E7 - Rainy Day Rundown: Math Soars, Reading Continues Decline

January 13, 2025 

See our Show Notes.

[00:00:02] Christie Robertson: Welcome to the Rainy Day Recess podcast, where we study and discuss Seattle Public Schools. 

[00:00:09] Jasmine Pulido: Happy New Year. 

[00:00:10] Christie Robertson: Here we are with the first rainy day rundown of 2025. And we are just getting back in the swing of things and noticing that legislative session starts on Monday. And looking forward to many budget discussions and lots going on around public schools.

 We haven't had a rundown since before the last board meeting on December 18th, which was the last week of school. So we are going to talk about that today. We'll talk about some listener feedback about our HCC episode, and community news focused on a Filipino student town hall. 

December 18 School Board Meeting

[00:00:51] Jasmine Pulido: So the board meeting was December 18th, and a couple of interesting things happened, like...

[00:00:57] Christie Robertson: People have probably heard already that Gina Topp is the new school board president. 

[00:01:03] Jasmine Pulido: Mm hmm. Congratulations 

[00:01:05] Christie Robertson: Congratulations, Gina. 

[00:01:07] Jasmine Pulido: And took over the rest of the meeting after the election. 

[00:01:09] Christie Robertson: That's right. It just happens right away.

[00:01:11] Jasmine Pulido: Mm hmm.

[00:01:12] Christie Robertson: The vice president is Evan Briggs.

[00:01:16] Jasmine Pulido: Congratulations.

[00:01:17] Christie Robertson: Congratulations, Evan. And the member at large is Joe Mizrahi.

[00:01:20] Jasmine Pulido: Just as a precursor, Liza Rankin was president and that switched over to Gina Topp. vice president was Michelle Sarju, and that transferred over to Evan Briggs, and then member at large before was Evan Briggs, and now is Joe Mizrahi, correct?

[00:01:37] Christie Robertson: That's right. 

[00:01:37] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. Great.

[00:01:38] Christie Robertson: There have been some contentious elections in the past but this time they all seemed to be on the same page. There was only one nominee for each post and all the votes were unanimous. 

 President Rankin and Vice President Sarju expressed a great deal of excitement about leaving their posts.

[00:01:59] Jasmine Pulido: It's a hard post. I can understand that! 

[00:02:01] Christie Robertson: It's extremely hard. And here's a little bit of what President Rankin said.

[00:02:07] Liza Rankin: I was going to say it's been a... People sometimes say it's been an honor and a pleasure to do something. It's been an honor to be president. And it's... it's been a year. It's been a time. It's uh, yeah, a growth opportunity that I am excited to support someone else in participating in.

[00:02:24] Christie Robertson: And here's Michelle Sarju after superintendent Jones uses her vice president title. 

[00:02:31] Brent Jones: Vice-president Sarju. 

[00:02:32] Michelle Sarju: That's the last time you'll call me that. Amen, Hallelujah. 

[00:02:34] Christie Robertson: And then Gina Topp gave a short acceptance speech. 

[00:02:37] Gina Topp: I think this past year, we've all alluded to, it has brought challenges, particularly, with the school closures process. And, I think we did some damage in our community. And we have some work to do to regain some of the trust, as Dr. Jones says.

I think the school closure process also highlighted how impactful our schools are in the community, what a valued asset they are for so many, and how important they are, the resources they provide to our families in Seattle. Education is what provides access to opportunity. And we have the burden and the responsibility to make sure that all students have access, particularly those who have been left out of the system previously and have not had that same access. 

So the year ends. One thing I don't think we do as a board enough is just thank the educators in the classrooms who are doing this work every single day. It is a job that I think is probably the hardest job there is. So thank you to all those who are listening, who are doing this work out there. 

I look forward to working with my new vice president, member at large, but really the entire board on this upcoming year and all that we need to do. But also, as we talk about engagement, the rest of our city. We live in a place with so much innovation and knowledge and experience. So let's harness that as we try to make Seattle public schools great. Again. I know. That was a joke. Sorry!!. 

[00:04:17] Christie Robertson: I think she's a bridge-builder. So I think that will be good for the board.

