Board Meeting Minutes
December 10, 2002
FEDERAL WAY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 210 – KING COUNTY
FEDERAL WAY, WASHINGTON 98003
The Board of Education of the Federal Way Public School District No. 210 held a Regular Board Meeting at 7:00 P.M., Tuesday, December 10, 2002, at Federal Way City Hall, 33530 1st Way South, Federal Way, WA. 98003.
Board members present: Earl VanDorien, Charlie Hoff, Don Putman, Ed Barney and Bob Millen.
Staff members present: Tom Murphy, Carol Matsui, Sally McLean, Mark Jewell, Diane Turner, Mary Asplund, Rod Leland, Chris Willis, Karen Dickinson, and Chris Popich.
CALL TO ORDER
President VanDorien: Good evening. I call this meeting of the Federal Way
Board of Education to order. It is December 10,2002. All directors are present
and accounted for; we’ll stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
Bells ringing…Santa makes a grand entrance: Ho, Ho, Ho!!! Merry Christmas everybody!
President VanDorien: I don’t see Mr. Claus on the agenda.
Superintendent Murphy: Mr. Claus does not need an agenda item.
SUPERINTENDENT COMMENTS
Superintendent Murphy: As Santa completes his distribution of either full or partial candy canes I think we can move on. I’ve got a number of items for you this evening. I think a large group of visitors tonight might be from the Chamber of Commerce Advancing Leadership class of 2002. If you could raise your hands please. Thank you very much for attending this meeting this evening.
Santa: Merry Christmas, everybody!
Superintendent Murphy: Merry Christmas, Santa. Advancing Leadership is the signature program of the Chamber of Commerce and this is the fifth class, the fifth year, of that program, and it’s an opportunity for students in our community to learn more about the community and more about becoming involved in leadership roles to make our community a great place to live, learn, work and play. So I greatly admire the alumni of those four previous classes and have great hopes and admiration for the current class that they’ll step into leadership positions and continue to make our community a great place. Thanks for being here tonight. Is Audrey Germanis here tonight from the CAC? Okay, we will not have a CAC report tonight. Third, I’d like to introduce Mark Jewell who is going to make some comments about the National Board Certification. We have two teachers who have achieved that incredible milestone and we have a presentation for them and Mark is going to tell us about the program. So, Dr. Jewell.
Mark Jewell: Thank you Superintendent Murphy. And actually Jolene Yoakum, who is one of our teachers on special assignment, is going to assist me in this presentation. We’re talking about National Board Certification which is basically a professional, a symbol of professional excellence. We are talking about teachers who have gone through a rigorous process and their numbers are very few – National Board Certification has only been around since 1987, and the first group of teachers who were Board Certified were named in 1995; there were only 86 at that time. In November 2002, the National Board awarded certification to 7,886, bringing the total number of National Board Certified teachers to 23,930. Now, putting this in perspective, we have more than 3 million teachers teaching in our public schools, so 23,930 are board certified. I’m going to ask Jolene who is one of our local teachers who is Board Certified to explain a little bit about the process that leads up to this honor.
Jolene Yoakum: Thank you, Mark. Again, I’m a teacher on special assignment in six of the elementary buildings in this district. And I moved here a year ago from Missouri and I actually certified in Missouri, but it is a national process and what these two people that we’re going to be honoring tonight have done, as well as the rest of us, have gone through a very rigorous process that is two parts. One part is putting together a portfolio that analyzes and reflects on their practice so they have to show evidence to support their accomplishments by videotaping lessons, collecting student work samples, analyzing those, and showing evidence of student growth and student learning. And the second part was to go to an assessment center where they got on a computer and took a very rigorous content-specific test and had to achieve passing marks in those areas. And then they have voluntarily opened up their practice to a group of certified peers to review and certify them in this process. And I’ve actually served as an assessor and it is a very rigorous process and very difficult to achieve. In the nationwide achievement rate this year was 40% of all the candidates that voluntarily went through the process. And the state of Washington had a 60% achievement rate, so we’re a little above the national average. But when you put this in perspective, these two people have certainly achieved one of the highest honors I think that teachers can achieve. So I appreciate your time tonight and participation in honoring these two people.
Mark Jewell: It’s with our great pleasure to be able to introduce to you the new Board Certified teachers in the FWSD. On the plaques they’ll be receiving it says that Federal Way Public Schools proudly congratulates Tim Fraychineaud and Jesse Towbin for professional excellence in achieving certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in the certification area of early adolescence generalists. And we’d ask Jesse and Tim to come and receive their plaques. (applause) We’re looking forward to encouraging more of our teachers to participate in this rigorous standards process, and look for Board support as we move ahead with encouraging our teachers to participate in this process. Thank you.
Superintendent Murphy: Thanks, Mark. I believe we had a number of teachers in this program. If you remember we mentioned those and introduced those teachers to you last year at this time, and one of those teachers informed me that she fell one point short of achieving the national standard, and she’s absolutely positive that she will achieve it next time around. So we’re very proud of Jesse and Tim and they’re great models for other teachers in our school district.
I’ve got three more points. One is that the student-led conferences were concluded last Friday at the secondary schools. Our plans are to collect the survey data as we did for elementary and get that survey data to you, and then in January and February we’ll be pulling together in separate groups elementary teachers, middle school teachers, and high school teachers and we’ll more than likely invite some parents to participate in the conversation which will include debriefing of those conferences and steps we can take to improve them for the spring conferences scheduled for March. We’ll follow that up again after those conferences in March so that we can have data on how to improve them for the 2003/2004 school year. But in my visits on Thursday and Friday of last week I was pleasantly surprised by the kinds of activities that I saw going on in the schools, but I’ve also received some concerns from high school parents that the conferences didn’t quite meet their needs. And so we’re going to be having conversations about that and see if there isn’t a way to improve that so that we can meet everybody’s needs as we move forward.
The other point I’d like to mention is that the paper had advertised that tonight you were going to have a conversation about graduation requirements; they may not have picked up on the new agenda which said you’re not going to talk about graduation requirements tonight, that you’ll be talking about graduation requirements either towards the end of January or the beginning of February. You’ll remember at the work/study the conversation that we had about involving staff and developing and creating what the sequence would look like especially in 9th and 10th grade – that will occur in January, at least I hope it will occur in January and then we’ll be able to bring that information to you so that you’ll have all of that to consider at the time you’re considering graduation requirements. So, it’s not on the agenda tonight, but will be on the agenda in January or in February for you to begin that process.
The last comment I have is related to the information that we received and that you’ve seen in the newspaper regarding a decision by DSHS to select a site within the FWSD as one of three final sites for the placement of a halfway house for sexual offenders. And I have a letter here that I’m going to be sending to DSHS and I’d like to read it to you this evening if that’s okay.
