Seattle School Board Meeting - New Budget and HCC Plan to OSPI

The Board has their regularly scheduled Board meeting on Wednesday; here's the agenda.

One happening you need to know - the Board meeting is going to include a 90-minute Work Session on the budget. So if you tune in at the beginning, starting at 4:15 pm, you'll be listening to a Work Session and public testimony has been moved to 6 pm. 

Of note in the Budget:

- The enrollment projection is somewhere between 50,183 and 49,650, a difference of a little over 500 students. I'd bet it'll be in the lower range. This is on page 4 but on page 5 I see the number, 48,748. Hmm.

- Special Education services has climbed to 17.8% of the budget. I don't even have to look to say that's an increase.

- The district is continuing with their squishy central spending because there is "central administration" and "other support." Central administration is management but they don't put something like nutrition services (making the food) into central administration even though ALL the food cooking takes place at JSCEE. That way they can say, see CA is only 6.4% of the budget when, in reality, CA is probably 10%+ of the budget. 

- I find page 14, Percent of Budget for Salaries to be jaw-dropping. Those increases are huge. 

- Another jaw-dropped is "districtwide leadership," page 28.  This $26.3M in the budget is JUST for the Superintendent, the Board (their office, they don't get a salary), the department of African-American Male Achievement, the department of Racial Equity Advancement and the office of Equity, Partnerships and Engagement (one office I have always been unclear about) and "strategic plan." It's over 2% of the General Fund. And, the AAMA gets outside funding as well. 

- Also, there is a 26.6M district reserve but that's not explained. Is that the Rainy Day Fund or what?

There are a few issues to note but the main one is Advanced Learning. The district is required to submit an annual Board-approved plan for these learners. (Hilariously, at a recent Student Services, Curriculum & Instruction committee meeting, not a single Board member knew for sure if the plan had to be Board approved. This includes the chair Liza Rankin and Director Chandra Hampson who have been around a lot longer than other members. 

Advanced Learning

- It is stated in the BAR:

The plan follows a format prescribed by OSPI and is not intended as a document to communicate the work of the Advanced Learning department to the broader public. 

However, some statements in the "plan" do make statements that do not align with what the district is telling parents. 

- The plan lists all the possible types of delivery of services but I note that the SPS document says:

Which services and how they are delivered are decided by each school. We encourage families to contact their school directly with questions about the specific services offered.

So how will the district measure the success of this program if every school - about 100 of them - are providing different services? Just on test scores? The district might be okay with a good test score but parents might challenge that as just one data point. What are parents to make of a service delivery at a nearby school that they like better than what is being provided at their own school? Do parents have any input on how the delivery of services might be done at their school?

- OSPI asks this:

Is there a parent organization in your area?

The district’s answer is it’s the Highly Capable Racial Equity Advisory committee. First, this is a group organized by the the district, not by parents so it is not open to all parents to attend AND give input. Second, there are 33 members of the committee and only 11 are parents. The rest are staff and teachers. It seems a little implausible to call this a “parent organization.”

- OSPI says:

Instructional programming and the delivery of HCP services must be in place at every grade level in your district.


At the high school level, HCC students have to enroll in AP or Honors or IB classes. It is curious that the district wants to keep HCC students in their neighborhood school in Gen Ed classes for services in grades 1-8 and yet, in high school, the only services available are in AP or Honors or IB or Running Start or College in High School. All of those involve students needing to make a direct effort to enroll rather than services being delivered to them by the district. As well, there are equity issues because for Running Start it can be a struggle to go to both high school classes and Running Start, in both time and money. 

- I also note under the Methods and Activities, the district says that:

Academic goals are developed in each cohort program for their students.

Given that the cohort program is going away over the next few years, I would assume that academic goals will then be developed for EACH student if that is still going to be a method used.

Other items of interest in the BAR:

- Continue the work with C & I to align course sequences across all secondary schools.

I hope parents are paying attention. I am seeing a flattening of courses offered and I suspect that the district may do away with speciality offerings at specific high schools.

- Implementing one field study for the purpose of talent development through the School-Wide Enrichment model including professional development and support.

Wonder what that might look like?

- Develop and implement an identification process for 2021-2022 for every student in K-8 based on the work of the Identification Practitioner Work Group.

No explanation so what this means, I have no idea.

- Funding an Advanced Placement/International Baccalaureate (IB) District-Wide Coordinator position to continue racially equitable systems for students.

Is SPS even funding one for each IB school?

