Seattle School Board Meeting, August 28, 2024

Man, news is coming fast and furious be the key item at this hour is that the Superintendent and staff are pushing a closure and consolidation list all the way to October. From KUOW:

In an update to the school board on Wednesday, Superintendent Brent Jones laid out a new timeline for the district’s “well-resourced schools” plan, and confirmed the preliminary recommendations would be made public at the Oct. 9 school board meeting.

Jones’ new timeline starts with more community engagement events in September and early October. District leaders will report back to the board on Sept. 18 with feedback and answers to questions that come out of those meetings.

The district will also launch a new online “well-resourced schools hub” during the week of Sept. 9. Jones said it will include a “detailed analysis” of the district’s current portfolio of elementary school buildings, and give insight on the impact school closures could have on families.

“We want to be there alongside you with every step of the way, helping you to understand and navigate these changes,” Jones said.

More community engagement? More than the little bit that they have done? 

And I'm not getting this  “well-resourced schools hub” item. Is that so you can compare schools to each other in a whack-a-mole try at guessing which ones will get picked? 

Most of all, this Superintendent has NOT kept to any timeline he and staff have put out. And the Board does nothing. 

But sure, allow him to go off working on a Homeland Security committee on school safety (which for him is an oxymoron) while Rome burns. 

end of update 

School Board meeting

All the Board members were there, except for the new student members who, right before the meeting, were sworn in. No explanation why they are not at the dais.

The meeting saw the Superintendent excited about the new school year and that students will have "a exceptional learning experiences from Day One." 

He spoke of a "three-part strategy to enhance safety in and around our schools," working with the City of Seattle.

- increasing staffing and improving infrastructure

- "Community-based measures that will roll out violence prevention programs"

- "With law enforcement collaboration, we are strengthening our ties with law enforcement to better protect our schools. "

Well-resourced schools blah, blah, blah. 

Director Gina Topp also asked if at the September 18th meeting, they would get a report on how the public engagement is going with the new dashboard with data on schools and their buildings in advance of the announcement of schools to be closed. Jones said yes.

But then Sarju said she didn't hear community engagement as the plan but "hearings." She doesn't even know the most basic legal fact about school closures. The district is legally obligated to have a hearing at each school that is up for closure. I shake my head.   

Board Comments

President Liza Rankin felt the need to explain what Board meetings are. 

"Um, just as a reset refresher, we hold Board meetings in public but they are meetings of the Board to do the business of the Board. There's something called the Open Public Meetings act, that means that we cannot and do not make any decisions without being in front of the public. 

So part of that is taking public testimony which is again somehting that is required by all governing bodies to offer the public the opportunity to make comments on items that the board will be voting on. Testimony period is that opportunity for the public to share their thoughts but it's not engagement, it's not dialog between the Board and the public. This isn't unique to the Board. So we invite the public to take this time to share thoughts but the Board does not respond to statements, take questions, or engage in a back and forth discussion.

We do look forward to partnership this year with continuing to engage in meaningful ways that are much more satisfying for us (she laughs) and likely better for you than 2 minutes at the podium."

She claims that the last several months the Board completed engagement in preparation for the next strategic plan of the district.

 "As the elected body we are representatives of the entire Seattle community."

She made that pointed remark about it not just being about people who show up, almost as if anyone who comes to the Board meeting is suspect. 

Another thing is that if the Board is having secret meetings with different communities they should be open about it. We have almost no idea who they meet with until after the fact. If it's a public meeting, they should allow anyone in with the understanding it is only to listen. Because all we have is their word that what they put out to the public from these secretive meetings is what was really said.

Vision and values and strategic plan and goals - you get the drift. 

Rankin says multi-language is a high priority in the next Strategic Plan. 

After public testimony, Rankin went off on yet ANOTHER rant about not engaging with the public at Board meetings. Something about listening to individual groups has made things worse and "put us where we are today." No idea for certain what she means.

She then went on to contrast 2016-2019 when enrollment went up and buildings were credited for "option and highly capable cohort schools and reopening some existing buildings which added 5800 new seats all north of the ship canal to 2019 to now where they have lost 4,000 students."

So all those previous Boards and Superintendents were listening to the wrong people? And building wrongly? She says "people were unwilling to make hard decisions in the past."  

I will have a separate post on this issue that she is repeating like a mantra. But suffice to say, NO revisionist history.

She says if district went into binding oversight from the state, they would be telling SPS to close schools and cut staff and SPS  would "have no say over it." 

Well, school communities currently have no say, either, so maybe it would be better.

In the only other director comment, Director Michelle Sarju - warning that there would be "one cuss word in a quote and my friend used it" - Rankin breaks in to say FCC rules -and Sarju says she'll abbreviate the word.