“First let me say that in the Federal Way School District the safety of our students is our greatest concern. In a recent news bulletin the state Department of Social and Health Services has identified Federal Way as one of three proposed sites for the location of a sexual offender’s halfway house. The site under consideration for this housing is at 5300 S. 336th St. It is within the boundaries of our school district. I object most vigorously to this proposed placement of a sexual offender halfway house. We have three sites for future schools in the area of this proposed placement. Lake Geneva site at 344th and 46th Ave. S. is approximately half a mile from the proposed site and is a middle school site. The Jovita site is located at S. 352nd St. and 52nd Ave. S. and is approximately 1 mile from this proposed location and it is an elementary school site. Five Mile Lake site at S. 360th and 32nd Ave. S. is less than 2 miles from this proposed site, and this is another middle school site. In addition, we have four existing schools in the area. Lakeland Elementary is approximately 2 miles from this site; Rainier View is approximately 2-1/2 miles from the site. Both of those are elementary schools. Lake Dolloff Elementary and Kilo Middle School are approximately 2 miles from the site. Those four schools are already in existence and too close to this site. I believe that including the site at 5300 S. 336th is inappropriate and does not consider the inherent danger to which our children would be exposed. I request that DSHS eliminate this site from consideration and I will join any effort to make sure that a sexual offender halfway house is not located in this school district.”
With your permission I propose to send this letter to DSHS tomorrow.
President VanDorien: Any objections from the Board?
Superintendent Murphy: I will also CC the King County Council and the City Manager and Mayor of Federal Way, as well as the Auburn School District and the Mayor of Auburn because it’s very close to their location too. They have an elementary school that’s probably in the same area as Lake Dolloff, and might even be a little closer.
That concludes my comments.
PUBLIC COMMENTS
President VanDorien: We’re at the time for public comments. Back on the table are these blue forms to fill out. If you wish to speak please read the top half, fill out the bottom half. First up tonight is Randy Dyer.
Randy Dyer: Thank you Mr. VanDorien and the Board for having this opportunity to voice my opinion about the Planned Parenthood that is being brought into Thomas Jefferson High School. I understand, because of our discussion at the forum, that you were unaware or had no knowledge of this so I just wanted to make it public record that I had knowledge of it and now we all have knowledge of it, and what we do with it from there will be your decision and I’m opposed to Planned Parenthood and as Mr. Murphy stated our greatest concern is for the safety of our children. And I think if children are led with wrong philosophies about abortion as birth control, the elimination of human life, I think that they will eventually, when they come to a higher enlightenment, be disappointed if they’ve ever made that choice. And I think that would be horrible for a person to fall into that category and I’d like to eliminate that from their choice. So, I think that’s all I really have to say.
John Hoskinson: I represent the Olympic View area. I attended your work/study group last March, and as an observer, and it was very productive. You discussed a lot of hard issues of the school and when it was concluded a comment was made ‘we’ll find the money somewhere to have summer school’. Well, I looked at your closing the gap plan – there’s no project for finding money for summer school or Saturday extensions or whatever you have. So, I looked at the results of the schools on meeting the state standards – 12 schools didn’t meet the improvement goals. They’re candidates for having the state visit us for having failed schools. Looking through your agenda you have four (?) – it says allocation of resources based on need. This has a timeline of 2002 – I don’t know what that means. Timeline – is it done? Is it started? Does the Board get a report? I don’t know. But anyhow, I have a suggestion for you. This plan has a man that’s going to draw a salary of at least $80,000/year to meet with the parents. His results will be very hard to measure, and there’s a question of how hard he’s needed. So I submit to you these 12 schools are in need – give them some money! Cancel that job and you’ve got $80,000 and you can put a thousand kids into summer school. Very simple if you want to do it. I’m interested in academic education for the elementary school students and you had a lot of programs going but there’s no sense of urgency to it, and on your gap plan you have two or three items with a timeline of the fall of 2002. I’ve heard nothing about it at a Board meeting. It wasn’t on the agenda for your retreat. What is this plan – a joke? Or do you really mean to improve education using it? Thank you.
Superintendent Murphy: President VanDorien, I have a couple of comments if you don’t mind. I would remind you that you had a couple of months ago an interim report from Alma Dansby about progress on Equity and Achievement Plan, and if I’m not mistaken there was also during that plan Alma reported that we had made allocations to schools of money and staff based on their need and based on their performance to try to shore up schools that may not have been performing very well. Second point I want to make is that the position that’s in that plan as the Family Liaison position has not been filled and that’s been my decision because of our current budget situation and what we’re facing next year as possible cuts that will come from the state. It didn’t appear to me to be appropriate to institute a position that I may have to cut six months later.
Mary Philomeno: I’m Mary Philomeno. Mr. Murphy, I reviewed several versions of your proposed materials and attended the work/study recently held at the ESC where you explained your proposal on graduation requirements to the Board. Based on my own student’s experience in kindergarten through 12th grade here in the FWPS system I agree that the FW public schools need to improve. Many of the inadequacies in our education stem from elementary school and junior high and it’s my opinion that you may want to improve…if you want to improve our WASL scores you’re going to have to make some major adjustments in the elementary school level as well. And I haven’t heard anything about what your planning to do at that level. A quick fix in the middle school and high school isn’t feasible for all of our students. And you need to look at the whole school experience. I’m concerned that you have not researched enough and thoroughly thought through your proposal which could lead to additional problems. And I want to remind you that the elective classes are an important part of a well-rounded education. I’m here primarily to protect the music classes in our schools, however, there are many important electives that aren’t core classes that are connected to the WASL. But many of these elective classes use concepts that are learned in those core classes. I’m also concerned that the proposed graduation requirements leave little time for elective classes or could create class schedules that do not leave room for some important elective classes. Our college-bound students who need to take a foreign language, who are eligible for AP classes and who are also interested in music, may have to make some serious decisions; and since music may not be a college prerequisite it may end up at the losing end. And I would hate to see that happen. The same could be said for drama, photography, journalism, auto shop, drafting, art and those are to only name a few. Music can be distinguished from some of these other elective classes as it is a class that interruption and practice can be devastating. For example, a student in 9th or 10th grade who cannot fit music into their schedule because of pumped up classes to pass the WASL may lose the discipline necessary to continue with it at a later time. I’ve seen that happen to a number of students already who have had to choose between music and AP classes. Some of the AP classes were only offered during the same period as band or orchestra or choir. I know that at Federal Way High School they’ve worked over the past couple of years to correct that problem; however, some of these students never returned to music. Some were quite talented but they felt they couldn’t go back and their skills would be behind their peers. It was inferred that our students could perform in musical ensembles outside of school as an alternative. However, most of those established ensembles do require students to be enrolled in a music program at their school in order to participate. So therefore that would not be a viable solution. With the upcoming budget cuts and additional transition costs I am concerned that some of the Board feels that music education is expendable. Please don’t let that happen. It would be a devastating loss to our community and a disservice to our students. Thank you.
President VanDorien: Thank you very much. And as far as graduation requirements in the plan for the high schools, I believe a week from tonight, next Monday night in the old Board Room at the ESC at
6 p.m., we will be discussing the high school transition. We’ll be getting an update on it and hearing a little bit more about what the high schools are doing. There’ll be each high school and the public academy will be doing an individual presentation.
Superintendent Murphy: Just the four high schools.
President VanDorien: And I highly recommend you attend that to get an idea of what our high schools are going to look like, and electives will be discussed at that meeting also. No decisions made, it’s a work/study, but they will be discussed.
