Rundown - HCC to stay, Jones to go

Episode 25

See our Show Notes

[00:00:00] Christie Robertson: Welcome to Rainy Day Recess, where we study and discuss Seattle Public Schools. I'm Christie Robertson.

[00:00:08] Jasmine Pulido: And I'm Jasmine Pulido.  

[00:00:11] Christie Robertson: Before we get to our regular episode, we need to note that this was recorded before the news came out on Monday, March 17th from Seattle Schools Superintendent Brent Jones, who announced that he will be leaving the district and that his last day will be September 3rd, before school starts in the fall.

[00:00:32] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, in his letter to families and staff, Jones said he made this decision “after much reflection” and is announcing now to “allow as much time for transition as possible”. 

An article in the Seattle Times notes that his wife got a job at the University of California, Santa Barbara. So it sounds like they'll be moving to California 

What's he going to be doing for his remaining months, Christie?

[00:00:57] Christie Robertson: He said that he will focus on assisting with the superintendent search, that he'll work with the legislature on funding and presenting next year's budget, and the strategic plan for the next school year and beyond.

[00:01:10] Jasmine Pulido: That's still a lot to do in the meantime.

[00:01:12] Christie Robertson: Superintendent Jones was appointed when Denise Juneau resigned in 2021, after three years on the job. 

[00:01:19] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, I actually read that Juneau resigned two months before the end of her contract and that she left after fallout from remote learning.

[00:01:30] Christie Robertson: Or something.

[00:01:32] Jasmine Pulido: Or something. According to official sources, that is why she left. 

[00:01:37] Christie Robertson: All right. Three years for Juneau, four years for Dr. Jones. There's a spreadsheet of all the superintendents back since 1881. 

[00:01:46] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, and it looked like in the last 20 years the average is a little over three years. Jones is a little bit over four years if you include his interim term.

[00:01:58] Christie Robertson: According to an Education Week article in 2018, before the pandemic, urban superintendents in general served an average of six years. 

[00:02:07] Jasmine Pulido: Anyway, and at that time what happened was Superintendent Jones was handpicked, right? As successor?

[00:02:15] Christie Robertson: Mmhmm, Yeah. 

[00:02:17] Jasmine Pulido: But he started off as interim and he wasn't supposed to be a permanent. 

[00:02:25] Christie Robertson: No, the agreement was that he would not be applying for the permanent job. That he would just be like a caretaker interim superintendent. But that isn't what ended up happening, obviously. He ended up being given the job. 

[00:02:37] Jasmine Pulido: But it doesn't look like we're going to have an interim appointment. So hopefully they'll be doing a real superintendent search, with criteria, and, hopefully, community engagement. 

[00:02:45] Christie Robertson: Hopefully. Yeah, I watched the process in a neighboring district where they brought the top two or the top three to actually have community engagement events and answer questions.  

Let's move on to our regular rundown episode. It was recorded at a time when we did not know this information. 

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[00:03:05] Jasmine Pulido: Thanks for joining us for our rundown, where we'll be unpacking the latest developments affecting our school communities, including a breakdown of the March 12th school board meeting, updates on the Highly Capable program, and several other important developments in our district. 

[00:03:23] Christie Robertson: A quick reminder that transcripts are available at rainydayrecess.org if you prefer to read or if you'd like to translate to another language.

Arsema Barekew: Killed by Unoccupied Vehicle

[00:03:31] Jasmine Pulido: Today, we need to start with some heartbreaking news. On March 6th, a 12 year old student at Washington Middle School was tragically killed when an unoccupied vehicle rolled down a hill and struck her on the sidewalk as she was walking to recess. 

[00:03:48] Christie Robertson: Her name was Arsema Barekew, a 6th grade student at the school, where her sister is also an 8th grader. It sounds like the driver of an SUV failed to put the vehicle in park before getting out, and it rolled 75 yards downhill. 

[00:04:05] Jasmine Pulido: The student that was struck was from an Ethiopian immigrant family who came to the US in 2019. 

[00:04:18] Christie Robertson: What makes it even worse is the way the situation was handled after the fact. There's a really excellent article in the Seattle Times that we'll link to. It sounds like the parents were kept in a room with the police for 2 hours, and only told that their daughter had been killed, and given no details. And not provided an interpreter. Not by the school, not by the police. They speak Amharic. And then failed to be contacted by anybody at the school or at the district for a week afterwards until a fuss was made about that. And then they were finally contacted. 

[00:05:05] Jasmine Pulido: Right. It was really hard for me to hear, especially as someone who has parents who are immigrants. And I also have a 12 year old. So I just feel like this one hit pretty close to home for me.

[00:05:18] Christie Robertson: At the March 12th school board meeting, Superintendent Jones and School Board President Gina Topp did make mention of this incident and also took the opportunity to mention the shooting that happened, where 40 bullets were shot into the Bridges and Interagency School at the old Roxhill building on February 10th.

[00:05:25] Jasmine Pulido: But there was also another shooting recently in a similar area.

