Board Meeting Review
I started this post this morning and got 45 minutes into the 5 hour meeting and somehow lost what I wrote. Sigh. Trying again.
The meeting started with all the directors present, including all three student members and what appeared to be a full house of spectators. The student directors are: Colin Bragg, Safiya Ilyas, and Sami Yoon.
Superintendent Comments
Superintendent Brent Jones talked about attending the reopening of Rainier Beach High School (partial as the building is not fully complete). He said thank you to all who sent messages to the Legislature in support of bills that would help SPS. He's going to the Alliance for Education gala. For some reason, he played 3 minutes of the SPS show, First Bell.
The student board members talked about seeing off the Ballard High girls gymnastics team to state finals. They noted a LOT of comments from teens about feeling unsafe on public transportation (which is how most high school students get to school). As well, one attended a meeting with Representative Pramila Jayapal and said she said, "Don't lose hope. Justice will be on our side." Director Colin Bragg only said, "Apply for the school board." They also met with the NAACP Youth Council on the subject of the superintendent search.
I have to say there is going to be a LONG line of people/groups who want to be part of the superintendent search. Wonder how the Board will handle that.
Board Comments
President Gina Topp talked about the upcoming engagement sessions that the Board is holding. One was Thursday night at Aki Kurose MS, there is another April 30th at Denny International MS, and another on May 7th at Daniel Bagley ES. All are from 5:30-7:00 pm.
She also mentioned that she had attended the Rainier Beach HS reopening and noted that her father had graduated from that school.
Director Liza Rankin had a lengthy report on the legislative activities. A bill was passed by both houses to lift the cap on Special Education funding but my understanding is there is no money attached.
Public Testimony
Janis White, a parent, was first, saying she is running to be on the Board in district 5. She raised an issue with one of the items on the Consent Agenda that was related to a company the district was going to use for Special Education services. It appears that the company may be the same one that had so many issues and they may have renamed themselves but had the same address. Sure sounds fishy.
Samantha Fogg, another parent said that the superintendent search needs to be "inclusive of those excluded and ignored" in the district.
Chris Jackins, the district watchdog, took a bit of bow when he said he was glad that the district was finally going to use interest from capital funds to close the budget gap. He has advocated for that for years. He thinks they should take more than the $4M listed. He also said the replacement windows at B.F. Day ES cost out to $34K each which seems high.
Shaun Sanders, a DHH parent, said it was very difficult for those parents to work with the district. He said SPS needs to provide a welcoming community.
Emily Wheeler, an HCC parent, said that the 8 year gap between her children allowed her to see how Advanced Learning has changed. She talked about how great Washington MS used to be and now it has no foreign language at all. She also said she didn't understand why advanced math - for any student - is so hard to access in middle schools.
Lindsay Blohm from the Seattle Student Option Coalition said that there were 1,000 students on the waitlist and that the enrollment cap was bad. She said that siblings can't follow to the school where the oldest child is.
Another DHH parent, Patrick Connelly, said to the Board about the lack of access, "It's low impact for you and high impact for us. We don't feel we are being heard."
Former City Councilperson Tammy Morales came forward. Her son is a graduating senior at Cleveland and her incoming freshman daughter is on the waitlist. She said this:
“Giving choice is protecting learning stability for families and you should accept all 129 students. Families make decisions about what’s best for their children and is is not radical to send your kid to the school that best supports their learning needs.”
Alicia Drucker, another parent concerned about the waitlists had this to say:
"The district enrollment director told me, 'Capacity is managed centrally to ensure equitable practices in balancing enrollment for all schools are met'. This erodes trust in district. "
Elias Kass, another Advanced Learning parents had these questions:
1) Will acceleration be allowed and 2) Will advanced coursework be allowed? If the answer is no, then HC programming will not be available in neighborhood schools. It should be a district-wide plan, not left up to each building individually. A clear standard that defines HC services in neighborhood schools and consistently accessed. CSIPs are using vague language.
SOFG Guardrail 5, Safe and Welcoming Environments for Black Boys
The district appears to be doing better on safe and welcoming but they continue to be bedeviled by absent students. Clark asked about the Panorama platform and the questions. Staff says questions are tweaked every 3-5 years and the last time was 2021.
Jones says instead of calling it absenteeism, they should say, "lost instructional time." You can put lipstick on a pig but it's still not pretty. Then he said:
"Like you are at school every day but you miss math because it isn’t working for you or you don’t have a sense of belonging.” He also blames teachers who may “not on point that day." My notation after this statement was "oh my."
Then, Director Evan Briggs jumped in and also said something I found troubling. She said she is a parent of a child who routinely skips class. And then she goes on, that her kid comes to school but then doesn’t stay there.
