Seattle School Board Meeting This Week

The agenda is not lengthy; no big personnel changes nor super important Consent Agenda items.

(Editor's note: the district staff has taken to make documents "share docs" which will not provide a clean link for me. You will find the item in question - fiscal policy - under "D. Introduction Items.")

However, there is just one Intro item and it's appalling. Here's the motion from - who else - Directors Chandra Hampson and Liza Rankin:

I move that the School Board adopt Board Governance Policy Manual Policies Financial Planning and Budgeting, and Administration of the Annual Budget and Financial Reporting as attached to the Board Action Report. These will be included in the Guardrails section of the Board Governance Policy Manual.

Such a word salad. And no doubt, that's by design.

It's the "first and initial Board Governance policies" (sic).

Background:

Background Transparency, equity and alignment of funds received and expended has long been a desire of the owners and customers of Seattle Public Schools. Whether related to building spending, fees, Parent Teacher Association donations, Associated Student Body inequities, or simply the fiscal data relative to the rationale for building funding, pay scales and union contracts, a clear set of expectations from the Board to the Superintendent as to how we provide that transparency, alignment and equity has never been brought forward as a matter of policy, as clear direction to the superintendent and specifically as connected to the outcomes of students. Seattle Public Schools is long overdue for this clarity and commitment to regular review of our commitment to the values expressed by these policies. It's a great idea to review what money gets into our schools, from who and for what and doing a comparison of schools and their money.

Fiscal Impact/Revenue Source

Fiscal impact to this action will be significant and in ways that will only be fully determined as the District evaluates how to, over time, administer and monitor the guardrails established by these policies. The implementation itself will likely cause a modification of existing systems. In working with the Assistant Superintendent of Finance, we’ve been careful to avoid changes that would create major new cost drivers. Where they are, however, they are balanced by modifications to or elimination of cost drivers that are inefficacious. These policies are in alignment with current District strategies intended to deepen financial alignment and reporting practices so as to demonstrate greater efficacy in spending alignment with Student Outcomes. To that end, this is not new spending, but a formalization of the expectations related to that greater efficacy and alignment.

Restated, portions of the policies are likely to have fiscal impacts that support District staff in finding savings and efficiencies. Others would create the need for additional expenditures, for example the balancing mechanisms for inequitably funded spending. As a function of the entire scale of the budget, these policies were written with the express intent of a more efficacious financial system that is budget neutral and possibly supportive of a reduction in the structural deficit.

This Board is stubborn in its insistence to make overly word and hard-to-decipher policies. Again, by design.

They claim that "Community Engagement" will be to "collaborate."

This work is long-standing among a wide swath of community organizations, Parent Teacher Organizations and Associations, regional education associations, and youth organizations. This is an accumulation of demands, resolution, testimony, and advocacy provided over at least the last decade by countless owners and customers who experience lack of clarity and equity in how the District’s finances benefit students. We hope we have managed to effectively reflect the mountains of work done by students, families, community members and other owners over so many years. If not, we hope the regular review process will engender trust in our willingness to continue to improve in our articulation of this Guardrail.

Sorry but private meetings with certain groups is not engagement. Listening to people complain is not engagement. And, it completely ignores parents new to the district who might want to have voice.

Policy Implication

This is a cornerstone policy for the Board Governance Policy Manual. It provides clarity to the Superintendent regarding the Board’s expectations around fiscal planning, administration, and budgeting relative to the Board’s role in receiving, reviewing, accepting, and approving budgets, audits, and financial statements. The policies will have implications for myriad existing fiscal policies that are administrative in nature and not part of the Board’s core work even if we are required to approve future changes to those policies.

That work is the work of the Superintendent and staff and is expected to take place over time as the attached policies are implemented. It is not the Board’s role to determine how this work is done outside of the limitations expressed explicitly in the Guardrail. When clarity is needed from the Board, it should come as future amendments to these Guardrail policies. That said, the recommendation is for an initial review at the close of the next budgeting cycle and then every other year review.