[00:05:33] Christie Robertson: Yep, the day after the school board meeting, there was another shooting in the park directly next door to the school, Roxhill Park. A 17 year old was injured. And I don't know whether that was a student of the school, I don't know whether the school went into lockdown, I have not been able to get any answers about that. 

[00:05:51] Jasmine Pulido: But we can link to what information we do have in our show notes. 

[00:05:55] Christie Robertson: And then the third thing that Superintendent Jones and President Topp mentioned in their statement was a commitment to racial equity. Which I think was their answer to the removal of those racial equity websites. They did not mention the sites going away, but said that they're still committed to those same principles.

[00:06:18] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, and I saw that they sent out an email that also articulated that statement but did not acknowledge the websites going down. 

With that in mind, we can go into the school board meeting. 

March 12 School Board Meeting

[00:06:31] Christie Robertson: The school board meeting was jam packed, as it often is. The main topics were another update on the Highly Capable Program, progress monitoring report and training, a presentation of what the interim goals are going to be, and strategic planning updates.

[00:06:55] Jasmine Pulido: Let's dig in.

We had a lot of students speak for this testimony. I counted six. And then we had 30 people on the wait list. There were a few people that said they signed up, but it was not shown on the list and I haven't usually seen them stop accepting waitlist signups

[00:07:12] Christie Robertson:  I asked SPS whether they're limiting the slots on the, but I did not hear back. 

[00:07:15] Jasmine Pulido: So that might be new. I wonder what's happening there.

[00:07:22] Christie Robertson: Yeah, signing up is a way of saying that “this is what I care about,” even if they don't get to you on the list. 

[00:07:29] Jasmine Pulido: And people do watch that. 

[00:07:30] Christie Robertson: Yeah. People definitely look at that. 

[00:07:32] Jasmine Pulido: Oh, can I mention one more thing?

[00:07:33] Christie Robertson: Yeah.

[00:07:34] Jasmine Pulido: At the beginning of this meeting, Director Rankin put forth what was called a clarifying question, but essentially pointing out – when are we going to have a second school board meeting.

[00:07:43] Christie Robertson: Yeah, she also said that she and Director Briggs had requested that something be put on the agenda and it hadn't been. So that was interesting.

[00:07:53] Liza Rankin: I have a couple of clarifying questions, actually, about agenda setting and work plan. When we adopted the regular board meeting calendar last year to the legally required one regular board meeting a month, it was with the commitment and planning of still having a second board meeting a month, but reserved for work session, study session, other business of the board, and community engagement in a two way fashion, to replace and improve upon one way public testimony that would have been lost by that second regular board meeting. I would like some clarification on where we are with that. It looks like we only have one regular board meeting a month, and that's all that we're meeting as a board. And a district this size and our need to be transparent and do our business in public. I'm not understanding how we're going to accomplish what's in our work plan in one regular board meeting a week. So I would like some clarity on that. 

Connected to that, I would like clarity on agenda setting. I requested, along with Director Briggs, to have our work plan discussed as an agenda item, and that was not honored. We have had, if two board directors request something to be on the agenda, it goes on the agenda. The Ad Hoc Governance Committee recommended, even, that any one board director could make a request. If there's a change in practice that I missed, apologies. I'm just confused about how the full board participates in what we do together as a board and how we're going to have time to do that. 

[00:09:27] Jasmine Pulido: And I thought this was, like, a really interesting interjection. Because wasn't the reduction of two school board meetings down to one school board meeting under her presidency?

[00:09:39] Christie Robertson: And it almost felt like the exact same conversation that had happened before when Rankin was president, and Director Topp was asking, “don't we need two meetings a month?” 

SBM: Public Testimony

[00:09:51] Jasmine Pulido: I'll also mention that Topp has started to make a pattern of interrupting whatever's happening on the agenda promptly at 5 pm to start public testimony, so as to not keep the public waiting. Vice President Briggs asked if making their coach wait until after public testimony was appropriate. Here's what Gina Topp said. 

[00:10:15] Gina Topp: Yeah, we have a commitment to our community to begin public testimony at 5 pm. 

[00:10:21] Christie Robertson: Director Briggs suggested that they just  make the language clear. I know that there have been times before where community was waiting and waiting so that they could give their testimony.

[00:10:33] Jasmine Pulido: That's right.

[00:10:33] Christie Robertson: Often we start with a mashup of different public testimony. But because there were so many disparate topics, we're going to try to intersperse them as we discuss the topics.

[00:10:43] Jasmine Pulido: With that being said, there are two testimony topics that we wanted to pull out. Do you want to talk about the first one?

[00:10:50] Christie Robertson: Yeah, so these are things that were not actually on the agenda. But they were brought up in testimony. 

The first one is the LGBTQ+ program coordinator position. that is threatened because of what's happening on the federal level. It is funded by a grant from the CDC. So a lot of people came to testify with the concern that this grant might go away. I will post some more information about this in the show notes, 

[00:11:20] Audriana Mountha: Audriana Mountha, senior from Cleveland STEM High School. 

What will you do if you can no longer afford your child's therapy? Their counselors? Their educators? What if the people who gave you guidance for your child suddenly disappeared because you couldn't fund it anymore? 