“I’m not in the building so I can’t do anything about that. So what adults are keeping track of the kids who are chronically not showing up to class? Once they are there in the building, we do have some control over that."
One, the adults keeping track are in the attendance office and in classrooms. If she thinks that someone in the building is tracking every kid so they don't leave said building, she's looking for a truancy officer. What control does she think staff has for a middle/high school kid who sneaks out of the building? Should the office be watching all the cameras at the doors and dispatching someone to call a kid back?
And only the "chronically" absent students?
It was somewhat unbelievable but then Director Rankin came in with her own story. She asked about academic outcomes for these absent students and asked if all of them were struggling academically. My guess would be 95%. She said some of it might be students on exclusionary discipline. She said her kid skips school but not because he feels unsafe or unwelcome but "he just doesn't think it matters."
My first thought is my heart goes out to them because it is tough to have a middle/high school aged child. The fact that it appears this absenteeism with their children is ongoing and probably very frustrating. But yes, I found their statements took me aback.
One of the student board members asked about mental health strategy and is there some serious with these students and they are not getting enough support from school?
Rocky Torres-Morales said that with the $20M from the City for mental health (which I thought got dropped down to $12M), they want to do universal screening for all high school students. I can only say it better not be the Check Yourself screener because if middle school kids think it silly/bad, I can only wonder what savvy high schoolers might say.
He also said there was talk about tele-health being available to students but that was not really a solid plan right now.
Another student director asked a good question about "How are you insuring students fill this out. I'm Running Start and I haven't filled it out in two years." She suggested an incentive to get students to fill it out. Torres-Morales said when they used paper, they had a 85-90% completion rate and now on the computer, it's about 65%.
Then they went back to the regular meeting where the first order of business was to single vote all the items on the Consent Agenda. Rankin asked that #7 get pulled. As was mentioned during public testimony, it looks like one firm that the district had problems using just changed its name but had the same address. They did not vote on this BAR and will find out what is happening.
Then the Board talked about the superintendent search and this is the first time in the meeting (but not that last) that things got a little tense. All President Topp was doing was trying to get the vote on acceptance of HYA as the search firm. But out of nowhere, Rankin had many questions.
So my question is, is now in relation to the contract, the time to talk about that expectation of timeline sometime soon. We need:
- expectations for outgoing superintendent
- Expectations for transition
- Dates by which we have an interim or permanent and how that is all going to work
- She then screws up her wording to make it sound like Jones was fired (and was quickly corrected by others).
Introduction Items
The first item was the repayment plan for the Rainy Day fund and using capital interest in the budget. Rankin said they had asked in January for multiple scenarios and still haven't seen them. And she's right. Sarju said maybe wait until the Legislature ends.
The other item here was renaming of Career and Technical Education in Board policy.
Interim Metrics for New Guardrails
Then they moved to the tables again for the Interim Metrics for New Guardrails discussion. I did not track all of this well but at one point, Rankin said that "community" says that the Rainier Beach area should not have less options than other areas for Option Schools. She said there is HC and IB at Ingraham at the north end.
Somehow it seems to have missed her knowledge that Rainier Beach HS DOES have IB. And has had it for several years. They also have Option Schools like South Shore K-8 in the south end.
Throughout the meeting, it felt like Director Rankin was trying to stir the pot. Weird.
I noted that the DHH interpreter was rubbing his upper arm; the two men really were working very hard at this meeting.
Enrollment Discussion (again, a separate post for this one)
Director Sarju made a point that the interpreters left at 9 pm and it was then 9:30 pm and those parents would not be able to follow the discussion.
She also said the agenda was too packed and they need to "split these meetings up." She seemed to forget that she was on the Board when they cut to one regular meeting a month. That she was on the Board when they stopped doing Work Sessions.
This situation needs to change. Please write to the Board - spsdirectors@seattleschools.org - and TELL THEM this. Demand Work Sessions where important issues can be discussed at length without a hurry-up agenda before them.
They talked so long about Enrollment that they did NOT do these items:
- Strategic Planning Update
- Board Self-Evaluation
- Monthly Budget report
- Final Interim Metrics for New Goals
- Highly Capable Services Plan
Legal Counsel Greg Carver then came forward because there was an Executive Session to be at the end of the meeting. He said he had outside counsel with him and they could either talk about the issue right then or send directors info via email with him being available for questions. Directors wanted to hear about right then so the meeting ended.
How long had the outside counsel been there because they bill hourly?
Here's what they were discussing:
To discuss with legal counsel representing the agency matters relating to agency enforcement actions, or to discuss with legal counsel representing the agency litigation or potential litigation to which the agency, the governing body, or a member acting in an official capacity is, or is likely to become, a party, when public knowledge regarding the discussion is likely to result in an adverse legal or financial consequence to the agency.
Uh oh.
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