Seattle School Board Meeting, April 24, 2024

 The Seattle School Board will have their regularly schedule Board meeting tonight, starting at 4:15 pm. Agenda

Public Testimony

It appears the majority of comments will be coming from Muslim students who are unhappy that Cleveland High School's graduation is scheduled on a Muslim holiday, Eid al-Adha. I'm a little surprised that staff didn't check this. The only available date to switch would be with Ballard HS which is the only graduation scheduled before June 17th. 

There are several speakers on ELL and equity. One is City of SeaTac Councilmember, James W. Lovell.

There are 12 people on the waitlist, the majority wanting to speak about the graduation date. 

 

Consent Agenda

- acceptance of about $1.5M from the Department of Education to help pilot a new program for Special Education students, Charting My Path for Future Success. The piloting would take place at Rainier Beach HS, Ingraham HS, Cleveland HS, and Chief Sealth International HS. The study is to "determine the effectivness of using the Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction (SDLMI) with and without counseling."

- one item that was cancelled (and it's an odd one) is around the City of Seattle's pre-K program and SPS. The district pays for the program and is reimbursed by meeting goals and metrics. But this BAR talked about reimbursements from 2022-2023. Hmm.

- Change order #12 for the Rainier Beach HS remodel, this in the amount of $1,332,142, for enhanced security. I have no problem with having good security in our schools but how was this not part of the original budget. 

 

Introduction Items

You might recall there was a meeting last week of the Board and staff to go over curriculum adoption procedures in Washington State. It was weird meeting with only four Board members there (and one cut out early), eight (8!) staff members, and a staff member from WSSDA (the Washington state board directors org). 

Abigail Westbrook (no relation) explained that WSSDA has resources to help directors learn more about the process. She explained that the Board has an important role but it may not be what the public thinks it is. 

She continued saying that by law, the Board creates the goals for the curriculum and how to adopt them. But the curriculum committee is formed by staff and now the law requires some parents. The committee generally meets over a year's time. Another new item in law is that the Board has to address if the committee did follow the process in statute and (new) establish a process for complaints about curriculum.

President Liza Rankin stated that current Board policy has "additional detail that we may want to revisit" but I would suppose that's part of the SOFG "policy diet." 

And so, on this agenda is the Introduction for new ELA curriculum for grades 6-8 which will cost nearly $4M and Introduction for new math curriculum for Algebra 1 and 2 and Geometry for about $3.5M. Those two adoptions are why the Board had their special meeting that seemingly did little. 

There is only one Director question to staff and it was about curriculum adoption and came from Director Evan Briggs. 

Thank you for providing the information on the proposed new ELA and mathematics(AGA) curricula. While I'm hopeful that these new instructional materials will improve student outcomes, it was concerning to learn that, for a number of years, our instructional materials were neither standardized across the district nor aligned to WA State Standards. How did this happen and what mechanisms have been put in place to ensure that it doesn't happen again?

Staff Response

Seattle Public Schools central leadership in partnership with the Board has taken several steps in the past to ensure we have up-to-date, standards-aligned instructional resources across required content areas. For example, the Academics Department has developed a chart and a report regularly shared with the Board documenting which adoptions by grade band and content area were out of date. When this was first developed and shared in 2018, it helped lead to an annual budget allocation of multiple millions of dollars for curriculum adoptions. This enabled us to make recent adoptions for K-10 Science, K-5 ELA, K-8 Math, and 6-12 Spanish. However, we have, of course, not been fully successful as evidenced by the time between adoptions for materials in 6-8 ELA. 

Given budgetary challenges over the past few years, we have not always been able to preserve this annual level of funding for new instructional resources. Going forward, we could implement more formal guidelines to ensure that this funding is prioritized for updated, standards-aligned materials adoptions.

Well, that's a bit stunning. Following WA State Standards was not part of the SPS budgetary process. And it's strange that staff only mention ELA curriculum when Director Briggs mentioned BOTH ELA and math. 

 

Board Self-Evaluation (SOFG)

Want a laugh? Read this document, Student Outcomes Focused Governance Manual and Board
Quarterly Self-Evaluation Tool,  that explains what the Board should be doing with their time. 

I particularly thought these a hoot as the best outcomes:

The Board used a process that included students, parents, staff, and community members in a way
that led them to express ownership of the adopted goals and guardrails.

There are no more than two Board-authorized public meetings per month and none lasts more than two hours.

I do not think for one minute parents and community feel ownership of the district's goals and guardrails (if they even know what they are).

If a Board meeting is less than two hours, that signals that the Board is doing little discussion.

 

The Legislative Update also has some items of interest: 

WA State Legislative Session “short session” 2024 ended with some increases in
legislative priorities for SPS and WSSDA

• Increased prototypical staffing funding (SB 5882)
• Increased MSOC funding (HB 2494) (editor's note - materials supplies, and operating costs)
• Increase to the special education funding cap (HB 2180)
• Reducing barriers to Safety Net funding (SB 5852)
• SPS-specific appropriations: Capital Funding for Whittier Elementary,
dedicated enrollment survey funding

I will have to ask about that capital funding for Whittier Elementary. I believe that "dedicated enrollment survey funding" is the $100,000 allotted to SPS by the state to figure out why parents are leaving and/or not enrolling in SPS in the first place.