Bill May: Good evening Board, Superintendent Murphy. I wanted to dovetail on what John Hoskinson said earlier this evening with regard to the equity and achievement task force and how it relates to parental involvement in the City of Federal Way and the schools in Federal Way. Over a year ago now we started on the path of spending a great deal of staff monies, a great deal of staff time, development, research and continued parental involvement on the discussion of equity and achievement in the city of Federal Way and the schools in Federal Way. To date we’ve spent well over $100,000 and we still don’t have as yet the promised parental involvement engagement that has been touted to us in the local newspaper by our Board President. I’m concerned that while we don’t have a program yet we still talk as though it’s something very high on our list, and we have not yet delivered to the citizens of Federal Way. We need to have a parental involvement engagement that allows parents of students that are both succeeding well academically and those that are detrimental to the educational process in the city of Federal Way, so that those parents can know that their children are either doing a very good job and can be praised for that and promoted for that, and those that are disruptive can be addressed in a situation that allows those students to be removed from the classroom so that the students that are there to do work in the classroom can continue to do their good work during the day. I find as a parent of a student at Illahee that on many occasions I’m told that there are situations in the classroom where my student cannot get an effective amount of work done because of the interruption of classroom participants that aren’t there to learn. I think the result of all this is we have classes that are under-delivering to our students and the students that want to learn are not challenged and they can’t achieve their goals; and this Board has promised on several occasions, have gone down in print that you’re going to deliver a parental involvement program, and to date I’ve not seen it. I want to challenge you publicly to make sure that you do take action on your words and deliver a program that’s effective to engage all parents in this community. Thank you very much.
President VanDorien: Thank you, Mr. May, and as we just heard from Superintendent Murphy there is a Family Liaison position that is planned out of that work, and we do have budget problems that we didn’t have when that was first announced. Superintendent Murphy will be staffing that as soon as possible, but that’s within his purview as administration as to what happens with that position. But I do have confidence that the full plan that’s been offered will be carried out.
Steve Gorringe: Board members, Superintendent Murphy, I live in the Adelaide service area. I’m also a teacher at Decatur High School. I too, as many of my students, parents, and colleagues, are deeply concerned about the proposed changes in the graduation requirements. Specifically, the reduction in elective requirements from an already paltry sum of six to just five. Of every district in our area that has a four-year high school around us there’s at least seven credits minimum requirement for graduation for electives. Why is it that we are requiring one more credit in social studies and science than every other district around us? Currently science and social studies are not on the WASL, but even if they were why are we requiring science and social studies in the 11th grade when the WASL is to be taken in the 10th grade? I realize that that’s yet to be determined. It has been said that we are not cutting electives, students will still have the opportunity to take the electives they desire. But this simply is not true. Currently students have to earn 17.5 credits in core subject areas. Students who take six classes a semester have the potential to earn 24 credits during their high school career. That allows them to take two elective classes all but one semester of their high school career. I will make it no secret that I believe that all students should have the ability or the potential to take two elective classes their entire high school career. Under the new proposals students would have to earn a total of 18.5 core credits; that would leave them only 5.5 credits to pursue electives and other choice classes. So, as you can clearly see, we are cutting electives and at the same time restricting student choices. I still have not heard a valid rationale, in my opinion, for the cut. I can only make the assumption that it’s about the WASL, and getting kids to pass the WASL. If the only reason the Federal Way Public Schools exist is to get 10th graders to pass the WASL then we are in worse shape than I thought we were and is in direct conflict to the proposals rationale for change. The proposal states ‘some high school students are not engaged with their own learning’. I agree, some students are not. Yet we are proposing changes for all students. What about the students who are engaged in their learning? Why is it necessary to require all students meeting WASL standards to take an extra half credit of English, science, social studies? Why are we asking students that want to go to college to choose between one elective or another? Or better yet, what about the students that aren’t meeting standards – the at-risk students whose only connection to being engaged in their learning is auto shop or art or music? If we increase their requirements and limit their elective choices we lose them. Does this proposal allow enough wiggle room for students who fail one or two classes? In summary, the question is how do we get all high school students engaged with their own learning? I don’t know, but I do know that piling on an additional credit of core credits and eliminating or restricting elective choices is not the answer. Thank you. (applause)
President VanDorien: Thank you, and again please attend next Monday night and you’ll see some proposed changes that will be coming up with electives and why or why not things are going to be happening with that. The room seats about 100 people.
Lloyd Gardner: Meredith Hill. I have been receiving every week a thing called “The Education Gadfly” put out by Fordham Foundation and the last issue of December 5th had some interesting articles which I have picked out of there and passed on to the School Board. I thought that there were things in there that needed a little bit of mentioning. I think the Education Gadfly provides a clue as to a lot of publications, articles, and news articles that are going on that really do a great job of putting the point in the right direction. And they can be reached on www.edexcellence.net . The first article was about Virginia – they have upgraded their criteria, 35 new pages, and the thing that was gratifying was that they are now putting an emphasis more than they did before on vocabulary, content, knowledge, grammar, punctuality, and sentence diagramming. Now I guess I haven’t heard the word ‘sentence diagramming’ since I was in the 4th grade I think, but certainly I don’t know if I’ve heard it around here and I don’t know that anybody knows it and maybe the school board could educate me on that, but I think it’s a horrible oversight if we don’t have it. Anyway, that article is going to be and can be read nice and straightforward by parents and teachers and I think it’s a good idea. Now, as far as small class size – another article – we seem to get and the article suggests that we have a good concern about class size because somebody out there, maybe it’s the union, wants more teachers. Well, we’d all like to have more teachers to teach our classes, but the point was made that in other countries they have a lot larger class size than ours and they’re running circles around us as far as the things they’re doing in education, at least in some areas. It bears thinking about. The other one was an article from a British (?) and it said that ¼ of the 5th graders can’t read – ever heard that before? We have a good beginning reading program in this district, but we still haven’t got around to address properly the remedial reading that I think lots and lots of kids need, and that are struggling I think. And the other one was coming from England – two and a half years it takes to fire a bad teacher. That’s called …well, anyway, we have the same problem, and I just hope sometimes when you’re talking to the legislature you’ll get that thing fixed up. Thank you.
BOARD COMMENTS
Director Millen: I would like to acknowledge that there are students here from Mr. Haynes’ civics class at Decatur. Welcome and thank you for joining us. And back there? Last week we had a work/study if you all remember and I’m sure you do on middle school transition and each school I would like to say did a fine job of presenting their information and showing the Board how far along they are in the process and I was quite impressed with their progress and it’s obvious to me that next year there will be middle schools here in Federal Way. They are well on their way and I appreciate it. Thank you.
Director Hoff: Just two comments. One for Mr. Gardner’s benefit that during the time I was a volunteer at the Public Academy they did diagram sentences down there. I saw that done and I remember it like you from the 4th grade – actually from the 8th grade in my case – I was a slow learner. But, yes, they were doing diagramming down there at least a year ago. And secondly, the Seattle Times has put out now a book which gives a profile of each of the schools in the Puget Sound area. I went to pick one up at Bartell’s today. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to have them yet, and it’s the only place you can buy them. But you can see all this on the net by going to the Seattle Times web page, and I would encourage all of you to take a look at your particular schools where your children may go and see the evaluations that the Seattle Times has placed upon these and other schools as well. They are worth noting.
Director Barney: I’ll just make a brief comment regarding the student-led conferences. I had the opportunity to attend my daughter’s this last week. It was definitely a different experience and there are a few comments that came out of that from other parents that I spoke to as well as teachers for improvement of the program. I know we’ll have a discussion of that later, but one of the most interesting things was the fact that after the conference was over I then got the progress report which I wish I had had before I went to the conference cause I could have asked her a few more questions that weren’t presented at that little conference. But that might be one improvement we might look at, is to have those progress reports available at the time of the conference.
