sweatshirt and kind of throwback. That was I've had the sweatshirt for a while and don't get to wear very much and you really want to celebrate that. So 2 ribbon cuttings Magnolia last Thursday Lincoln yesterday both buildings are absolutely amazing they're gorgeous. They include a historical component I was actually walking through Magnolia and I was thinking this smells like the intersection of old house and new building and it just made me smile because I'm kind of an old house person but also love new. So I want to shout out to our artists and craftsmen that have made those projects possible. We are. Grateful for everyone throughout the system from our community through our you know our our educators and students that fill the halls but the
029people that use their hands and and turn raw materials into those masterpieces are such to be commended and I'm excited for our work around the student and community workforce agreement to find more ways that we can put our students in those environments and helping with those experiences. I want to thank Superintendent Juneau for in your report. I hadn't realized some of the outreach you had done I just want to say thanks for connecting with the nutrition services team because I think the intersection of the adult relationships and sharing meals is something that can't be underestimated. So I really appreciate you making that direct leadership connection with them. Start of schools just based on the indicators in my email inbox. This has been since starting my term the. Knock on wood most uneventful cleanest fewest bumps
030start of schools. And so I want to celebrate that publicly from the leadership all the way through the system families community. It's a big lift. And I look forward to hearing at the what Director Mack had spoken about the quantitative data about start of school coming up in the work session. We had a wonderful meeting actually earlier today that. Director Mack and I had with with district staff around the advanced learning task force and their preliminary results are preliminary recommendations. And I think that for any of my colleagues that have the opportunity to meet. I highly recommend that. This is a lead into our September 25th work session on next steps and policy conversations. And I think that the it was a really rich discussion about how we serve our advanced learners in their attendance
031area schools but also how do we not disrupt the experiences that they're having now in the existing system and there’s a. There's a lot of challenge a lot of potential polarity around there. And those conversations are going to take all of us really leaning in on them. So keep your eyes on that one and in closing. Heads up about an exciting event that's in the planning stages with SPS team. This sort of speaks to what you had inquired about. What is what is the I’m not sure how you phrased it but the the specificity around our strategies for college and career readiness. This is a subset of that a career connected learning partnership summit this week. Many of us have been to events that have been hosted by other organizations around career and technical experiences
032or worksite learning experiences that are being championed or the heavy lift is being carried by our partners. And we're grateful for that a huge amount of work is also happening here in the district to build those into common systems. And this is our opportunity to celebrate that to invite partners collaborators educators to hear about the common goals between our K12 system and what's in post-secondary. And to talk about our strategies and initiatives multi-year to get more student experiences in CTE and in worksite learning and to really specifically ask our partners outside the district to help us lift those students put them to work in summer jobs help us fund programs offer volunteer staff to help our existing programs sustain to provide material supplies and operating either funding or donations of materials. So there's a lot
033of different places that the district has intentionally built into its outreach strategies so that multiple different organizations can find a way to connect. I think probably all of you as directors and many of you in the public have had that experience of the question How can I help. And the answer is I'm not quite sure. And so the focus of one of the focus areas of this summit is to figure out let's answer that question this is how you can help sign up here and help our students and help our system some super excited about that likely end of October. Still working out exact dates locations more information as that becomes available. And then in closing just to restate my my meetings for the rest of my director term have been set now September 14th.
