School Board Meeting Date: March 2, 2016 part 1

001it is now 4:16 so I'm calling our meeting to order want to welcome everyone who's here today this is March 2nd one of our regular meetings um so uh Miss fod can you please do a roll call please director blanford here director Burke here director Gary here director Peters here director Pinkham here director Patu here if everyone please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to The Republic which we stand one nation under God indivisible of liberty and justice for all now I'm going to uh it's our recognition and I'm going to turn it over to superintendent Island who will now present the recognition of outstanding staff all right actually I'm going to invite uh our uh executive directors uh to the podium and

002they're going to do the recognitions we have uh recognized semi-officially many of these individuals uh in our comments before but we haven't invited them uh to come to the board meeting uh so that uh the board could actually see them in person and hear a little bit more about the background for uh the recognition that the individual staff members have received so we're uh delighted to uh have a lot of great staff in uh Seattle and these individuals have been recognized across our region across our state and across our country so I'll start with uh Kim even good evening good afternoon my name is Kim Whitworth I'm the executive director of schools and I serve the Northeast region of Seattle the first um staff member that we're going to recognize is Miss Helen Jung who

003is the principal at Olympic Hills Elementary Helen has has received the American Association of school administrators scholarship award that's given to acknowledge someone who provides exemplary leadership on behalf of students in public education we have some very strong evidence for Helen receiving this award Olympic Hills this past year was celebrated for having the highest growth of any Elementary School in the state and Olympic Hills has great staff members that's without a doubt but I don't believe they could have done this work without Helen's leadership and there are several things that Helen does to do this she is a master teacher and learner she takes the stance alongside of her staff and she's very specific about what she wants um the group to achieve she has systems in place that allows this work to happen it's

004all done with students in mind first more importantly she has the moral imperative to do this work she believes that every student can be successful if the adults are doing the right thing and she's very clear about what the right thing is sets High expect for everybody and then supports them to get there and just to end on a note she's super smart and has a wicked sense of humor so this is a welld deserved award so I also have the second award Jennifer heler there's Jennifer so Jennifer is an art teacher at exin middle school and she won the middle school art educator of the Year award one of the things that um her principal said was that in order to ensure each and every student is successful we need to know what it

005is that they're good at and what they want to be doing and so that we're matching their interest and this is something that Jennifer does very well she is a superb instructor first and foremost and guides each student to be successful she also takes the time to get to know students and then structures her class so that not only are students learning about art they're being able to express themselves and really tailor what they're doing one of the things that I appreciate about Helen is um sorry Jennifer is that we we made a change a few years ago saying all children will be successful we're selling we're Ser um serving all of our students to each and every student and I think Jennifer really exemplifies that um that philosophy that it's each and every student

006individually you want to go next so we don't have to dance I'm going to go ahead and do my third one which is for Christina Bita who is uh a teacher at Hazel wolf uh K8 so Debbie Nelson is one of our principls who's who's been uh given the Foster award last year and is held in high esteem by her colleagues and staff here what Debbie will tell you is the work that she's done at Hazel wolf would not have happened without Christine Bita Christine is sincerely truly in so many ways her right hand she um is a partner she helped create the program she was hired for her knowledge of environmental science but more importantly because she was an Innovative thinker she's a leader among teacher colleagues providing guidance support and professional development Debbie

007will tell you that Christine is a consumate team player and partner and without this work it couldn't have happened and so we we really appreciate Christine's um work at Hazel wolf good afternoon my name is Sarah pritchet I am the executive director for the central region of Seattle I have the honor tonight of talking about Jennifer lungren who is an art teacher at Mont Lake Elementary School she is the elementary teacher art educator of the year she is a phenomenal art teacher I've had the opportunity to be in her class a number of times and she makes you want to do art she makes you want to stay there the energy in the classroom is amazing um the work that she does with the students at Mont lake is second to none she finds something

008for every single student to be able to do well um principal Melissa gray said that she's absolutely amazing she has a way of making all kids feel successful whether they are Naturals at art or not she makes our school beautiful if you ever have have the opportunity to go to Mont Lake Elementary you will see the amazing artwork um that she does she brings an energy and a spirit to the building again that is phenomenal and I appreciate the fact that she is here and she was working in a school that my daughter also attended and and she again is just an outstanding art teacher and um I am so happy for her all right good evening everyone uh Kelly aramaki I'm the executive director of schools for the Southeast region have four Awards to

009give out tonight the first one is for Marca Ventura uh Marsha is a 2015 paty Collins Award winner for excellence in education environment and Community uh at Maple Elementary School Mara strives to connect her fifth grade students to their community and environment uh since the damus river runs right through their neighborhood in which their students live and play uh she developed a comprehensive teaching plan around the interaction between humans and the environment I was recently in her classroom and uh I I can say I've Not Seen kids so excited to be learning about social studies and history and things like that it was just great to see the kids raising their hands looking at the maps and being so engaged so congratulations to Mara uh the second award I'm happy to uh to announce is

010for miss Karen Andrews the principal of inter agency academy uh she is the recipient of the 2015 Crosscut courage award for Public Service uh Karin was honored at Benoy Hall at the annual courage Awards breakfast this past October Karen leads the inter agency staff in their inspiring work with Seattle's most impacted uh and marginalized students and though uh the staff continues to grieve the tragic loss of 11 of their students last year uh to violence uh they are working together to move forward to address retaliatory violence and to address the trauma needs of all of their students uh here's something that their uh one of her teachers says about her Kar leads by example there's nothing that she won't do you watch her passion and her commitment to the kids and it inspires you it's

011definitely her in front but she'll be the first to tell you I'm right here next to you we all stand beside her congratulations to K all right the next uh the next award is for Miss Mia Williams the principal of Aki Kos Middle School uh in January uh Mia Williams uh was uh participated in the panel discussion at the White House in the White House in Washington DC uh Mia was invited by the Johns Hopkins University everyone Graduate Center uh to share her experience and expertise using early warning systems at Aki uh Student Success mentors and enhanced uh student support systems to reduce chronic absenteeism she's also recognized for her work around my brother's keeper um Johns Hopkins University is also recognizing Mia for her dedication and Powerful leadership that she provides not just for

012Aki Kos but also uh for the schools in the region especially the elementary schools that feed to Aki uh so congratulations to Mia and then the last uh award that I'm going to give out tonight is for uh Miss Sandra Scott the principal of Hawthorne Elementary School uh Hawthorne Elementary under the leadership of Sandra has been chosen to receive the prestigious John's Hopkins University uh national network of partnership schools award this is the first time any individual School in Seattle has won that award every year the national network of partnership schools recognizes districts and school schools that demonstrate excellence and continuous progress in applying research-based approaches to implement goal oriented programs of school family and Community Partnerships and if you've ever spent any time at hawthor elementary or talked to any of the parents in

013the school uh you would see the impact of her leadership around Community engagement parent involvement so congratulations to [Applause] Sandra good afternoon John Haik I'm the executive director for the northwest region um Dei fontleroy and I started working together about three years ago and when she took over the Reigns Dei over there stand up Dei that she said that um and while she was a rookie at that time to being a principal uh clearly her work has been recognized not just at John Stanford International where she's at um but uh throughout our region and now nationally um Dei in January was one of 20 principles Nationwide who was asked to come back and meet with the Secretary of Education John King Jr uh to talk about the New Essa uh policy that was going into

014place um so we're recognizing de tonight for that and giving her a big round of applause good evening Shauna Heath executive director of curriculum and instruction tonight I have the privilege honor of uh recognizing Lori Dunn She was recently named the shape Channing man outstanding physical education administr administrator of the year uh Lori has been in Seattle public schools for more years than I can count and she's been the man manager of PE for that time she's been honored with this top award for physical education administrators the Society of health and physical Educators shape is the n nation's largest membership organiz ization of health and physical education professionals Lori was announced as the Channing man outstanding physical education administrator of the Year Lori was given this award and I can say this with complete confidence

015because of her unfailing commitment and her tireless efforts to ensure all academic assurances are met for every single student in Seattle Public Schools so Lori will you stand up so we can give you a round of applause all right I'd like to invite all of our recipients to come forward and I'd invite the board to come down front so that we can congratulate them and uh do a photo [Music] our little certificat thank you thank you so much [Music] I don't know such they always do this they always make a huge um well if we can get them to condense and get the board up on the Second Step what do you think in the back SP nice smiles thank you all right thank you for coming tonight so that we could recognize uh each

016of you for your good work in the schools appreciate uh very very much this is uh classified employee month and uh have a proclamation that I'll read in a minute we have 2600 of our I don't know how many employees we have a lot uh of our employ Es are classified uh employees and uh we certainly can't do the work without them in terms of our operations work safety maintenance property Transportation nutrition and a whole lot more Proclamation reads uh the the school board uh believes in and supports the education of our youth and recognizes classified employees as a backbone of our public education system School Board values the classified employees their work with students Educators parents volunteers business partners and community members board recognizes that classified employees uh support the smooth operation of offices

