Budget and Tradeoffs

Episode 21

See our Show Notes

[00:00:00] Christie Robertson: Welcome to Rainy Day Recess, where we study and discuss Seattle Public Schools. Thanks for joining us for our rundown. This week we break down what SPS is asking from the legislature, what happens if that money doesn't come through, and what school communities are asking for – a real seat at the table. 

[00:00:24] Jasmine Pulido: Before we get started, just a quick reminder that we provide transcripts for each episode. These transcripts are helpful if you want to read along, reference anything later. or even translate the content into another language. You can find those at rainydayrecess.org.

Slow News

[00:00:46] Christie Robertson: Let's start off with this concept that you mentioned to me, Jazz, this idea of “slow news”. 

[00:00:51] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, I should probably give credit to Tortoise. I was listening to a podcast produced by them, and their whole thing is “slow news”, which is basically moving away from the urgency and focusing on a more deeper and nuanced understanding, where you really break down things instead of chasing the latest headline. You are diving into the issues and investigating on a deeper level. And I really liked that. And I was thinking we were already doing that. So it's nice to have a term to understand what it is we're doing and to know that's the value that we're providing. 

[00:00:56] Christie Robertson: Yeah, there's times where I feel like everybody talked about the last school board meeting the day of and the day after, and maybe the day after that. And then, a week and a half later, we come along with our episode. So it's definitely not breaking news by the time it's in our episode

[00:01:46] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, and luckily we have a lot of news outlets that can cover breaking news, so maybe doing slow news helps to balance it out more.

[00:01:53] Christie Robertson: And we're also just busy and juggling a lot and sometimes it just takes longer. 

[00:01:46] Jasmine Pulido: Yes, it's also, circumstantially, what is best for us as two parents who are trying to put this podcast together in between our busy lives.

Follow-Up on SPS Racial Equity Departments

[00:02:09] Christie Robertson: And in contrast to everything we just said, we had a breaking news episode on Friday right. Partially because nobody else covered this breaking news. 

[00:02:14] Jasmine Pulido: It's true. Yeah, It's true. No one covered it. And has anyone covered it since?

[00:02:23] Christie Robertson: Nobody has covered it. 

[00:02:24] Jasmine Pulido: Oh, okay.

[00:02:25] Christie Robertson: Episode 19 if you missed it, was just a very short episode after we were alerted by a community member that the Department of African American Male Achievement and the Department of Racial Equity Advancement were suddenly just gone from the SPS website. Since then, we have some updates.

[00:02:34] Jasmine Pulido:  about 6 hours after our episode aired, those departments quietly reappeared on the SPS website. There was no public announcement or explanation from the district at all. 

[00:02:55] Christie Robertson: Late in the day, we got an email response from SPS Chief of Staff Bev Redmond. We have that statement posted on our show notes. The statement claimed that the pages were "temporarily unavailable" while the district "considered updates to their content". 

[00:03:14] Jasmine Pulido: So what do you think? 

[00:03:15] Christie Robertson: I think it strains all credulity that this was any kind of standard update. Having those two departments, and only those two departments, offline for a whole week, just shortly after the federal government has been ramping up its push against DEI efforts in schools? And then on top of that, SPS has plenty of outdated information on its website. It's not like they're prone to taking something down if it's out of date or if they want to update it. They'll just update it when it's ready. And to my knowledge, they've never just taken down a whole section of the website for days at a time or weeks at a time to update it.

[00:03:57] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, it's definitely what I thought about too, which is, can we look at any other updates that have happened, and have they ever followed the same trend of being down and no one announcing it or saying anything? 

I will say that the response that we got back from Chief Redmond did emphasize that no programs, staffing, or services had changed, and that SPS remains committed to racial equity.

[00:04:21] Christie Robertson: I was very glad to hear that. It sounds like the departments were fully up and operational while the websites were down. Nobody lost their jobs. And they're making public statements about their commitment. So to me, at least that part of it is a very good outcome.

[00:04:37] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, I agree. Still, it does raise questions about transparency, which is something that the community is often raising concerns about, especially with the timing. Can the timing really be that accidental? And if they did plan updates, then why not Just put a quick announcement so that people aren't alarmed? Or why not just tell the school board directors? The fact that it took public attention for them to reappear makes me wonder what's really happening behind the scenes.

