Seattle School Board Meeting, January 17, 2024

Update:

Speaker list for tonight's Board meeting (Wednesday, Jan 17) is full, with 20 speakers plus 10 on the waitlist.  

Notable on the waitlist is one of the teachers who has been participating in the Gaza protests and was filmed vandalizing the Starbucks Roastery. Here's her topic:

Staff safety: addressing recent wave of doxxing and intimidation of SPS employees 2. Student safety: growing need for adequate response from SPS to address how ongoing genocide in Gaza is impacting safety of not just staff but students and the need to break the silence in classrooms about what’s happening in Gaza while offering educational resources and space to learn about what’s happening (and has been happening for 75 years) in a meaningful and truthful way

Gotta say, that certainly plays into the hands of those who lambast "activist teachers." 

There are also several speakers who want to support "Abdulahi" but I don't know who that is. Anyone? 

Also several speakers want to talk about "educational equity" and again, I have no idea what that might mean to them.

end of update

The first Seattle School Board meeting of the new year will be on Wednesday, January 17th. Here's the agenda.

This is a fairly short agenda except for the Work Session in the middle of it, the topic being the Budget. 

Early in the meeting, there will be a "progress monitoring" for Goal 3 - College & Career Readiness for Black boys in SPS. Here's the strategy:

Strategy
SPS has engaged in five broad strategic areas in its CCR work: excellent teaching, strong relationships,
equitable measures, opportunity pathways, and expanded learning over the past three years. More
recently, we have focused on the following six specific levers to improve CCR-related student outcomes
within the five broad areas. They are listed here in order of those that are already under way followed
by those that are just getting started.

1. Aligned Use of Data so that staff can help students stay on track to graduate and be ready for
postsecondary opportunities.
2. CSIP-aligned School Strategies so that school leaders use data tools to focus on the most important
student CCR-related outcomes.
3. Grading for Equity so that students and families can get clear feedback on how well students are
making progress towards meeting standards.
4. Postsecondary Pathway Exploration so that students have regular opportunities to explore career
and college options so that they know what postsecondary opportunities they want to pursue.
5. Inclusionary Practices so that students can succeed in advanced courses and be prepared for a
variety of postsecondary opportunities.
6. High School & Beyond Planning so that students have hopes and goals for their future and regular
opportunities to develop plans to reach those goals.

Nothing inherently wrong with those areas except that yes, they are quite "broad." Two of them are basically "we use data in this work." Then there's "grading for equity" which if I understand it correctly, means making sure students pass classes in order to move on.  There is this update:

Grading for Equity: To ensure students have adequate, consistent opportunities to show their
learning of standards, all secondary schools are in the process of developing and implementing a
standard retake policy.

That one is fascinating because I just read at a parents Facebook page, a parent who wanted their child to retake a class for a better grade. Under the Superintendent's procedure, that student would be able to but both grades would show on a transcript. Still, the student's counselor said no, it could not be retaken. I would think if SPS is developing a new "standard retake" policy, then it would be accessible to all. 

Then there is also the problematic "advanced courses" area. I think it grand that the district is working on making these courses more inclusionary and more known by more students. The problem here is that "advanced courses" is not defined. In the past, the complaints were about AP courses being mostly white students. But a course can be advanced -they used to be called "honors" - without being an AP courses. So what are students taking and, if not AP, does each high school define what "advanced" means? 

There are confusing data points:

 Not Good

Looking just at Graduation rates, independent of advanced coursework completion, the percentage
of African American male (AAM) students in the Class of 2023 graduating within four years increased
by 0.5 percentage points compared to the Class of 2022.

Great

The percentage of African American male (AAM) students in the Class of 2023 graduating
within four years and successfully completing advanced coursework increased by 4.0 points
from the Class of 2022 – and is 13.9 points higher than the target for the Class of 2023.

On Advanced Coursework

Advanced Coursework by Subject: Among AAM students in the Class of 2023, 50% completed an
advanced course in ELA, which compares to 51% in Math, 31% in Science, and 57% in Social Studies.

I have to say given math and its reputation, I am amazed that more students chose an advanced math class over an advanced ELA class.

The Consent agenda contains items previously introduced to the Board. Amazingly, not a single Intro item. 

Then there is the Budget Work Session. I urge you to READ THIS DOCUMENT. Why?

- Page 5 has many financial reports with links. If you are interested in digging deep, they could be useful documents.

- Page 6 compares General Fund revenues from 2022-2023 to 2021-2022. In 2022-23, the district received almost $35M more from their state apportionment. They got about $13M more in state grants. But there was a huge drop from the feds -probably because the ESSER funding went down -  at nearly $50M.