017safety and maintenance of buildings and property Safe Transportation Healthy nutrition and direct instruction of students Schoolboard understands that our community depends on and trusts our classified employees to serve students believes that all classified employees with their diverse talents and true dedication Nur our students throughout their school years School Board encourages all members of our community to join in this Subs servance recognizing the dedication and hard work of our classified employees so again we thank our great uh colleagues and Educators and support staff uh for the good work that they uh do throughout the district couple of other recognitions uh Phyllis compano uh vice president of sea has been honored uh with the UW women's center women of Courage award uh she was recognized uh Saturday night at a University of Washington uh fundraiser event and

018uh certainly uh join in recognizing uh her work and just today uh we got an email just a few hours ago from OSBI uh saying that uh Cleveland had been uh named as a stem Lighthouse school they announced that uh Cleveland was one of six uh five schools and one District that would be uh new stem awardees they receive $20,000 uh and that helps them with their work and it gives them the opportunity to Mentor other schools across the state so uh congratulations to Cleveland couple of uh current current issue items uh first and foremost our successful Levy passage 72% yes vote for our operations Levy and for our uh BTA Levy so um can't say enough for our community uh for their support for um our School's First uh Levy Campaign Committee we can't

019campaign as a school district but we obviously need the money in that uh that represents about 25% of our operating uh funds for everything that we do in schools every day and then the BTA portion pays for uh remodeling our older schools and helping add some much needed uh new classroom seats so um in my role as superintendent I participated in I'm sure I could count them but a lot of them we used to have to do them every year uh and everywhere else that I've worked uh that's meant well over a hundred meetings for me personally uh and I certainly contributed a small part to the levy campaign uh kind of before and after working hours uh to do my part but uh it's just such a gift to have a dedicated Community organization

020uh many of them having served for many many many campaigns uh to do that uh great work I would mention that uh sea was uh uh Far and Away the hugest uh that's that a word uh our biggest campaign uh contributor uh and uh was there early was there late made phone calls and contributed to the uh to the outcome some budget updates uh we continue to be in what I call for budget and in many other areas uh in the radical middle so um in the past uh few years we have seen some increase in school funding from the legislature as they've paid for things like Transportation uh and materials things that we were already paying for and that they just finally got around to paying for those were green dollars and that we'd

021already made the commitments and they came through with the money and so we had a little bit of new money the commitments that they're filling now are class siiz commitments and those come with strings attached so we get added staff but we have to by added staff so we're going to see uh quite a bit of additional staff at the primary level but no real additional money anywhere else uh we are fortunate in that we have more Levy money um but virtually all of that goes for the uh salary agreements that we've made with our employees and trying to keep competitive wages when the state has been unable to uh meet those uh salary requirements over several years during the recession so what we'll see in schools is we'll see more teachers at the primary

022level and as we've talked about before the good news is we get more teachers the bad news is we need more classrooms and so uh as we know we're scrambling to find those um we are setting aside a little bit more funding for either counselors or social workers I think that's a net of about seven FTE across the district lap funds uh previously have paid helped pay for all day uh kindergarten that was not covered under the state's commitment to all day kindergarten so the state's now covering the all day kindergarten that frees up lap dollars lap dollars are we're able to Target to students who are not reading by third grade so this is kind of a dut hole for us in that uh title $1 go to schools that have the highest concentrations

023of uh needy students and what that means is that we have some schools that have uh a large enrollment but a small percentage of I'm not saying that right they might have like 30% uh Title One eligible students but then they wouldn't qualify for Title One funds because they don't meet the threshold so the lap dollars ow us to give some funds directly to the students that uh have uh those needs even though they're in schools that don't qualify for title one we are seeing a challenge in the Southeast for our high school enrollments we continue to try to balance uh Garfield uh Cleveland rineer Beach and Franklin uh but the overall enrollment is uh decreasing in that part of the city increasing elsewhere in the city and so that's uh causing challenge for us

024and then um because of the way that we got the state funding uh the state funding uh as I said comes with strings attached so I think the the the advertising was uh 17 to1 and the legislators did figure that out that 17 to1 doesn't mean 17 in a classroom because you have to have planning time for the teachers uh so the converted that to 20 to1 and they said okay we'll give you the teachers and we expect you to have 20 students in every classroom so that's going to drive us crazy over the next few uh weeks and into the fall and that that means that if you happen to get 35 kindergarten students uh that probably works out fine you have two teachers and you're less than 20 in both of those if

025you go to 45 kindergartens then if we don't add the additional teacher the state will say we didn't meet the requirement so we're trying to figure out what that means uh we're fortunate in that we have more Staffing than most of our neighbors and we're trying to figure out how to comply with the legislative uh requirements so you'll probably start hearing about that some from schools in that uh it means a lot of multi-graded uh classrooms in order to meet uh that legislative requirement mayor Summit uh is underway uh they've got an advisory team put together uh director Patu and I had the opportunity to be at the meeting uh this week Chris Carter from Mercer Phyllis compano from sea Kristen Bailey Fogerty from exin and Karen Andrews from inter agency uh are on the

026advisory team and uh uh they said once a month but then they talked about having meetings more frequently so it sounds like uh a lot of meetings over the next few uh weeks and months with a ending date scheduled for July middle of middle to end of July they are having focus groups coming up I think maybe about 20 of those uh scattered out through the month of March many of those will be in our schools and then uh there's a summit on the 30th of April um that will call people together from throughout the community so uh was described as uh focusing primarily on the uh opportunity Gap and um so good group of people and should be exciting work over the next uh uh few months smart goal two is closing the opportunity

027Gap uh Schoolboard held a work session on that uh recently uh would report uh that on Saturday here uh we launched uh some additional schools who are uh setting up race Equity teams racial Equity teams that was part of our partnership agreement with sea uh director Blandford was here to give a keynote with regard to critical race Theory thank you very much uh Helen young who we just uh recognized was here to talk about closing the opportunity Gap at uh her school Olympic Hills and uh a lot of other good work was uh undertaken and I think we had well I know we had we had more than 100% attendance uh so schools sent more people than uh the ones that we had uh officially uh invited so there's interest in the work and energy

028and enthusiasm for the work uh same goal uh closing the opportunity Gap Southshore uh held uh a huge event for National African-American parent involvement day uh and had 200 African-American uh men there to greet uh students that day and it was just incredible to see the students eyes light up uh one little uh guy said uh first graders said I don't know what's happening but I sure like it so uh that was an awesome event a lot of good Community organization a lot of phone calls U thank you to director Patu and director Blandford for being there and Harris all right that's right you were there at the uh even for the uh classroom walkthrough so thank you yes smart goal three is special education uh we continue on a 3 to 5e transition toward

029uh a district-wide Continuum approach access model uh so uh there's quite a few additional schools being added to the access model uh with quite a few additional teachers and instructional assistants uh being brought on the are um I guess over time the sm12 34 will be phased out uh still here for a while and sm3 is being renamed around social emotional Services OSBI continues to be in our schools uh is part of our uh it's a memorandum of understanding currently last year it was under the federal watch which we're no longer on uh but they've been uh going region by region uh to see if we're doing doing the things that we promised to do Under the compliance work from last year and the schools have been doing a good job of implementing those changes

030and preparing for the visits and uh so far we've received a million dollar back from the $3 million that was uh withheld from us uh earlier smart goal number four is early hiring again the uh board held a uh work study session on that recently uh and um HR is in the process of trying to do 215 early hires particularly in areas like special education and dual language where uh we find ourselves uh short uh unable to make all of those hires uh at the start of the school year so trying to get ahead of that and fill those positions early and then uh we had a meet and greet activity in this uh room about a week ago for uh principal candidates and uh it was well organized and well received um maybe half

031of those who were here were people who are Vice principls assistant principals in the district and looking for opportunities to become principls and then we had people from across our region across the Northwest across the West Coast across the country from Chicago North Carolina a variety of other places uh so it was an opportunity for them to hear about what we do to support principles uh three-year mentorship for uh new principles who uh come to us and that's helped uh reduce the turnover in um our principal core and then they also had an opportunity to meet and greet a lot of the district uh staff and then we had a lot of principal volunteers come and do short little 10-minute interviews with uh the candidates and give them some feedback we did identify some people

032that we had screened out on the basis of paper that actually after meeting them and talking with them a little bit realized wow they've got some things that didn't come through as clearly on the paper as they might have so we now have 92 um people uh principal candidates in our pool uh available as we uh fill interview for and fill the remaining uh openings that we have for the coming year ee uh part of the re resolution of the ee uh work was uh a telephone call understanding between ee OSBI uh and the district uh was that we could uh come up with a um memorandum of uh understanding an inter agency agreement with the University of Washington for that program and we have obb's uh commitment to do that and we're in the