[00:05:13] Christie Robertson: And I have to say, it bothers me that other outlets haven't covered this story. Even though they came back up right away, it was after media coverage. And, I feel like in the wake of what's going on at the federal level, if institutions just bow to pressure to hide our values around racial equity or DEI or any of those things, that's how those values get pushed into the background. 

[00:05:43] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, and almost then proves that those are performative values if there's something that they're going to be really bold about during, let's say, a rational reckoning during the pandemic, and then just quietly trickle out of the picture when those things seem to have disappeared from the national landscape. 

We'll see. Hopefully, though, next week at the district or the board make more public statements or even offer resolutions in response to or as an additional follow up regarding what happened here. 

[00:06:16] Christie Robertson: Yep. All right. we will keep you up to date on that. 

Feb 26 School Board Budget Engagement Meeting 

[00:06:21] Christie Robertson: Let's talk about school board engagement. 

At the board retreat that happened earlier this year, President Topp laid out a work plan for the school board. And one of the new items on it was to have regular community engagement sessions. The first one happened on February 26th at Bailey Gatzert. 

The topic of the engagement was the school district budget. The format of the meeting was a slideshow presentation by school district staff, then split up into smaller groups and have each board director get feedback from one of the groups. Meanwhile, budget-related staff wandered between the groups to answer questions.

[00:07:08] Jasmine Pulido: It kicked off with a slide presentation that was... I don't know... What's the easiest way to say this? I mean it was monotone, it was hard to see...

[00:07:21] Christie Robertson: The other thing is that they were the exact same slides from the January budget work session. I was wondering if there would be more information.

[00:07:28] Jasmine Pulido: Sure, or just a summary presentation of it, keeping in mind the amount of time that community members could be there. 

After the presentation, the board directors spread out to different groups, two cafeteria tables per group. It's a cafeteria, so it was a loud, echoey space, and it was hard to hear.

[00:07:50] Christie Robertson: You know, honestly, I probably only caught half of what was said. 

[00:07:53] Jasmine Pulido: Same. Yeah, I only caught half.

[00:07:55] Christie Robertson: So I imagine it was even harder to hear if you were hard-of-hearing or a non native English speaker. There was a sign language interpreter for the slideshow, and I'm sure they must have joined a group.

[00:08:06] Jasmine Pulido: Mmm hmm. I did I did see them there.

[00:08:07] Christie Robertson: Which was great to see.

[00:08:08] Jasmine Pulido: Mm hmm.

So the school board directors I saw were Director Clark, Director Rankin, Director Sarju, and President Topp. We ended up in School Board Director Michelle Sarju's group. And she just went straight into it and actually apologized for the presentation and how much time it took from our conversations. And that it wasn't really the ideal way to engage, and yet that's what happened.

[00:08:36] Christie Robertson: I thought she did a great job of disarming the crowd. There was a high level of frustration in the room, I think. And she was just kind of like, "Okay, here we are.” Like, “Let's do with this what we can."

[00:08:49] Jasmine Pulido: The biggest question in the room was, "Does community input actually matter though? Were they actually listening to the community input that they got?” I would say Seattle Public Schools has a long history of holding these meetings and not necessarily folding the feedback that they get into real change.

[00:09:07] Christie Robertson: The community in our group expressed two kind of specific concerns, I would say. The first is the October adjustment that happens every year, where teachers are shifted within schools and around the district after kids have already been in school for a month and a half. It's happened to various degrees over the last few years and is extremely disruptive to teachers and kids and families. 

The second specific thing was the option school wait lists that I heard brought up a lot. Another thing that people feel like the district is not being upfront about.

So those were just a couple of specific concerns that families and teachers expressed, and they didn't necessarily have a direct connection to the budget. That was discussed. 

The big thing I think that people said about the budget was suggesting how a real budget discussion could be had with community that would be productive.

[00:09:58] Jasmine Pulido: There was a lot of talk, in our group at least, about trade offs, and letting the community weigh in on trade offs. Maybe for their own building, in how they figure out staffing, for instance.

[00:10:26] Christie Robertson: Yeah. Over and over again, from many people, I heard, like, "We get it. You're in a budget crunch. Bring us some choices, so that we can see – do we cut our librarian to half time or do we have x class size?"

But the district just has essentially. Refused to do that over the last few years, They just seem to bring a plan and try to get the community buy-in, and then give up on that plan and then bring another plan.

[00:10:58] Jasmine Pulido: Or maybe, like, concepts of a plan. Even the idea of just doing a task force, where they're not necessarily making the actual decisions, but they have more involvement. 

