Seattle Schools School Board Meeting, August 30, 2023

But first, some good news; there are comfort dogs at Mercer Island High School

Finley, a 4-year-old Golden Retriever, and his sidekick, 2-year-old Guinness (also known as Little G.), are a cuddly, calming presence to both students and staff.

The dynamic duo are the personal pets of special education teacher Andrea Confalone, who got the idea of bringing in therapy dogs back in 2017.

Finley even has his own Instagram page.

"Kids are welcome any time, so they can come in and visit with the dogs, and we do some work out in the halls and in the common area at other times," she said. "But for the most part, my classroom is like an open door for kids to come in when they need some additional support and staff as well."

Confalone said counselors have brought in kids who are in crisis just to sit with the dogs.

Confalone said between periods, the dogs will sit at the door and greet people as they're walking by.

"They get a staff photo, and they are in the district office," said Confalone. "So, when you walk in the district office behind the secretary, their photos are there."

 There are many ways to support good mental health in schools. 

The Board is giving the oath of office to the newest student board members before this meeting. There are only two this year and one is a holdover from last year (Luna Crone-Baron). The new member is Aayush Muthuswamy. There are no details on the agenda so I am not sure what schools they are from. It is a streaming event and both new members get to make some remarks. I might listen in to hear what they have to say.

I just wanted to give you a quick read of the minutes for the Special Meeting on August 9th to vote on Rules of Seattle Public Schools/Board Retreat. And by quick, I mean it's a one-pager that basically says people were there and breathing. 

To the school board meeting tonight, here's the agenda. There are 10 speakers so that leaves 10 open spots. 

From the personnel Report, we see that six principals have left/are leaving including the principal of Frankin High School, Joseph Williams (the principal at Hazel Wolf K-8, Deborah Nelsen,  is leaving but not until the end of this year). There are also several assistant principals leaving.

For the 10th year, the district is accepting an OSPI grant to support work/mentoring with 1st/2nd year teachers in the amount of $400,000. 

The demographic make-up of the Consulting Teacher Program (17 members) is 35% white and 65% people of color: 6 White; 3 Black/African American; 1 Multi-racial; 4 Asian; 3 Latino. This funding will also help support the mentorship of our first year Educational Support Associates (ESAs).

• 2021-22: 315 teachers served – 93% of teachers indicated the consulting teacher program had an impact on their culturally responsive practice.
• 2022-23: 343 teachers served –

• 93.3% of teachers indicated the consulting teacher program had a positive impact on their culturally responsive practice.

• 83% of teachers indicated that the consulting teacher program has a positive impact on their ability to identify and address issues of racial equity in their classroom.

There is also a BAR for Acceptance of School Emergency Response to Violence (Project SERV) Funding from DOE for Ingraham High School for the 2023-2024 school year. The funding is $493,923.00 and it appears that Senator Patty Murray's office helped with connections to this funding. 

0. During the 2021-22 school year:

   • 87% of ninth-grade students attended school, pre-shooting attendance was 89%,

     then there was a significant drop post shooting to 85%

   • 80% of 10th-grade students attended school, pre-shooting attendance was 87%,

     then there was a significant drop post shooting to 83%

   • 84% of the 11th-grade students attended school, pre-shooting attendance was

     85%, then there was a significant drop post shooting 81%

   • 82% of 12th-grade students attended school, pre-shooting attendance was 88%,

     then there was a significant drop post shooting to 77%

     Post shooting, Ingraham saw an impact to student grades and the percent of 12-grade students needing waivers to graduate. There has been an increase of 224 D and E grades given. Many students were in danger of not graduating because they wouldn’t have sufficient credits.

     The impact can best be seen in 12-grade students. Many of them have had to apply for graduation waivers because they failed one or two classes necessary for graduation. Data collected in April 2023 demonstrated that the 2022-23 senior class bypassed the 2021-22 senior class on percent of students needing waivers to graduate.

The funding proposed will provide the Ingraham community with mental health supports, including:

• Access to mental health assessments, and referrals for students to engage in trauma informed evidence-based practices such as one to one individual therapeutic and group support.

• A chemical dependency (CDP) provider that would afford access to education materials and one on one individual support to students who are experiencing substance use disorder.

• A restorative practice practitioner who would engage in the student community in providing restorative practice circles.

• Curriculum that supports teachers providing students with social, emotional learning.

• Staffing personnel offering services, which will help restore the learning environment

  and would include new positions of a full-time house administrator, security specialist and funding to contract with community-based, culturally responsive mental health supports.

• A personal services contract with an outside psychotherapist who would provide individual therapeutic services for staff to access.

 Then we have the annual funding for the especially high needs Special Education students. There are several BARs for each of the institutions serving those students. All of these are on the Consent agenda.

In Action items we see:

- a Bar for the CBA between the district and the Major Preventative Maintenance and Critical Maintenance work groups. Apparently this negotiation has been going on for awhile as the BAR is retroactive to September 1, 2022. It includes a 6.6% raise for 2022-2023 and a 4.7% increase for this school year (both include the "inflationary increase)." 

- a BAR for Non-Represented Staff update

This Board Action Report makes edits to the Compensation Bulletin for Non-Represented Staff (“Compensation Bulletin”). The edits include an inflationary increase of 3.7 percent, consistent with the implicit price deflator approved by the state under Senate Bill 5650, which amended RCW 28A.400.205 effective July 23, 2023. 

For Intro items there is just one but it is NOT being introduced correctly. It is for the Approval of the 2023-24 Superintendent Evaluation Tool. 