033process of working through the paperwork and waiting for osp's review of uh the draft copies of that agreement we also had obbii here this last uh week for the Consolidated program review uh they come every year uh some years are a full year and other years are a partial year where they look at some of our programs so they were here to look at a dozen of our federal and uh State uh programs and then went out and visited schools to find out whether what we told them is what really happens uh in the buildings and so one of our big items from last year was identification of elll students uh we had been giving elll students an opportunity to uh either uh opt out of elll services or attend a school that was not

034their neighborhood school and that's not appropriate so last year we uh created 25 new uh elll uh programs not quite the right word because there were schools that had maybe 5 to 10 elll students so it wasn't a full-fledged program in the sense that we have in other schools but it was providing services to those students and parents that wanted to stay in their neighborhood school so we got uh both commendations and um a finding uh with regard to elll we're still not uh fully identifying uh all of the students that we need to but as the reviewers visited the schools they were impressed with our 25 new schools and the ownership that they saw in those schools for uh other language students and making them welcome and uh assisting them with their needs we

035did have an advanced learning uh privacy breach uh 348 uh students parents uh were sent uh letters that were uh not for their child uh Social Security information was not compromised and we did catch the uh issue fairly early in the process uh but we did have the 348 that were sent out uh inappropriately um and um we've yeah we apologize for that we've self-reported it to the Department of Education we do have uh continue to have uh these challenges so we just completed three days of uh budget reviews listening to each department and their requests and I would say that we had about a dozen requests for technology assistance where uh different departments are keeping uh an Excel spreadsheet or uh data in some uh form of their own and trying to figure out

036how to merge that data with the district uh database we uh to some extent we're aware of those things those are the issues uh many of which were put on the BTA Levy uh and um we're now now we have the BTA Levy approved we don't have the funding yet it'll be about a year before we get the funding but we'll be working through that list of priorities to uh begin working on those issues to make sure that we have better handshakes and better uh handoffs between what a department does and how we keep track of that information as a district system sea uh held their walk-in which was part of a national event uh and a Statewide event so many of our directors participated thank you uh I was at Washington Middle School with

037um actually sea vice president uh Phyllis compano and uh browsing event a lot of enthusiasm and uh good news uh coverage this week uh I guess last week I was at West Seattle high school and at schmidtz Park uh and West Seattle high school was doing amazing work in terms of uh shared lesson design so I probably won't get it quite right but they had a week's worth of activities where uh teachers had paired up with other teachers sharing their planning period uh they had done a lesson design together they had sat down together and critiqued each other's lesson then they went and visited each other's classroom and then they had an early release day where they got back together and talked about what they had seen um uh in each other's classroom so uh

038great work around improving our teaching skills and making our practice public at schmidtz Park I actually uh yeah I did get to see the portable City that they have all over uh and visited a few classrooms but then went to um the new school uh jese Hill that is scheduled for a substantial completion in May and opening in September so uh great design and actually an amazing in design given the site which is I don't know might be 40 or 50 FT elevation change from the one end of the site to the other and uh they did a have done a really nice job of uh preparing that site for uh students few good news items and then I'll be done here uh Admissions and open enrollment uh we often times uh hear it feel

039it sense it uh out here in the lobby as uh thousands of parents uh come through the lobby to to uh enroll for next year uh and uh they've gone through a lot of uh revamping of their processes and uh I think everybody reports that the process has gone a lot better this year than it has in earlier years so the noise level is down the wait time has been uh considerably better so a lot of good partnership between different departments uh and streamlining of that process Nathan hail uh has a radio station and um they recently renewed their license they recently received a grant of $100,000 from The Corporation for Public uh broadcasting and they're number four in the Seattle Market in public uh radio and U for most of uh I think it's

040close to 40 years that they've been in operation they've had really one teacher uh director manager whatever the right uh term is that has done uh kind of everything getting the funding figured out getting the licensing figured out uh working with the kids developing the program uh and eventually we'll move on and retire here so uh the the school and the program their Advisory Board uh is asking uh to not only have a teacher who uh supervises the students but uh to look at a a director of development who can help them with the uh coordination of fundraising Cleveland uh Memorial Forest uh um many of our schools as I visit uh have done our high schools have done memorials to students uh that went off to fight in World War II and now subsequently

041in other Wars since then so I I saw um the West Seattle plaque when I was there uh we have the Queen Anne plaque since Queen Anne is no longer a school is here in this building uh and then Garfield planted I think cherry trees and red dendrons in um memory of the students who died during World War II Cleveland uh alumni Cleveland students at the time uh raised funds they raised $300 and um then they wanted to figure out what they could do with $300 they were able to buy the Cleveland Forest uh 131 acres for $300 so uh we should have had them invest for us yes uh it's east of Lake Washington and uh has had a uh they call it a lum kind of an open framework facility on there actually

042that's been used quite a bit by the Garfield program um anyway they uh they honor their uh Fallen comrades students uh each year at Memorial uh on Memorial Day and they came to see me because uh they're raising funds and working with us to put up uh better signage and to replace the uh covered uh area so yeah awesome uh story about uh our past and uh last night uh I didn't get the pronunciation on this you can help me Marcus okay uh was honored last night at benoa Hall uh 30 years uh great uh uh work at Garfield uh with their uh Symphonies and uh so um last night was part of the Seattle symphonies youth educational Community connections concert series and a great uh recognition so that brings me to the end of

043my comments uh the school board uh is in the process of Shifting the time for public comment looks like we would be pretty close uh tonight but some nights we've gone past the 5:00 time and that's a little difficult for the public to get here uh with traffic and work so uh we'll be uh moving the public comment time from 5:00 to 5:30 starting in April and um that will also give us a little bit of time uh during the superintendent comments for reports on some of the items of uh interest last item that I have is would like to request that uh we remove all of the uh approval of the minutes uh from um from the agend uh from the uh agenda for tonight's action thank you the Martin Luther King Jr Elementary

044School choir was uh schedule to be here this evening and they had Transportation issues so we will look to have their performance at a later date this year um we do not have any student comments this evening we have now reached the business action items portion of the agenda I will now entertain a motion for the superintendent's request to remove the minutes from the January 27 work session from tonight's consent agenda so moved Miss phobe roll call please do a second need a second oh we need oh so I'm sorry I'll go ahead of myself yeah she did make second director blanford I director Burke I director Gary I director Harris I director Peters I director Pinkham I director Patu I this motion is passed unanimously we have now reached the consent portion of tonight's

045agenda I move approval of the consent agenda I second that motion do directors have any items they would like to remove from the consent agenda if none all those in favor of the cending G signify by saying I I those oppose the consent agenda has now passed what time is it okay we are now going into our public testimony and the rules for public testimony are on the screen and I would ask that speakers are respectful of these rules I would note that the board does not take public comments on issues related to Personnel or individually named staff I would also like to note that each speaker has a two-minute speaking time when the two minutes have ended please conclude your comments or your remarks I will call three names Chris Jenkins Vicki Pinkham Joanne

046Rose sers Pinkham my name is Chris jackins Box 84063 Seattle 98 8124 on the charter schools resolution I would like to thank board members for bringing this issue forward I would also like to suggest some improvements to the resolution number one the resolution should note that some charter schools are corporations promoting private sector ideas and trying to get Public Funding by praying on the unmet hopes of some District families number two the resolution wrongly touts Seattle's so-called creative approach schools number three the resolution wrongly implies that current District option schools adequately meet educational needs in fact the district wrongly refuses to reopen the African-American Academy and Indian Heritage School on the settlement agreement with local 609 the district has been required to publicly acknowledge unfair treatment of an employee such public acknowledgements related to the

047teachers union seem more rare why is that on construction contracts for Franklin exin John mure mcgil and Mei each of these items is incomplete missing one or more attached documents years ago the district did not conduct its business this way on loyal Heights three points number one the district is proceeding to ask for city permits to remove 30% of the playground this is a mistake number two the City Department of neighborhood hoods zoning departures advisory committee already recommended against the district's request to violate city code in this way number three please vote to reduce the size of the project thank you thank you I'm Vicky Pinko and I'd like to talk about the resolution also about charter schools it implies that African-American and Native American are um that you're working towards and you're embracing these

048two ethnic groups and that's not true the fact of the matter is is that Indian Heritage closed where it was um producing 100% graduation rates African-American academy closed and both races have um dropped in their graduation rate since those two um schools have closed so looking at this I would just like to say that this is incorrect and as board members as elected officials that I would like to remind you that you are working for those that elected you and not the school board and at that I'd like to hand it over to my daughter my name is Jo Joanne sers Pinkham I am 11 years old and I in fifth grade the resolution is not correct it states that the Seattle School District promotes equal out equal outcomes for all students it says it

