Explaning the Enrollment Enigma

Rainy Day Recess, Episode 35

April 23, 2025 School Board Meeting

See our Show Notes

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

Jasmine Pulido: And I'm Jasmine Pulido.

Christie Robertson: Today we're discussing the April 23rd school board meeting.

Jasmine Pulido: There was a lot to unpack. And it was like six hours long, and they didn't finish the entire agenda. And so I was like actually falling asleep during the enrollment planning update. So I did do my due diligence and listened to it today. 

Christie Robertson: And I think it took me like three sessions to get through the whole thing.

Jasmine Pulido: MmHmm.

Christie Robertson: Let's dig in. So – enrollment planning update. So this has been a hot topic of late. We will point you to Dawson Nichols’s video episode, released on April 23rd, right before the school board meeting.

Jasmine Pulido: The episode covers different perspectives from staff, student testimony, school board directors, and parents engaging with the system. So a really intriguing episode I feel like really captures community sentiment. And certainly that same sentiment appeared a lot in our public testimony at this meeting. 

And this conversation actually didn't happen until about 9:00 PM. To frame that, the special meeting was at 3:00 PM. They started the regular meeting at 4:15. And so it was basically pushed all the way to the end. 

And one thing that director Sarju pointed out was that the deaf and hard of hearing parents who had testified about the waitlist could not receive any communication regarding this discussion topic that they were really wanting to know more about, because the ASL interpreters left at 9:00 PM.

Christie Robertson: Yeah. And she also referred to how much effort it has taken her to get ASL interpreters at the meeting, something that has been called for, for years and years. And finally now, as is appropriate, there are two ASL interpreters at every school board meeting. So thank you very much to Director Sarju.

Jasmine Pulido: Yeah.

Changes to the slide deck

Christie Robertson: The slide deck. I wanna call this out... or do you wanna call this out? 

Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, I'll talk a little bit about it. So Superintendent Jones did start the discussion on enrollment planning by mentioning that the slide deck had been updated. Superintendent Jones said that the reason that they updated it is because they wanted to make sure that they were streamlining the information.

I heard that the old slide deck had a slide in it that talked about that the waitlist enrollment had the most students on it from SE Seattle. Is that... am I saying that right?

Christie Robertson: Yeah, so it was a heat map of which students participate in the choice process, and the darkest kind of blob of students making that choice was in SE. To some degree. What really struck me the most about that map was that people choose option schools when they're near the option schools.

Like, you could see where every option school was and there was a big cluster of families choosing that option school if they were nearby. Which kind of speaks to – one of the values is wanting to go to a nearby school. 

But yes, they did take that out and so people were questioning – why was that? 

Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. I guess the thought that comes to mind is, regarding the guardrail on geographic equity – and kind of wondering about how that plays into it. And then the other thing is, I'm not in SE Seattle, but I also ended up choosing an option school because it was closer to us as well. And we had heard good things about it. I definitely can see how the location can play a big part in where people decide to go.

I also think about is because we're underfunded for transportation, I feel like that also could play a factor 

Christie Robertson: That's a really good point. Yeah, because there might be a longer bus ride versus that you can just walk.

Jasmine Pulido: I've been studying transportation justice and the safety of transportation infrastructure, and I know there are some hotspots in the south end in which that's a major issue that is being advocated for right now. So I could understand if students were like, “we should go to the nearest school because that's the safest route.” Or “we should go to the nearest school because we can't get busing otherwise.”

Christie Robertson: I wonder if that also ties into one of the slides that... they showed that about half of people applying for a different option were applying for option schools, but half of them were applying for another neighborhood school. And that could be a case where another neighborhood school is closer.

Jasmine Pulido: True. Yeah. Like it's almost half and half.

Christie Robertson: Yeah. 

I wanted to say one thing about changing the slide deck. It's very common that they'll update a slide deck shortly before a board meeting. But when they do, they always are transparent in the naming of the file. Like, the file will have appended to it “changed on this date” so that you'll know this is a different version. In this case, the file was named the exact same thing. And hopefully that was a mistake. 

Just a note that the agenda was later updated, clearly delineating separate links with a note: “updated in response to board director questions”.

Jasmine Pulido: It's so hard, if it is an error, because there's just so much distrust right now. And there's not a lot of transparency. So any small thing...