 It is not correct because the actual tool is NOT attached. Documentation is supposed to be attached at Intro.  If the Board chooses at the NEXT board meeting to put this on the Consent Agenda, rather than having the tool available to the public and then having an open discussion, then you know they are not serious people. 

The timeline says that the Board will meet quarterly to use this tool and then have a final Executive session in June 2024 to "discuss performance on the goals over the entire year." Then they will put out that documentation to be reviewed "in a public Board Meeting prior to the last Board meeting of the 2023-2024 school year."

This is stunning because Superintendent Brent Jones only took a two-year contract and by January of 2024, the Board should be doing this work to see if they want to retain him. Waiting until June? Well, then, you know he's here to stay and probably gonna get a big raise. 

Where's the public engagement? Maybe someone can ask candidates Rankin and Rivera Smith this question.

The Board has a new area on the board meeting agendas - "Progress Monitoring" which is in service to the Student Outcome Focused Governance model (SOFG). This section is blandly called "Goal 3.1 and Goal 3.2." But there is real news in there about the African-American Boys initiative.

Goal Status: Yellow

Recent data indicate we are not meeting current targets for the interim measures. At the same time,  SPS continues to make progress on these measures relative to the (pre-pandemic) 2018-19 baseline.

Interim Measure #1 – The rate of 9th Grade Black boys and teens who earned at least 6 total credits, with a minimum of 1 credit in ELA, Math, and Science by the end of the 2022-23 semester 2 is currently at 68.7 percent, which is 3.2 percentage points lower than the result from the end of last year (2021-22 semester 2), and 9.3 points below the 2022-23 end of year target (78%)= Yellow

Interim Measure #2 – The rate of 10th Grade Black boys and teens who earned at least 12 total credits, with a minimum of 3.0 credits in ELA, Math, and Science and 1 credit in Social Studies by the end of the 2022-23 semester 2 is currently at 54.3 percent, which is 3.7 points higher than the end of last year (2021-22 semester 2), and 6.7 points below the 2022-23 end-year target (61%) = Yellow

Yellow means "interim metrics indicate conflicting evidence regarding whether results will be delivered."

After reading all the different stats, I would agree, that the data is all over the place. Not sure there are conclusions to be drawn.

1. Seattle Public Schools continues to improve the college and career readiness and postsecondary opportunities for African American boys and teens.  
2. SPS Data shows that we are not meeting the targets we have set for 9th and 10th grade course completion for African American male (AAM) students though we are still improving on these metrics.

This part is interesting:

1. There are several claims we can make from this latest data including that the efforts to promote equitable grading practices and new district data reports have had a positive effect on these numbers.

Strategies for Achieving the College & Career Readiness Goal-   Among these are:

 

-  Advanced American Indian Studies - interesting, I never heard of this class

-  STEM courses (including culturally relevant math materials) - I have heard of this but I'm still unclear on what it means in practice.  

- Universal Design for Learning in advanced courses - Not sure I understand this either but here's a link.  

- As a 9th grade "success tracker" - Atlas College & Career Readiness Dashboard for School Leaders to monitor progress on their CSIPs - has anyone heard of this or used it? Is it different from what school leaders use to determine 9th grade readiness for other groups of students?

 

The overall trend for the topline measures has been positive for both AAM students and Students of Color, FFEJ.

Context: It is important to note district grading policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. In semester 2 of 2019-2020, students were awarded As or Incompletes. In 2020-2021, students were awarded As, Bs, Cs, or Incompletes.

 

One thing that is NOT good is that after page 5, all the documentation is from AJ Crabill and SOFG. Using other sources - without acknowledgment to the public - is wrong. 

 

Lastly, in the "Directors Questions and Staff Responses" we see two things. 

 

One, once again, it is Director Vivian Song Maritz who is asking the questions.  

Two, she asked a lot of questions that could have been answered long ago if staff had given the Board an understanding of how to read the Personnel Report. This needs to happen for the new Board members who come on in December.

She also asked about the African-American Male Student initiative and missing credits. Here's the answer:

The majority of the 213 2022-2023 African American male students who were off-track in their credit accumulation were missing credits in multiple areas at the end of 10th grade. 

- 29.6% (63) were missing credits in one credit type

- 21.1% (45) in two credit types

- 11.3% (24) in three credit types

- 36.2% (77) in all four credit types.

So I don't know what the number of AAM there are in high school but that last stat is not good.

She then asks what factors there might be? To paraphrase the answer: most of missing credits are not passing a class. Reasons:

- inequitable grading

- students not receiving adequate support to learn foundational skills in earlier grades (such as math)

- missing many days of school

The most interesting exchange was when Song Maritz asked about Board policy 5020 around the BOARD "establishing a strategy for collective bargaining negotiations." She says, "I do not recall this Board work being done." The policy also says that the Superintendent's "chief negotiator" "shall advise and inform the Board regarding the progress of negotiations and shall negotiate within parameters established by the Board." She says again, that the Board didn't see any of this. 

Staff's reply:

We recognize the provisions of Board Policy 5020 and, in accordance with our past practices, typically notify the board about any challenges during bargaining that might affect the school district's daily operations. We also note that the application of this policy has varied among our labor partners. We will continue to strive to establish a more consistent approach to communicate with the board about negotiations with all our labor partners.

That's a pretty shockingly bland reply and the "labor partners" have ZERO to do with enacting this policy. No, that's all on staff.

 

The Board goes on and on about their lane being policy but when the district does not follow the policy as stated, then what? That this Board has not been consistent in their insistence that Board policy be followed is deeply troubling. And the person who should be leading this charge is NOT Song Maritz but the Board leaders, namely, President Hersey, VP Rankin and Member at Large Sarju.

More and more it all looks like rubber-stamping by the Board.