049will embrace the child and it will provide resour es towards social emotional learning and continue educational placements for African and Native Americans however Seattle public schools close the africanamerican and Indian Heritage schools that showed 100% graduation rates for both groups that have fallen I no longer go to the lick in Springs be because of the fear of running into a woman who attacked my mom and my family Springs is the native Focus school which would have helped me graduate this resolution is lying to the students of color as educated board me as elected board members you work for the parents of students but yet you are not listening to the students of or anyone the or anyone this resolution is not meant to include me you should not pass this resolution until you fix the

050problems of low graduated rates thank you thank you Eliza Jacobs Melissa Westbrook and colen Johnson hello my name is Lisa Jacobs I have been a 30-year resident of Southeast Seattle and I had two kids that went through the Seattle public school system they're doing great now they had a chance at preschool and currently I work for the Seattle Education Association as you may recall sea strongly supported and urged the board to approve the current three classrooms and we're asking you to approve their continuation and expand the proposed site where there is space educators are well aware of the serious Equity issues in our school they see it every day and they recognize a highquality preschool education as a key effective tool in addressing the opportunity Gap fortunately the voters of Seattle agreed and the levy

051was overwhelmingly passed to promote access to highquality preschool education after it passed Seattle School educators representatives from the district representatives from the school board as well as parents and Community were involved in an extensive process of developing what they should look like and what components were necessary for an effective program they basically came up with this huge thing which I'm not going to go through now but after being at meetings and knowing how a lot of your concerns I urge you read it it talks about the Staffing the curriculum their resources and you can see what a wonderful program it is um so the levy has funded the three classrooms that exist now exist now sorry their predicted benefits are already visible you can see students engaged staff collaborations students have been given access to

052an opportunity they didn't have before the data shows that these classrooms are serving students and family who generally have less access to such a preschool education they'll be more prepared for school easier transition and if you visit the sites what you can see and what you can see from the video is how much these students and these parents appreciate this opportunity what impressed me in the video was a parent you normally didn't hear from before and I hope you listen to her and continue to provide that opportunity for her and her family thank you thank [Applause] you good evening I want to add my voice and support to the resolution against Charter Schools I believe we need to fully fund our existing schools first to the prek issue I have several points one the issue

053of the 25% holdback you were assur that there was grant money to pay for next year but what about the year after that and after that I agree with Dr Blandford about his lockbox idea that the city agrees there'll always be grant money to pay for that 25% the city's Missi told you that the whole back money wasn't really based on outcomes but was like a classroom checklist again like the grant money that may be true now but in the future there will be outcome-based benchmarks what happens when you don't have the money for that and what happens if you don't meet those benchmarks as well listening at the work session it seems like special ed prek is getting short shrift the city and the district have to commit to find a way to serve

054all students and as director giri pointed out at the work session the ee model is a great one to follow director Peters also brought up the issue of Portables and the larger issue of space no K5 student should be in a portable so that space can be used for prek as well several directors voiced concern about opening prek is only to take it back in a couple of years I served on the school board's closure and consolidation Committee in 2006 and I can tell you it's a disaster to close something and reopen it and in Reverse just as well don't do this to communities and the city has space at their own Community Center so you are not stopping their expansion there's also no real data yet on and how any of these pre are

055doing in or out of Seattle Public Schools shouldn't you wait a year or two for that I'm going to channel the Elder PR uh President Bush here it's your job to be prudent and about what programs come in what programs get expanded please consider the issues that I listed that I heard you talk about at the work session and be prudent and saying no for now to any expansion of the city's prek program thank [Applause] you thank you good evening my name is Colin Johnson um 4245 27th Avenue West 98199 for the past 6 months I have had the amazing opportunity to grow and learn with 20 intelligent inquisitive pre kindergarten students in our class we explore everything from the application of fine and gross motor skills to verbal and written language development to counting

056and number Concepts as well as social and emotional skills alongside these important developmental milestones we are also exposing students to the practices and cultural understanding ings present in our elementary school environments these Concepts include things like how to move through the halls in a line what volume our voices are in different areas of the school how to share space and resources how to problem solve with other students and teachers and many other ideas that incoming kindergarteners are all too often expected to know immediately exposure to these core School Concepts as well as the academic aspects is very important for those students who do not have access to childcare services without the Seattle preschool program many of my students would enter their kindergarten classroom without any knowledge of the basic expectations and this lack of exposure

057puts them immediately at a huge disadvantage providing Seattle's most diverse and atrisk communities with preschool options and pre uh will preemptively solve academic social and emotional problems down the road this foresight is very important in making realistic advances in closing the achievement Gap and is an enormous service to the communities that need it most alongside there students I have seen the families of the van Asel preschool classroom become an integral part of the larger School community beginning Elementary School is a new scary experience not just for the students but also for many of these families the opportunity to gain confidence and a familiarity with the public school system at an earlier stage has been an important resource that many would not otherwise have that may not have otherwise existed without the Seattle preschool program families

058are able to access resources provided by the district to best serve their student and this extra assistance places these families in a much better situation to foster a healthy learning environment in their homes the parents and Guardians in our classroom have also reached out to become involved in Van Asel Elementary's organizations such as the PTA this increasing involvement provides a sense of ownership that encourages families to invest time and resources back in their Community I urge you to continue the support of the Seattle preschool program because as an educator involved in this environment on a day-to-day basis I have seen many of my students I've seen how many of my students and families have been impacted so far thank you thank you Jonathan nap Aaron Auda Sandra rolands board directors uh president Patu superintendent Island

059I'm Jonathan nap the president of the Seattle Education Association the voice of Seattle's Public School Educators and I'm here tonight to urge you to find the political courage to reject the political negativism and re-approve for 201617 school year the three current Seattle public school preschool programs at Bailey Gater van assel Elementary the original van assel building and also to improve the creation of four new four new classrooms for 201617 at Arbor Heights Boren School Highland Park and Thorton Creek I'm also here tonight to tell you how disheartening it has been in recent days and and this is as an educator I'm an educator sitting down to listen uh to the board work sessions and the level of discussion about these decisions instead of Laing the incredible work of SPS employees and sea members in getting

060these classrooms up and running on a nearly impossibly tight timeline I heard criticism about why one of these classrooms wasn't fully enrolled in the first couple of weeks instead of rejoicing in the clear feedback from families and Educators about the success of current classrooms and the excitement about proposed classrooms I heard endless digging for some Bobble or difficulty to use in an argument against the moving ahead into the next phase and instead of seeing these classrooms as an opportunity to advance our crying need to make progress on opportunity gaps between white and minority students I heard narrow technical arguments about this study and that study and whether or not is good to open a classroom if we can't guarantee it'll be open in five or 10 years board directors you are at risk of not

061seeing the forest for the trees your voting constituents approved this the city proposal to create this program with a better than 70% vote why do you not not see that as a mandate to move ahead our superintendent has argued that making progress on closing the opportunity Gap is going to be the standard by which our school system and our service as Educators is going to be judged why do you not want to partner with the city to get the resources to help close those gaps all across our country people are crying out for a need to address equity in our communities this is an equity issue for the poorest families in Seattle how can you even consider taking a pass on such OB obvious steps forward Educators take on a can do attitude every day

062with students in their classrooms can't you do this simple thing for Seattle four-year-olds please do not delay in approving these classrooms thank [Applause] you good evening my name is Arin auno and I'm the executive director of the southeast Seattle education Coalition we are a coalition of over 60 community-based organizations schools parents and community members many of them coming from communities of color and families of color our Coalition uses a racial equity lends in our work and in our conversations our Co Coalition prioritizes high quality early learning as a key strategy to close the opportunity gaps for children of color research has proven quality Early Learning programs make a difference children start school ready to learn and launch their school careers more prepared and on an equal footing we need to think of Education as one's

063seamless experience not as silos of experiences with we are asking you to support the three existing preschool classrooms at Bailey Gasser van assult and original van assult and expand the program to several new schools van assult and original van assult are in southeast Seattle and serve high needs communities van assult school has a 43% um 43% rate of English language Learners and an 83% rate of free and reduced lunch down the street from the school is whole place a transitional housing shelter shelter and the school is within walking distance of new Holly a public housing community with many immigrants and refugees and a proud and diverse Beacon Hill Community high quality Early Learning is needed and it makes a difference we urge you to vote Yes and to visit the school so that you can

064see for yourself what a difference it really makes thank you thank you Sandra rolands Mary Griffin and David proser sner hello good to be before you again my name is Sandra Rollins and I'm a teacher at Van asid elementary school a kindergarten teacher and I came before you guys before about imploring you guys to please let us have our pre school thank you for allowing us to have it however as we stated we would do our parts to make sure that we are in compliance and we adhere to what we said we were going to do and we're expecting for you guys to do it and also we're asking for us not to have to come back every year to do this if possible now I was concerned too about the late start and oh