[00:11:33] Kat Behrend: Kat Behrend, a parent of an SPS student. Also as a teacher at Maple Elementary on Beacon Hill. 

Every two weeks when I gather with the 30 plus students at Maple's Rainbow Club, I see students who are hungry for a space where they can truly be themselves. 

[00:11:53] Fox: Fox at Cleveland. Half of trans and non binary kids consider suicide. We are four times more likely to consider it than any other kid. That's their job. They're keeping this from happening. We will see more dead kids next year if they are fired.

[00:12:09] Christie Robertson: Also just to note that the CDC grant has been in place for 30 years. And the request is for SPS to find another way to fund this position if that grant goes away. 

[00:12:20] Jasmine Pulido: Is it just one person in the entire district?

[00:12:23] Christie Robertson: Yeah.

[00:12:24] Jasmine Pulido: Oh, I see, okay.

[00:12:25] Christie Robertson: I have a last minute add to this story that came in from a listener. A teacher is organizing a postcard campaign for the LGBTQIA+ Program coordinator position that we just discussed, and they're hoping to get a bunch of postcards in to the district by March 28th. So, check the show notes for more information.

[00:12:48] Jasmine Pulido: And then we can just play a couple clips on testimony regarding option schools. 

[00:12:54] Ellie Wilson-Jones: Ari Ingalls 

[00:12:55] Ari Ingalls: So what I'm saying is, that by closing option schools and playing shenanigans with option school enrollment, you're actively pushing kids out of SPS. Which leads to greater inequity and lower enrollment. Which, in turn, leads to lower budget. The option schools already exist. Use them. Open up the waitlist. It's practically free right now. 

[00:13:20] Janelle Marrera: My name is Janelle Marrera. I attend Cleveland High School. Cleveland has capacity for 900 students, but the district is only projecting us to have 660 students. Which is about 75 percent of our capacity. Every year, many students are applying and having to be waitlisted, and they are not being let in even though we have space for more students. Staff members are affected because of this under enrollment. We are projected to lose 3. 5 FTE for our school next year. It will potentially lead to blocking certain humanity classes. That would mean there would be less teachers in overcrowded classrooms. We need to learn history because it is important to learn about our past in order to fix the present and future. 

[00:13:59] Young: I am Young, a student at Rainier Beach High School Filipino Club and a part of the Save Our Schools campaign as a youth activist. Filipinos in Beach have witnessed and experienced countless issues that deeply affect how they are able to learn in our school. The budget cuts limits resources for queer students and limits where migrant students can learn their history. The only Filipino history class in Cleveland may get cut.  

[00:14:20] Christal Lee: Liz Bergsten Buret 

[00:14:23] Liz Bergsten Buret: The more hostile a country becomes, the more support is needed to keep minority individuals safe, especially minority students. The decision of whether or not schools should continue to provide classes that support and validate minority students is crucial.

[00:14:48] Jasmine Pulido: I see Cleveland, Rainier Beach. It looks like the majority of the student testimony was regarding option schools.

[00:14:55] Christie Robertson: Yeah.

For anybody who's interested in the origins of the option school situation that we're in, Kellie LaRue, who is one of our lay historians in the district, pointed me to a meeting from July 5th, 2017. If you, like, have a few hours free, I recommend watching the whole thing. There's so much history in there. It explains so much about so many aspects of what the school board and the district are like right now. We'll probably create a whole episode out of it at some point. But for now, we will include a link to it from Albert Wong's amazing...

[00:15:28] Jasmine Pulido: ...transcription website, SPS by the numbers. 

[00:15:31] Christie Robertson: SPS by the numbers. Particularly the part that starts 25 minutes in is where it is very explicitly explained why they started constraining the waitlists at option schools. And apparently it was started in 2007 because they were saying it was 10 years ago in this 2017 meeting. But here is where the impact on low-income schools was actually spelled out. And the financial impact too is, like, spelled out to the dollar in some materials from the board meeting. 

[00:15:59] Jasmine Pulido: It's just interesting to think about decisions that were made and how, down the stream, those impacts are. 

[00:16:05] Christie Robertson: One of the most striking things, though, was just the transparency. I think a lot of the same things are being done now as were being done then, but it's very behind the scenes. And actually, maybe that's part of why the district changed their approach, because when they did spell out the consequences, the board ignored them and went their own way. 

Highly Capable Update

[00:16:29] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, so speaking of decisions being made and what would their possible ramifications be, let's talk a little bit about highly capable programming. 

One thing to note is that this particular update was added to the agenda the day of. And so, like, I just wonder how much they might have been scrambling to, like, get their ducks in a row so that they'll have a cohesive  presentation, considering how blasted they've been in the past. Even by us. So... 

[00:16:05] Christie Robertson: For sure. And, I mean, it was only a month, ago that they gave that first presentation that we panned. And this one... it was like night and day. 

[00:17:08] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. And fun fact, there was a pause! So I feel like community really felt seen in this particular presentation.