Director Hoff: Well, I just wanted to add concerning the parent conferences last week that I, like the Superintendent, also spent some time in at least two of the schools and I was impressed with the number of people that were showing up for these. One of my major reservations about this when we started was that some of the parents who really need to be at these conferences if we’re going to give them the kind of assistance that we would like to give them would not be showing up; but I saw evidence that considerable numbers of people were showing up for these and I thought that was encouraging.
President VanDorien: I also had my first experience with student-led conferences at the Public Academy where my son goes to, and I will be proffering my suggestions for changes or not to the folks that will be reviewing this also. I also had occasion to visit TJ High School today and I talked to Principal George Ilgenfritz who started rattling off a long list of numbers and I was very impressed at the level of parent involvement at TJHS as he went through the list of the classes and he was rattling off like 20 out of 20, 19 out of 20, 23 out of 23…the numbers were very high. There was only maybe at the most I saw two parents per class that didn’t show up. The attendance was very high and he got a lot of feedback, pro and con, but mostly he thought it was pro, and the best thing about the student-led conferences is the high number of parents that actually showed up. He said he’d never seen that many parents in his school before. So whatever else your opinion on the student-led conferences is it got parents back into the schools to talk to the teachers, and that was one of the goals of it, so if that was the only measurement we had of the SLC’s I would pronounce it a success. We’re about to get into the rest of the agenda with review of the Consent Calendar but my last final comment is this is the last Board meeting before the end of the year. There is no second Board meeting in December, and I just wanted to take a moment to wish everybody a good, safe holiday as you travel – return safe and sound for January, and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
REVIEW OF CONSENT CALENDAR
President VanDorien: There are three additions to the Consent Calendar.
1. Add as Item 2-C, the approval to enter into agreements with property owners for the right of way and easements to construct Off-Site Roadway Improvements for Todd Beamer High School. (If you all want to know what that means, it means they’re going to make the entrance and exit to the general area where Todd Beamer High School is a whole lot easier to get into.)
2. Add as Item 2-D, to grant approval to the Superintendent to enter into an agreement with the City of Federal Way and King County regarding the transfer of ownership of the Kenneth Jones Pool from the County to the City.
3. Add as Item 4-J, the approval of the girl’s softball team from Federal Way High School to travel to Florida during Spring Break to participate in a training week at the Disney Training Camp. (And I suspect with that one we’ll have 100% parental attendance to volunteer as chaperones to Florida in the spring.)
APPROVAL OF AGENDA
President VanDorien: Do I hear a motion for the agenda?
Director Putman:I move that the Board of Education approve the agenda of December 10, 2002, as submitted.
Director Barney: Second.
President VanDorien: All in favor? Motion carries unanimously.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES
President VanDorien:May I have a motion for approval of the minute?
Director Barney: I move that the Board of Education approve the minutes of November 26, 2002, as submitted.
Director Putman: Second.
President VanDorien: We have a motion to approve the minutes of November 26, 2002, as submitted. All in favor? Motion carries unanimously.
.
ADOPTION OF CONSENT CALENDAR
President VanDorien: May I have a motion for the adoption of the Consent Calendar.
Director Hoff: I move that the Board of Education adopt the Consent Calendar of December 10, 2002, with the addition of the previously mentioned items. These would be added as 2-C, 2-D, and 4-J.
Director Barney: Second.
President VanDorien: It’s been moved and seconded the Board of Education adopt the Consent Calendar of December 10, 2002, with the addition of the previously mentioned items. These would be added as 2-C, 2-D, and 4-J. All in favor? Motion carries unanimously.
PRESIDENT VANDORIEN STATEMENT
At this time I have a brief statement and it pertains to the next item on the agenda. It’s been a year since the last election of the Federal Way Board of Education, and we four new Board Directors up here. This is quite a young Board for such a large School District as Federal Way, the sixth largest in the state.
What this District has accomplished in this past year is amazing:
- Finalized plans on two high schools – that would be Truman and Todd Beamer, the one we named, and we acquired a new facility for the Public Academy that’s currently under construction now – renovation;
- Implemented a Middle School transition plan, begun by the previous Board, refined by this one, that also converts our high schools to four-year schools;
- Reviewed the work of Equity and Achievement office and the “Gap” Report with much more work to be done;
- Begun work on new Graduation Requirements, a revised Promotion Policy and a new district-wide Elementary Report Card that will continue into next year;
- Started the search for a new elementary math curriculum, using our new expectations for the 7th grade, and the 8th grade and that will be continuing tonight and it’s also on the agenda for the 8th grade;
- Commissioned work on a new Vocational Tech-Ed committee to begin the process of reviewing and enhancing our Vocational and Career Offerings;
- Started work on the definition of the state-mandated 13th Year Plan and Culminating Project, both required for graduation beginning with the class of 2008;
- Implemented Student-Lead Conferencing, and based on our recent teacher/parent surveys especially in the elementary schools, it was a resounding success;
- Considered proposals for a Technology Levy and a Transportation Levy;
- Begun the wrestling match with our Budget Shortfall of 2.5 million this year and a projected 6 to 8 million next year;
- And of course, we’ve handled the surprise contingencies that pop up on any school board, like movies, field trips, 6th grade camp, budget deficits, and much, much more that creates better schools for your kids.
All in all, it has been a very busy year.
Because of the public nature of a Board’s work, you have been able to witness these works as they have progressed. We are proud of these accomplishments, and proud of our schools and the students and parents we serve.
This Board, being new, is a work in progress. We are a body of five unique individuals with unique personalities thrust in to the public spotlight to do the work for you; the “citizen” side of the check and balance between the tax-payers and the government, which is what a school district is.
This is not easy work; it’s complex, time consuming, taxing on our families as well as each of us and our “day jobs.” Each of us knew this coming in to these positions, and each of us gladly makes the sacrifice for each of you.
Not only have you seen the good works we have done, but you have also seen our mistakes, procedural mostly, but some mistakes nonetheless. They are our Growing Pains….
For me, to be elected a Board member of this proud district, and then just 12 weeks later to take the gavel as President, it has been an especially tough “education” for me. I have not only had to learn the Board’s work in making policy for the direction of our schools, I have had to learn how to effectively chair a Board in public meetings. This first year, for this young Board, has not been without its little bumps, but for every one of them, we have learned, grown, and continue forwards.
We thank you for your support, your understanding and your participation in the process.
Tonight, we have our annual Board Reorganization. During Board election years, we elect new officers as soon as the elections are certified by the Secretary of State. During non-election years, like 2002, Board Policy 1120 states, “….at the first regular meeting in December in non-election years, the Board shall elect from among its members a president and a vice-president to serve one year terms.” I wish the new President a great year, continuing our work to make Federal Way a model school district in Washington State.
It was an honor and a privilege to serve as your Board President these past 10 months.
BOARD ELECTION OF OFFICERS
President VanDorien: Do I have a nomination for the new President of the Board of Education?
Director Barney: President VanDorien, I would like to nominate our junior statesman, Bob Millen. He’s the youngest of us here as a Board Member. That’s why I call him a junior statesman.
President VanDorien: He’s older than me though. Bob Millen, do you accept the nomination?
Director Millen: Yes, I will.
President VanDorien: Are there any other nominations for President of the Board of Education? Are there any other nominations for President of the Board of Education? Three times per law. Are there any other nominations? Do we have a motion to close nominations?
Director Barney: So moved.
President VanDorien: It’s been moved. We don’t need a second to close nominations. We’ll have a roll call vote for Bob Millen as President of the Board of Education.