065my gosh we're on strike you know we got a new preschool trying to get here to open but you know what we overcame and also so did our parents because when we started we we did have a few students but now we're at capacity and matter of fact our building is only halfway occupied which isn't acceptable when we've got uh you know ability to have more but neither here nor there we're doing what we're supposed to be doing and we're reaching out and we're making good decisions as far as making sure that our children are ready to make sure that we are making a positive impact on this uh achievement Gap but I'm varying from my speech But whichever let me keep going but we want our parents to continue to have the opportunity they've

066overcome the adversities of no transportation of no after school care they bring their children every day to our preschool does that mean oh 30 seconds okay and so anyhow in my classroom I have seven children that had no experience in preschool out of those seven four of them have social emotional and academic delays now I'm projecting that if we've got 20 kids and out of four kindergarten classrooms I'm hoping though maybe only have two or three CU parents have the right not to have their kids in preschool but if it is available and our parents are saying they want to bring their kids let us give them that opportunity to do so please oh hush okay and so the other thing is that remember we support feed we support which is family engagement action team

067parent classes getting School ready all these things do not have Common Core Curriculum goals and and state requirements that are required for them to be successful but we do it because it makes good business sense it makes good Common Sense we we need to make those good sense Decisions by allowing the preschools to continue and not have to do this every year we have a big Harvest Harvesters are Harvesters are few please wrap up your commment comments please okay I'm a harvester and I'm going to keep on harvesting until I can't Harvest no more I hope you guys are on on board with us thank [Applause] you good afternoon my name is Mary Griffin I'm the parent of a student with disabilities I am not against a preschool for low-income families but I am not

068I am not in favor of expanding a system which tracks some students into a program with three times as many hours and other students with disabilities into a program with a third of the hours it is an apartheid wife Jesse met with Cecil mccor and myself in November and at that time to discuss the possibility of a coordinated effort between the current segregated programs at old van assult as you may know there is one city preschool there and four halfday special education programs under conr current plans I hear they want to make another special education preschool program there at the time of the meeting YF indicated he had training in the eeu program which uses a blended model of instruction and he indicated willingness to approach the city regarding this natural opportunity I have heard

069nothing about this since the district continues to operate with a least restrictive environment that does not meet its state Target particularly in the three to four preschool the district is well below its state goals as well as state averages I'm going to show you a visual aid of how the preschools in Seattle currently have not met their targets for social emotional growth or other goals that the preschools are supposed to meet see those little red boxes mean no um and I'll be uh happy to send this to you later uh these are positive social emotional skills acquisition and use of language and use of appropriate behavior to meet their goal to meet meet their needs the district uh for the first one was at 63% the target was 83% the average for the state is

07089.9% etc etc etc and I'm running out of time what I want to suggest to you is to push if if you want to approve this effort to put as much energy into making an inclusive environment which would benefit both groups of preschool students and to work with the city on that effort if you decide to go ahead with us thank you thank you hello my name is David Posner I am a retired Seattle school teacher and also currently a substitute with the Seattle public schools and I'm here today to talk to you about the occurrence of withholding of uh recess and other instructional activities from uh withholding students from participation in those activities due to discipline um instructional activity by state definition includes basically every moment that a student is in school except for

071meal time so recess field trips participation in specialist classes um going to camps like islandwood those are all considered instructional activity um sorry the possibility that a student may be denied participation in those instructional activities should not be dependent upon the school the child attends the teacher they have within that school or the color of their skin but currently with no district-wide policy the exclusion of students from these activities varies widely from school to school state code requires that all school districts collect data on disciplinary actions and record this data these data actions these disciplinary actions within Statewide Data Systems however because these disciplinary actions are for the most part not documented no one knows what's really going on there's no way to actually know and the district is in fact out of compliance with

072that portion of the state code it also makes it impossible to accurately acess assess the frequency with which this is happening to our students but I can report as a substitute that this practice disproportionately impacts students of color there's no question of of that I substitute in high poverty and low poverty schools it doesn't even happen at some schools and it happens frequently at other schools um see I'm running out of time again um so I would like to urge the board as I have before to direct superintendent Nyland to instruct his senior staff to speak with principles and address this issue I would like to encourage the district as well to work with the Seattle Education Association to come up with a plan together to support teachers in other means of dealing with students

073behavior restorative justice has been talked about trauma based informed education has been talked about but I don't see any action in those those areas so until that happens this dispropor proportionality and this inequality will continue and it really needs to stop so thank you thank you Kurt bitum demier Sasha de merian Nicole lur flatb go I'm Kurt beer damer I'm a father of three a longtime youth coach and owner of a family of food businesses under the name Sugar Mountain which includes the Pike Place icon beachers handmade cheese I'm also the founder and primary funer of our beachers Pure Food kids Foundation the primary product of our foundation is a 2 and a half hour learning standards aligned nutrition education curriculum that we provide free to more than 20,000 fourth and fth grade students each

074year in the Puget Sound area and in New York City since our founding in 2006 in the Seattle School District alone we have spent approximately $400,000 providing 662 workshops free to schools turning 16,8 students and their teachers into food detectives equipped with the skills they need to figure out what's really in their food and how to avoid highly processed junk foods and drinks today we are close to reaching 100% of Seattle Public Schools students with this program kids spend most of their Waking Life in schools and like it or not our schools are the most important role models in our students lives the most valuable product our schools can produce is healthy eaters I'm here to congratulate the school board for adopting a robust wellness policy and to ask the board to ensure that the

075policy is put into action with specific requirements for nutrition education at every grade level but that's just the start we need to teach kids not just about nutrition but how to cook for themselves homec now called family and consumer Sciences when offer is an elective not a required course at many Seattle schools in fact it's often the first to be on the chopping block for lack of funding this is backwards we need to elevate the teaching of life skills to the same level we give math and science I'm also asking that the district ensure every teacher and Coach receive Food and cooking education so they can be healthy role models for students we're proud of the programs we provided to schools here please wrap up your comments but they are just the first steps in

076the long journey that needs to be taken we are asking the district to move forward in implementing comprehensive food education requirements so schools can be Launchpad for students to live long and happy lives thank you very much thank you hello I'm Sasha deeran and I want to start this by asking if you remember having unstructured time as a child because I do these days for many families they need to actually schedule downtime they need to schedule that unscheduled time so the brain and body can do what it wants and needs in this time the brain and body aren't told what to learn and do they seek out what to learn and do and play is the time when kids learn about who they are and how they are with others it is how they learn

077conflict conflict resolution and compromise it is vital but I'm not here to talk to you about parenting I'm here to talk to you about the school day because I seeing the same thing happening during the school day and the school system needs to much like I do at home protect this vital play time it is not the nothing time in between the something time to quote from the AAP recess policy statement a re a growing Trend toward reallocating time in school to accentuate the more academic subjects has put this important facet of a child's school day at risk recess serves as a necessary break from the rigors of concentrated academic challenges in the classroom but equally important is the fact that safe and well supervised recess offers cognitive social emotional and physical benefits that may

078not be fully appreciated when a decision is made to diminish it recess is unique from and a complement to PE and not a substitute for it the AAP believes that recess is a crucial and necessary component of a child's development and as such should not be withheld for punitive or academic reasons furthermore the period allotted to recess decreases as the child ages and is less abundant among children of lower socioeconomic status and in the urban setting please ensure that all kids have this protected recess time at school by implementing a recess policy and procedure and schools also need to be both held accountable and supported by their executive directors and superintendent in following board policies so that these policies are followed at all schools not just those with deep PTA Pockets thank you thank [Applause]

079you hi my name is Nicole fatabo and I am a public health dietitian and I'm also a SPS parent my son attends Lafayette Elementary as a kindergartener but today I'm here to as I'm concerned that districtwide SPS is not meeting current lunch policy which is to provide 20 minutes of seated time to eat lunch we have two major data points uh for you that support this concern um the first is 2015 SPS instructional data which shows that only four out of how many elementary schools in the district actually provide enough time to follow this policy the second is you may recall last year at about this time the udub nutritional science es program went into SPS elementary schools and actually timed lunches and found that the average was about 13 minutes so uh this disproportionately

080impacts students who are participating in the school lunch program as I'm sure you can imagine they're standing in line and for 20,000 students in this District the school lunch program is a hunger prevention program so you are essentially not allowing the kids who need the food the most enough time to eat it so research shows us that students with shorter lunchtimes consume less food and list less nutrients than students with longer lunches and when kids don't have adequate nutrition there are direct negative impacts on academic achievement behavior and overall school performance short lunches also res result in lots more food waste current Research indicates that best practice is to have a minimum of 25 seated 25 minutes of seated time in order to significantly improve dietary intake and reduce food waste so my ask today