Christie Robertson: Any little thing...

Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. It's hard to not put in a lot of negative like history into that to explain what's going on.

Christie Robertson: And I have to say, unfortunately, that this meeting was a prime example, I think of: in some ways increasing trust, because they're actually discussing things, but in a lot of ways really decreasing trust because the answers were just very roundabout and contradictory. Confusing. Obfuscating.

Jasmine Pulido: I just found myself so unsatisfied by this conversation. I was like, “Great! They're gonna talk about enrollment and waitlists. That's like a hot topic. Everyone wants to know everyone is really invested in having more information.” And I just... Like, they talked for so long. And, granted, there was some confusion in the end discussion-wise, and it was late by that point, but the questions that the school board directors were trying to ask to understand what is going on, I think that was starting to clash with student outcomes focused governance in the sense of: they're not getting a lot of information of what's happening operationally. So how do you make strategic decisions or proposals if we don't actually know what's going on? What do you think?

Christie Robertson: Yeah, I think that discussion happened at the end. Raised by Director Rankin: 

Liza Rankin: I don't think that seven of us should try to entertain what we think you should do. That is dangerous. That is why we are where we are. And Fred is laughing 'cause he knows I'm right. That is why we are where we are because we have had seven people trying to please different people. No, I'm just... Historically. Historically. ...trying to please different groups of people and lose the big picture.

Christie Robertson: I think that's really true to some degree. But also, it's very important that directors at least have a basic understanding of operations so that they can talk to community. And, I think, so that they can assess whether guardrails are being followed. 

And that actually made me wonder about the guardrails. If you set out these principles that you don't wanna violate, sometimes you're going to see something that clearly shows that you're violating a guardrail, but it wasn't one of your predefined interim measures or something. And I think that's important for somebody to keep an eye on. And in order to do that, they have to understand operations to some degree.

Jasmine Pulido: Yeah.

Christie Robertson: I also wanna play President Topp’s response, because it gives a window into what's coming ahead.

Gina Topp: This is our opportunity as a board to learn and to ask questions. The next step was the superintendent is going to do a survey. And he's going to come back with recommendation for us. 

And we're getting a ton of incoming questions about this exact thing. So having an understanding that we all know what's going on, all are able to ask questions and hear what our questions are and where folks are coming from on the board. Because there are a variety of differing opinions on this board. So that's the goal tonight is just to get that common understanding amongst us all.

Liza Rankin: So the next thing that happens is – go to the people impacted and figure out the solution? 

Gina Topp: And because they're going to come to a recommendation with us on our May 7th engagement meeting. 

Christie Robertson: Okay, so that sounds to me like the district is coming with proposals about the choice process to the school board community engagement meeting at Daniel Bagley Elementary on May 7th from 5:30-7.

And let's talk about what was in the slide deck.

Stability and Choice

The beginning of the slide deck was something that also raised a lot of hairs in community. It was a slide that had a balance... What do you call that? Like a scale? Or a teeter-totter...

Jasmine Pulido: Like a seesaw?

Christie Robertson: Yeah, like a seesaw with a square block that says STABILITY on one side and a round ball that says CHOICE on the other side. And so everybody was trying to decide what it means. And, listening to the staff talk about it, I still wasn't really sure. It first struck me as you can either have stability or choice. Is that how you saw it at first?

Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, when I first saw the graphic? That's true.

Christie Robertson: They said that maybe it's, like, that you need to balance them. And then there was a quote from Dr. Campbell that she likes to see it as abundance. 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: The school choice process is a product of decisions. It's a product of the way we approach enrollment, which emphasizes, since 2010, we moved toward a guaranteed neighborhood assignment. Prior to that, and I was a parent in the day when you weren't guaranteed any school assignment. You actually made a number of choices and everybody went into the lottery. 

That changed after the PICS decision, the Supreme Court decision and some other things. And that policy and procedure is 3130. And it does guarantee a neighborhood assignment for every student. And the premise at that time was that all neighborhood schools would have academic assurances that no matter where you went, you would be guaranteed things that you need and deserve. 