Director Barney: Yes.
Director Millen: Yes.
Director Hoff: Yes.
Director Putman: Yes.
Director VanDorien: Yes. It is unanimous. Director Millen, you are now President Millen.
President Millen: Thank you, I think. Next order of business is to elect the Vice President. Are there any nominations for the office of Vice President?
Director Barney: President Millen, I would like to nominate Earl VanDorien for the position of Vice President of the Board.
President Millen: The name of Earl VanDorien has been placed into nomination for Board Vice President. Do you accept that?
Director VanDorien: Yes.
President Millen: Do I hear any other nominations for Board Vice President? Are there any other nominations? Any other nominations for Vice President? Do we have a motion to close nominations?
Director Barney: So moved.
President Millen: I will call for a roll call now for Vice President.
Director Barney: Yes.
Director Hoff: Yes.
Director Putman: Yes.
Director VanDorien: Yes.
President Millen: Yes. Newly elected Vice President is Earl VanDorien. Okay, we have a Vice President. Congratulations. And I will take a five minute break until 8 o’clock so we can reorganize ourselves and have a cookie. (break) We have some more work to do before we continue and that is I need a motion to move that all the policies and regulations are adopted. May I hear a motion on that?
Director Putman: President Millen, I move that all policies and adopted regulations are in full force and effect as they are now constituted, but are subject to individual review and revision as the need arises.
Director Barney: Second.
President Millen: There has been a motion and a second that all policies and adopted regulations are in full force. We’ll have a roll call on that.
Director Barney: Yes.
Director Hoff: Yes.
Director Putman: Yes.
Director VanDorien: Yes.
President Millen: Yes. Motion carries unanimously.
RECESS TO OFFICIAL PUBLIC HEARING FOR SURPLUS OF PROPERTY
President Millen:Now we will have to take another short recess for the Official Public Hearing of Surplus of Property. Sally, would you fill us in on what’s going on please?
Sally McLean: Thank you. Good evening, President Millen, members of the Board and Superintendent Murphy. During this public hearing this evening our community has an opportunity to respond about the possibility of surplusing a piece of district property. The fire department has expressed an interest in acquiring a portion of district property. This piece of property represents an approximate two acre parcel of the Lakota property facing 312th and adjacent to the fire department. In accordance with state law the district must first declare the property surplus in order to engage in discussions about selling that piece of property and that is what tonight’s public hearing and then the resolution that you have in your Board packet when you reconvene in regular session addresses. And I’m here to answer any questions that you might have or to listen to public comment about the surplus.
Superintendent Murphy: Perhaps I could give you a little bit of history on this piece of property President Millen. Quite some time ago we entered into some conversations with the city of Federal Way when it first became a city about the playfields at Lakota. In an early bond issue that probably was in the ‘80’s I think, the ’88 bond issue, there was some money put aside to help develop the playfields at Lakota. I think they were originally county fields that we were joint using. Maintenance had always been a problem when the county had them. We were interested in trying to create a soccer/football type field at Lakota and when the city became a city and actually took over the playfields from the county we had an ongoing discussion for about three years about trying to relocate and work with the city on that piece of property to try to create a football field, a soccer field, something along those lines. We were never able to come to an agreement on that because of a number of issues. Money was one. We only had $200,000 and it was going to be a pretty expensive proposition, and I think some wetland issues got in the way. And so that kind of went away, and the property has simply been sitting there for all this time, generally unusable to the school district. There have from time to time been occasions when that area has been difficult to supervise and the fire department has always been a good neighbor and I would recommend that you move forward with surplusing this piece of property. We don’t need it, there isn’t anything that we can use it for, and it would certainly help us and help the community if the fire department could end up being the successful purchaser of the property and then be able to expand their training facility.
RECONVENE REGULAR BOARD MEETING
President Millen: This will reconvene the regular board meeting. Next item is Section B which is decision on the surplus property.
DECISION ON SURPLUS OF PROPERTY
President Millen: We’ll take public comments first and then have Board comments. There are no public comments on this, so we’ll take Board comments now.
Director Putman: I just was going to ask Sally a quick question. If the property sells where do the funds go?
Sally McLean: All property sale funds are required to be deposited in the Capital Projects Fund for future building/renovation/field renovation kinds of work.
Director Barney: Would that include the moving of the sign which I believe currently sits on that property – the Lakota sign? Will those funds be used to move that sign? Is that part of the…?
Sally McLean: Yes, they could be or it certainly could be negotiated as part of the purchase sale agreement.
Superintendent Murphy: I’m pretty sure that it’ll be part of the purchase sale agreement and that we won’t be paying money ourselves to move the sign.
President Millen: Any other questions? Hearing no questions do I hear a motion?
Superintendent Murphy: One final point just as a reminder to the community. The act of surplusing the property does not obligate you to sell the property. It simply is a declaration on your part that we have no use for the property and would entertain offers from prospective buyers to sell the property, but you’re under no obligation to do so.
President Millen: Thank you.
Director VanDorien: I move that the Board of Education approve Resolution 2002-40, to declare surplus and offer for sale the real property commonly referred to as a portion of site 32.
Director Barney: Second.
President VanDorien: It’s been moved and seconded that the Board of Education approve Resolution 2002-40, to declare surplus and offer for sale the real property commonly referred to as a portion of site 32. At this time we’ll take a roll call.
Director Putman: Yes.
Director VanDorien: Yes.
Director Hoff: Yes.
Director Barney: Yes.
President Millen: Yes. Motion carries unanimously.
GRADE 8 MATH EXPECTATIONS
Mark Jewell: President Millen, this is the third time that I’ve come before the Board presenting the 8th Grade Pre-Algebra Math Expectations. The first reading was on November 12th, the second reading was on November 26th and when we look at the 47 expectations we’ve made a few adjustments and in response to comments that you’ve had and so at this point we’re hoping that a decision will be made to approve them as we’ve revised them.
President Millen: Are there any questions? There are no questions. At this time, as there is a decision on this tonight, are there any motions on this?
Director Barney: I move that the Board of Education approve the 8th Grade Math Expectations as currently constituted.
Director VanDorien: Second.
President Millen: It’s been moved and seconded that the Board of Education approve the 8th Grade Math Expectations as currently constituted.
Director Putman: Yes.
Director VanDorien: Yes.
Director Hoff: Yes.
Director Barney: Yes.
President Millen: Yes. Motion passes unanimously.
POLICY REVIEW FOR:
POLICY/PROCEDURE 3413 – IMMUNIZATION AND LIFE THREATENING
HEALTH CONDITIONS; AND
POLICY/PROCEDURE 3415 – ACCOMMODATING STUDENTS WITH DIABETES
President Millen: This is the second reading.
Chris Willis: Thank you, President Millen. These are two policies and procedures. The first one, 3413, is actually an amendment of the immunization policy. This policy is designed now to, prior to attendance, each child with a life threatening condition shall present a medication or treatment order prior to admittance into school. A life threatening condition is a condition which puts a student at risk of death. And 3415, which is accommodating students with diabetes. There’s three aspects to this. Parents of students may designate an adult to provide the care for their student, generalized training for all staff, and individualized training for those who work with the student him or herself. Those particular statutes were passed by the Washington state legislature prior to the summer, and advocated by the state school nurse’s association. Do you have any questions?
President Millen: No questions. Thank you very much.