081is that you enforce the current policy that you have to provide our students with the full 20 minutes and as you begin plans for upcoming years I challenge you to meet the best practices and provide 20 25 to 30 minute lunches scheduled after recess thank you thank you James fagler Robert Stern and Laura Kramer James fagler Robert Stern Laura Kramer hello good evening my name is Laura Greer there's a lot of things I would like to talk to you about tonight but I only have a limited time to talk so I'm going to pick on I'm going to talk about two things one I'm very young sure about the enrollment plan I don't know where I am at with bre I'm not getting answer from the school what I need to do with my son

082my son is supposed to be in preschool through your school and I thought he was automatically enroll but I'm getting L than people telling me I have to enroll them I don't know what to do from there I'm kind of hoping maybe after that someone can May get back to me on that the second thing I would like to talk about is but you probably see one of my sign here I was very frustrated when I went to um T toab because know my son is supposed to be entering kindergarten next year I was very displeased that I didn't get any information about the school T I had to go find them my information myself I mean and I know that c the only school that had the kindergarten to eighth grade program for death

083heart children I also found out that the teacher the death was not planning to be there so that's why I wrote to all of you saying I expect someone to be there then I was firstr when I get there the teacher couldn't answer any question because I had wait to talk to the director of the D heart of hearing program that was the waste of my time and my husband time my husband work it's not like he could go during the daytime to see the classroom I go I just I have gone during the daytime but I'm not going to bother the teachers while they're teaching and and ask them question about the program so please I I'm asking you to change your mind I think the school need to change their mind that how

084they approach that that education and program you need to be integrated the other thing that really bu me I want my son to be involved with school life and when I went to the school and I the principal talk about the death Harding program great but when I asked a simple question about how are de kids involved in the program she couldn't answer that question the har program been there for years she to be able to give me an answer oh we have interpret we have this and that that shows me that the program is not integrated it is separated and that's very sad to me thank you thank [Applause] you I'm speaking tonight uh as president of the special education PTSA you've heard from me about the inequities between the developmental preschools for students

085with disabilities versus these City preschools my concerns apply equally to those grant-funded preschools including headart that are intended to serve our most needy young children ospi continues to investigate the separate and unequal structure that resides in our district with respect to these preschools I know of others who are more than happy to approach the doe office of civil rights for more timely REM remedy to this problem I have seen this body ask staff for the numbers of children with disabilities in the existing three City pre 6 weeks later there are still no firm numbers or commitments uh from staff to provide Equitable access to these much lotted enriched environments to our neediest children on the contrary what I heard at The prek Works session last week is that things will proceed business as usual staff's

086assertions that there are conversations with the city are not actions Bailey Gater principal offered up at the work session that he had one pre student who was identified as needing Services when asked how that child was later served so he could access the benefits of 6 and a half hours of preschool breakfast and lunch and nursing support the principal admitted that as is often the case the child uh not his words but he was C soed out and moved to a presumably more distant less enriched shorter day developmental pre in other words business as usual because that student would not be served there I noted the presence of principles from the schools proposed for New City preschools at the work session I found this very aggravating because my public record search reveal a general reluctance

087and forgive me I'm going to run over a little bit General reluctance on the part of the building admin for the presence of Dev prek in their buildings I quote principal's concerns that preschool students impact schools without generating any Bea or counting toward additional admin support they go on $24,000 is added to the building discretionary budget during budget Arena to in effect it seems like a bribe or to appease principles to have pre in their buildings do not approve any expansion of a discriminatory non-inclusive system please thank you thank you Michael Jen Cola and Ewan McCarthy cartney hello my name is Michael janola I live at 8314 Jones Vue Northwest I'm here today to request information about the beex 4 project to modernize and increase the size of loyal Heights Elementary first I want to

088thank the board for hosting the departures or as I see them the zoning violations meeting uh last fall the takeaway from these meetings was very valuable and enlightening for the general public I understand the school board has was made aware in no November that the department of neighborhoods the dawn committee voted against all departures after hearing some of the public debate firsthand I agree completely with the dawn decision I'm here today because I've heard nothing from the school board about this project since the departures meeting last fall I request the school board provide an update on the mitigation of the departures uh if no progress has been made or no changes to the plan are being considered I respectfully request an explanation as to why a large number of us spent time away from our

089families to attend and contribute to those meetings at a minimum I would like to hear how the voting down of the departures has or has not impacted the project plan everyone I have heard from is in favor of modernizing and expanding the school many of us were really looking forward to a compromised design which did not contain rooms for programs which are not currently funded and which would reduce the building to lot ground coverage percentage allowing for a safer environment for our children and the children in our neighborhood thank you very much for your time thank [Applause] you hi my name is Yan McCartney I'm a freshman at Garfield I came to one of your meetings last year to tell you about the lack of racial and economic diversity in se's gifted programs approximately 133%

090of the white of white kids in SE public schools are print in gifted programs while less than 2% of black kids are what is going on why are you failing to know students of color who are smart if it's just wrong you can walk around our schools and look in our classroom window and know immediately by the racial makeup of class whether it's an HC class or not s Public Schools runs the gifted program and you are also you also are who decides who can be in the program right now it feels quite a lot like segregation I'm here to ask what you've done to fix this situation in the years since I alerted you to this ugly problem thank you thank you we have two more uh slots open so if anyone wants to

091uh testify you can see uh Lauren I guess not okay that is the end of our uh testimony we are now going to uh move to board comments don't I'll raise your hand at [Laughter] once director kri thank you thank you as always for everybody who is coming to our meetings um I want to encourage everybody to continue to participate typical of many of the anybody who Bel who spends time in school sees the same faces over and over again and being new to the board I am starting to recognize those of you who Step Up week after week and month after month month and I applaud you all for your care and concern for our children thank you even when we don't all agree and we can't all find the exact cohesive path to

092move together the fact that your voices are here for our consideration means that we will be doing a better job to meet more people's needs so thank you for that um a few things I hear the frustration of our special education families about the enrollment process and I want to assure you that I will continue to think about that I I haven't heard speakers tonight but I've heard many emails and the frustration that families feel in that um because of the individualized nature of their children's programs they don't feel that they are given the same opportunities to enroll in Choice programs or even select their home school the school that if their child was typically developing they would have access to without question and so I will continue to look at that problem um it

093is a balance between meeting the individual and needs of the children applying uh versus um making sure that they have the same access to community that rolls straight into the prek uh the preschool issue which is um one that I will continue also to work very carefully and look at very carefully I it it is the balance between a service that is so desperately needed by so many families and I feel that versus making sure that when people say that it is going to be accessible to our kids with disabilities that we hold them to that promise and that everybody who is coming before us in an Institutional capacity today is remembering that in every single aspect every time they say please approve this program I want you to be thinking is this program fair

094is it accessible and what are we doing to make sure that the resources are being used to create an inclusive environment for all of our kids so that's on you if you're asking us to approve it from an Institutional capacity then make that one of your guiding lights and I will also see this as I spoke in the past about the EE and what I think it has to offer I think this is a great partner to bring in to talk to to help us design an Inclusive Preschool system that will hopefully roll into an inclusive districtwide kindergarten system and onward so that we will see the closing of the achievement gap for our kids with disabilities just as we hear so much mentioned about closing the achievement gap for other groups beyond that I've

095had great um opportunity to meet with uh different community members and schools this time I had a chance to meet with Thorton Creek in District 3 John Miner and PTA principal and Rachel Brooks uh the PTA president and learned about their Expeditionary Learning I want to get that right which is a a projects based learning program that is happening in Seattle Public Schools so that when people say that we aren't offering different um ways of learning I would I would invite you to go meet the people at Thorton Creek who are so excited about this program and what it does for uh the kids in terms of bringing in this program based learning where they're learning lots of of different things at once very um experiential along with expeditionary met with Community Health Services Sarah

096willheim and Sarah Regal and learned about our community health services being offered in our public schools and what I found out that I want to share with everybody so you can share it and what I didn't understand is that those programs are available to every single um Seattle public school child so you don't necessarily have to be enrolled in the school where the health center exists you can go to that Health Center so don't feel that just because there was not a health center in your school that that isn't available to you they were lovely women and that is an example of a wonderful partnership between King County the city of Seattle and Seattle Public Schools working to do great things for our family I have more to say but I will let others talk

097and we have a commu my next community meeting is March 26th uh at the Mt Lake Library at 11 o'clock thanks director Peters okay first of all I want to thank the teachers um who won awards that were announced at the beginning of this meeting and to thank all our teachers for all the wonderful work they do um they're just incredibly valuable part of our district and um a lot of them are unsung heroes and so when we have an opportunity to recognize them I think that's something we should we should be doing um I also want to thank the city of Seattle for passing the levies as superintendent mentioned by significant margins we very much appreciate your vote of confidence in us your vote of confidence in public education but we also recognize it's

