Seattle School Board Meeting, November 15,2023: Part 3

This phase of the board meeting took two hours. It felt much more like a Work Session than a board meeting. Everyone moved to tables set up nearby to view the PowerPoint.

Below will be key quotes but here are the important highlights.

The MOST important highlight is two-fold. 

One, I believe Director Liza Rankin is now a conduit for new ideas from the Superintendent and staff, particularly around closure and consolidation of schools. I've seen this now several times where she seems to pull an idea from the air or "someone at a school told" her something. Then, someone on the staff agrees with her or says it might be possible.

Two, want to know what that means in this board meeting? 

Rankin put forth the idea that some K-5 principals, tired of not being able to have a full staff or being in an old building (or both), might want to volunteer to consolidate with another school. Superintendent Brent Jones concurs saying some school communities are "approaching readiness." He said that Dr. Jarvis was running point on this issue.

Jarvis said he is trying to be "invitational" to principals as they "practically speaking, pragmatically speaking" know they will probably have to do this. But Jarvis then said this:

There is also the side that is very loaded in a sense of principals not wanting to be the one that says, 'I volunteered my school to be closed and then have their own parents say 'whoa, when did this get, how did we get here?'"

No kidding.

He finished:

"I'm not naive enough to think we're going to get consensus on any hard decision but we can get to a place where the parents feel that the people they respect like their principal are leading them safely through a hazardous process."

Jarvis also threw out the idea of phasing out K-8s. Look for his name below for his remarks.

So your school is small, your resources are drying up so why not just pull the bandaid off and get (literally) going? But my first thought was - are these principals being promised something for their school if they get going sooner? I'm not sure we could ever find that out even if it were to be true. 

So no closures/consolidations next year? All we can do is wait and see but here's your heads up. 

Because what I am writing here with these multiple posts on this board meeting is NOT what will be reflected in the minutes of this meeting. I plan on posting those meeting minutes when they become available.

Why am I still here? For the reason I state at the beginning - what this district says and does needs to be documented somewhere and it's not going to be minutes or media doing that. 

Brent Jones, Superintendent

"This two-part agenda item will show our work around a system of well-resourced schools. "Whenever you see the phrase 'well-resourced schools,' it should always have 'system' in front of it." Schools that have all the elements that we know that there's almost a guarantee that students have everything they need in terms of service, programs, and how we use building space in a way that is effective, efficient and, most importantly, yields outcomes for our students. We hope for this to be enlightening and informative around what community has said to us around what is a well-resourced school system look like."

I don't really get the use of "outcomes" in SOFG. There are outcomes no matter what they do. It might be better to say good academic outcomes. 

Jones said that all of it was "feeding into the next Strategic Plan and ultimately the Board is going to need to validate that this is the vision and values of the community." 

He later held up the Board resolution on his plan and said it was for "increasing clarity." He said it "can be adjusted as you see fit but we are ahead of where we were last time." 

Bev Redmond, Communications

She first demurred as to when a report will be out for the "well-resourced schools" meetings but later said it would be available at the district website. This is what I found when I looked but it feels more like a PowerPoint than a report.

Lisa Rivera Smith asked about all the post-it suggestions taken at the meetings, saying she would like to read them. The answer was that they are in "Research" and have been digitized. Rivera Smith also said that communications need to be accessible to families where English isn't the first language. 

She later said that the "Research people" said they could break down the participation at the well-resourced schools meetings by grade level. 

Michelle Sarju

I am proud and I have never seen anything like this in my history of living here and I have been very actively involved. When I think about communication, what is apparent to me that we don't want to mislead our community into thinking that they will have a say in every single decision that's made at every single level in this district; that's not going to happen.

"This is an example of us including community. I have been asking for weeks what a "well-resourced school" is. I now have a definition, like I am so ecstatic."

What she seems to have missed is that the community feedback is a wide-ranging list of wants/needs. It is NOT the district's definition of "well-resourced" schools.

She then went on a slight rant about how she works in King County and can't go ask Executive Dow Constantine anything (and that the County has its own budget crisis). 

She also suggested reaching out to KC Public Health but "not to me because I'm doing other things there." She didn't offer a suggestion as to who the district COULD call for information. She emphatically said that the birthrate in Seattle is not going to go up. 

Liza Rankin

She sure spoke a lot. I honestly think some directors need a timer put on them because it's so obvious who takes up more time than others. 

She pointed out that there was not enough student representation in this feedback from community as well as not enough from community members who don't have students in SPS. 

Looking at the slide on small elementaries - "No one should take this personally. It's just a reality of living in a city that changes and grows and if you look at the history of SPS and the population. When things changed we're all like all my gosh, oh my gosh, we're under this is desperate situation where we are losing students and we are at the same point we were in 2008." Well, not exactly the same but she seems to be wishing on some star that this enrollment issue will change.

As for "not taking it personally," again, as someone who had a front-row seat for the last closure go-round, parents take it VERY personally because of the time most of them invest in the first school their child attends, the school that their child attends the longest (6 years). People love their schools. 