Superintendent Murphy: I would encourage you again that if you have any questions or thoughts or comments for Mr. Willis to please get those in to him prior to the next Board meeting when you’ll be asked to make a decision on those policies.
President Millen: Thank you. That is a second reading; next meeting should be the third reading and decision.
2003/2004 BUDGET DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Sally McLean: This evening will be the first of many nights that you will have an opportunity to hear from me around selected budget topics as we begin our planning process for the 2003/2004 budget year. It’s important for me to note at this point in time that we are planning – we don’t know what the final 2003/2004 budget recommendations will look like and indeed don’t anticipate releasing those final recommendations until June, once the state has actually adopted a budget for the biennium. But we do know that we have some challenges coming down the road in front of us, and I think that this Sunday comic depicts things fairly well for us. We certainly know that there’s budget cuts and downsizing all over the place. We can read our local newspapers and read about layoffs here locally. And I’m sure many of you have probably heard that there might even be some budget trimming in K-12 education. And you’ll notice in this top panel that these guys are all in color still, and you drop down into the bottom panel and the conversation continues and says well, yeah, probably nothing too dramatic, but there could be changes. And look at what happens as these guys, Frank and Ernest, continue their conversation. They end up down here in what I call ‘bare bones’ black and white basic education. So I do want to spend some time this evening talking to you about the planning process and what the scenarios look like. In addition to the projected state shortfall and the impacts of that on public education, not just for Federal Way, but for every school district in this state, Federal way also has some challenges at the moment in terms of enrollment. If you’ll notice the dip here below the line, this is the first time in almost 20 years that the district is actually serving fewer students this year than last year. So we are actually serving 250 fewer students this year than we did last year. And when you look at this 45-year picture here you can see the baby boom – when all the baby boomers came to school, and you can see that the district was growing 1500-2000 – fairly substantial increases in terms of trying to find enough teachers to deal with 2000 new students on an annual basis, find enough places to house those students, enough desks, and those kinds of things. What we’re used to in this last 20 year period is more like about 500 new students every year, and that’s been a substantial increase for us. But what we see now and what I have taken to calling myself as your chief financial worrier is this the beginning of a new trend that we saw back in the ‘70’s and into the mid ‘80’s, where rather than growing on an annual basis we’re actually losing students? And the reason that I bring this to you as an issue is because public education in the state of Washington, that major revenue driver, is based on the number of students that we’re serving. So, as you’re increasing you’re seeing your state revenues increase; unfortunately the math works against you when you’re decreasing. You start to see your revenues work against you. And the math is fairly easy behind this. For every 25 students currently we received about $4000 in state funding for the basic ed portion – that’s about $100,000 for every 25 new students in the district. If you’ll think about things in simplistic terms and assume those 25 students move into one neighborhood, for example, Meredith Hill, with an empty classroom and those 25 kids are all second graders – we hire one teacher. So about half of the $100,000 goes to pay for the teacher’s salary and the other half is used throughout the system. It’s used to pay for utilities, diesel fuel, additional paraeducators, classroom materials – the whole range of day to day activities that we see is paid for with that additional $50,000. So when you’re growing you hire teachers and you have more money to spend. When your enrollment is declining, as I mentioned earlier, that math works against you. You can make the adjustments in terms of your teaching staff, but you still have to find the other pieces of money that we’re spending in the system. So with a 250 FTE drop in enrollment this year we have lost a million dollars in state funding this year in 02/03 without really doing anything differently. Half of that we can address through staffing and did address through staffing adjustments; the other half is being spent in the system, and we have to find ways to stop spending that as we move into the future because what I project at this point is that we’re going to continue to see this move down in 2003/2004. And I project we’ll be losing another 250 students in 2003/2004. So that would reflect from budget to budget an actual loss in state revenue of about two million dollars. So, what’s the bigger picture out there? We know at the moment that the state has at least a two billion dollar revenue shortfall. That’s the big number – two billion dollars. And there are several ways that I have taken at looking at that two billion dollar revenue shortfall and trying to understand how that might impact us here in Federal Way. One of those ways is to say well our elected officials are going to have a really difficult time figuring out how to balance the budget this year and so at some point in time they’re going to run out of time, they’ll have to adopt a budget, and they’re going to just take proportionate cuts across the board. They’ll cut K-12, they’ll cut higher ed, they’ll cut the prison systems, and they’ll cut health and social service programs. Now, I don’t know that, but if that was indeed their tactic – that they just took across the board cuts, K-12 represents 43-1/2% of the state’s operating budget. So that would mean K-12, statewide K-12, would have to take $870 million dollars worth of cuts, slightly less than a billion dollars. That’s still a big number and that’s hard to equate in terms of Federal Way. Well, again, as I mentioned earlier, it’s student enrollment that drives state funding and we, with 21,500 students in 2000/2001, which is the last year statewide statistics were available – we represented about 2-1/4% of the state’s total population. So when you multiply those two numbers together you come up with this large negative number of about $19.5 million dollars, or roughly 18% of our total state funding. That would be devastating, to take a $19.5 million dollar cut out of state funding out of the district’s budget. So I will get to give you one piece of good news tonight and I will tell you the one piece of good news is I don’t think the cuts will be this deep, and the reason I don’t think the cuts will be this deep is two-fold…one, public education is defined as the paramount duty of the state of Washington in our Washington state constitution. And in the mid ‘70’s when Federal Way was experiencing – if you remember the enrollment graph – and we saw declines in enrollment. That was happening not just in Federal Way, but across the state as the state struggled with the recession and the national economy was also weak – very similar to what we’re seeing occurring now. The school district of Seattle sued the state of Washington for failure to provide the paramount duty of the state, for failure to provide public education, and as a result of those lawsuits there were several decisions issued called the Durand Decisions and there was also the Basic Education Act of 1977 that was enacted and the Basic Education Act of 1977 defines basic education and defines what the paramount duty of the state is. Now the piece I also like to mention is that certainly public expectation has changed from 1977 until today, 2002, in terms of what school districts are expected to provide to our students. And the easiest example to think about is in 1977 I doubt if you found a computer in a classroom anywhere; certainly in 2002 we know that that’s become a fundamental part of not only the administrative side of the house, but the instructional side of the house. So technology’s not funded as part of the Basic Education Act of 1977. This list of activities represents all of the current state funding that’s provided above and beyond that basic education act of 1977; and I’ll point out a few of these. This first line where it talks about enhanced staffing ratios at K-4, about $2.3 million dollars that provides not only funding for about 40 additional teachers, it also provides additional funding for non-employee related costs. So that funding formula rolls through the whole piece. Every single one of our certificated staff, our teaching staff members, has two of their 183 days paid for by the state. So on average about $250/day for each of those members. Our vocational program is not protected; the enhancement piece is not protected. This basically provides for enriched equipment purchases within the vocational programs or the career and technical programs as they’re more appropriately called. We have levy equalization funding of about $2.5 million and you will hear me speak in the future about levy lids and levy equalization, but basically what this $2.5 million does is equalize the tax rates between Federal Way taxpayers and any other taxpayer in the state, at least for the first 12% or roughly 50% of the levy that we asked the taxpayers to support. We have a category of special and pilot projects that includes our early childhood education program; that’s the state complement to Headstart. We have obviously the student achievement or I-728 funding – this was the initiative that was passed with about 73% voter approval two years ago. And you’ll remember here in Federal Way we have been using I-728 money to reduce