098a huge responsibility to be responsible stewards of these funds and so thank you thank you again um uh I want to correct for my community meeting my next one will be Sunday March 13th uh at 1:00 at the Magnolia Library I had another date on the calendar before and that has to be um corrected um I understand there's a movie being shown around town called screenagers and it sounds very interesting and it has to do with the potentially detrimental effects of um screen time for our for our children and I think this is something that we should all be taking a close look at um I C I know it's definitely an issue at my house um but also we are focusing more and more on integrating screens into education and Blended learning and I

099think we as as a district we have to be mindful of having the right balance there so we don't overdo it so we don't unintentionally create a generation of students who are unable to concentrate on anything that doesn't move or jump or has colors attached to it um so we have to take a look at what we're doing with our 21st century technology uh let's see I participated in the walk-in on February 18th it was a you know a nice vibrant event where we all were trying to remind the state that we are still not fully funding our schools and um I appreciated the opportunity to join teachers and students at Ballard High School in that in that morning event um let's see um you know I wanted to address something that was brought up

100in public testimony by um by Jonathan nap specifically you know he commented on our work session we recently had about preschool I just want to just sort of remind him and everybody that our job is as governing officials here is to ask difficult questions our job is to thoroughly vet what is brought before us and sometimes we're playing The Devil's Advocate on some of these questions we have a budget that totals a billion dollars and so we have to be very serious and mindful about how we use that what we take on and so I think any of the questions that and discussions that took place in that work s session or any of our work sessions are totally legitimate and an very important part of about of our oversight and if we do not

101exercise this degree of due diligence we are not doing our job having said that I don't think anyone's questioning the value of preschool I think we all know that it has an intrinsic value the question is how do we do it can can we do it um do we have the resources how do we do it without overcommit our space and how do we do it so it's inclusive those are very important elements of this discussion and I look forward to us continuing this this discussion later on tonight so um lastly I am troubled to hear uh from Laura gramer about the ongoing issues with our de and heart of hearing program and I would like to know why we do not have greater Outreach to families why we don't have teachers who are um

102more aware aware of what is required and expected of the classrooms and so I I would like to follow up on this and find out what what needs to be done because this is also part of our ongoing discussion about what preschool should look like in Seattle public schools and how we meet the needs of all our students now in prek all the way up to 12th grade so thank you all for bringing these issues to our attention and um that's it for me thank you Scott Pinkham yeah and again congratulations to all those that were recognized tonight um showing that you we are trying to do the best that we can as a district and I think we also have to acknowledge you know where we do fall short you know we need to

103still move forward and not just restant on Laural and say here we go um let's keep going at the same old but what I heard tonight from many people was kind of does address that Equity issue that we still need to close that Gap and you know preschool programs is going to help that but we also got to try to balance that with child care needs of our low-income students and families as well space is an issue money is an issue but we got to say what is our priority and one thing that I want to see that we do a measure of how well we are as schools is that we do close that achievement Gap get a close to see the news that Seattle school district is having the largest achievement Gap you

104know we we got work to do so I must admit when I saw the resolution opposing Chari schools one one of the whereas says whereas that we're willing uh and able to serve all students we're falling short of that we need to do better than what we're doing so if we were doing that we wouldn't have the state pass uh the need for Charter Schools or see that need so I said it more as a challenge for us we need to step up so that this community the people that voted us have confidence in our Seattle schools and that we can all move together as a community because we need to make sure we include everyone in the conversation um you know I want to thank those that attended my community meeting on February 27th

105uh thank you for the input where they brought up the recess and lunchtime issue yeah if we aren't if we do have schools out there that aren't following our policy for lunchtime we need to make sure that's then the ceps plan how are you going to accommodate that 20 minutes 20 minutes of sit down not 20 minutes of lunchtime where the kids have to stand in line get served then sit down and eat and I hear that some schools just have 15 minutes you so we need to see what we can do so that our kids are getting the meals that they need and especially kids that are coming from low income fames they need that meal and as our school times adjust that if the school starts at a certain time lunch may be

106the only meal that child has for a significant part of the day um my next community meeting will be on March 26 at Northgate Library at 3:30 and I do have one scheduled for April 23rd and then June 4th May is currently open so I would invite any of the schools let me know PTA meetings that you're going to have I'd love to come out there and see your school I was at Olympic Hills uh their PTA meeting and I got to meet Helen young and what job she's doing and why announc that they are having a fantastic I think results with their stem group they will have a stem math and science fair on March 24th and hopefully people can go out there and attend um I was also spent the evening with the

107Lo Heights Community where they were saying that they want to get across they're not opposed to the expansion of loyal Heights they're just opposed to the size you know what can we do to combinate that and work with them that okay we can't be constantly reducing the size of our open space for for kids they need that time outside to play and if they're going to have a school the size of 450 how are you going to rotate the recess lunchtime so students have that release that they need um but again uh thank you for presentations and look forward to still being able to carry your voice as much as I can thank you direct Burke um I want to also uh put a shout out for the uh staff that were recognized this evening

108um the work that that you do that they do it's it's high impact in our schools you know we we sit up here and we talk about a lot of things we try to make Intelligent Decisions and create sound policies and be thoughtful and deliberate but um the work that's done in the schools it's it's inspirational for us on the board um um because we're looking to provide resources and remove barriers in the classroom so hearing these success stories and and really recognizing the people that are making a difference in the classes is huge for me uh I want to thank everybody on uh on their testimony um the loyal Heights Community I've heard from several different people about the loyal Heights community and the the challenges trying to balance this capacity how how much

109capacity is enough capacity and how much building is too much capacity and uh trying to understand exactly what are the different forces at play there um I hope that we can find that compromised position and also uh take those lessons around Community engagement and Outreach and apply them to our our future sites that we have under underway um regarding the wellness and recess um the your concerns the messages you're bringing up are are completely valid that it's I really appreciate the clarity and the consistency around that message I heard met with some folks during the campaign season um and I love I love the intent I love everything about it and really the challenge for us as a board is to figure out how to fit that into the tetris that we call our school

110day um and balance that with all the other academic challenges and the other demands so um keep the pressure on on that and help us figure out how to work it into funding and schedules at the building level and at the policy level uh I'm going to withhold comments regarding the charter resolution and Seattle preschool program until those item introductions uh and I do want to thank Hamilton the community Seattle Education Association for inviting me to the the walk-in event at Hamilton on February 18th uh and for the opportunity to speak that was my first school that I got to do um speak to a crowd as was a board member and I promptly screwed up a factoid on 24 credits 24 credit graduation and kudos to the Community member that kindly and privately corrected

111my misunderstanding and gave me a an opportunity to to practice a moment of humility um I also want to thank um Greg IML and his staff I had the chance this morning to drop in at bayy gater and see their um their preschool program and when I arrived the kids were dancing and then I got to join them while several students shared some self-created story books with the class with the rest of their their colleagues and then uh the high point of my day today has been that I got to do some watercolor painting um so it was a pretty impressive thing and I I I appreciate that opportunity and the the freedom to just kind of drop in um and then I also want to thank those who came to my community meeting um

112this last Saturday and I'm still pring for a location for my next community meeting because libraries seem like they're fairly booked up nowadays Dr Harris thank you um my list of thank yous a huge shout out to the awardees that came before us tonight I'm not sure we do as good a job as we should and I'm really thr thrilled to see us celebrating the extraordinary people that we work with um a huge shout out to the classified employees whose week it is these are the people that keep the engines running and and I don't know that they get their share of the glory as much and as often as they should um to the folks that give testimony and also to the folks that call me up on the phone and send emails and

113and respond to my questions and to my colleagues I I have to tell you it's it's really quite a joy and a blast to be doing this work and I think I think we are making a difference and I think we can make a heck of a lot bigger difference and and I'm very very grateful for that I'm also grateful for staff in answering those phone calls and not making you feel small diminished or stupid when you ask questions that make maybe you're obvious but they weren't obvious to me or to see the connections on how the laws of unintended consequences play into effect with a district of over 52,000 kids and 8,000 employees in a I think billion dollar budget um it's really been a pleasure and an honor and I think that it

114it serves to say that we model the behavior we want the young people to follow in terms of crafting Solutions and there's no end of problems to craft those solutions for I also went to the uh Ben royah Hall last night to watch the Garfield Symphony and the Seattle Symphony and it was joyful and it was extraordinary and it was profound and in marusawa what an amazing teacher and how lucky are we that we have that kind of a program here in Seattle and I close my eyes and I think how many high schools do we have and how many other young people need those kinds of opportunities and we have to figure out a way to make that happen we need to put Arts and Music and drama back into our schools and we