Brandon Hersey

I found his comments confusing but he said "this gives us a playbook for whoever the next president is and we have a clear indicator of where we are lacking in terms of community engagement with specific populations. I am super concerned about how little student voice there is here." He did also point out that some people may not have responded to the outreach because "it was summer" and they may not have known this was happening. He said it was a great job.

How about not having vitally important meetings in the dead of summer? Just a thought. 

Aayush Muthuswamy, Student Board Member

Saying that student voice is important - "They won't come back again if they give feedback and nothing comes of it. This is not a complete picture without student voice."

He also had a brilliant question at the end (but then said he needed to get home because his mom would be mad he stayed out past 9 on a weeknight).

"On this resolution - your toolbox - most items are internal, so enact them now but get a loan from Legislature? If not, will all the other tools be enough? "

Podesta said they will have to put together a package that the Board will support. He said the state financing system has tools around this if districts can't build a budget.

Rankin said, in speaking of a loan, that it was permission they needed to get from the State to do that, not dollars from the State. The money would be an internal loan.

Chandra Hampson

Said it felt like very K-5 feedback, saying "that's the period when people have the strongest opinions." She referenced giving Rankin a Schoolhouse Rock book and pictured an animation of this work. 

As for student voice, she said they "Might not necessarily ask the same questions of students."

"I started to see this drift we get in as adults - what do i want for people to provide for my child to sort of stuff them full of things, resources versus what does my child actually need to be successful in things they want to do?" I can't say for sure but that sounded like her saying some parents ask for more than their child truly needs. 

"We didn't ask that question - what would you need for your student to be more successful? or if you are a student, what do you need?

She said students had told her "instruction" and "the feeling that they - not a knock on teachers - a low sense of teachers wanting to teach." The "belief gap" is prominent in SPS and adults not believing that kids or connecting with the students. 

Well, whether she thinks it's not a knock on teachers, I do.

 

Vivian Song

She said she did want to see the report for more information.

She also stated that Mercer Island SD has 500-seat elementaries and are looking to go to 600 students. 

She also expressed surprise that the Board hadn't been told about a second demographer.

Podesta said it was "really to provide quality assurance on the major project that FLO did. Hired Les Kendrick who has a firm we worked with previously." I do recall Mr. Kendrick doing work for the district years back and, at that time and place, he fully explained the drop in enrollment. 

She also stated, "I know that last time of closure/consolidation. enrollment planning was flat or declining  and then came a huge increase. "What is different this time around so that doesn't happen (to us) again?"

Podesta said not much housing stock is coming online that will be family housing. He also said it's much harder at the school level to know what is happening in neighborhood area. 

Leslie Harris

She said this was "a good start." But she then said she noticed something at a couple of the meetings. "One thing I noticed at the sessions in the hot summer is that we need more TLC. We had a ton of staff there but they didn't have badges and no one knew who they were. We had trolleys full of water for facilitators and board members. it's the framing of this information, closures and closures and overlaying right on top of the other. "

She asked what the consultants have to say about the Seattle Comprehensive Plan. 

Podesta said, "They use historical trends and more coarse analysis than us." 

Fred Podestra, Operations

He said, "The context that we are in is the general funding in WA for basic education, our own decisions and decline in enrollment." He said over 4900 students left over four years, mostly in elementary grades.

He said they were working with two demographic firms - both said, flat to slow growth. He said no matter the population size of a building, fixed building costs stay. 

"Long-term outlook does not see us bouncing back." Again, Rankin telling a parent - in writing - that the district was going to swing back was not present in a single staffer's statement.

He says there was some pandemic impact "but the long-term outlook doesn't see us bouncing back and this (budget-planning) has to be a multi-year exercise."

 

Dr Art Jarvis, Deputy Superintendent

"For example, you have been looking at, for a number of years, on K-8s. They can be looked at from two different perspectives. One is what is the effect on middle schools where the middle school will be shrinking in a few years and what would you do. Or look at it from the other side with K5s and say if you add those as pure K5s in system, how big are they?"

He talked about whether you put 9th grade at high schools and keep 6th grade at the elementary level. He spoke of phasing out K-8s, admitting there will be some "weird configurations" but "it will get use where we want to be by 2023."

Song asked about having an understanding of what the impacts to students would be for any given action. "My expectation is that there will be some analysis of sources of deficit as well as whatever ideas you are proposing to us will have analysis."

Jarvis ruefully said that that WAS what the presentation was trying to say but "that may be a weakness of the presentation." He also stated, "We are running small schools that are not sustainable."

 

Interchange on early closures

Rankin

Some buildings that were "oh my gosh, tired of not knowing if we're going to have a counselor and art teacher or whatever and could you just please, our building's old could you just please let us leave here. Not saying there are a ton of those but if there were to be a couple of school communities that were like 'we don't want to wait because we don't want to do another year like this year, could that like no consolidations meaning we're not directing them but suppose someone like knowing that is the source of our deficit if there was a school community that was like, yeah, we don't want to wait.

Jones

"So yeah so they're probably a couple of school communities saying they are approaching 'readiness.' But I would question what readiness means - is that part or all of their community or is it a K-5 community but the 6-8 isn't ready?" He said there could be "pilot schools" or "early adopters."