[00:17:15] Christie Robertson: Yes, I think everybody's well aware of this by now, but the district made the decision to pause the sunsetting of the highly capable cohort. Very big deal. They have been working on the sunsetting for years now and the sunsetting was supposed to be coupled with moving highly capable programming into the neighborhood schools. And the pressure has just continued to ramp up from community saying, “It's just not there. So, pause the sun setting until the programming is available in neighborhood schools.” And that is what they did with an email announcement on Tuesday, March 11th. And then with this presentation at the board meeting on Wednesday, March 12th.

I don't know about you, Jas, but I was really impressed by this presentation. I found it to be very clear and answer a lot of the questions that people had asked. Of course, it's all in the follow-through, but kudos to Dr. Rocky Torres-Morales on really turning this around. 

[00:18:18] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. So let's just, like, actually break down what the content of this presentation was. First of all, there was an email sent out to the school community on Tuesday, March 11th that officially announced that they will be continuing the cohort model alongside the neighborhood school model. So, a hybrid model for the next three years. When originally the cohort model would have closed at the end of this year.

[00:18:43] Christie Robertson: Or rather, they were going to phase it out year by year. So next year there would have been no second graders, the following year there would have been no third graders, and so on until it was gone. So another four years it would have taken with the HCC schools getting smaller and smaller. 

Dr. Rocky Torres-Morales:

[00:19:01] Rocky Torres-Morales: So our recommendation for the next three years is to continue in a hybrid model. Families of students in grades two through five will be given the choice to decide if they would like their student to receive their services via the cohort model or in their neighborhood school. 

[00:19:15] Jasmine Pulido: The email says, “For 2025-26, eligible students in grades 2-5 who wish to attend their Highly Capable Cohort Pathway may still do so by completing a school choice application before the May 31st, 2025 deadline.”

So all of the community input that has been going into testimony and to letters about pausing the sun setting of the cohort model was answered. So just a big acknowledgement to all the community members who really put a lot of heart and soul and brainpower into communicating this message.

[00:19:53] Christie Robertson: A bunch of people had signed up to testify about Highly Capable, and a lot of them converted their testimony into a thank you for taking this action. 

[00:20:05] Alex Feldman: Hi, I'm Alex Feldman just want to thank you along with a lot of other people for keeping the Highly Capable Cohort open as an option for students while the district develops a new program for neighborhood schools. I know this will help a lot of kids in our city.

[00:20:17] Christie Robertson: Of course there are still plenty of problems, as there always have been with the cohort program, and people talked about some of those as well. 

[00:20:24] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, there's now at least a three-year runway in which to address the problems in the neighborhood model. And I think the first thing that it seemed like most people wanted to address was the fact that the neighborhood model does not allow any advancement above grade level. Whereas the cohort model can advance the curriculum up to two years. 

And so, we'll see how that continues to develop and of course we'll cover it. 

[00:20:50] Christie Robertson: Dr. Torres-Morales was very concrete about what he was promising. He promised that by April 1st, that they will deliver to the board an HC plan with 

* details about identification. That's never been a problem. They've always talked about their identification. The thing that's been missing is the description of the services that they're going to offer. But now he's promising

* an instructional program description, 

* a description of the professional development 

* a program evaluation and 

* fiscal report. And then he talked about 

* what they would actually measure to determine that the neighborhood schools are effective. Are the kids at level (not sure which level), making a year or more of growth from where they were, and checking in about environment. Because another thing they have heard over and over is that kids who are identified often feel ostracized in their neighborhood schools. And Rocky committed to 

* hire a director this spring.

[00:21:51] Jasmine Pulido: That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[00:21:53] Christie Robertson: And 

* set up a series of engagements. 

So, many, many commitments. 

[00:21:57] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. Which I think a lot of people were happy to hear some sort of concrete commitment. Though there's not a great track record in general of execution. But I don't wanna be too pessimistic. It's just hard when you do all this coverage.

[00:22:11] Christie Robertson: Well, it's nice when there are bullet points that are in English, as opposed to educationese. And are clearly, like... We will know whether he delivers these things or not. They're concrete. 

[00:22:24] Jasmine Pulido: They're not, like, what do they call it? Like word salad.

[00:22:27] Christie Robertson: Word salad. 

[00:22:27] Jasmine Pulido: Not like word salad.

[00:22:28] Christie Robertson: Word salad is a favorite dish of many administrators in Seattle Public Schools. 

[00:22:33] Jasmine Pulido: That's so true. 

[00:22:34] Christie Robertson: I think this is the last thing about highly capable, and this ties into some community feedback we got from an SPS parent. In a recent Seattle Times article, Superintendent Jones and Dr. Torres-Morales named Gatewood and Lowell elementary schools as examples of successful neighborhood school models. Our listener said, “I would find it so helpful to hear from members of the Gatewood and Lowell communities about what the model actually looks like there, whether the community members agree with the SPS assessment that it is working well, and what is enabling it to work so well.”

[00:23:10] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, so if you're a parent, staff member, or student at Gatewood or Lowell, we'd love to hear your perspective on how the neighborhood school highly capable model is working. Please email us at hello@rainydayrecess.org with your experiences. 

[00:23:26] Christie Robertson: Huge deal between Tuesday and Wednesday, a giant shift in highly capable.