There was also some talk in our group about participatory budgeting, and that one done well could be a way to answer those concerns.

[00:11:24] Christie Robertson: Yeah. There were a couple of parents that have been in the district for longer, though. And they remember that there was a participatory budgeting group that happened that was given this tiny pocket of money. And I think they could never really come to a conclusion about how to use that little bit of money, and it didn't impact the larger budget. So, that did not end up being a good use of anybody's time.

[00:11:48] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, maybe that's why the disclaimer was, "When done well." I definitely noticed that was added in. I was like, "Oh, okay, so it could be done badly. "

As far as a task force, task forces can be put together, and have in the past, that do give great recommendations, and then the district just doesn't take them. 

[00:11:56] Christie Robertson: Yeah, like the Highly Capable Task force. 

[00:12:06] Jasmine Pulido: And I'm sure there's others. I know that I've read at least, like, five other task forces in which that happened. But I couldn't tell you off the top of my head which ones those are. 

I guess, like, how I would like to conclude it is – I'm very glad that they put a community engagement event together, and they're starting to actually engage in that way, versus previous years in which it was basically up to an individual director. So I really commend putting this event together. And a majority of the school board directors were there. They had interpretation. They had speakers. They had a lot of district staff there. And so as a first attempt, while probably not close to anywhere near perfect, I do think there was some elbow grease put into that, and hopefully it just continues to get better over time. We'll see.

[00:13:05] Christie Robertson: Yeah, that's a really great attitude about it. And I think that there's some degree to which I've been hoping that they would just, like, just start doing engagement. Like, your first time is going to be rough, and, like, you can improve from there. And so I also am glad that President Topp put regular engagement just on the calendar. They'll hopefully improve as they go. And it was just cool to see community crowded around school board directors and getting to talk to them. And it was a fairly big crowd, reasonably diverse...

[00:13:30] Jasmine Pulido: I counted like 75, maybe 75 people, not including staff or directors.

[00:13:35] Christie Robertson: And that was with some people said that they had only heard the night before.

[00:13:38] Jasmine Pulido: Right.

PSA: Washington Multicultural Services Link 

[00:13:39] Christie Robertson: Let's take a break for a public service announcement. We have a public service announcement from Ayan Elmi about an important event coming up. The Washington Multicultural Services Link (WMSL) and the Somali Health Board are teaming up to host an Autism Awareness event this April. It's dedicated to supporting African American and African diaspora families impacted by autism and other disabilities.

[00:14:08] Jasmine Pulido: They're looking for vendors who can provide services, information, or products that benefit individuals with autism and their families. They also need sponsors, funding support, and volunteers to help make the event happen.

[00:14:23] Christie Robertson: It's their first time hosting the event, and they're asking for any help they can get. If you or someone you know can contribute, please reach out. Every bit of support matters.

[00:14:33] Jasmine Pulido: You can contact Ayan Elmi at ayan@wmslink.org.

2025-2026 Budget Update

... And back to budgets

[00:14:46] Christie Robertson: Let's give everyone an update on where we stand with the SPS budget and its $94 million deficit that we need to solve for the 25-26 school year.

[00:14:57] Jasmine Pulido: And as a reminder, at the last official budget work session at the January 22nd school board meeting, SPS released a vague budget plan that relies on:

[00:15:09] Christie Robertson: So, there's a couple of one-time solutions, regardless of what comes from the legislature. 

The first is that they are going to use the underspend from 23-24. And this is just... They usually over-budget. So they have left-over at the end of every year. And so they're using the left-over from the 23-24 year. It's pretty big. It's like $42.4 million. 

[00:15:33] Jasmine Pulido: Oh! Ok. I was thinking, like, “Oh, is it like $300 or something?” That's great! That's great.  

[00:15:38] Christie Robertson: And then it's $14 million that they were supposed to be paying into the rainy day fund this year. And they want to defer it again and keep that rainy day balance at zero.

[00:15:51] Jasmine Pulido: That's also one of the one time solutions. 

I definitely wonder how long we can keep going without a rainy day fund. 

[00:15:58] Christie Robertson: I feel like they shouldn't just keep planning to do this.

[00:16:01] Jasmine Pulido: No. 

[00:16:08] Christie Robertson: They did also outline some structural changes, although very vaguely. And for each one of these, they said that it would save them between $0 and $[some maximum amount].

[00:16:16] Jasmine Pulido: Yep.

