This Week's Seattle School Board Meeting - This Should Be Interesting

The School Board is having a regularly scheduled board meeting on Wednesday, the 15th.  Here's the agenda which has expanded greatly since last week. (By the way, did you know you have to click through at least 5 times (!) just to get to the agenda? Don't tell me how great the website is.) This is its 4th posting and they STILL don't have all the documentation attached.

So the district had three audits done recently:

Announcement of Completed Audits by Audit Committee Chair 

• Communications Internal Audit 
• Ingraham High School Addition & Modernization Project Internal Audit   
• Northwest Laborers – Employee Trust Fund External Audit 

The Communications audit is a hoot but very professionally done. I read through it but I'll have to break it down further another time. Basically,

As part of this communication audit, School Communications Performance Evaluations (SCoPE) surveys were conducted to collect feedback from three stakeholder groups:parents and families, employees (both
instructional and support staff) and the community. The nationally benchmarked SCoPE Survey was conducted for SPS on November15-December 2, 2022. It included questions regarding the following:

• How people are currently getting information and how they prefer to receive it.
• Whether they are getting the information they need.
• Perceptions around their opportunities to seek information, provide input and become involved.
• Whether they perceive the communications to be understandable, timely, accurate, transparent and trustworthy.

 Faculty/Staff Survey:
ƒ 736 surveys completed 

Parent Survey:
ƒ 2771 surveys completed

 Student Survey:
ƒ 440 surveys completed

Community Survey:
ƒ 24 surveys completed
ƒ ±20.4 percent confidence interval
(± 10 percent target not met)
ƒDue to low participation, no significant findings are included in this report based on SCoPE Survey responses by community members.

The district couldn't scrounge up more than 24 community members to take the survey? Oh my.

My only comments at this juncture are that this report is quite thorough and reminds me of the Moss Adams report way back when that also tried to help the district revamp itself. As well, a few of the staff comments seem suspect to me given that they seem to echo exactly what the Strategic Plan says.

The Ingraham High School Addition audit says this: 

Cornerstone General Contractors, Inc. (“Cornerstone”) completed its work on the Ingraham High School Classroom Addition (“Ingraham”) project for Seattle Public Schools (“SPS”) in the spring of 2020. Cornerstone’s final billing was rendered and paid in May 2020. 

In late 2022, SPS engaged MWL Advisory, LLC (“MWL”) to perform an audit of Cornerstone’s billings and supporting cost records on Ingraham. Through its billings, Cornerstone asserted that it had costs that exceeded its Guaranteed Maximum Price (“GMP”). 

Through audit, MWL identified certain questioned costs raising audit concerns which, if pursued, might reduce Cornerstone’s project cost substantiation by $246,680 and result in GMP savings that could cause Cornerstone to refund SPS an amount of up to $200,908.

The problem is that the district had several change orders and blah, blah, blah. I'd bet the district doesn't see a nickel back.

The NW Laborers audit is basically a bill review.

Then there's this:

4. Acceptance of the League of Education Voters Foundation (LEVF) grant to South Shore PreK-8. Approval of this item would authorize the Superintendent to accept the LEVF Grant of up $2,000,000 for 2019-2021, with the option of up to $2,000,000 for 2021-2023 for South Shore PreK- 8.

For those who are new, at least two decades ago, a guy who owned QFC said he would give then-elementary TT Minor one million dollars a year to try to bring up a Title One school. TT Minor got closed and the money followed to South Shore K-8.  (The TT Minor building was revamped to house the World School.)

I have NEVER seen any public reporting of how it's going at South Shore, given that money but if you look at their test scores, it doesn't appear to have done much. It appears most of the money goes to "whole child" work which is great but I'm not sure it's true to the spirit of what it was supposed to do. I would guess there is some internal report but who knows?

Then there is the annual filing of the CSIPs (Continuous School Improvement Plan (CSIP)) for each school. I haven't done a spot check but do look at your school's and see if it is reality-based.

Next up - the BTA V Implementation Plan. Haven't read this one yet.

Then we have the district's plan to buy a warehouse. Still no documentation and I'd bet it will appear at 4 pm on Wednesday. No idea where it is or how much it will cost. 

Then some more Board SFOG navel-gazing. Pass. 

Then, under Informational Items:

- Clean Energy Plan from the Clean Energy Task Force

- Monthly Budget Status Report 

- Board Director Questions and Staff Responses for March 15, 2023 Regular Board Meeting 

- John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence Fire Line Separation Emergency Determination 

I'm only going to address the last two.

The Board Director Questions are quite interesting; good reading. I'm particularly noticing the sharp tone coming from Director Chandra Hampson ( she even acts as the grammar police at one point - good for her). 

As for the "Fire Line Separation Determination," this is a report on the water line break at JSCEE recently and the large costs to fix the problem.  (And they did something so I can't figure out how to cut and paste.)

Basically, on Feb. 12, 2023 there was "a major water damage incident" "when an 8-inch fire line separated under the loading dock on the west side of the building, " near where one of two main electrical rooms exists.

The main electrical switchboard which supplies power to half the building was severely damaged "and cannot be salvaged." 

"The damage caused by this incident is significant." The Facilities Operations personnel have made an Emergency Determination under an RCW that allows a waiver of competitive bidding. 

The Superintendent notified the Board that it will cost more than $250,000. The estimate of the costs to repair are $5M. There are three phases of work:

- Phase 1 - immediate power restoration with emergency generators ($195,000 a month)

- Phase 2 - temporary power restoration to eliminate the use of those generators because of their cost (2-3 months)

- Phase 3 - permanent power restoration (10-12 months)

Source of funds is not named.