034Fremont library 3 to 5 p.m. October 12th Greenwood library 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and November 9th. Greenwood library 3 to 5 p.m. and other directors as well as staff and obviously the public community are welcome at any and all of those. Thank you. Director Harris: Next up is Director DeWolf. Director DeWolf: Thank you President Harris. and I also wanna make sure. Just first as a citizen the Chippewa — Cree nation of Rockyboy Montana just to illustrate that I am grateful to live and serve here in a city that is the ancestral homeland of the Duwamish people the Muckleshoot nation and the Suquamish Nation. We acknowledge them as custodians of this land since time immemorial and as guests and for many of the folks here as settlers on this land we extend our deepest gratitude
035and respect to their ancestors and elders past present and future but also want to just extend some gratitude to the community and SPS for working to bring a resolution to Bailey Gatzert. I'm excited that our conversations and community meetings this summer yielded positive results for the students families and the whole Gatzert. And Yesler community and also really excited for Dr. Bruno Cross as the permanent school leader at Seattle World School. I know that that community has been yearning for a permanent leader and so really grateful that Dr. Bruno Cross was selected and really excited for his leadership there. As you know we did have a very busy summer as kids were out for this. The summer we were still busy in our D 7 appointment process and so I'm looking forward to next week's final
036community meeting here on Wednesday to do our community forum for the remaining three candidates for to succeed. Betty Betty Patu thank you at Rainier Beach and then also just wanted to elevate the great work from last school year on our student and community workforce agreements applications for the task force are due by this Friday at 6 p.m. and I excuse me this Friday September 6 at by 5 p.m. and so I look forward to seeing who's looking forward to working with us on the student and community workforce agreements here at Seattle Public Schools. I am currently working on school visits for the 2019 —2020 school year so we'll have some more updates as we as we get to go visit our schools in District 5 and the last thing. Just want to make sure we
037elevate particularly as we head into a new school year students and community particularly in our emails and and other places have been continue to advocate that we prioritize the completion of policy 2015 which is our vehicle for bringing ethnic studies to Seattle public school so I hope we begin moving on this critical piece of the puzzle. And then lastly just wanted to read a story by one of our students from Nathan Hale High School her name is Rachael Smit Schmidt. However you say it. It's called Speak Now and and it goes like this. My words my words are too much for your flimsy rules too much for your confining boxes. My words spill out of my mouth. Keeping up with my Amtrak of a brain my word speaks truth to me. To me of me
038for me not for you to judge or critique for I spent so long with my mouth shut silent keeping my thoughts contained in that box society made. But I can't do it anymore. So you see saying Rachael be quiet means nothing to me. I have the right to speak my mind for you do not know what I've been through the thoughts and emotions life I had hidden away snatching the days I should have used to go to carnivals and daydream on hills. The years I lost to my disease never saying what needed to come out of this mouth this big mouth my mom telling me to be quiet in church. For the preacher is giving me words. No I won't be quiet anymore. I deserve you to hear me speak not for your benefit but
039for the respect of my words. No. The appreciation of my words. No. The wild wind in your hair that is the words coming out of this mouth. I need you to hear me this time in the midst of mania and out the other side hear me speak then only then will I listen to you. And again this was Rachel Schmidt from Nathan Hale High School. Director Harris: Director Geary. Director Geary: Welcome back everybody to our new school year. I'm excited to sit here for the final three months of my term. It's hard to contemplate and every board meeting is going to be a reminder that it's one of my last. So I'm just gonna be really centered on what an honor it is and really appreciate these last three months. Had a great summer took
040time off really looking forward to seeing how we move forward on our strategic plan. I'm really hoping that we share that news across our district and into every building and into every person who continues to the extent that I feel that the work is not being understood in our city as fully as it can to the extent that I hear people talk about our district and I feel they're talking about a district that I don't recognize. I think it's important that we all try and get out there and tell the world about the work that we're doing to focus on our students farthest from educational justice. And so whether I sit on this board or afterwards I'm going to continue to do that. I'm excited. I did mention the. Anti-racism policy and I'm excited about
041that. I'm excited to have something to focus on and it seems strange to have so little time and be bringing something so big. But on the other hand it took that long to understand what we're doing and for us as a district to be even ready to have that conversation. I think it's gonna be a beautiful dovetail to 0030 and our strategic plan and it's going to make us even focus in more closely in terms of how our systems may be tripping us up in spite of ourselves. And so hopefully we will put in place processes by which we can really inspect them. Once they are identified be it structural institutional or personal racism so that we can hold ourselves accountable to the work that we have said that we want to do because it's