Enrollment stability again is that idea of balance. and I think it was... some folks presented it as a competition between choice and stability. I don't see it that way. I tend to think in terms of... abundance, for lack of a better term. I think we can work with both. I think that we absolutely need to find both, because families need different things. But we also have a baseline of needing to provide those schools that are stable for all of our students.

I just wanted to address another thing that was said tonight. Families, when they submit a choice form, offer five options. So although we're talking about first choice, no student is kept at a school they absolutely don't want to be at. Or, they might be. But they're given... If they've elected three or four other options, they're almost always able to be matched with another school. And I just think that's important to know for context, that if you're in a school that is really not working for you, you might, again, not get your first choice, but you will be able to find another school that might work better. 

Christie Robertson: So many interesting things in that quote. And I also just wanna note that for the, "you can always get into a different school", we'll talk about this later, but this is one of those statements that you need to put an asterisk after that says, “unless your kid is disabled and gets special education services”. 

I also wanna play these two quotes from Dr. Jones and from Fred Podesta. They were saying, “look, we're gonna talk about how this works, but these are just what we made up, right? This is the system. We're gonna present to you how it works, but it's up to us, like, the board and the district. We're the decision makers.” 

Fred Podesta, Chief Operations Officer: So, the trade-offs here in terms of policy perspective are really about the balance between choice and stability, in as much as a system that provides for more choice creates mobility within the system for student enrollment. And resources follow students. So the more mobility that we provide within the system, the more resources are gonna move around. And it's not a value judgment. It's just – these are the things we need to consider – that as families make choices, as students make choices and move from one school to the other, we'd be moving resources from one school to the other. And that has impacts. Again, it's not a value proposition, say, it's just something to consider as we think about the level of choice that we want to build into enrollment policy.

Brent Jones, Superintendent: Can I double down on something? Again, this isn't a value judgment. We may even sound defensive. We're just really trying to explain what is – what are our operational considerations. And so, forgive us in advance if we sound defensive. And I think there'll be time to say this is a direction that we're recommending that we go in. So I want to put that out there as a disclaimer. We're defensive in terms of wanting to make sure that the data's right and the framing's right. But in terms of what we're doing and where we go later, I wouldn't say we're agnostic, but we are very, very open into what the future may look like. So I just wanted to mention that upfront. Please. 

Fred Podesta, Chief Operations Officer: These structures are totally of our making and totally within our control. So, um, so we have choice about how we balance this. And that just is what it is. And that's why we're having this conversation. So there's just how much choice there is. 

Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, a lot of the disclaimers that they gave in the beginning were really interesting. Like the first being, “we're very open to whatever you wanna do with this, but we're just presenting what it is.” And then the second was, “it sounds like we're defensive, but we're not. We're just trying to explain to you how the system works.” And I see them preemptively addressing, probably, a lot of criticism that they already know is going to come at them. Yeah. 

Christie Robertson: I appreciated that. Except the only problem was that it was followed by such a confusing and somewhat gaslighting presentation. 

So let's talk about how choices are made.

Jasmine Pulido: Okay.

Christie Robertson: This changed throughout the presentation. Marni started off by saying... And, sorry, this is Marni Campbell, whose title I think has changed, but on the SPS website is still listed as "Well-Resourced School Officer”. Marni started off by saying, “Okay, here's how decisions are made. Look, we tell people you're not guaranteed an assignment. And we tell them what the decision is based on, which is sibling and geozone priority.”

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: If they're on time applications, there's a sibling tiebreaker and there's a geozone tiebreaker. And then every on time application receives a lottery number. So that's how those assignments are made. 

Christie Robertson: But that's not the part people are confused about. I think the part people are confused about, and the part that people are very frustrated about is that... and I want everybody to have this language now, because I think it will make it easier to talk to the district and talk amongst each other. The term they're using is "assigned school considerations." Did you notice that term, Jas? 

Jasmine Pulido: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Christie Robertson: And do you wanna say what that means?

Jasmine Pulido: Here's what it means. So if you go back to, let's say, if you go back to Dawson's episode, he talks very well, very basically about the fact that there are three clear criteria, which is what Marni refers to as well – sibling priority, geozone, priority. And then after that you're on a lottery number. So if you're higher in the ranking in the lottery, then you're more likely to get in. Okay. So that's that. And that is clear. 