[00:04:21] Jasmine Pulido: I agree. From what I've seen Gina Topp do, only in the last year I have found there to be action supporting bridge building between the board members. And between the community and the board members. So I'm excited to see what Topp's interpretation of the president is.

I know that Hersey again reiterated that the president does not hold that much power. 

[00:04:46] Brandon Hersey: Surprisingly the board president and vice-president don't really have that much power aside from setting agenda, having served in both of those roles for a number of years.

[00:04:55] Jasmine Pulido: So I wonder how the president's role will be reinterpreted with a new person in the position. I wonder also is there a lot of room for interpretation based on what their comments are about the president's role? That's a good question.I guess I've seen a few presidents. I saw Chandra Hampson be president and Brandon Hersey, and 

[00:05:17] Christie Robertson: I think there's been a lot of change, but I don't know if that's because of particular personalities or because of governance changes.

[00:05:25] Jasmine Pulido: Mm hmm. I'll say that I actually listened to the acceptance speeches from the last election and then this one. And one thing that is just like minor but humorous is that every time someone accepts the member at large, people are like, "okay, I don't know what it is," which I think is funny. 

And as I mentioned in our last episode, I am working on a school board episode so I can break down a little bit about what each of these roles does in detail at a later date.

[00:05:56] Christie Robertson: I will mention that the West Seattle Blog broke the news that Gina Topp is applying for an open position in Legislative District 34. There's a bunch of shuffling happening in the legislature. And there's a bunch of people interested. But Gina Topp put her name in the hat which immediately made me worried that our new president wasn't going to be president for very long. But she informed me that if she gets that position, she would do both. Which is wild and also good. we could really use more education knowledge in the legislature. That's very clear.

[00:06:33] Jasmine Pulido: That's quite a commitment to public service. And I commend considering doing both at once. And does Gina Topp have kids?

[00:06:42] Christie Robertson: Yeah, she has like a young kid that's not in school yet.

[00:06:45] Jasmine Pulido: Oh, wow. Even more kudos to that. I guess we'll update that as we find out. To my understanding, it's unlikely that Gina Topp would assume this position though. Is that right? 

[00:06:56] Christie Robertson: I think it's unlikely. Yeah, there's a lot of people in the ring. Just by the numbers, I don't know anything about the internal politics of it.

[00:07:02] Jasmine Pulido: Okay we'll see what happens.

Moss Adams Performance Audit

[00:07:05] Christie Robertson: Okay, another thing at the school board meeting was the presentation of the Moss Adams Governance Assessment. Those who have been following the school board may remember that Moss Adams originally suggested to the school board that they implement policy governance. later tied into their adoption of Student Outcomes Focused Governance.

[00:07:27] Jasmine Pulido: Can I ask what Moss Adams is?

[00:07:31] Christie Robertson: They're like a consulting firm. 

[00:07:33] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, okay, go ahead. 

[00:07:35] Christie Robertson: Okay. So this assessment was, they brought back Moss Adams to help them analyze how they're doing with Student Outcomes Focused Governance. I always am pleased when people are willing to take constructive criticism. And I think that they did that very well. The board did not seem defensive.

[00:07:53] Jasmine Pulido: let's talk about the suggestions. What were the suggestions?

[00:07:55] Christie Robertson: That much of the organization still is not aware of Student Outcomes Focused Governance and its practical implications. So that they should make sure that they implement a communication training and onboarding plan.

[00:08:08] Jasmine Pulido: So when we say organization, do we mean the district?

[00:08:12] Christie Robertson: District. Yep.

[00:08:13] Jasmine Pulido: Like the staff and the people under the superintendent. Okay.

[00:08:16] Christie Robertson: Student Outcomes Focused Governance is supposed to bleed down into everything. So people should be. aware of it. 

And Moss Adams highlighted that they have not effectively implemented community engagement and responsive support for constituents. So I was really glad they called that out. 

And they called for accountability and compliance. And that those are not really fleshed out, and that makes it really hard for them to know how they're doing. 

[00:08:46] Jasmine Pulido: Is there any like idea of because they had this recommendation in 2018 now, we're in 2025. Is there any timeline as far as like how long we would try this policy governance framework before we decide whether or not we want to try something else?