042really hard work. It's much easier to put on paper much harder to address when barriers are exposed. So I invite everybody as we move forward in that process to share their thoughts and feelings about that. So that's going to be my focus. I think for the last few months that I'm here that and getting and moving forward on the advanced learning task force and I want to share some history around that because I was sitting at one of the meetings one of our work sessions where the question was once once again raised what's happening to advanced learning. And that was early in our tenure and it was really clear to me even after a few months that given the amount of community input that is necessary the care the thoughtfulness getting voices making sure that
043we're getting voices from all the different corners that it wasn't gonna be something that this board was going to do from the dais on our own. And so I have to say that I'm really proud that once it was identified that that was a really really big body of work that needed to happen and didn't necessarily align or it wasn't so obvious at the time how it aligned with some of the equity work that we were trying to do. And yet I think many of us in our guts realized that there was a huge intersection and that until we addressed that advanced learning we were going to continue to come up against a stumbling block in our conversations and how our district operated. And so we did that. We we allowed a task force to
044be put into place and do its work very carefully over a year and a half. And that's an immense amount of work and time. And so I just give that history because it was identified as something that had to happen people wanted something to happen right then and there. And we recognize that that's not how anything that happened under that system would not take. And we allowed this to happen and we've had our input on the advanced learning task force over many many months. And so that's another piece that I'm very proud of in and hope to see come to fruition before we who started that process find ourselves off this board. So I share that I will continue to have my Tuesday morning coffee meetings at Zoka the one on Blakeley behind the University
045Village from eight to nine thirty this month I will do be able to do two of them one on September 10th and one on September 24th should I have to cancel for personal reasons. I will post that on Facebook and I will also post events for those on Facebook. There's usually a pretty good crowd of people these days. And really great conversations around education. So I invite everybody to come sit down. I hold mine on Tuesday mornings for those who don't have availability on the weekends. It's the one time during the week pretty regularly that you can have access to a school board member. So again welcome to the new school year. Director Harris: Director Pinkham you’re up. Director Pinkham: All right. Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ and Táˀc kulé-wit I. Guess first off just a welcome to everyone
046back to school hope [indistinct] the high schools and middle school elementary except for kindergarten right kindergarten start next week that they had a good start to their school year. I was with my daughter. Yesterday as we had orientation for the Nathan Hale so she's now and Nathan Hale Raider and is ready to start playing basketball is what she wants to play. So yeah good. Best of luck to everyone. Good job. To the transportation that we saw that. wow 1 percent. Only 7 buses. [indistinct] That was morning at 6 but still for us to see that on the first day of school I think it's just amazing. That we're making that kind of an improvement getting the. Students in school on time and because I think as one of our. People have said that if we
047can't get our kids at school on time. That's the first and foremost we need our kids in school learning so thank you to the Transportation Department because. I think that success is on you and unfortunately I also [indistinct] that when things don't work well we will be looking so a [indistinct] Congratulations. Also congratulations to the new schools that started. Rick now has his high school in his district Ready and rolling and. Showing the paraphernalia off All right. And I wish I could have made it out to some of the ribbon cuttings but sorry I wasn't able to make it but congratulations to those schools as well. Also the Urban Native Education Alliance is kind of doing their annual Billy Mills event and this will be on Sunday. September 8th from 2 to 4 at Greenlake
048a. Good chance for people to go out there. Billy hasn't been running the last few years because he still kind of recovering but. Man for. He just looks fantastic. [indistinct] two to four. Greenlake they meet up just right by outside the community center. That's at Greenlake and. They have a fun run walk with them. So just one trip around the Greenlake and those that run run those that rather just take their time walk But it's just a good time for community. They plan to hand out some school supplies as well to our new returning school students so I encourage people to come out there. I can't make it. I've got a wedding to attend to this weekend on the other side of the mountains. Also I acknowledge Nancy Bob. She was actually here prior to