The thing about "assigned school considerations" or all the other considerations they take into account that they don't really tell families about. So for instance, let's just say you waitlist for an option school. One of the considerations they'll think about is: how does it affect the school that you're leaving? And if it affects it too negatively, then they won't let you in.

Christie Robertson: Here's Dr. Campbell at one of the parts where she actually does say that they do this.

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: So, but we do look at the impacts to the assigned school – that is where the student is currently assigned – and the requested choice school. We have to just, again, in the interest of stability and choice, balancing those, we have to do that. 

So capacity is really about. Um, where there is space within the current staffing allocation.

Christie Robertson: So "assigned school considerations" is the term, and it means considerations for the school that you are “assigned to”, your neighborhood school, the school that you would be leaving. 

Jasmine Pulido: And the thing is, at this meeting, anytime they talked about considerations, they were very vague about it. They were like, “there's other factors”. But they would give some sort of, like, roundabout examples. But they would never say, “this is exactly, like, the process that we go to. We think about their assigned school, we think about the school that they're waitlisted for.” I wished that they had said, to the school board directors, “We have a very specific protocol of questions that we go to.” Just list the considerations. List them. And list, like, how you prioritize them. 

Christie Robertson: Yeah. Just explain. 

Jasmine Pulido: Exactly. That's the part that I found really unsatisfying. And that really... That really contributes to this frustration of the lack of transparency from this department.

Christie Robertson: Yep. Yes, exactly. And directors just kept asking and asking about WHEN that assigned school consideration would come into play and HOW it would come into play. And one of the clearest questions was from President Topp: 

Gina Topp: So just so I understand, if I have a kid at a smaller school, say Sanislo, and I want to go to an option school, or just a different school, would I have a harder chance leaving that school because my school is smaller? And I would have, maybe split classes or... my leaving would negatively affect that school?

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: Yeah. Thank you for that question. And I double-checked with a number of people on the enrollment planning team. The answer is no. 

Christie Robertson: This is Christie, jumping in to the middle of Marni Campbell's answer here, just to clarify that she says that the answer is no, but if you listen further, you will hear that the answer to President Topp’s first question is actually yes. Meaning: Yes, if you are coming from a smaller school or school that is an attendance area school that is losing enrollment, you will be less likely to get an assignment to a different school. Because it would fall under “assigned school considerations”. And when Campbell is saying “no”, she actually means. “No, they won't jump over the first person in the waitlist.”

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: So if you're first on the waitlist, we're not gonna jump over you because you go to Sanislo. We're going to... when that space becomes available, we are going to move the waitlist in accordance with the way that the waitlist is structured. We might not move 10 students all at once, so I mean that's where some of the judgment comes, but we're going to move that waitlist prudently as those spaces become available. Again, according to where you are on the waitlist. Which would again be dependent on those factors that we're very clear with families about, that we wanna hold to the integrity of that. You know, you're on the waitlist because of the factors that influenced, you know – the lottery and then sibling and geozone. 

Gina Topp: So just a follow up. So if you're number one on the waitlist, but you have some negative criteria against you, you wouldn't move to number two? We'd be stuck sort of at number one until we felt like we could move that student? Or... 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: Correct. We wouldn't jump over a student. And I, and I, I know what you're saying about negative criteria, and because we said “considerations” for the... 

Gina Topp: Yeah. 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: ...for the assigned school. I wouldn't say those are “negative criteria”. The criteria for the waitlist and the waitlist movement are very clear, and we don't vary from that. That's just more in how we manage the overall process – that we, we just are mindful of that. 

Christie Robertson: I think this is the kind of language that makes it so difficult to understand. To say that “the criteria for waitlist movement are very clear and they don't vary from that,” that “it's only about how they manage the overall process that we are mindful of that”. It's just so obfuscating of the actual answer. And I think in order to make a decision about how we wanna balance stability and choice, we need to really understand that “assigned school criteria” are part of how the waitlist functions. 

And I think that the people in central office really believe in the way they're doing it. So maybe they don't believe that community believes in it, and so they're kind of trying to hide the ball, so that they can keep doing what they think is right. But that just doesn't feel like a long-term, sustainable way to function. 