[00:09:03] Christie Robertson: That is not my impression.

[00:09:06] Jasmine Pulido: It's just, “we're going to just keep doing this.” 

[00:09:13] Christie Robertson: there's no acceptance criteria. Yeah,I've been thinking lately about the stark contrast between how data driven they're trying to be when they look at student outcomes. But yet there's no data to prove that Student Outcomes Focused Governance works. 

I was excited to see that in this report they actually benchmarked Seattle Public Schools against 10 peer institutions that had adopted some form of Student Outcomes Focused Governance. And I was like, “oh wow, they're going to get at what really works!” But all that table did was it just talked about what the practices were at each of the peer institutions, not what works and what doesn't work. 

[00:09:50] Jasmine Pulido: So that means, we do at least have a list of other schools that are also doing it simultaneously that we can research?  

[00:09:56] Christie Robertson: That's also what I thought at first, but I think that not all of those peers were strictly doing Student Outcomes Focused Governance. In the meeting, they said something like, “or another form of policy governance,” which is very broad.

[00:10:08] Jasmine Pulido: I see. What else happened at the meeting?

Progress Monitoring

[00:10:12] Jasmine Pulido: So there was a progress monitoring presentation for third grade reading and seventh grade math. And are these based off of the old outcomes that we were following? They're not going to be part of the new ones? 

[00:10:22] Christie Robertson: Right.

[00:10:22] Jasmine Pulido: Okay. So can we start with third grade reading? 

Progress Monitoring: Math

[00:10:26] Christie Robertson: Let's do seventh grade math, because it's really fast. Because it improved! So they didn't talk about it a lot.

[00:10:31] Jasmine Pulido: Ok, yeah, so let's talk about it. 

[00:10:32] Christie Robertson: There's some beautiful graphs that are going up in the rightward direction, which is extremely rare to see. 

[00:10:39] Jasmine Pulido: Wonderful. And these are just at like test schools. Is that right? 

[00:10:43] Christie Robertson: It was at all schools 

[00:10:44] Jasmine Pulido: Oh, it was at all schools? Great. 

[00:10:46] Christie Robertson: It was more at test schools, which is good because then you can hopefully take some of those things they're doing there. At the targeted schools, for African American males, the students projected to meet the math standards in 7th grade went from 9% to 27.5%.

[00:11:05] Jasmine Pulido: Wow! 

[00:11:06] Christie Robertson: In two years. 

[00:11:06] Jasmine Pulido: In two years?

[00:11:08] Christie Robertson: In two years, at the targeted schools.

[00:11:10] Jasmine Pulido: Oh my gosh! That's amazing! 

[00:11:12] Christie Robertson: And at all schools, it went from 19% to 33%.

[00:11:16] Jasmine Pulido: Wow, okay. That's amazing.

[00:11:18] Christie Robertson: That's the kind of change you can actually see, right? Their new goals are like 2% or something, right? I really don't think you would notice that. 

Progress Monitoring: Reading

[00:11:25] Christie Robertson: Reading, on the other hand, has gone down district wide for African American males from 45.3% to 34.6%. So more than a 10% drop.

[00:11:36] Jasmine Pulido: Yikes. 

[00:11:37] Christie Robertson: And at the targeted schools, a 6% drop. In two years. So you might think, or I might think, that what they're doing isn't working. But that's not the conclusion they drew.

[00:11:50] Jasmine Pulido: What did they say?

[00:11:52] Christie Robertson: Their conclusion was, we need to do summer school.

[00:12:00] Jasmine Pulido: How are they attributing that drop to learning loss over the summer? Is there any data for that?

[00:12:07] Christie Robertson: They just said we saw some loss over the summer, and so maybe we need to do summer school. Which completely misses the point of: “what actions are you taking, and are they effective?”

[00:12:20] Jasmine Pulido: Mm hmm.