She asked directors "to bake a cake with me." She had a story to frame this ask. She has a friend with cancer who beat it and before every chemo, she baked for her care team. Something about support (I couldn't follow this). She said the district has "a bowl of lemons and a very large budget deficit." She said there have been "very, very structural issues in district to solve" from the 1990s and she is asking to take the bowl of lemons and "bake the best cake we can for the kids in our district." 

Public Testimony

This meeting it was largely folks asking the Board to protect dual language programs. 

Also, Chris Jackins noted that for the new Alki Elementary building, the contract had been for $53M and is now $10M higher. He said, "This is a mega-school project meant to close other schools." 

There was one weird moment where a mom called in with a specific story about her child getting Special Education preschool. We had JUST heard Rankin say that people should come to the Board for specific to them issues and that the speakers don't always represent who is out in the greater community and yet, she stopped the speakers to tell staff to address this problem.

One speaker did ask a good question, "Where is equity analysis for school closures?" 

 

Business Portion of Meeting

They passed the Consent agenda, then the PASS contract for principals came up and  Director Michelle Sarju wasn't ready to make the motion (in her role as VP). She didn't have the documents at the ready so she said, "I move to vote on this item" and so Board office staff had to come and take them out from underneath her laptop and put them in front of her so she could do it legally by reading the entire item. 

There was a discussion of PASS issue with the  process of investigation and recs for procedure (referencing the Rainier View Elementary principal) This came up from Rankin she tortured it badly and then staffer Sarah Pritchett didn't not go into it completely so they basically were speaking in code. Very helpful in a public meeting. 

Jones jumps in and we are interested in having a process that solves things at lowest level and then to "closure and completion." He said the process last school year daylighted some gaps in how we understand moving through complex issues and "we've learned a lot" and PASS has been "very open."

Onto the BEX item about scoring and ranking of buildings to make it onto the next levy.

I have to wonder about the mood in Seattle when the BEX levy rolls around in Feb. 2025 as the schools  chosen for closure are starting the process of winding down for good AND the district embarks on redrawing boundaries. (Of course, I'll bet that redrawing might take place AFTER the levy to have fewer upset people but who knows?) 

I'm sure the Superintendent may say during the levy campaign that renovating the remaining buildings is all part of "well-resourced schools plan."

Capital Facilities staff have added on a new criteria, Environmental Sustainability as the Board has passed multiple board resolutions around green environments in schools.  Staff stated they wanted to be "fossil free by 2040." 

It was interesting that as they got into details on BEX as well as HCC, the only director who asked questions was Director Gina Topp. 

On HCC, she wanted to know if it was a service or program. She asked for consistency in the language and Rankin talked around it but said they have a month as this is an Intro item. Except next month, it will be rolled into the Consent agenda without any further discussion.

Then, Director Erin  Evan Briggs asked questions about what is replacing the cohort model and when is that timeline. These are not bad questions. "What is the future of Highly Capable in SPS? It feels like it's past time to know what's going on with that."

Rankin really wasn't having it. She made it sound pro forma as it is an annual thing for OSPI and that's what they are doing. It's odd that they don't have staff there to answer these questions as they did for the PASS contract and BEX item.

Joining Rankin in that dance was Superintendent Jones. He spoke in circles and didn't get to Briggs' question.

Briggs comes back, "How will we know if services are being delivered (Jones' and Rankin's point) if we don't know what services are?"

Rankin actually said they could look at the OSPI document and see the models and then "drill down on that, then we can figure out how to ask staff" what they are. Oh.

Topp asked for a future Work Session just on Highly Capable. Bravo! And when Topp pointed out how many students are in the program (between Advanced Learning and HCC), what was Rankin's snappy reply?  

"It's like Lake Wobegon." Topp tried to continue as Rankin said, "And all the kids are above average" while the rest of the Board struggled to not laugh especially Sarju who laughed out loud.

This is about 2:25:00 into the video if you want to watch it yourself. 

I'm sure Rankin thought that very funny. However, it is apparently what President Rankin thinks of the program and, apparently, the students it serves. 

Topp ignored it all.  

Budget Presentation

It was pretty straightforward but Rankin went into another school marm speech about how the state formula for funding student is flawed and Washington State has a regressive tax system and there are binding conditions for five districts in the state for oversight of those districts due to financial issues.

Director Sarju broke in to ask her to go faster.

Rankin when back to the lecture and then Hersey asked her to keep on topic. 

This was all done nicely but even board directors get tired of her lectures. 

The only couple of things that were new:

- Topp asked that there be a breakdown of ALL categories of closed buildings so they know exactly where the savings is coming from. Staff have never clearly explained how much they would save from personnel changes. 

- Director Hersey asked about "doing a full-court press in Olympia" and all seven of them go down to lobby. Rankin laughed and said the state doesn't want SPS in receivership and Seattle "comes with baggage in Olympia."

Know who they should be talking to? The Seattle elected delegation. Those people know the issues that other legislators have with Seattle.