Board Agenda for Wednesday, October 16th

I know.

I know I said I wasn't going to do this but I had checked in at the district webpage for updates and was browsing the agenda for this week's board meeting.  I lay it out below but this isn't even all of it. I wish someone would pick up the reins just on Board meetings because I think the pace of change is going to pick up.

From the Board's agenda for Wednesday night's Board meeting, their legislative priorities:

The 2019-20 proposed legislative agenda is focused on three main areas:

• Services, Supports, and Staffing for the Whole Child to Eliminate the
  Opportunity Gap

• Increase State Funding to Reflect True Cost of Capital Facilities

• Ensure High-Quality and Culturally Responsive Educators in Every
  Classroom

Also on the agenda, there's this: 
Approval of the 2019-20 District Educational Research & Program Evaluation Plan. 

Except it's really about this - a 5-year plan:

The 2019-20 Educational Research & Program Evaluation Plan includes five multi-year projects, which are described in the following pages. The table below shows the planned duration for each project.

PROJECT	2017-18 2018-19		2019-20	2020-21 2021-22 2022-23 2023-24
Strategic Plan 2019-2024 Evaluation			Year 1	Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5
K-5 ELA Curriculum Evaluation (CCC)	Year 1 Year 2		Year 3
MS Math Curriculum Evaluation (enVision)		Year 1	Year 2	Year 3
K-12 Science Curriculum Evaluation			Year 1	Year 2 Year 3 Year 4
Strategic Research: Detracking		Year 1	Year 2

And youhoo, President Leslie Harris - it appears there IS some kind of case study report on Garfield's Honors for All (red mine):

Research & Evaluation will continue its research into detracking efforts to improve equitable access to advanced courses and create more blended, less segregated learning environments. This second-year study will build upon a preliminary 2018-19 case study of Garfield High School’s “Honors for All” program, which focused on Garfield’s program purpose and vision and the challenges associated with effective implementation. 

Year 2 of the study will extend the strategic research to additional case studies in SPS and seek to examine in more depth the challenges identified in the Year 1 Garfield study, including maintaining high expectations and rigor, effective differentiation, and culturally responsive practices to ensure high quality instruction within highly diverse, integrated classrooms. The research will also continue to examine longitudinal student data to understand the longer-term impact of detracking for students.

The preliminary Transition Plan for next school year is out and boy, there are some changes that look like done deals to me (at least if staff has its way):

The provisions of this action are to update information in the Student Assignment Transition Plan. The Transition Plan for 2020-21 continues most of the assignment rules in effect during 2019-20. Some highlights and changes are:

• Changing the location of Licton Springs K-8 to the Whitman Service area and updating the Licton Springs GeoZone to extend to the west boundary of the district;

• Expansion of GeoZones for Cleveland HS, Cedar Park ES, South Shore PK-8, Hazel Wolf K-8, Orca K-8, Salmon Bay K-8, Stem K-8, and Thornton Creek ES to align GeoZones with walk zones; 
• Increase of the native/heritage set aside to 20% from 15% for John Stanford (JSIS) and McDonald International Schools; and
• Updating Advanced Learning (AL) assignment language and tiebreakers to reflect the fact that all schools offer AL programming and eligible students will be assigned to AL at their attendance area school. 

To Note:

At the Operations Committee Meeting on October 3rd, the Board proposed increasing the native/heritage set aside for McDonald and JSIS from 15% to 20% and not to change their GeoZones as was initially proposed to help provide some relief to the overcrowding at Green Lake. The result will likely have a small adverse impact on already constrained space at Green Lake. It would increase overcrowding by limiting the number of Green Lake residents who are likely to get into McDonald and JSIS, thus they would attend Green Lake.

Hey! The District is getting a tenant at Memorial Stadium who wants to pay for some upgrades:

The XFL, a professional football league owned by Alpha Entertainment, has requested to rent the district’s Memorial Stadium for their Seattle Dragons team practice and training sessions. The property will be used by the XFL as a practice and training facility from December through April of each year. To bring the property up to their standards as a professional practice facility, the XFL has asked to make alterations to the property at their own expense, which will become the property of the district upon installation. The alternations are valued at $400,000 and would include updates to communication equipment, significant locker room upgrades including new lockers, flooring, and improved ventilation, an ice machine, commercial laundry equipment, etc.