[00:12:21] Christie Robertson: All I can see from that is that they're saying, “how do we make up for our losses in some way?” But it's not at all targeting. “What are you doing wrong?” Because you're doing something wrong. I'm very disappointed in the leadership in ELA. Because I feel like they have not shown a capability of being self reflective in that way, of “we're not doing something that's working. And what do we need to change? Because this is not acceptable.” They're always coming up with excuses or missing the point. That's such a miss to me to say “we need to do summer school.” 

[00:12:53] Jasmine Pulido: Did the school board have any comments in regards to that suggestion?

[00:12:57] Christie Robertson: One thing I have to say is, we've talked about how Evan Briggs has been running these progress monitoring sessions, and she has started not letting the district administrators respond and only wanting Superintendent Jones to respond. And I and others have questioned that you want to hear from the experts. But I actually felt like in this session, it was helpful because when the administrators give these long presentations, you get a little glassy eyed and a little there's just so much eduspeak and terminology and details that in some ways you lose that bigger picture. 

So what they ended up doing, maybe as a result of this, is they did what A. J. Crabill of Great City Schools, their coach, is always telling them to do, which is to focus mostly on the past. Don't focus on what's coming and what's the future, like summer school. Focus on the past. “What did you do? And how can you tie it to these scores?” And that's what they did. They really, their questions were really pretty good.

And the gist of the questions, which is the gist of my question, is “How do you not know why the reading scores are declining??”

[00:14:11] Jasmine Pulido: This has always been something we've talked about too.

[00:14:13] Christie Robertson: Yes. Cashel Toner of ELA lists out all the different things they're doing: Universal Design for Learning, Multi-tiered Systems of Support, different reading curricula, and coaching. So they're like, “Which of these isn't working? Or which of these might work if we emphasized it more?” And she's just like, “I don't know.” 

So Director Clark asked basically, "So, can you break down the schools to which ones are getting UDL? And which ones aren't? And then how did the scores compare?” Or same thing with MTSS.

[00:14:48] Sarah Clark: Is it possible for us to map school by school which students are receiving access to these supports and which ones aren't, or is that too granular? Thanks. 

[00:15:01] Christie Robertson: Very obvious question it seems to me. But here's what Superintendent Jones said.

[00:15:06] Brent Jones: It's not too granular, and that's what we're doing internally. We have it broken down just as you've talked about it. I don't know if it's just a limitation of the six pages that we have, but I think we can figure out an elegant way to enter that into here if that's of interest to the board for sure.

[00:15:23] Sarah Clark: I feel like that would be important information for us to have as we go into strategic planning and budget conversations. Thank you. 

[00:15:30] Christie Robertson: And Director Rankin asked a similar question. And again, his answer didn't make any sense.

[00:15:36] Liza Rankin: So what I'm hearing is that you all have identified that strong instructional leadership in the principal is one of the best... Lowell and Gatewood have been some of the strongest aligned to the UDL and MTSS implementation. The students that attend those schools, the African American males and students of color, represent a departure from the decline overall? ... Was there less of a decline at those schools? At Gatewood and Lowell? 

[00:16:12] Brent Jones: I don't know those specifically. We may have those data, but demographically we don't... I don't have that right now. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:25] Liza Rankin: Because what I'm hearing is a vague statement that leadership is really important for the success of students. So if that's the case, I would expect strong instructional leadership on the part of the principal to be a pretty powerful strategy that we should be investing in. 

[00:16:44] Brent Jones: We do believe strong instructional leadership is one of the keys, and we've said that throughout. And regardless if you're at the UDL early adopter schools or some of the schools that we're seeing really good outcomes, you're seeing strong instructional leadership. And that's really around the consistency of the practices. That's really focusing on data. That's really providing the type of timely, relevant, professional development that's necessary. And I think you'll see that common to any of these schools that are we're seeing positive growth. It's... I don't know if that's the answer... 

[00:17:17] Liza Rankin: No, I'm I guess I'm wondering: if you've identified that is meaningful in terms of the outcomes, would we not expect to see that investing in principal support and implementation of these best practices is a strategy that is worth pursuing and investing in instead of leaving it up to what people feel like?

[00:17:30] Christie Robertson:  and then Student Director Colin Bragg asked, Have you considered talking to the people at your schools and asking them what works?

