Previewing the Next Seattle School Board Meeting

The Board will be having a regular Board meeting tomorrow, Wednesday the 12th, starting at 4:15 pm. Public comment starts at 4:30 pm. Agenda.

It appears to be a more regular looking agenda. Meaning, there are many items that directors will actually need to discuss. Of course the irony is that one item they will discuss - approving the framework for the new Student Outcome Focused Governance plan - will mean much less oversight on their part of district inner workings. It might have meant shorter Board meetings as well but the plan also rolls Work Sessions into  Board meetings. 

Speaking of Work Sessions, there will be one on the Budget rolled into this very meeting. 

The agenda reflects this order:

- Superintendent Comments

- School Board student member comments

- Public testimony (not sure how long this will be without seeing the number of speakers but probably 45 minutes to an hour). 

- Board committee reports (under the new SOFG plan, most committees are going away)

- Consent Agenda 

There are several BEX items on the Consent agenda; each is for the rebuilding of an elementary school and ALL have more money added to them. Alki ES will get another $8.7M. John Rogers ES will get another $3M. Montlake ES will get a whopping $15M added. Alki's budget is now $75M, Rogers is now $94M and Montlake is now nearly $80M. For elementary schools, those are breathtaking budgets. I'll go check but I'd venture to guess that no other district is building at that high of prices.  

The increases to those elementary schools' renovation budgets is stated as having come from the BEX V contingency fund. Well, according to district documents, that fund is $32M and just these three increases are $26.7M so that doesn't leave much for any other issues that arise. I continue to be worried about what looks like overbuilding old buildings.

- Work Session on the Budget for an hour. Presentation

I see NO good news in this budget. Page 5 is titled Enrollment:October Headcount and yet the last count says, "As of 9-22-22." It looks like staff was very right on in their budgeted vs actual count (49,855 vs 49,650). This is down from last year's actual count of 50,183. 

Page 9 has the ESSER Expenditures and Budget. There is one section - Increase Wellness and Supports which has a subsection "Culture of Care and continued COVID Response" at over $2M. I hope the Board asks what that covers. 

Another section - Enhance Responsiveness/Communications and Engagement, with a subsection "Response to Racism and ESSER Team" that spent $800,000 last year and will spend another $800,000 this year. Again, I would like just one Board director to ask to clarify what that spending is. 

In a BIG red flag to me, I see on page 10 that there is this notation, Use of Capital Fund to cover maintenance operations in FY20-21 for $10M. Maintenance is General Fund work so it would be good to know WHY this was done. It is also notated "Savings created by charging the capital fund for maintenance costs in FY 21-22."  You don't rob Peter to pay Paul but that's sure what it looks like. 

They have a reserve for "active legal claims against the school district" of $2.6M.

Page 11/12 has the really bad news. In what they are calling a "resource gap," it appears by 2025-2026, the district will be short $128M. 

Page 13 shows the impacts of the latest contract with SEA on the Budget. 

Page 15 compares what the district is spending for staff versus what the state is funding. 

The certificated staff item isn't that bad with the state funding 86%. But for administrative staff at schools, the district is spending nearly double what the state funds. Special Education is nearly the same (but I don't find that as difficult to read about as the administrative staff). But for ELL, the district is spending two-thirds more than state funding.

Page 16 is Potential Solutions: 

- Enhancements to Revenue (i.e. go begging to the Legislature)

- One-time Resources 

- Reductions to Expenditures (the only item they have for this is "program reductions." What about all the consultants working for the district or all the new JSCEE hires?

- Action items - just one - approval of the 2022-2023 School Year Calendar.

- Then, an Intro/Action item - the approval of new boundaries for DIRECTOR regions as required by law after a new Census has been taken. 

So apparently, the Board is tentatively liking Scenario 1 as put forth by the consulting firm. 

However there are now three amendments that are three new scenarios. (Maps embedded for each amendment so check the Board agenda item for those.)

Amendment #1 is from Directors Song Maritz and Hersey. They want Scenario 4 to help preserve the boundaries for the Chinatown International District region.  I like this one because at least then the Central district will have elementary schools in that region.

Amendment #2 is also from Directors Song Maritz and Hersey. Apparently they also like Scenario 5, again to help keep the International District intact. This one would get my vote.

Amendment #3 is from Director Hampson who likes Scenario 6 because it more closely aligns with the City Council's new redrawn of council districts. If this was really important to do, there should have been direction from the Board to the consultants to do this in the first place. 

- Intro item, again for the SOFG plan. I have gone over this issue here.