And this BAR is the first time the public has seen this policy save when I printed it recently. It's just shameful.

I urge you to write to the Board - spsdirectors@seattleschools.org and tell them you call bullshit on this.

There is also a review of "Goal 1" -

I see this under "Lessons We Are Learning"

Attendance, however, remains a headwind for our work across the system. Among Title I schools, long- term absenteeism (missing 10% or more of the school year) was roughly double pre-pandemic levels last year and we are developing strategies to support schools and families on this issue.

They also whine that:

Set back in 2019, these targets were extremely ambitious and were not recalibrated to account for the impact of the pandemic. 

 

 I have no problem with the impact of the pandemic - we all get that - but are they really saying they were too ambitious from the start? Oh my.

This review of this goal sounds like a lot of backpedaling and "but we tried."

It's much the same for "Goal 2" which addresses math goals for 7th grade.

The SBA data is deeply concerning and requires urgent action. Students who are not yet proficient need to achieve strong annual growth to be on track to reach proficiency. High proportions of students not meeting minimum growth expectations is therefore of significant concern. In fact, if a student is significantly below the cut score for projected proficiency, they will need an accelerated level of growth to reach a proficient or higher level.

Given how alarming the data is, we are also exploring additional steps to take in the areas of human resources, attendance, and the overall coordination of supports for schools to ensure we are working in concert to improve student outcomes.

That last paragraph? Gonna take a lot of dollars. Where will that come from?

SBA results show that SPS did not meet its Spring 2023 strategic plan targets. Results for AAM students declined by 4.2 points from 24.4 to 20.2 percent of students scoring proficient or higher, which is 14.8 points below the 2023 target. Results for Student of Color FFEJ remained flat compared to 2021-22. Math proficiency rates remain below pre-pandemic levels for both AAM students and Students of Color FFEJ.

There will be a .5 math coach for six schools.

Also, there was this:

Excellent Teaching
o We can significantly improve the quality of  teaching at our priority schools if we devote resources to a national recruitment campaign, provide incentives for high-performing teachers (not all teachers) to teach and stay in high-need schools, identify the causes and places of high teacher turnover and develop strategy to solve, and solve the crisis in substitute teacher fill rates at Title I schools by developing an incentive pay system.
 

Expanded Learning
o SPS needs to expand the number of instructional hours students receive in math by developing a high dosage tutoring system, including a dedicated transportation tier, and refocusing our approach to summer learning. 

 

Dollars for added pay for teachers, dollars for more tutoring, transportation dollars and summer learning. Again, where will that money come from?

In the Directors' questions I see that Director Lisa Rivera Smith has read the Goals 1 and 2 data carefully. She points out something I missed:

Re: “A notable year-over-year increase was observed for Multilingual leaners (sic), consistent with a positive upward trajectory since 2016-17,” begs the question, what is working for this group and are similar strategies being used for our AAM/SoCFFEJ groups?

She also asks about the group that misses the most school - kindergarteners - with 1 in 5 schools missing 30+ days of school in 2022-23. She says, "Are the schools that fall into this category also schools where we have not aligned Head Start/Pre-K bell times with those of home schools?"

The district only answers the Head Start question, NOT the Pre-K City program. There are 13 Head Start schools, 12 of them Title One. Six of the 13 have bell times that don't align with the home school. "We would have to look more deeply to determine whether student attendance in kindergarten is connected to bell times in preschool."

Director Vivian Song Maritz asks many questions about reading in elementary schools. What is fascinating is that there are just 13 "priority" schools to track and yet when Song Maritz asks for specific data it seems the district just hasn't been able to get that yet. And they say, "We are not able to precisely disentangle the effects of each component of the strategy in 13 schools but are confident that each is having an impact." Oh.

It's quite interesting that Rivera Smith and Song Maritz seem to submit something like 95% of the questions.