[00:17:50] Colin Bragg: During your diagnostic period here that we're going into, how much time are you going to spend on those less numbery, like, more talking to people things? Talking to your students, talking to your teachers, talking to your parents? Because a lot of the questions that are being posed of “we don't know”, I feel like can be answered partially when you just ask someone. And it will look different from school to school. I understand that. But what will that look like? Is that going to happen? 

[00:18:16] Jasmine Pulido: That's such a great question. I love that we have student reps.

[00:18:21] Christie Robertson: I know,

[00:18:22] Jasmine Pulido: And what did they say? 

[00:18:23] Christie Robertson: "yeah, we should do that." Here's superintendent Jones.

[00:18:29] Brent Jones: But I also was remiss in not affirming that anytime that we can get to talk to those who are closest to the work to understand what some of their challenges and barriers are and opportunities is always a good thing. So if we have those opportunities, we should take them early and often. If we can be more strategic and intentional about it by using some third party to come in and help us to do some analysis, that's great too. But I don't want to run by the fact that talking to those who are closest to the work is powerful in terms of us understanding it. 

[00:19:06] Christie Robertson: So all told, I don't think they're doing any of the obvious things that they should be doing. Very disappointing. And meanwhile, kids aren't learning to read and are learning to read less and less. Which should be a crisis.

[00:19:19] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, I would love if we did an episode just on reading curriculum and stuff because I did start listening to Sold a Story, the one that you recommended to me. Super fascinating. There's lots of really interesting conversation happening in the community around reading curriculum as well. So certainly I think getting some community input on what is working and what, especially from like our educators, they're so passionate. There are so many people I know that are educators that are really invested in figuring out what works in their classrooms. I'm hoping that they're able to get more input on what works. Or for us to do even a spotlight, sort of breakdown of reading for our district.

[00:20:03] Christie Robertson: Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if we could cobble together those data in some way or if one of our listeners wants to try to figure out what are different schools implementing and what are the scores that correlate to those. 

But to me, the big benefit of student academic focused governance should be being able to analyze those kinds of questions.

Testimony

[00:20:24] Christie Robertson: A couple more important things that happened at the board meeting. 

First was the Education Program Resolution. And this is kind of a really sneaky name for “what are they going to cut to balance the budget?” 

The board is requesting that the superintendent create a task force that contains community that will participate in looking at the longer term budget plan. 

The second thing is that the board is asking that the district make sure that there's one proposal that deals with the scenario in which the district receives no additional funding from the legislature. Which is kind of a nightmare scenario, but given that the state is in a $12 to 14 billion dollar deficit is something that could be a possibility. 

And the board also asks that, when the district considers that scenario, they should contemplate the potential impacts of any cuts that the district makes to enrollment. That's definitely new. 

And then the last thing that's new in this Education Program Resolution is that there are no longer any specific tactics outlined as something that the board would potentially entertain from the district. It had been outlined that they might consider transportation changes, pausing programs, salary cuts, staff cuts, central office cuts, fees. And all of those individual specific tactics were removed. 

So Jas, what do you think about those changes to the Education Program Resolution? Does anything strike you from that? 

[00:22:00] Jasmine Pulido: Well, I think the first thing that strikes me is I'm glad that there is a responsiveness to what the community asked for, which was a multi-year plan regarding the budget, especially given that it's a structural deficit, so that families can have a idea of what changes will be made and be able to make their own decisions accordingly.  

Regarding the worst case scenario proposal, I hope that they don't have to exercise that plan, but I'm happy to hear that they are trying to consider that in advance, instead of being reactive, depending on what happens. 

And lastly, I find it really interesting that they took out specific tactics. And I'm thinking about that two ways: either it makes it more open-ended. And then the other is, by striking out specific tactics, they aren't going to use specific tactics. So I guess I will be listening to which direction that goes.

[00:23:13] Christie Robertson: Yeah. You know, my thoughts are that they took out the specific tactics because they don't want to deal with the kind of testimony that they got at this meeting, focused on the possibility that all schools might be cut back to half-time librarians. They don't want people to start thinking about what the specific cuts are until they actually have to deal with what the specific cuts are. Which makes me a little bit nervous because it means there won't be much time to react when those real actual cuts come forward.