[00:16:16] Christie Robertson: That's a lot of wiggle room.

[00:16:18] Jasmine Pulido: Yep. So between $0 and $millions. 

[00:16:23] Christie Robertson: Right. Together, if you added, like, the maximums of all those together, it would be $22 million in reductions that they could make without touching school staffing. 

And then they say that they're hoping for $30-60 million from the state government. And, in fact, we learned that they are planning on that money. Because the Gold and the Purple Books were released this month, and they build that money in.

[00:16:51] Jasmine Pulido: All right. So what exactly is the Gold Book and the Purple Book?

[00:16:56] Christie Robertson: Okay, the budget books got their names, I assume, because they were originally printed on gold and purple paper back in the day. 

The Gold Book is officially called the "School Budget Development Instructions". and that guides the administrators of each school through the budgeting process. It's got the key dates, costs, program requirements, and an outline of how to distribute their staff. And that goes out in early February.

[00:17:24] Jasmine Pulido: And then the Purple Book?

[00:17:25] Christie Robertson: The Purple Book is also known as the "School's Funding Allocation Report". That lays out the actual dollar figures that each school gets for the upcoming year. It's actually just got a page or two for every single school in the district. And the way that money is calculated is that it's the enrollment that they project for that school and then the "Weighted Staffing Standards", which says how many of each kind of staff you get for each student in your school. And that's basically what determines how much schools get. 

This year's Purple Book was released on February 25th.

[00:18:02] Jasmine Pulido: So does that mean every principal flipped through it to see if they needed to cut staff for next year?

[00:18:08] Christie Robertson: Yep, everyone's like, "the Purple's book is in!" And then they go and see if they need to fire anybody.

[00:18:13] Jasmine Pulido: Okay, and did they?

[00:18:16] Christie Robertson: In general, no. The Weighted Staffing Standards didn't change, and the enrollment didn't change much. Which means that basically the district isn't proposing any staffing cuts. 

In fact, according to my read on the Purple Book – from last year's Purple Book to this year's Purple Book there are 1,911 more students projected, which is a 4% increase from the previous projection. And 227 staff, which is a 5.4% increase from the previous staff projection. So yeah, the district is counting on staff increases, not staff cuts. 

One last note is that it sounds like there was an error in the most recent Purple Book posted online, and so these numbers are going to change again.

[00:19:05] Jasmine Pulido: And according to that last budget session, that means that they're relying on the legislature. Is the legislature going to save the day?

[00:19:14] Christie Robertson: I don't want to say No yet. But it is not looking good. I tried to really roughly estimate what SPS might be getting from each of the bills as they made it through last week.

The bills are all still in their house of origin. They got through their policy committees, where they don't talk about the money. They talk about everything else but money. And then last week was when they were in their money committees – fiscal committees. And if they didn't get out on Friday, then the bills just die. And that's what happened to the transportation bills, actually – dead and gone.

[00:19:51] Jasmine Pulido: Oh.  

[00:19:52] Christie Robertson: So we had the Big 3 – special ed, MSOC ( which is material supplies and operating costs), and transportation. And now we have the Big 2.

[00:20:02] Jasmine Pulido: Okay. Yeah. So transportation is dead. Unfortunate. 

[00:20:08] Christie Robertson: There's still special education bills alive in the House and Senate, and the same goes for MSOC. These bills were pared down. Some of them are not recognizable, maybe not even worth running. And the rough calculations that I did on these? They went from giving us maybe half of the money that we needed to giving us... very little. 

If you're interested in the details, I have a spreadsheet on this, that I will link in the show notes.

[00:20:34] Jasmine Pulido: Okay, so could the numbers go up?

[00:20:39] Christie Robertson: Technically, theoretically, yes. But that rarely happens. And I don't think it's going to happen when we have a 12 billion deficit in the state. I don't think those numbers are going up. If anything, I think they're going to keep shrinking. And there's plenty of more chances for them to shrink before they're done.

[00:20:57] Jasmine Pulido: I see. And since the Purple Book already went out to schools and showed no staffing cuts, what happens then if we don't get the money that they were counting on?

[00:21:08] Christie Robertson: That's the big question that's been really worrying me. My worry is that the rug will just get pulled out from under all our schools. So the principals who were dancing around saying, “I don't have to fire anybody!” are just going to be told, "No, actually you do." I don't know that to be the case, but that's what I'm worried about. We're not going to truly know what we're going to get until April, when the session is over. 

