Seattle School Board Meeting, October 7, 2026

The agenda shows just 15 people giving public testimony. You cannot call in at this point but if you have something burning to say, you can show up and sign in for any of the five remaining spots. The top two topics are lights for Eckstein Middle School's field and tech issues. 

There is one BAR about Special Education Vendor Contracts. From the BAR:

These contracts are a combination of Non-Public Agency (NPA) private placements for students who require therapeutic day and residential services, Language Interpretation Services for our Deaf and Hard of Hearing population, hospital education, and behavioral staffing supports for students who require 1:1
behavior support and programming. 

These contracts provide the cost of private tuition, language services, and behavior staffing services for Seattle Public School students special services needs per their Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) from September 1, 2026, through August 31, 2027. Attached to this Board Action Report are the initial contracts for this school year with the listed agencies for reference. As students are identified throughout the school year as in need of services, these contracts may increase and need to be amended. If the contract amendments exceed the applicable threshold under Board Policy No. 6220, Procurement, the
Superintendent will seek Board approval for the increase.

The revenue source for this motion is general funding and state special education funding including Safety Net for extraordinary high-cost needs.

By my rough count the amount for these contracts is about $20M.

Another BAR is for $5M in spending for the new warehouse that the district bought last year. 

There is also the annual approval of the CSIP. That's the Continuous School Improvement Plan for each school in the district. Each school should have it on their webpage. Parents, you should go and read what your principal has written. Even compare with another regional school. You might be surprised. 

There are three Action items. One is an approval for a contract with the engineers' union.

The other two are more interesting.

One is about using the Naglieri General Ability Tests (NGAT) to test students for HCC.

As part of the District’s universal screening for Highly Capable services, state law requires that the District administer a nonverbal assessment when native language screening and assessments are not available. 

 

The NGAT is a nationally normed assessment that measures reasoning, problem solving, and creative thinking skills through nonverbal and quantitative measures. The assessment will tool that reduces linguistic and cultural barriers for students. 

The addition of the NGAT strengthens SPS’s Highly Capable identification process by identifying students with high potential who often are not recognized through achievement-based measures alone. Current screening measures rely heavily on language acquisition and prior academic exposure, which can limit identification of students from historically underrepresented populations. The NGAT provides a more objective measure of student potential and aligns SPS identification practices with numerous school districts across the country. 

The revenue source for this motion is the OSPI Highly Capable Apportionment for Seattle Public Schools.

The other Action BAR is supporting a resolution to Support the Superintendent's Implementation of School Safety Measures. 

Here's what it is in a nutshell:

This Board action would approve Resolution No. 2026/27-08, Supporting the

Superintendent’s Implementation of School Safety Measures, as attached to this Board Action. During the September 23, 2026 Board Special Meeting, principals, students, and parents from Nathan Hale High School and Rainier Beach High School presented on their interest in implementing a weapons detector pilot program at their schools, as well as the ongoing threats impacting student safety in their communities.

I watched the Work Session where this was discussed (a link is in the agenda). Both principals - Jolene Grimes of Nathan Hale and Annie Patu of RBHS - were in attendance but more importantly there were student leaders from both schools.  All the students acquitted themselves very well and were quite persuasive. 

This will be a pilot program at each school during the second quarter of the school year, starting December 6th. Both schools will be looking for feedback on how it is working for students and staff throughout the pilot time. They will be looking for issues of line length in the morning, do students feel more secure, etc. The students said they didn't think trying this idea for a period of time would hurt anyone. 

Superintendent Shuldiner noted that these metal detectors are used now at football games and graduations. He said that the amount of people at those events did not slow down access to the events because of going through the detector. He said that the detector would be like the ones at the Mariners games and not like those at the airport. He said cell phones and keys should not set it off but a laptop probably would. 

There is the issue that some school buildings have multiple entrances. Hale was renovated in a way that makes it easier to use the detectors. But for safety's sake, I think there should be no more than two entrances into any given building. 

The Superintendent made it sound like doing this in the future - if the pilot holds promise - would be the decision of each school community. 

Principal Annie Patu had a couple of guests. One was Lonnisha Landry who is the mother of Xavier Landry who was murdered two years ago in Auburn. Other guests were the parents of Connor Holland, Alice Dassa and Jimmy Holland. Their son was killed outside their Rainier Beach home in 2020. Both victims were RBHS students. 

Principal Patu suggested that maybe the district could go back to busing high school students for better safety.