[00:23:41] Jasmine Pulido: I often find it really interesting when there's a coordinated effort for a particular message at a public testimony. For this one, I feel the arguments made for what librarians contribute to our schools are really pertinent points. The thing I kept thinking about was, “what will we be okay with cutting?” Or is it just going to always be pushed back on anything cut? In an overall picture, I think, no matter what, it's going to be hard.

[00:24:18] Christie Robertson: It should be in the next couple of months that we start seeing more details on what is actually proposed by the district to balance our budget. Which is going to be an extremely difficult task. 

[00:24:29] Jasmine Pulido: Should we talk about the legislature?

Legislature

[00:24:33] Christie Robertson: Legislative session is starting.

[00:24:37] Jasmine Pulido: On January 13th, very soon. 

[00:24:40] Christie Robertson: Actually today, the day we're releasing this.

Most of the advocacy orgs are focusing on advocating for three...

[00:24:50] Jasmine Pulido: Three legislative priorities for funding schools. 

[00:24:54] Christie Robertson: Yes. And we just released the interview with Oliver Miska where he talks about the Big Five, which adds in progressive revenue and equity in taxation and distribution.

[00:25:07] Jasmine Pulido: And that also includes Dr. David Knight and Kendall Fujioka from UW. If you haven't listened to it yet, I would highly suggest going back and listening to it in preparation for the legislative session.

[00:25:19] Christie Robertson: Absolutely. 

Listener Feedback

[00:25:19] Jasmine Pulido: And then listener feedback. 

One of the emails that we'd like to highlight today is from a teacher from an elementary school in the Seattle Public School District in response to our episode regarding highly capable program and advanced learning. Here's what the listener said. "The whiplash between promoting and disparaging highly capable learners goes way back. But in 2020, even when we put into IEPs that advanced math would be important for some twice exceptional kids, SPS would not budge in placement.

Now I have to be "underground" about intentionally stretching kids into higher math. It's very weird given that the district is claiming we're all offering something for advanced learners because our area director tries to catch us not using district curriculum on the right day according to the pacing guide. So last year my class took to calling him, "the inspector", and were happy to play along when they saw he was in the building. 

I just finished the form every teacher has to fill out for their entire class, re: advanced learning. It has zero real content asked of us, no evidence, utterly subjective."

And then a little bit later says, 

"I have to admit, the first time I did one of these, about three years ago, I was really excited. I thought, oh, they are going beyond test scores. They will pay attention to what I think. But then I realized that they did not actually consider a single thing I wrote. And I took a really long time being thoughtful about adding data. This time I was last minute and did not add much at all. But then there's also not a pathway for my fifth graders to be accelerated in middle school. So it feels pointless." 

Yeah, and just to point out that this is edited for length and clarity but that's parts of the email. 

[00:27:07] Christie Robertson: Yeah, then the teacher also included the spreadsheet that they have to fill out and We'll link that in the show notes so people can see what it is the teachers are getting. 

[00:27:15] Jasmine Pulido: What do you think about this? 

[00:27:16] Christie Robertson: I think it's always great to hear what's happening on the actual ground because so much of what you hear in board meetings is like three levels up from the teachers and I sometimes think they don't even know what it looks like on the ground.

So it's just really stark contradiction between everything they're saying about UDL and differentiated learning that they're trying to be caught.

[00:27:41] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah that's so wild. It's wild that being able to give advanced curriculum is an underground endeavor. Wow.

[00:27:49] Christie Robertson: Especially when that's what they are saying they're specifically doing, is having teachers give advanced content. I don't even know what to think about that. We'd love to hear from more teachers if your experience is different or if you have more to add.

[00:28:01] Jasmine Pulido: Yes, and we're always happy to keep you anonymous, so no worries.

[00:28:05] Christie Robertson: Yes. 

And Jas, did you have other thoughts that you wanted to share about the HCC episode with Jie Lei? 

[00:28:12] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah first, like you said, understanding on the ground how we have been dealing with this problem of advanced learning, and how to do it in a way that's equitable and accessible. We've been working on this for decades, and have had all sorts of different modifications, and even some ingenuity.