[00:23:31] Jasmine Pulido: A huge shift. And definitely wanted to put it a little bit higher in the episode, because it was a pretty big deal to see this announced. 

SBM: Progress Monitoring Report

[00:23:39] Jasmine Pulido: So let's move to progress monitoring on college and career readiness.

[00:23:44] Christie Robertson: In contrast to Dr. Torres-Morales beautiful bullet points, I have this slide that I might make the thumbnail for this episode, which is this "Theory of Action" slide. 

[00:23:55] Jasmine Pulido: Totally.

[00:23:56] Christie Robertson: If you were making a salad, you just... you wouldn't put this many ingredients in it. It's just, this would be a bad salad. There's, like, how many boxes are on this slide? 20 boxes? With arrows?

[00:24:09] Jasmine Pulido: I mean, this is a favorite slide, too. They always show it. 

[00:24:12] Christie Robertson: They love this slide. 

[00:24:13] Jasmine Pulido: They always show it. They always spend time talking about it, but I don't ever actually know what it means.

[00:24:18] Christie Robertson: it's impossible to look at. As soon as you look at it, your eyes go cross eyed 

[00:24:22] Jasmine Pulido: There's just a lot of key words in there and a lot of directionality that, evokes the feeling of progression, but it doesn't actually say anything about...

[00:24:31] Christie Robertson: Yes, evokes the feeling of progression. Yes, exactly. And then at the very end is, “Impact: Academic goal: SPS graduates succeed in a range of post secondary pathways of their choosing in Seattle and the world.” It's not just the slide, it's that the words that accompany it are just as difficult to understand, in my opinion. Where I'll find myself just needing to tune myself back in and try to understand what they're saying. Yeah.

And now I feel kind of bad, because somebody probably put a lot of effort into making that slide. And probably it all made sense in their head. But I definitely would like to encourage people presenting to a broad audience to pay attention to what's understandable in a forum like this.

[00:25:18] Jasmine Pulido: So let's move to progress monitoring. And it's just, like, a quick update on the interim goals. Should we just say a sentence about it or what do you think?

[00:25:27] Christie Robertson: Sure, go for it.

[00:25:28] Jasmine Pulido: So this progress report was on college and career readiness focused on the targeted group of black male teens. And they're looking for the percentage of black male teens in each cohort who both graduate and also successfully complete at least one advanced course. And so they just went over two interim goals for this larger goal. That is 1) what percentage of ninth graders are earning at least six credits, and 2) what percentage of tenth graders are earning at least twelve credits, 

And just like the update on that is – ninth grade black boys are tracking 2.7 percentage points lower compared to last year's cohort. And then 10th grade black boys are tracking at 0.3 percentage points up from last year's cohort. An additional data point they threw in was that the improvement that can happen between 10th grade Semester One and the actual graduation can be quite quite a big jump. And so they're feeling optimistic. 

[00:26:33] Brent Jones: It's important to note that while 61% of African American male students were on track with credits after the first semester after 10th grade, ultimately 80% of these students did graduate on time. We anticipate that the graduation rate for African American male students in the class of 2026 will also be much higher than the current 59.1%.

[00:26:57] Christie Robertson: So, Jazz. Unfortunately, I'll have to be the Debbie Data Downer, because 1) it seems like all the changes are within the margin of error. So you can't really conclude anything from that. 2) And it also seems like they're not really measuring something that correlates strongly with the outcome that they want. 3) And then I also don't feel like I understand their theory of action. And so I don't necessarily believe that they're gonna be able to move things in the right direction. Despite the fact that I love the idea of bringing data and evaluating strategies in light of those data. But for me, this isn't it.

[00:27:42] Jasmine Pulido: Mm hmm. 

[00:27:43] Christie Robertson: A paper that I can also link, “The Eight Practices of Highly Successful School Boards” dovetails with some of the training that we're going to talk about. One of the key things is that the superintendent needs to convince the school board that they have a plan for making clear, rapid progress on the goals. And if you can't understand what the strategies are, then you can't determine whether they're sufficient. I think there are things that they could do that would be, like, just a lot more clear cut and hence more convincing. 

For example, one would be, "We see a really clear correlation between school attendance and school performance and getting kids to graduation." Which is true. They have shown this. “And so we are going to work really hard specifically on attendance issues, and we will report back about whether we're making progress on our goals.”

Another one could be, “High schoolers need 24 credits in order to graduate, which is 4 years of 6-credit days. Anything that gets in the way of any of those credits automatically puts them off track. A lot of districts have gone to 7-period days in high school to give students a lot more wiggle room. Then you have 28 possible credits that you need to squeeze 24 credits out of. So we're going to convert our schools to 7-period days." 

There's also an audit that came out this year that showed that having more counselors available to kids to help them stay on track with graduation and life and career goals has an incredible impact. So that's a third option that they could bring. “We're gonna put our budgetary focus on high school counseling for Goal 3.”

So just a couple of things that I've been thinking about that would be much more straightforward.