115need to we need to raise all votes we're we're judged by the quality of our Arts not just by our test scores um got to attend the chief South International High School they have a pretty terrific jazz band as well and uh had a great community meeting and one of the things that came out of that community meeting was the concept of lunch and recess folks being more than willing to meet with the executive directors to brainstorm ideas about how we actually make sure that we have Little People in chairs for a lunch and that we have enough recess for that brain reset time and that's that's pretty exciting safety continues to be quite the issue on my emails my phone calls and my uh working with the district and I'm I'm told and I

116believe we will have some clearer guidelines about when parents are advised of lockdowns and shelters in place and I'm excited about that because I can't think of a more terrifying scenario than hearing about it on your local blog and you know the kids in West Seattle they just text to Tracy record at the West Seattle Blog now as opposed to doing anything else and all of West Seattle explodes and it's it's not a good feeling to know whether or not your child is safe um the other big issue that I've been hearing a great deal about is the equity issue of special ed preschool and the Seattle preschool partnership I did tour the facilities I was extraordinarily impressed I'm excited about the possibilities was lucky enough to speak with the mayor about a number of

117those possibilities and with Mr chapel and with M agary as well um we're going good places but we have to remember that we need to bring everyone along and to treat each other with the same kinds of opportunities I I look forward to the conversation I look forward to extending those conversations because we're judged by how we treat people and and this one's this one's too too hard and too important to ignore um near term a couple of issues that I am delving into presently are the concept and we've asked budget to determine what the numbers are to take on more than one curriculum adoption at a time we can't close the opportunity Gap and respect pedagogy if we don't have current material materials and uh that's one of those places where the board hopefully

118will have an opportunity soon to impact the budget development and the other is is if we are going to use PTSA funds to the tune of about $3.2 million to balance our budget a year and almost a million dollars to pay for staff do we do the responsible thing and plan as part of those resolutions a way to come out of this subsidy scenario in two or three years love your thoughts and your feedback on that and I well appreciate that that is a political Pandora box Minefield but what the heck he elected us thank you so much Dr bford I'll start my comments by thanking the executive committee for scheduling um the recognition of our teachers and our building leaders and our uh program staff that's a great way to start off this conversation

119which before it's over may be a little bit difficult I think it's important an important way to Center us to uh recognize that we've got so many leaders in our classrooms and our schools and even in this um building that are uh leading us forward and so uh I'm very happy to be able to celebrate them uh also to the classified staff uh during this week the classified employees week it's great to um recognize some of the unsung heroes for the work that they do um I also want to appreciate the folks at schools first who had a huge role to play in the 72% um margin of Victory on the on our levies um as someone who served on schools first in my past um I know that's a lot of work um going

120out and raising money to put out the message about how important those levies are and what is being done with those levies and so and it's unsung work so I just want to recognize all of the work that uh the schools levies or or School's First organization did um on Friday I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit West Seattle Elementary School um and to celebrate with a a member of the Sounders and folks from United Way and others encouraging kids to have a healthy breakfast every morning and um seen a lot of very young uh and energetic uh kindergarten through fifth graders very excited about the opportunity to uh kick the ball around with a Sounders player and and yell and scream about how important breakfast was was a neat opportunity for me

121and then that same day um I left from there and went and got a chance to visit with some students at uh Madrona K8 as they were demonstrating their work they did research on Black History Month and wanted to share what some of their findings with the Schoolboard director and so I got the opportunity to talk about some of their Heroes and um how they updated it they a few of them talked to me about their favorite um hip-hop artist and what the lyrics of their song said and I even discovered and felt a little bit younger as I discovered that one of them had the same favorite hip-hop artist that I have and by the way that that that the President Obama also has we share the same U favorite music so that it

122made me feel young for a moment and so I just want to share that fact um also on Saturday and it's been w recognized or uh has been brought up before that uh along with principal Jung who uh at Olympic Hills I got to give a keynote address uh to the equity teams and in my mind because that's something that um that I think we as school board hold very dear it was a fantastic opportunity and I was humbled to be asked to give the keynote address but more importantly to um I got about halfway through my uh prepared remarks before a barrage of questions um about how to actualize equity in classrooms came and the degree of Engagement the types of questions that they were asking um the challenging nature of some of the

123questions that they were asking was for me very refreshing and um I encourage all of my colleagues on the the school board to take the opportunity to attend one of those sessions if it all possible um beyond the opportunity to learn ourselves uh we also demonstrate to um to the folks that are in the room and to the broader community that we hold Equity as a serious issue and as I'm sure some of you know um there are people in our community who question our commitment to equity and so I think that's an easy way to demonstrate that it is indeed we're walking our walk um I want to thank Evan McCartney who spoke earlier today uh EV I remember well last year when Evan came and challenged Us in the same way that he

124did tonight to look at the enrollment of our highly capable programs and to question and to take action to ensure that those programs mirror the diversity of um our school population as a whole and so from someone who's a ninth grader holding us to holding us accountable to that I think is a wonderful uh recognition of all the instruction that he's gotten in his life and something that I hope that uh many other students and parents and community members are thinking about finally I will um End by announcing the fact that my community meeting which was scheduled for next weekend is not being held because our uh board retreat is being held that same Saturday so I will look for a a different date and look for a different location and try to make sure

125that that is scheduled soon scheduled and announced and then finally there was a um the superintendent spoke a little bit about the uh event where 256 African-American men showed up early in the morning at uh Southshore Elementary school um as someone who's been watching Seattle public schools and participating in one way or another um I must say that that was one of the proudest moments that I've had as a um as an employee as a supporter of Seattle public schools and now as a school board member I know that there are um there's a stereotype around uh African-American engagement and for anybody that was there that day seeing um that many men um willing to put time and effort into uh celebrating the efforts of the students at that school uh it was something to

126behold it was nice to see that the Seattle Times covered it on the front page and um as I travel to other schools I talked to a lot of principles who are all adamant that we need to figure out a way to do that at every school next year and so I know um anony is working really hard on that he's made some changes in his uh professional career but uh he and I are are going to be talking about how we can um spread that out distribute the wealth to all the schools in Seattle Public Schools so I just want to publicly acknowledge Anthony shcra for the Magnificent leadership that he provided in making that event happen I think it is um exemplary work that we should all be uh appreciative of thank you

127I would like to say thank you to all of uh of you who came to testify tonight on behalf of the various issues that you are passionate about um we hope my hope is that we are working on those various issues that you have mentioned and that you will see the good results as we continue um I also would like to say congratulation to all the staff who were recognized tonight for all the great work that the they continue on to do on behalf of our children and honor well deserved and um and also I would like to uh to say thank you to all of you um who actually uh continue to let us know what is in your mind um I know that um we uh we don't always do things the way

128we should do but at the same time we are doing the best that we can to accommodate the children because I realize that being on this board the main things that we think about is our kids as long as we know that our children are actually taken care of that is the goal of this board is actually to be able to uh find ways to actually to provide opportunities for all our kids we may not do it on a timely manner but I know in back of our mind this is the reason why we're sitting on this board to make sure that we provide opportunities for all our kids um I really had a great opportunity to visit Orca and it was their um National parent day and they actually um had provided various uh

129classrooms where parents were able to go in and actually be able to observe the V various classrooms uh why their students were at their children were inside and I think one of the classroom that I went to was actually a math class uh the math teacher actually taught math in more of uh what she did was actually she did a rap well she was teaching uh math and the kids really really enjoyed it as she was trying to wrap uh the instruction the kids were following along with her and it it seemed like they were so involved in it that um they were making up their own rap where she was rapping about what they were supposed to do in in terms of adding or subtracting so I thought that was a really uh creative

130way of actually teaching kids uh to enjoy math and you know math is uh always a subject that a lot of us do not like but teaching math in a way that's fun and exciting really got kids involved and then also I got a chance to go to the kindergarten class which is one of my favorite and um we were able to they were able to actually to ask us to sit down so we can so they can actually ask us some questions and um some of them asked too many questions so we said it's time for us to leave but it's very enjoyable to actually to go into classes and be able to inter uh to be able to interact with our students in various schools I would like to also say that uh

131my community meeting is on March 26 uh from 10: to 11:30 at the cafe vaita thank you for those who actually attended my last community meeting had a great conversation and in terms of what's happening with our scho and then last but not least I actually I have a grandson that really he's a faithful supporter of watching our board meetings and uh usually you know I ask my other kids if they watch it said no we don't want to watch it but this grandson of mine makes an effort to watch our board meeting every Wednesday when we're on TV because when I see him he said I saw you on TV so I'm going to do a shout out and said Maris thank you for being a faithful supporter of our TV show for the

132for the board and I want to say hi that is now we are going to take a 10-minute break thank [Music] you [Music] oh [Music] n