And also how it relates to racial equity, because that's also something that we've been tackling for a long time as a city. So seeing our cultural shifts through someone who's been through it and who has kids that are in it. 

[00:29:10] Christie Robertson: Hearing the details of her family's history with that program and the difficulties with the transition really emphasizes how easy answers to complex problems are just often the wrong way to go about things. This is what it looks like when they decide to get rid of something. just not effective.

And one of the things that Jie pointed us to was the task force. They had a big task force that worked really hard and put out a report on how they could move HCC from the cohort model to the neighborhood schools. And the district shelved it. And used none of it. And just decided to axe the program and say that the neighborhood schools are doing it.

[00:29:32] Jasmine Pulido: One thing I read recently on one of the education forums is that there are so many task forces that go through a really intensive process to figure out recommendations, and how often the recommendations don't go anywhere. 

Now we're in an era where there aren't really any task forces at all. And so even if we do bring them back, I wonder about this gap between recommendations and actual implementation. Like, where do these recommendations go? And are the SOFG recommendations from Moss Adams, are they gonna go to that same place? Which is, I don't know what place it is, like a subliminal file cabinet or something that it goes into, for someone later to pick up and realize was there all along instead of redoing all the work? I don't know. 

[00:30:21] Christie Robertson: Yeah. And in some ways I wonder if the task forces are set up for failure because they're not tied to a budget. They're not really struggling with how the implementation could Actually work in practice. 

[00:30:33] Jasmine Pulido: Do we have like consultants that help with that sort of gap between?

[00:30:38] Christie Robertson: What my mind goes to is the audit committee. Because that's who is in charge of checking in on things. So if you really wanted to make sure a task force was effective, there needed to be a step where there was an estimate of how much it would all cost and a new recommendation that did it with balancing the budget. 

If they just bring back task forces...

[00:30:59] Jasmine Pulido: That's not enough. I would say that's not enough. 

[00:31:02] Christie Robertson: “Okay, here you go. Give us input.”

[00:31:03] Jasmine Pulido: I'm definitely a person of incremental gains, but also I sometimes feel like that's just like a way to slow down progress on purpose because of whatever reason.

So that being said, highly capable I think is like the writing on the wall of what's going to happen to option programs, as they are probably going to revisit closures again, and likely option school programs might be some target again. 

[00:31:29] Christie Robertson: And in those closure plans with both option programs and dual language, they were using the exact same methods. You could just see it in their language of "don't worry, this will be at the neighborhood schools. We'll take care of it."

[00:31:41] Jasmine Pulido: What else do we need to talk about?

Listener Stats

[00:31:43] Christie Robertson: Oh, we got our end of the year stats from Buzzsprout, which is who distributes our podcast. That was fun. We know we've been hearing from our listeners that we have like teachers and parents and students as well, which is great. But regionally, we were really excited to see that we have listeners even outside of Seattle, people in other school districts. We had 594 listens from Tacoma. 

[00:32:09] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, and we also were in the top 25% for all Buzzsprout podcasts. So that's super exciting. So thank you everybody for helping us with that. We are also averaging one episode a week almost.

Yeah, and those are our 2024 stats. A very special thanks to Jane Tunks Demel, who also co hosted and edited and produced many of those episodes.

[00:32:31] Christie Robertson: Yes, that's right. This was a transition year. So those stats include both Seattle Hall Pass and Rainy Day Recess.

[00:32:37] Jasmine Pulido: Okay, everybody, Peter is here with me. Just so you know, I have a one year old now, And he's here. In the background. 

[00:32:42] Christie Robertson: Yep. He's our third co-host. 

[00:32:43] Jasmine Pulido: He's our third co-host now.

[00:32:34] Christie Robertson: Oh, and we have some listeners in Kansas City, Missouri. 

[00:32:48] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah! 

[00:32:49] Christie Robertson: If you're in Kansas City, Missouri, write to us and tell us what you think and what's going on in your district.

[00:32:55] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. It also says that we have listens from 57 other countries, including Canada, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. So wow. If you're in any of these countries, I would really love to hear from you and how you found us. 