- Page 8 has (to me) a shocking bit of info which is that Special Education costs are nearly half of what Regular Instruction costs are. Someone should show the Legislature those numbers and say, "See why we need more?" 

- Page 10 is confusing reading to me so help me out. Certificated spending went up nearly $20M and Classified spending went up nearly $7M but Payroll Taxes and Benefits went down 21%. 

- Page 15

On December 13, Governor Inslee unveiled his proposed 2024 supplemental operating budget.
Per his budget highlights for education document:  

“The governor’s proposed 2024 supplemental budget prioritizes Washington’s special education students and provides much needed support to school district staff. These investments will continue to support the growing needs of Washington students and school employees."

As a reminder, the Governor’s budget is a proposal. The House and Senate will offer their own budget proposals in February, and the Legislature will adopt a final supplemental operating budget by March 7, 2024, the last day of the legislative session.

- Page 16 - Specifics on Governor's budget 

- Page 23

SPS could save $5M if there was a 3-bell transportation schedule. If SPS does this, the Board should demand that the savings be accounted for, in detail. Too often, staff has said there would be savings in various places in transportation and yet they never explain how much WAS saved and where that savings went. 

- Page 24

Pay for play fees for athletics. The chart here shows a large drop in participation in 2020-2021 (probably COVID-related) but the number of students participating in athletic programs versus low-income students in those programs has been quite steady. 

- Page 27

I either missed this previously or it's new but it talks about contingency balances. 

• Relying more on vacant position savings in the short-term could allow for
reductions to formal Contingency budgets ($0 - $10 million).
• Reducing Contingency budgets would also limit flexibility for budget
adjustments during the school year.

- Page 28

States the RCW on borrowing from Capital Funds. An interfund loan "must not be used to balance the budget of the borrowing fund, except in fiscal year 2024 when such loans may be used to address budget destabilization in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic."

- Page 32

The district surveyed SPS staff in a survey which will close on Friday, January 19th. These are fascinating results. Staff was asked to rank order different budget solutions. 

Number one by far is to "lease or sale non-school properties." 

Number two is "reductions and adjustments in central administration"

A big no-no? Fees, "program adjustments and restructuring" and "reductions and adjustments in school..." (that last one is not clearly printed in the document). 

They list "survey takeaways/themes" which are confusing; perhaps I need to see the entire survey wording. Maybe there was an open-ended place.

Staff says that the results so far say "consolidate small schools" which is not listed as a choice. I don't get how they got there. 

Oooh, here's a thought - "increase enrollment by attracting families back to SPS" (but again, not listed as a choice on the survey). 

Their "concerns" - further reductions in staff, bigger class sizes, impacts to students and additional decline in enrollment.

Last item of interest on the Board meeting agenda are the Board Director Questions and Staff Responses. Can I just say that "responses" is the right word and not "answers" because many times, what gets asked is not answered. I would find that disturbing if I was a Board member. Director Vivian Song asks nearly every question and those are about graduation as well as budget.

Director Song asks about absenteeism and here's the response:

Absenteeism is an issue for all grade levels at SPS, particularly given trends after the pandemic. Changes in absenteeism have apparently not had a general impact on credit earning, advanced
coursework completion, and graduation. That said, with the assumption that many high school students are receiving less instruction given absences, we will need to make sure we track closely readiness measures such as through Advanced Placement(AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) testing. We are not awareof any decreases in these College and Career Readiness metrics at this time.

I did see at a parent Facebook page that one parent said that because a kid can pass a high school class without being in it daily, many kids blow off going to class.

I note in one answer that it may be the answer to my own question about what are advanced courses:

The implication is that our high school leaders and educators are consistently promoting increased access to advanced coursework for African American male students across three approaches through the International Baccalaureate program, Advanced Placement courses, and College in the High School courses.

Also:

The SPS Research & Evaluation team completed a formal study of Rainier Beach High School and Nathan Hale High School documenting their successful efforts in expanding access to advanced coursework for African American male students. This study is anticipated to be posted to the district website next week and will be shared with the Board.

Song also asked about "identified high-demand careers, which ones were selected and why were certain careers excluded from consideration?"

The nine SPS Career Pathways encompass a wide range of careers that meet student interest and career goals.
In WA state, high demand occupations groups include STEM
related or STEM literate careers.
1. Computer Occupations (Software developers, Computer
System Analyst, etc.)
2. Construction (Plumbers, Pipefitters, Electricians, Carpenters,
Construction Laborers, etc.)
3. Business and Financial Operations (Accountants, Business
Operations Specialist, Marketing Specialist, etc.)
4. Health Care Practitioners (Registered Nurses, etc.)