Comments

Stefanie said…
The link to the budget requires an SPS Microsoft login. Any way we could access that information elsewhere?
Weird Stefanie because it works for me and I don't have a login. Let me see if there's another way.
Maybe try going thru the Board meeting agenda; it might work better that way.
Wow said…
Page 9 of the budget indicates that 6.4% of the budget is being spent on central administration. Central administration costs should NOT exceed 5%.

Is the school board paying attention and what do they plan on doing about high administration expenses? My guess: nothing. The board is focused on changing governance structure, placing students on the school board and killing advanced learning while enrollment decreases to a projected 48,000 students next year.
Anonymous said…
"The district’s answer is it’s the Highly Capable Racial Equity Advisory committee. First, this is a group organized by the the district, not by parents so it is not open to all parents to attend AND give input. Second, there are 33 members of the committee and only 11 are parents. The rest are staff and teachers. It seems a little implausible to call this a “parent organization.”

This committee seems ineffective. Most of the 33 appointees listed on the SPS/AL website have left it. The website is, to put it kindly, inconsistently updated. No meeting minutes have been posted since June 2021, but because this is a "Superintendent's Advisory Committee," no public meeting laws apply. However, any parent can attend the meetings (on Zoom), though the schedule is not always clear. At the meeting I attended last week, staff and facilitators allowed non-members to comment in the chat, and Advanced Learning Manager Deenie Berry visited with us in a Breakout Room. What was bad about that: the handful of committee members in attendance were discussing an issue privately in their own Breakout Room. (No rules prevent an advisory group from doing that.)

– HC Parent
Anonymous said…
The district hasn't updated the superintendant's policy for Highly Capable Service & Advanced Learning Programs posted on their web site since 2016.

https://www.seattleschools.org/about/school-board/policies/2190sp-highly-capable-services-and-advanced-learning-programs/

What Policy?
Grading PolicyChanges said…
The district and school board quietly changed grading systems- in the name of "equity". There wasn't a single board discussion regarding proposed changes. Although, one board director admitted that no one knows if changes will "work". It is past time for Researach, Evaluation and Assessment to research whether these changes are helping- or hurting- students. There is a chance that the new grading policy will actually hurt students.

The district is directing $26 M towards the Strategic Plan which has a very narrow focus and the public should expect results. Thus far, 90% of Rainier Beach high school students can't pass a state math exam and 95% of Emerson Elementary students can't pass a state math exam, as well. With SPS's changes to grading systems, it seems to me that state tests become more meaningful.

The district spends approximately $5K more per student at low income schools, sends grants to low income schools and now, $26M gets directed towards these schools that need support which is fine. However, Hampson, Rankin, Hersey et. al still want to kill 0.4% of the Budget's PTA funds that are used towards student support during a pandemic.
Anonymous said…
This sketchy budget of over $1B of our tax money looks scandalous to me. This should at least look pretty sexy to real journalists.

What happened to the Board Members who were promoting their skills with spreadsheets?

P59 (online PDF P65) shows "Deputy Superintendent" growing from $505,086 in 2021-22 to $1,322,812 in 2022-23. The only explanation they offer is:
"The Office of Strategy Deployment and Responsiveness (SDR), added in the summer of 2021 to support schools and school leaders as the district returned to full in-person teaching, is now a part of the Deputy Superintendent budget. The SDR office works to bring strategic alignment and coherence to district initiatives in support of student outcomes."
I need to see the spreadsheets to get this.

P64 (online PDF P70) shows increases in Finance Department. The only explanations for the two notable areas (Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance, and Risk Management) are:
"has increased funding to support the ongoing participatory budgeting work. Participatory budgeting aims to improve engagement with students and families furthest from educational justice in the district budgeting process.
"For 2022-23 there is a 25% increase in the cost to purchase insurance against major property and liability claims. Rising insurance costs are a national trend, due to increased property damage claims from more frequent and severe natural disasters and larger liability settlements."
Again, who gets it? The national trend needs data to show for even in this big nation.

P65 (online PDF P71) shows the "Reserve" of $26.6Ms without any further definitions or explanations. Isn't this an underfunded district with underserved students needing more actions than arbitrary fund hoarded without purposes? P71 has no breakdown of that "Reserve" of $26.6Ms. P66 (online PDF P72) is void.

I wish true sources like the documents or spreadsheets that can back these numbers were accessible to the public, in the district where the central administration and the Board are annoyedly disclosing limited ideas about purported use of each $M.

Because this budget book lacks data-based explanations of how the funds are managed, it's just like a presentation by a cult on their finance.

If this were a Business Plan anywhere else besides SPS to be asking for loans or funding, it would definitely fail. SPS continues to be an extremely poor example of how Public School Systems behave with taxpayers money.

Toxic Bubble

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