049our starting. She is the one that helped with the sign that we see behind us and that's going up at international schools. And I told her one goal is hopefully get this sign up at all schools all 104 schools so we do acknowledge that you know what land we're on. And I do appreciate that. That we’re saying that and I go to other meetings now I'm starting to hear it more often that people will start their meetings acknowledging the land of the Duwamish the. Suquamish or wherever they may be that this is becoming almost. Common rhetoric that we're hearing. And I appreciate that Seattle school public schools does this as well. So thank you for doing that. I still have to schedule my community events but once I do we'll get them posted as soon
050as possible. I will have one sometime in September and definitely October and November. And I am going to try to make it out to at least to Rick's some of Rick’s meetings as well since we're so close together and some of Jill’s. But then I can't make 7:30 coffee so. Definitely some of President Harris's as well. Oh actually maybe that should be a goal of mine to make every one of my fellow board member’s community meetings at least one year well before this ends. All right. Lasagna. No. But that's all I have Qeˀciyéẁyéẁ Thank you and everyone. Welcome back to school. Director Harris: Okay This meeting. Is truly about gratitude. And. First of all thanks to my colleagues sitting up here I might not agree with you but I love you to death. Community meetings
051September 28 three to five Southwest Branch Library October 19. High Point library. 3 to 5 November 16th Delridge library. 3 to 5 in September you have a one out of two chance of getting lasagna. And if I don't get there in September you're eating lasagna in October and all are welcome. We are rowdy we are thoughtful and we welcome you. Thanks to the good folks working in this building and all one hundred and four we've agreed we have agreed now that 1 0 4 is standard language OK no more guessing. So says the superintendent an incredible amount of work has been done over the summer I think that folks have a misimpression that the lights are dark here and that's that's absolutely not the case. And to see our four rehabbed buildings to have start
052of schools this morning. Superintendent Juneau and I and the mayor and the police chief and council member Herbold and Seattle Housing Authority Director Andrew Lofton welcomed our students at West Seattle Elementary and there was a pony to boot and a deejay and it was a huge celebration and it it made me feel ever so hopeful for the year. Then I went up to see lunch lady Dorie at Denny International middle school and I was promised a cookie and Aaron hear me clearly it was not a home bake cookie it was a cookie out of a freezer in a plastic wrapper and that woman can make incredibly good cookies. So as soon as we can bring back scratch baking and the smell of cookies in our cafeterias I will be forever grateful and I'll get my
053food handler's permit so I can help bake them a huge thanks to our Seattle Education Association members who voted on this contract who negotiated since May and a huge thanks to our Seattle Public Schools staff who also lost their summer and put in probably several hundred hours working to an agreement that we can live with. Now it does take down a rainy day funds so if you come calling bring money with you because a couple of years from now it's gonna hurt like heck and I don't frankly expect a whole lot of help from the legislature. But if you know any legislators let them know we're coming because we are not funding the way we need to. And in this world class city and to director Burke's comment that we have extraordinary partners in this
054city in this world class city let's do a full court press for folks to open up their checkbooks because they'll be hiring our graduates and they need our graduates to be ready to go. And a huge thanks to everyone around. And notice I didn't say up and down the food chain because I don't live in an up and down food chain. Thank you to the crossing guards to the cement mixers to our teachers to our senior staff to our instructional assistants to our administrative assistants. We can't do it without everybody pulling the same direction on these oars and our work is too important not to be working as a team. A couple of other comments no doubt folks have listened and read about the 20 minute lunchtimes that the state auditors office has tagged. And
055as the superintendent of public instruction has tagged we made a lot of progress a couple of years ago. It'll be interesting to see where we stand on that and that's again one of those individual one hundred and four buildings leadership principals large and in charge and trying to do best practices. If they don't eat they can't learn they don't eat healthy they can't learn. The advanced learning task force recommendations are attached to the Friday memo I encourage you to look them up and start giving us your input and a special thanks to Chief Podesta who listened to the requests and pleas from the West Seattle community who was grandfathered in on highly capable and we got us a school bus and it's hugely appreciated. And Fred your reaching out and answering emails to constituents. I
056bow down. Thank you. That's the kind of sensitivity and as superintendent Nyland used to say fly to the ball that is hugely appreciated. Again it's an honor it's a privilege. We've got great work to do when we leave the house at our house we say carpe diem which is supposed to mean seize the day. We yell and say seize the fish. I love you. We're taking a break until five thirty until public testimony and there will be no more breaks because we're gonna get out of here early tonight.