[00:29:35] Jasmine Pulido: I have a feeling that if it's not clearly articulated in the way that you have just exemplified for us now that they don't actually know which strategies are working. My theory is that when you have word salad, it's because you're covering up the fact that you have nothing.

[00:29:52] Christie Robertson: Yeah. Or that you're just doing business as usual and you pulled some of the things onto a slide. 

Which ties very well into the next segment, which was a training on progress monitoring.

SBM: Progess Monitoring Training

[00:30:03] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, let's talk about it. I thought this was the more interesting part on progress monitoring. 

[00:30:07] Christie Robertson: Absolutely!

[00:30:09] Jasmine Pulido: This training was essentially for the school board and for the public to watch what a training looks like for the school board on Student Outcomes Focused Governance. 

[00:30:17] Christie Robertson: A. J. Crabill is their coach for Student Outcomes Focused Governance. And while I am not a Student Outcomes Focused Governance zealot, A. J. Crabill clearly has a vision. And it makes so much sense when he talks about it. You can clearly see the ways that if the board were to adhere more closely to what he's talking about, whether or not you like Student Outcomes Focused Governance, that the board would be functioning better.

[00:30:39] Jasmine Pulido:  I also really appreciated the clarity and the straightforward manner in which Crabill speaks and is very deliberate in being able to articulate what he means and what he doesn't mean. 

A quick breakdown of some key points. One was that he outlined the three key ingredients for progress monitoring. 

[00:30:54] Christie Robertson: Yes. Regular reports. A monitoring calendar so that you get a little bit every month and can really dig into that. And the third one, Jas?

[00:31:12] Jasmine Pulido: Questions that the school board members bring. 

[00:31:15] Christie Robertson: And he said a couple of times that all three kinds of questions – technical, tactical, and strategic – they're all valid questions. It's preferable if technical and tactical questions are answered before. but you can ask them at any time. And that the answers should be shared with everybody.

[00:31:32] Jasmine Pulido: If you look back on one of our episodes in which we question the way in which questions are admitted or not for a conversation during the school board... Essentially, they were banning any questions that were technical and tactical and leaving only strategic questions. 

[00:31:45] Christie Robertson: Which is particularly problematic because I feel like it's not always a clear case of whether something's strategic or not. 

[00:31:52] Jasmine Pulido: What he said here was that if you're told you can't ask a certain question, that's a misunderstanding. 

[00:32:05] Christie Robertson: Yeah ,it really points to: what things are important to be concerned about when you're trying to do Student Outcomes Focused Governance, and which things are just watchdogging and quieting people.

[00:32:22] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, that sort of leads into the second thing, which was how the purpose is not to have a gotcha moment for the superintendent, and what it's supposed to be about is evaluating the performance of the system, and not the individual character of the superintendent. I'll play the quote from it, but basically Crabill has some constructive criticism for the board about how these conversations have played out at school board meetings. 

[00:33:00] AJ Crabill: My view of watching your board meetings is that there is a reluctance to have the superintendent really own the entirety of the monitoring conversation, for fear that the monitoring conversation may be weaponized and used as an opportunity to beat up on the superintendent. A healthy recipe involves this being a conversation between the board and the superintendent. But that only works when there is a feeling of a safety around the conversation. I see that as speaking to a failure of the board to create the optimal conditions for monitoring to be effective.

[00:33:17] Christie Robertson: I loved this too, Jazz. I felt like there's been this jumping back and forth between being really scared to be critical of the superintendent, and so not wanting to push too hard. Or, like, getting very frustrated and pushing really hard on the superintendent. What it sounded like to me Crabill was saying is: It's the system, and the board and the superintendent are all part of the system. You're working together for students. And if something's not working, then you all are trying to figure out what to change to make it work for students.

[00:33:57] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, and put an emphasis on creating the conditions of safety to have that conversation. And that was really on the onus of the school board to create for the superintendent and district staff. 

One thing that Crabill also mentioned was that he had coded a previous school board meeting on progress monitoring and described that iteration of the school board as “extremely verbose”. He gave a pretty, I thought, a really accurate summation of how these conversations go.

[00:34:27] AJ Crabill: I know from having previously coded your meetings, you all in the past, but in a previous incarnation of the board, you all were definitely extraordinarily verbose. And so trying to get to how do we be just really dialed into what is it we want to ask? 

So for example, I remember one of the meetings that I coded earlier last year, and what would happen is, there'd be a 3-minute statement, and then a question, and then another 3-minute statement, and then 2 more questions. And then the staff would only answer the very last question, and the board member would get frustrated because they never got an answer to the first question. I don't actually fault the staff for that. That is just poor question-asking on the part of the board.

[00:35:09] Jasmine Pulido: Hersey felt it would be valuable for the board to go back together and see how those meetings went down to get an idea of how to improve moving forward.

[00:35:21] Brandon Hersey: Looking back, especially over the past year, given that there's just been so much going on, it feels as though we spent a lot of our time utilizing progress monitoring to express our frustrations with other things.

And that, to me, is just, like, time that we could have used really diving in deep and spending more of our energy and limited time together focused on children, right? I know you haven't looked at a lot of the past board meetings, but I think this will probably be a good opportunity for us as a board to replay the tape and really go into our next monitoring sessions with a more clear-eyed objective focused on students. 