class size, particularly at K-2, but in all grades levels. We have approximately 80 teachers hired through I-728 funds; there was also one day – the 183rd day – for every certificated staff member is currently being funded with I-728 dollars and our extended learning opportunities. Most of our ELO programs are funded through I-728. So this has been a substantial influx of funds, at least on the surface, and we’ve used them to augment and create new programs in this district. The highly capable or more commonly called gifted education – we get about $140,000 for that and that basically pays for the coordination of the program and the testing materials. We have, as Superintendent Murphy refers to, flexible funds, some creative accounting at the state level. One of the cuts that we took in this school year in 02/03 came in the flexible funds arena where in the past we used to have 10, 11, or 12 different funding sources from the state for things like school security, teacher assistance program for mentors for new teachers, administrative intern support, and a whole variety of things. Those were all bundled together into one pot called flexible funds and then the total funding was reduced. And then we have some nominal support from the state for the nutrition services program. In addition to all of these which total $12 million, or roughly 11% of the total state funding, remember the automatic COLAs that were granted as part of I-732 are also at risk. They are not protected by the Basic Ed Act of 1977, and they’re not listed here with a specific dollar amount because we have salary compliance in the state of Washington. So if the automatic COLA is overturned, if I-732 is overturned, it saves the state money and obviously then there are no salary increases for our employees, but it doesn’t directly impact the revenue model, so to speak. In other words, it’s money that comes in that has to go right back out as salary increases. The piece that you don’t see in here and that we have talked about and will continue to talk about is the local impact of COLA costs. If you’ll remember our levy increases have been entirely consumed by the automatic COLA in the last couple of sessions. So while you don’t see state funding listed specifically here, increases in COLAs or decreases in COLAs do have a tail in our local levy piece. So, for those of you who have packets out in the audience, I see you’re on the pink sheets and thank you very much for following along. If you drop down to the third scenario on the pink sheet what you can see that we’re actually planning for – this is the likely reduction scenario. And this is the logic behind why we’re looking at an $8 million shortfall. This year, in 02/03, the state had a billion dollar shortfall. They fixed that in two ways – they fixed half of it, half a billion dollars, with one-time money. The state sold some tobacco settlement money, it became a marketable security, and they used their rainy day funds, or their fund balance. The balance of that one billion dollar shortfall they took as cuts. So we had a half a billion dollars worth of cuts throughout the state’s operating budget. Here in Federal Way that translated to a million and a half dollars in state reduction and that was compounded by the million dollars of local costs for local COLAs. So you’ll hear us talk about a $2.5 million cost, and that is indeed what it was, but in pure state revenue funding we lost a million and a half dollars. Remember what we had to do in order to balance that million and half dollars this year? We had to reduce school operating budgets by 15%, we laid off department staff, and we attached some ongoing maintenance costs to one-time money. So we made some ongoing maintenance costs contingent upon beginning fund balance. So I’m sitting here with a million and a half dollar problem in 02/03. If you think back to that Frank and Ernest cartoon those guys were running around without their pants on this year, and probably not really legal, but that’s about where we’re at. Now, in 2003/2004, for the biennium here, we’ve got a $2 billion state shortfall. For all intents and purposes the state’s used all its one-time money. Yes, they will have some creative financing things that occur again this year, but for all intents and purposes they’ve used their one-time money. That means they have to make $2 billion worth of actual reductions in 2003/2004, or in the biennium, and that’s four times what we had to see this year. So you take a million and a half dollars and multiply it by four and we’re losing $6 million in state funding. I think that’s a reasonable place for us to plan in terms of what we’re going to see during this legislative session. What else is happening that we know is coming down the pike? Well, we talked about the enrollment decline. The enrollment decline will actually result in a $2 million loss but the net impact is to go look for that other million dollars that we’re spending in the system. We have the third year of the high school savings plan; again, anytime you open a facility you have new core costs with that facility; you have a principal, you have an office manager, you have custodians, you have bus routes, you have utility costs. So there are costs with opening a new building. We’ve known this, we’ve been planning for it, we’ve been saving for it; we need the third year in order to offset all of the operating costs of the new high school. And then just for rounding purposes sakes, here’s another half a million dollars worth of unidentified inflationary pressures. We have four labor contracts open this year; the FWEA contract, our teacher’s contract is open; our educational support personnel contract, our secretarial contract is open, and then I believe both Headstart and ECAP are open, which are smaller pieces. So we’re going into a year of negotiations also in a year where we’re looking at some substantial state reductions. So we are planning for an $8 million reduction. Those of you who have worked with me for a little while know that what I like to do is bring what I hope is the worst case to you - $8 million – and then as more information becomes known, be able to come back and say okay, now we have this piece of information so the picture’s not quite as deep as I thought it was going to be. That’s what I’m hoping for; that’s what I’m banking on. So what happens in any school district when you’re looking at an $8 million reduction? School districts and the people who work in school districts – we all have hearts. What do we want to do? We want to look at funding fewer things to balance our budget. We want to look at cutting administration because obviously we want to preserve instructional programs. That’s what we’re about is instructional program. And then if we can’t figure out how to balance the budget by cutting things or by cutting administration we want to do the same thing that the legislature’s going to be tempted to do this year and that’s to take across the board cuts, because it’s very hard to make decisions about what programs to eliminate. And I’m here to tell you that unfortunately those strategies aren’t going to work for us if we’re looking at an $8 million reduction. Remember this year, 02/03, with a $1.5 million reduction – we cut things, we cut school operating budgets by 15%, we cut people – we had to layoff people, so we got out of the ‘thing’ category and had to lay off department staff. And we also did some allocation of one-time money. So we’ve got a tough road in front of us, but it’s manageable. And a couple ways you can look at how we’re spending our money to help you understand the people and things and administration and instruction – the green sheets, you should have two green sheets, one says object, one says by activity. We are, as you can see, $126 million of our roughly $150 million is people. We are roughly 85% people, more than 51% of our total budget is spent in certificated salaries. And the balance of that budget, that 15%, is things. Now, 15% is still $22 million, almost $23 million, so surely we could find $8 million out of $23 million. It would only be a 25% reduction – we ought to be able to do that. But the problem is when you start, if I can use Dr. Jewell’s analogies, when you start unpacking that expenditure data in things, what you’ll find is about $4.5 million worth of those things on non-employee related costs are allocated to grants. So those grants have specific strings attached to them, for example, with USDA commodities – it’s not a grant, it’s a categorical fund. Commodities is considered a ‘thing’, so we spend money on commodities and/or food to feed our students breakfast and lunch. So you back out the $4.5 million because it belongs to grants and if you don’t spend it you don’t get to spend it somewhere else. Then there’s about $11 million that is considered mandatory, and the Board will remember last year when we walked through that, we walked through the scenario about why is $3.5 million difficult to cut? And you can remember in that $11 million we have a $3.5 million utility bill; we have a million dollar property and liability insurance bill, we have a $750,000 software agreement bill, we have diesel fuel, we have a $300,000 toilet paper bill. So when you start backing out all of the things that are needed to run the school district that adds up to about $11 million; then we have school operating budgets that are now reduced 15% but they still total about $5.5 million of our total operations, and the balance left over is not very much money. So, it’s just travel, which is basically itinerant mileage and capital outlay. So, while I don’t want you to think that we won’t find some other places we can make reductions in things, I’m here to say we can’t get $8 million worth of reductions out of things. We will be impacting people this year, just like we will be impacting people in 2003/2004, just like we did in 2002/2003, to balance a million and a half dollar reduction. What’s the other way we want to tackle