Last Day of School (and Looking Down the Road)

 Update

I sure missed something in the agenda for the Board meeting this Wednesday.  

The Seattle School Board is moving to ONE meeting a month.  The BAR claims some equity reason because of "a review of holiday and religious observance calendars." 

Bullshit.

This is a result of a previous director who thought that the Board was not representative enough and it was because of too many meetings. Add President Rankin and Director Hersey and you can see where this is going.

Near zero committee meetings. And now a SINGLE Board meeting a month. No community meetings, save Director Gina Topp. 

This is not oversight. This is not accountability. 

I ask you to PLEASE write to the Board and call this out. 

spsdirectors@seattleschools.org

end of update

Congrats to ALL the graduates this year and their supportive, caring parent/sguardians. It's a long road but you did it. 

 

Also, I see today is the last day of school so huzzah! for that. 

 

And I wish it would be a summer vacation for SPS parents but the reality is, for many, it will not be. Organizing during summer is difficult work. I will strive to put up any and all parent meetings around school closures so let me know at - sss.westbrook@gmail.com

 

Wednesday, June 26th, the Seattle School Board will have its regular meeting and we are told that is when the Superintendent will reveal what schools are on the preliminary closure list. Here's the agenda.

It appears in a low-key way on the agenda and is simply called "Well-Resourced Schools Update." There is no link. Public Testimony is right after and I sure hope they will take more than 25 comments.

I see by the Personnel Report that the head of Advanced Learning, Claudine Berry, is leaving as of July 1. 

Among the 16 Consent Agenda items is one where the Superintendent will spend nearly $3M "for DocuSign Enterprise Edition Platform. The district says:

The Electronic Forms initiative within Seattle Public Schools aims to revolutionize document
handling and workflows processes while championing efficiency, accuracy, and sustainability.
By implementing this solution districtwide, the manual burden of paper forms is alleviated,
leading to streamlined tasks such as start-of-school packets and employee onboarding. The
automation of workflows and forms eliminates the need for manual paper processing, liberating
valuable school staff time previously spent on these manual administrative tasks. This not only
boosts productivity but also enables staff to concentrate on crucial tasks, improves equitable
community access, and enhances cybersecurity through data accuracy and privacy.

I get some of this reasoning. But why do they need to spend that money NOW? They can't wait 2-3 years?And I have doubts that this truly "enhances cybersecurity."

And hey, look at that! Intro and Action on the Superintendent's contract. I gotta say that if the Board gives him more money, then they are not serious people. Throw him a bone with some sweetener but a higher salary?  Plus, they could have been working on this MONTHS ago. 

Also, the Board will be voting to approve the 2024-2025 Budget resolution and will then vote on July 2 to approve the budget. 

The 2024-25 General Fund Budget is recommended at $1,252,959,867.

The 2024-25 Capital Fund is recommended at $589,811,449. 

The 2024-25 Debt Service Fund Budget is recommended at $3,168,783. This fund will be used to pay the debt service on the 2020 Series-A Refunding bond that financed the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence, and $10,000 in capacity for administrative fees or other currently unknown expenses.

Yes, we are STILL paying off the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence building. I think this is now decade three.

The 2024-25 Associated Student Body Fund Budget is recommended at $6,198,000.

Included are enrollment projections:

2024-2025 - 48,838   2025-2026 - 47,290   2026-2027 - 45,948   and 2027-2028 - 44,651

The 2024-25 Associated Student Body Fund Budget is recommended at $6,198,000.

What's fascinating is that the General Fund expenditures are STILL going to go up. 


After the Board meeting will be the public hearing for the proposed budget, starting at 8 pm. I'm sure there will be many citizens able to be there at 8 pm. 


Comments

Benjamin Lukoff said…
I wrote the board about meeting frequency and just received this surprisingly quick reply from Liza Rankin. I've placed in asterisks some of the points I found most interesting.

==
Hello,

That is just the schedule for regular legislative board meetings that must be approved by state law requiring at least one regular board meeting monthly. We will have additional work sessions, engagement, etc that are not yet scheduled. Regular Legislative Board meetings are business meetings of the board and do not have engagement opportunities (***testimony is not engagement as it is one-way***).

We follow the adopted recommendations of the Board's governance committee to "Generally hold two full Board meetings monthly with the Superintendent and District Staff that will be a combination of Legislative and Work Sessions. Executive sessions and closed sessions will continue to be scheduled outside of this meeting cadence as needed and as authorized by law."

As far as community engagement, in the last six weeks ***the board has held three engagement sessions open to the public*** and ***18+ outreach sessions in pairs with priority community representatives/groups*** (those historically marginalized and least likely to attend a public meeting) on the community priorities for the next strategic plan.

We have yet to determine a fall schedule for board engagement, and are ***doing engagement by the board as a body (as opposed to individual directors having meetings with constituents that may or may not be about the work of the board)*** for the first time in alignment with the best practices as outlined in our adopted governance framework:
https://www.cgcs.org/cms/lib/DC00001581/Centricity/Domain/4/StudentOutcomesFocusedGovernanceManual.pdf

Thank you for your email,
Liza
6/21/24, 10:08 PM
Melissa Westbrook said…
" additional work sessions, engagement, etc that are not yet scheduled.z'

Not community engagement. That the Board CHOOSES to not comment on public testimony is on them. Other Boards have done this.

I don't understand this:
""Generally hold two full Board meetings monthly with the Superintendent and District Staff that will be a combination of Legislative and Work Sessions."

Well, their new schedule doesn't reflect that. And again, Work Sessions are NOT engagement.

"18+ outreach sessions in pairs with priority community representatives/groups*** "

One, that is not fair. But if the Board does this, they need to 1)list those meetings and say what group they are meeting with and 2)I think they should be open to the public if only to listen to the conversation. Without this, it makes it very easy for the Board to claim "community says" when the meetings were not open to all nor are their minutes. How does the public know what was stated except for what the BOARD says was stated.

And if they are having these meetings in pairs, why can't they have a general community meeting in their region that way?

6/22/24, 9:45 AM
Anonymous said…
Wow this is really bad. I know these meetings are painful but they are very important. It’s bananas that a district this large has pared back oversight this much. Very, very dangerous move. Please write your board members and share this broadly.

Email Sent

6/23/24, 9:45 PM
John stewart said…
I do not understand how a board member (even Rankin) can say with a straight face that apparently closed, unannounced, not public meetings with "groups" (like who, exactly?) are somehow "engagement". I get the erstwhile appearance of "reaching people who don't come to meetings" - the City does this. But they will also list out exactly who all they met with, especially when asked if it's not already on a web site or in an email. I would imagine SPS would require FOIA just to get a handle on who they "engaged" with.
6/25/24, 3:43 PM
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