[00:36:02] Jasmine Pulido: Crabill was a total fan of being able to play back the tape and offered to code the next progress monitoring meeting as feedback for them.

[00:36:10] Christie Robertson: That would be a very mature and productive thing, I feel like, for them to do.

[00:36:17] Jasmine Pulido: I hope they do it. It just seems really honest and genuine and authentic. I was appreciating Hersey putting that forward as a matter of ownership for the board to take on.

[00:36:27] Christie Robertson: Yeah. Crabill was talking about making a safe space for the staff to come forward, and at the same time, then he spoke about that if a monitoring report comes, and it does not show satisfactory growth, and there are not strategies outlined that are sufficiently aggressive to bridge the gap, the monitoring report should be rejected. A safe space and yet an accountable space.

[00:36:54] Jasmine Pulido: Good point.

[00:36:54] Christie Robertson: Voting on Progress Monitoring Reports is something they have not been doing. And would be really interesting to see. They're clearly, some of them, very angry at the superintendent now. But, there has never been a point where they've said, “your plan isn't good enough.” Or “OUR plan isn't good enough. We need to come back.”

[00:37:13] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. And I think the nuance that AJ Crabill was trying to really make clear was that we shouldn't personalize the superintendent. It's about the system, right? 

[00:37:25] Christie Robertson: Very interesting session.

[00:37:26] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, really interesting session.

[00:37:28] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, and he did give some really specific recommendations as far as what to do if they felt that it was going to go off the rails. One is checking to make sure that the intent of their questions actually matches the impact. And another was the board chair or even the facilitator, if it's someone different, being able to recognize when things are going off the rails and just putting a pause.

[00:37:52] AJ Crabill: Frankly, a lot of this falls on the shoulders of the board chair to simply pause questions or conversations that, in the board chair's judgment – so this is purely a judgment call – that in the board chair's judgment are not actually contributing to understanding the reality for our students and understanding what are the strategies that are working and not working. What we've learned from and what we're going to do next. 

And so when we start to have a conversation that looks like it's trying to reflect on the character of the superintendent rather than the performance of the system, our coaching would be that the board chair has an obligation, as the role of the chair, to pause that. Because that is inconsistent with what you all have said that you’re going to do. Monitoring is not a time to offer critiques on the performance of the superintendent as an individual contributor. It is a time to really evaluate the performance of the system as a whole. 

[00:38:52] Christie Robertson: Okay. Should we move on to the strategic plan? 

[00:38:57] Jasmine Pulido: Yup. Superintendent Jones was joined by Eric Guerci, who is a Deputy Chief of Staff. 

[00:39:02] Christie Robertson: New. 

[00:39:02] Jasmine Pulido: And is new. And if you recall, the old strategic plan was called Seattle Excellence. That is the one we talked about earlier in the episode about the outcomes for black boys as a targeted group.

And now the district is taking a gap year before going into the new strategic plan. And so this update was really just to talk about what the timeline is between the gap year and the new strategic plan. And it was very broad, but I thought there was a really nice timeline of all the different work streams that happen to make the strategic plan happen. And they're really just trying to get in the practice of providing a monthly update for the strategic plan. 

[00:39:47] Christie Robertson: But, like, can you explain to me what a strategic plan is? What actually is it?

[00:39:54] Jasmine Pulido: So, my understanding of the strategic plan is the actual concrete details in which the values are realized within the guardrails. 

[00:40:06] Christie Robertson: So what actual... How they organize their resources and stuff to accomplish the goals?

[00:40:12] Jasmine Pulido: Right. 

[00:40:13] Christie Robertson: Ok. 

[00:40:13] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, so they're like, “Okay. Now that the board has voted on the goals and guardrails, now we're going to put all of the resources and plans into place to realize those values.” Or outcomes, I guess. 

[00:40:25] Christie Robertson: Okay. And they did say they're going to have a task force.

[00:40:28] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, so they did say two things. One is that they have a advisory task force that they're going to put together for the strategic plan and another was that they'll have access to a national database that shows what other districts are spending in particular areas. And they can make adjustments based on if they are spending much higher or lower in certain areas.  

[00:40:50] Christie Robertson: They will be doing community engagement from April through November.

Community Notes

[00:40:55] Christie Robertson: Okay, so let's jump to some community notes. We released our first interview with a school board candidate, Sarah Clark, and we have another one coming soon. With Landon Lebosky, and that is because we are in school board candidate season. Which extends from, I guess, like March until November. 

Community Notes: SESEC Panel

[00:41:17] Christie Robertson: There are a couple of school board candidate trainings we want to talk about. One that's past, was hosted by the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition, also known as SESEC. This was a panel discussion called “Stepping Up for Schools”. It was March 4th at El Centro de la Raza.

[00:41:35] Jasmine Pulido: Our current District 7 Director was there, Brandon Hersey, as one of the panelists. We also had Aaron Garcia, who's a current Highline District School Board Director. Korey Strozier, who is the current president on the Tacoma School Board, and Stephan Blanford, who was previously a school board director for us in Seattle.