[00:21:33] Jasmine Pulido: And I guess it's because of that  that SPS isn't planning on giving us another update until May. So we are waiting until then. 

[00:21:44] Christie Robertson: And that actually ties directly into feedback from Vivian Song.

Listener Feedback

[00:21:51] Jasmine Pulido: Okay, so let's talk about some feedback we received from former school board director Vivian Song (who was actually District 2, which is my district) about our last episode, The Cost of Indifference. 

[00:22:03] Christie Robertson: Vivian wrote in responding to my criticism that the district had no budget work session to plan between January and May of this year.

[00:22:12] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, so Vivian actually spoke from her experience on the board, pointing out that there isn't much new news on the budget right now, simply because of where we are in the budget cycle. So this is what she wrote: 

In February/March, individual schools are working on their own budgets, which still require Building Leadership Team approvals. The State Legislature is still in session and final apportionment numbers are needed to do any meaningful work on the budget.

[00:22:39] Christie Robertson: Yeah, that makes some sense to me, why they're not coming with new updates. I do wish that the update they give us in January made a lot more sense to me. Maybe then I wouldn't feel so anxious about this gap in between. But I appreciate her information from having gone through this process before.

[00:22:57] Jasmine Pulido: It's useful to know. And I guess that's the thing is that, as, like, a community member, I just think as much transparency as you can provide is useful. And so, like, if they said, "Okay, in the budget timeline right now, in February or March, it's actually that a section of Building Leadership Teams work on their own budgets.” I think I would feel better knowing that.

[00:23:20] Christie Robertson: They actually do have this cool table in that presentation, and I'll put it in the show notes, where they lay out all the different things that are influencing the budget and what the timelines on those are. 

[00:23:30] Jasmine Pulido: Oh yeah, the color one? 

[00:23:31] Christie Robertson: Yeah, that was cool. And so the legislature's on there, bargaining with unions is on there. So yeah, they've got a lot of balls in the air. 

And Vivian was also saying that she sees this as a good moment for community engagement before everything's locked in. She said, 

I think community engagement on the budget is a good use of this time. And it's great that under Gina's leadership, a session was scheduled... for Bailey Gatzert elementary.

[00:23:57] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, that's the community engagement meeting we broke down earlier in this episode.

[00:24:02] Christie Robertson: Yep. It makes sense.

[00:24:04] Jasmine Pulido: And then there's this other point about student progress monitoring and how recent discussions on outcomes seem to have completely ignored the impact of the pandemic. She wrote, 

While current outcomes don't meet our collective expectations, any meaningful assessment must account for the unprecedented disruption students and staff experienced. A more comprehensive analysis of pandemic effects would provide better context for our current challenges and inform more effective solutions.

[00:24:33] Christie Robertson: Yeah. So that does make a lot of sense. And a lot of analysis of student outcomes in general out there in the world are talking about pandemic recovery more than student progress.

[00:24:44] Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. And she also said, "thank you for your work and the important conversations you facilitate in our community."

[00:24:53] Christie Robertson: Thank you so much for your thoughtful feedback, Vivian. We always appreciate hearing different perspectives and adding more depth to these conversations.

[00:24:59] Jasmine Pulido: Yes, and any institutional knowledge that people can tell us that will help paint a bigger picture of what's happening, I think all of our listeners would totally appreciate. 

[00:25:09] Christie Robertson: Much appreciated.

[00:25:10] Jasmine Pulido: That's it for this episode of Rainy Day Recess. If you want to dive deeper into any of the topics we covered, check out our show notes for links and additional resources.

[00:25:22] Christie Robertson: And don't forget, if you like what we're doing, please subscribe, rate, and review Rainy Day Recess on your favorite podcast platform. It really helps more people find the show.

[00:25:32] Jasmine Pulido: We're also listener supported. So if you'd like to help keep this work going, you can donate at rainydayrecess.org.

[00:25:40] Christie Robertson: And as always, if you have thoughts, questions or feedback, we'd love to hear from you, you can reach us at hello@rainydayrecess.org, or find us on social media.

[00:25:49] Jasmine Pulido: Okay. And then maybe you should say who you are.

[00:25:52] Christie Robertson: Oh, right. I'm Christie Robertson.

[00:25:54] Jasmine Pulido: I'm Jasmine Pulido. Stay curious, stay cozy, and join us next time for Rainy Day Recess.