So thanks. So thanks, everybody. 

[00:33:12] Christie Robertson: Yeah, thank you. We're looking forward to this next year. 

Community Notes

[00:33:15] Christie Robertson: I think the last thing is community notes. Jas, you went to this really interesting South End Education Town Hall in December.

[00:33:25] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, I sure did. And I really enjoyed it. I am Filipino American, and I'm first generation as in my parents immigrated and I was born here. And so being able to go to this town hall that is like the intersection of so many things to me personally, which is Filipino culture and education and the South end, especially. I was a contributor for South Seattle Emerald for a long time, because I am really passionate about supporting the South End in the bigger picture of the city of Seattle, given redlining and how that affects BIPOC folks. 

So that being said, the town hall really focused on migrant and working families. It was organized by students and I found it to just be such a great community lift by these students.

They had testimonies from janitors, they had testimonies from educators, ethnic studies definitely as a focus, for history, and testimonies from students. And, you could just really see this connection between these students who are really passionate and who have these ties into the community. And the way that budget cuts are affecting these students and these endeavors. 

[00:34:17] Mr Tomchick, Rainier Beach High School teacher: I would love to see teachers and the school board and the superintendent push back against the state legislature, push for more progressive taxation, push for an end to the factors that are driving people out of Seattle because it's no longer an affordable city to live in. The reality is that Seattle is one of the wealthiest cities in one of the wealthiest nations in the world and it's embarrassing that we cannot fund a high quality education, especially when so much of that wealth is built upon the exploitation of migrants and workers of color. We need to remind them that it is not a charity. It is not a philanthropy. It is a debt that needs to be paid.

[00:35:22] Jasmine Pulido: As someone who covers education, we can get really big picture and being able to hear community discussions about this is really important. And to hear what's happening and how budget cuts have been affecting the South End. Specifically, Cleveland High School, Rainier Beach High School were in attendance. 

[00:35:43] Christie Robertson: what did they say about how it's impacting their schools? 

[00:35:46] Jasmine Pulido: Oh my gosh, some of these stories were really hard to hear. There was one that was about how something about their blinds broke and they don't have HVAC in their classroom. And so it gets really cold and it gets really hot. And they weren't able to replace these blinds that were helping with temperature control for years. There was a testimony from someone, who used to be a student who's now an educator and they're like, "it's been 12 years and these things have not changed." 

There was another testimony about how kids were the ones doing the janitorial tasks because they've cut so many janitorial hours. That, for instance, their trash wouldn't be taken out more than once a week. The students would be taking the trash home with them because if they didn't their classrooms would attract roaches and rodents. That's just completely unacceptable. Like, how can you learn when you have to deal with these sorts of issues.

I really feel like these are stories that the legislature needs to hear from. 

[00:36:49] Christie Robertson: Because remember, SPS is allocating more for most of these positions than they are given by the state. 

[00:36:55] Jasmine Pulido: Mm hmm. Right. 

[00:36:56] Christie Robertson: So that means the state is really inadequately funding these positions. 

[00:36:57] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, true. 

[00:36:58] Christie Robertson: Okay thank you so much for going to that jazz and for sharing what you heard. 

And that concludes this episode. We'll go out with some music from the Filipino Southeast town hall. 

[00:37:15] Jasmine Pulido: You can find our show notes at our website, www.rainydayrecess.Org, or you can also subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. 

[00:37:22] Christie Robertson: If you like our work, please consider donating to us at our website. The price of a cup of coffee once a month is so helpful to us. And thank you to our current donors. 

[00:37:31] Jasmine Pulido: Yes. 

[00:37:32] Christie Robertson: Email us at hello@rainydayrecess.org.  

[00:37:36] Jasmine Pulido: Special things to Lester Mayo and Manzana movement for our music, as well as the singers and musicians from south end education town hall for this musical clip you're listening to here.

[00:37:46] Christie Robertson: I'm Christie Robertson. 

[00:37:47] Jasmine Pulido: I'm Jasmine Pulido 

[00:37:48] Christie Robertson: Stay curious, stay cozy and join us next time for Rainy Day Recess.