this stuff? Okay, well we want to look at administration. The piece you need to remember with Federal Way, in accordance with our strategic plan, we spend almost 75% of our budget on teaching and teaching support. That’s the largest percentage of our budget of any district serving 20,000 students or more; and I think we’re probably first or second serving 10,000 students or more. So what does that math tell you? If we are spending the most in teaching and teaching support then we are spending the least in administration, and that is true. Activities and teaching support – the 75% that includes the classroom teacher, it includes paraeducators in the classroom, it includes all direct classroom supplies; it also includes our athletics and activities. Teaching support includes positions that don’t directly have classrooms, but interface with students on a daily basis. Counselors, librarians, nurses, speech/language pathologists, and people of that sort who help with our students’ education but aren’t directly in the classroom. So that’s teaching and teaching support. We have about 15% of our total budget spent on ‘other support’. Other support is grounds, maintenance and custodial services; it’s transportation services, nutrition services, and our ITS department. So there are a lot of support services in this category that interface with the buildings on a daily basis but again aren’t considered in that first or second line with students. What does that leave us? That leaves us less than 10% in what people might think of as pure administration. We have school administration, and central administration. School administration is the principal, the people you see in the front office. Those are typically all folks that are coded to school administration. Central administration includes people like myself and the Superintendent, and people who you generally think of as working at ESC. The couple of examples I try to give to folks is that if we were to make the decision to not have a single principal in any building, and/or any front office staff, which is really a ludicrous decision to make, but I share that as an example, we would have no one to take attendance, no one to report enrollment which would be a problem from a total state revenue perspective. But even if we cut all of those positions it would not quite total $8 million. The same is true if we were to say we’re going to cut all central administration. Same ludicrous kind of decision cause you wouldn’t have anyone here to pay the bills, and/or write paychecks to people, and I think people still want that to happen. Even if we cut all central administration it still wouldn’t total $8 million. So, again, I don’t want you to think that we won’t find places to make reductions in central administration, school administration, and other support, but we will if we need to find $8 million worth of reductions be looking for program elimination and/or reduction. And that’s a tough one. So here’s the stack of pancakes, or as Director Hoff likes to call them, the stack of crepes. We can’t make an $8 million reduction by taking across the board cuts. One, 85% of your expenditures are with people and so they’d all have to agree to take an 8% salary reduction and I think that would be a tough sell. But, two, at some point in time as you keep slicing away at programs and we keep trying to deliver 100% of the expectation, with fewer and fewer resources, at some point in time this stack of pancakes topples over. So, this is the year where we need to decide if we’re not going to offer this middle pancake or the top pancake or the bottom pancake, or crepes as the analogy might go. So how are we going to do that? How are we going to make those decisions? Well, we have put in place a process and this is the beginning of the process where two things are happening – I’m out meeting with a variety of groups, staff groups and community groups, sharing this message. To date I have done over 30 presentations in the last six weeks. During the presentation there is a purple input form in the packet that the audience has and they are given an opportunity to provide input about not just brainstormed ideas but to give input about where they think the school district might make program reductions, cause obviously everyone interfaces with the school district from a different perspective and a different aspect, so they have a different view of what we’re providing here in Federal Way than I do. And we have over 450 comments that have come in at this point in time. Those 450 comments are being synthesized for what I call the Ad Hoc Committee. I was having a hard time calling them the three-legged stool committee. But, what I have done is actively recruited – I have my standing Fiscal Advisory Committee which is a committee of about 18 folks, about half parents and community members and about half staff, and I’ve reached out through the community advisory council and through the district wide PTSA, through the music booster clubs, and a variety of avenues to gather other parents into this process. In addition we will bring to the table every president or representative of every union group we have in the district and then I will supplement that with principals and a portion of the management team. At the moment I have about 50 people who have indicated an interest in serving on this ad hoc committee and it will be the ad hoc committee’s responsibility in a very short time frame – I expect them to be done with their work by the end of January – to take the input that we’ve gathered to date and to filter it through the district’s strategic plan. And if you’ll remember you’ve heard comments earlier this evening, that strategic plan has documents that were specifically prepared to support the strategic plan, the middle school transition plan, the high school design, and the closing the gap document. All of those will be used as filters in going through the however many comments we end up with and can deal with through the ad hoc committee. And so that group will prepare a recommendation. I’m assuming we’re going to lump things together into categories of sort of top priority for reduction, middle priority for reduction, and low priority for reduction, rather than try to rank them from 1 to 450. And the ad hoc committee will be responsible for submitting that information to the superintendent and the board. It will become the Superintendent’s basis for developing a preliminary recommendation early in the process for the Board and the public for consideration. As I mentioned earlier I’ll be doing regular updates at every Board meeting. If you think about the budget planning timelines, the pieces of information that will become known to us on December 19th – the Governor will release his budget, the Governor’s budget will be the high water mark for education. So we will know that if everything meets best case we will have the funding that the Governor has included in his budget. The legislature will convene on January 14th – both the House and the Senate. The House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Ways and Means Committee create their own budgets. Typically they have released those in early March. The last couple of sessions they’ve struggled with those deadlines and we’ve not seen them until late March, but once we see the House and Senate budgets that will be additional pieces of information that we’ll be bringing back to you that say now we know what the Governor’s budget looks like, here’s the recommendations from the ad hoc committee, this is what the House budget looks like, this is what the Senate budget looks like. Here’s a preliminary recommendation for the 2003/2004 budget. And then undoubtedly as the legislative session continues beyond its normal session, I’m betting on June 30th as an adjournment date, we will bring back yet a second recommendation I’m sure for your final consideration for the public hearings in July and the final adoption in August. So, I know this forecast is what I call doom and gloom, but I don’t think that we would be good stewards of our money, our information, and our students if we waited until April to try to bring this message out to our community, to our parents and our staff, and our greater community. I think people need to understand now what the impacts of the state shortfall could potentially be on public education here in Federal Way. Do you have any specific questions? You can e-mail questions, comments, and suggestions to budget@fwsd.wednet.edu .
Director Barney: And once you gather all of these comments, suggestions, (tape change)…so that we can see each one of these individual ideas that we can look at as well.
Sally McLean: I will e-mail that out to you tomorrow because all of the comments that were received through last Friday have been inventoried and categorized.
Director Millen: Any other questions? I have a few. The ad hoc committee – will they be looking for $8 million in savings? Is that their goal?
Sally McLean: That’s their goal.
Director Millen: But you also mentioned that you’d be hoping for $8 million. So will they have various levels of savings they’ll be looking at for as much as $19 million?
Sally McLean: No. We will be using the $8 million target as our reasonable target, although on the pink sheet or in the slides I took you through I went through a variety of scenarios, but based on my professional knowledge and then the legal protection that we have as a school district I think $8 million is a reasonable reduction to work with at this point in time.
Director Millen: But it’s still a guess though isn’t it?
Sally McLean: Yes, absolutely, it’s still a guess. It’s only as good as my crystal ball.
Director Millen: I think we’re done. Thank you very much.
This regular meeting of the Federal Way Public School Board of Education is adjourned. Thank you.
Meeting adjourned at 8:48 p.m.
President VanDorien, Board President
Tom Murphy, Superintendent
Minutes prepared by Chris Popich
Minutes transcribed by Cathie Harris