[00:41:59] Christie Robertson: They were all school board directors of color, and they each had some messages to pass along to people who might be considering running.

Director Hersey encouraged people to set a timetable and not expect yourself to serve on the school board forever. He said, "It will take everything from you." And he also said, "It's the hardest job in American politics, but the most important."

Aaron Garcia, the Highline School Board Director, said that it was very important to listen to constituents. A couple of the school board directors emphasized not just hearing what the administrators are telling you in the school board meeting, but to actually go visit the schools and talk to people. (Something that we talk about a lot on this podcast.) And then my favorite line maybe of the entire event was him saying, "If you have a high need to be liked, don't do this gig."

[00:42:52] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah I want to say Aaron is probably at least partially Filipino, because he mentioned “tsismis” (CHIZ-met), which is like gossip. Like, wanting to know. 

[00:42:59] Christie Robertson: Oh, really?

[00:43:02] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. So he was saying, like, when you become a school board member, you're not in the know of all the tsismis. Or, you do get some, but it's very filtered. And so that was something that he felt sad about. 

I'll also talk about Korey, who's the current Tacoma president. He was talking about the importance of seeing what's really happening in schools and trying to basically pop in without telling anyone, so that they don't have time to prepare a front for a school board director. He wants to just know what's really going on. And focusing on student needs above all else. Which we hope all directors are thinking about. And he said, “I don't need permission. I'm here for the babies.”

[00:43:40] Christie Robertson: A side note that maybe we can put here somewhere else, but I watched an Edunomics Lab presentation recently, where they were saying that they'll ask superintendents, “What's the most important thing to prioritize,” and they'll say, “The students, the students.” Universally. “That's what all our decisions should be based on.” But then if they present a scenario where they say, like, "Okay, well, it would help the students if we take some resources from staffing and put it over in this other area," the superintendents will be like, "Oh, no, we have to protect our staff. They're like family.” And it just... it's easier said than done to make decisions solely based on students.

[00:44:22] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. I love that presentation. 

And then Stephan did talk about Whether or not closing schools is the right thing to do which I thought was interesting. And he also talked about, as a person of color, having to contend with the idea that you're participating in a system that is oppressing people like you. How do you reconcile your role in that.

[00:44:46] Christie Robertson: Yeah. That's... I'm sure a lot of people have had the experience of criticizing something from the outside, working hard to get into a position where you can try to do something about it, but then you're complicit as well. Yeah. And Director Hersey also seconded those comments. That's a very heavy piece for directors of color.

[00:45:12] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, and just one thing I wanted to mention was there were no women of color on this panel. So I'd really be interested to hear how that particular intersection might also affect what advice she might give to a future school board director.

[00:45:26] Christie Robertson: In that 2017 meeting, Betty Patu was one of the directors. It would be pretty interesting to get her take.

[00:45:33] Jasmine Pulido: Really interesting too because Betty Patu ended up resigning early. Actually out of the people that I saw that resigned, most of them were women of color. So I'm really curious to hear what is going on in that experience.

Community Notes: School Board Training

[00:45:46] Christie Robertson: One other training that we want to mention is one that is ongoing, which is from the Coalition for Healthy and Equitable Education. They have launched a brand new training series for school board directors. They say their goal is to “help candidates prepare not only to run for election, but also to effectively govern at the board level.” The initiative focuses on "building a strong pipeline of candidates who are informed about educational equity." 

They have six sessions. I believe one of them has passed, but it's fine to join mid session. And they will have current board directors, a bunch of former board directors, and are working with orgs like Alliance for Education, SESEC, that we mentioned above, Washington Family Engagement, and the National Women's Political Caucus.

[00:46:30] Jasmine Pulido: We will add that into the show notes if you're interested in those trainings.

[00:46:34] Christie Robertson: Yes, or Google “learning together school board training”.

Community Notes: Chris Reykdal Press Event

[00:46:37] Jasmine Pulido: Our state superintendent, Chris Reykdal, did have a March 13 press event. 

[00:46:44] Christie Robertson: Yeah, just quickly. Look up Reykdal's March 13th press event. He talks about some of the federal changes and the impacts on schools, which are mostly "Follow the state law." 

And then he also spoke to the legislature saying that districts are facing $1000 per student funding reduction compared to 5 years ago. And also advocating for increased levy authority and new revenue. 

It's a very interesting event. I definitely recommend listening to what he has to say.

[00:47:14] Jasmine Pulido: I haven't watched that yet, so that'll be good. 

Outro

[00:47:19] Jasmine Pulido: All right. That concludes this rundown episode. You can subscribe and see our show notes at rainydayrecess.org and contact us at hello@rainydayrecess.org.

[00:47:31] Christie Robertson: You can also donate! As little as a cup of coffee once a month really helps us with our software costs. I'm Christie Robertson.

[00:47:39] Jasmine Pulido: And I'm Jasmine Pulido. Thanks to Lester Mayo and the Manzana Movement for our music 

[00:47:45] Christie Robertson: Stay curious, stay cozy, and thanks for listening to Rainy Day Recess.