Christie Robertson: So, Jas, did you catch this while you were listening to the meeting? Because I'm imagining that a lot of people didn't follow that – if somebody is at the top of the line who is not being moved because of “assigned school considerations”, the line just gets frozen. They won't take number two who's coming from a school that maybe is over-enrolled, because that wouldn’t be fair to number one. And so then they just don't move the waitlist at all.

Jasmine Pulido: Oh! I didn't realize that's what they were saying.

Christie Robertson: Yeah, I only realized that was what they were saying because it was something I already knew. 

Jasmine Pulido: So that means that basically you're just creating a traffic jam.

Christie Robertson: Creating a traffic jam. Exactly.

Jasmine Pulido: Right. Because you're not gonna move the person in the front so everyone else gets jammed up in the back.

Oh my gosh. If we're talking about student needs and equity, it's just... it's such a big problem.

Christie Robertson: Yeah. And  a lot of these choices don't feel like nice-to-haves for people. Certainly for my family, it was a matter of my kid refusing to go to school until we found a school that was inclusive and welcoming for him. So it was like – going to school or not going to school. It was that stark. 

Jasmine Pulido: I understand needing to balance the livelihood of the public education institution, in this case Seattle Public Schools, and having to balance that with what it's meant to do, which is serve students' needs and education. And I know this particular presentation is supposed to be about, this is just where we're at. And we realize, we understand that it probably has a lot of problems. But at this point where we're standing, it seems like this system definitely prioritizes schools over students.

Christie Robertson: And I guess there's a flip side about the real need of kids who might need a different school, and that's the real need of the kids who might be at an under-enrolled school who might lose a teacher if somebody leaves. So it's not a simple matter of that the kids who are choosing options... They're not the only ones that we need to think about. There might be kids who would do really well at their assigned neighborhood school, but are not gonna do as well if they lose three staff. it's not a cut and dry balance.

*special education

Christie Robertson: And I have been trying to find the right place to put this in about special education, something that is an asterisk pretty much on everything that everybody's saying in this conversation. Whenever anybody's talking about rules for enrollment, we need to keep in mind that there's a whole different set of rules if your kid is getting special ed services. Because the way we do special education in SPS is that kids who get services are assigned to these named programs. And they cannot move unless there is a spot for them in that program.

And in the case of option schools, this is especially problematic, because many kids with disabilities are the ones most in need of an alternative, non-traditional environment. And they are the ones who, for the most part, I don't think it's exaggerating to say that they cannot get into an option school. Certainly in my experience my kid with disabilities was not able to get into an option school for years and years. The environments at the many different neighborhood schools that he was put at were not good. And like I said, he ended up having school refusal. 

So I just wanna make sure that whenever we talk about option schools, we include this asterisk. Again this year... every year there's a parent that I need to talk to to explain, “no, your kid is not getting in because they have disabilities.” 

That is a case where they will jump the line. They will jump the line over a kid with disabilities and fill in the gen ed spots.

Jasmine Pulido: Oh, really? They'll jump the line.

Christie Robertson: Oh yeah. They count it as a different line. So, if you look at the waitlist, there's a line for the gen ed students and there's a line for each special ed program. So they're not in a lottery together. They'll only run the special ed lottery if there's a spot in a special ed program. And there never is. Because those are filled by kids who are already at the school.

Jasmine Pulido: Wow.

Christie Robertson: Yeah.

Jasmine Pulido: Okay. Are we on timing?

Yes.

Timing - the phases of enrollment

Christie Robertson: Okay. So then, another piece to enrollment that is very complicated is the timing issue. First of all, Dr. Campbell stated multiple times, and Fred Podesta stated, that the complications around waitlist come for people who applied late. Which is very confusing to me, because the waitlist assignments just got made, and there's a ton of people on the waitlist. So I don't see why the problem is people who apply late. Do you understand that?

Jasmine Pulido: What I understood not, from this discussion, from Dawson's episode, is that like the actual waitlist process is past February, right? Like, it goes later. But what they're saying is if you don't apply early in that time range, then they basically consider you late. Is that right?

Christie Robertson: Yeah. So, the way it works is – there's a deadline, I think it was February 28th for applying for that first lottery. Like, they don't run the lottery until that date. So everybody who applies before that date is in that first lottery. And they were implying that, like, everybody who gets their application in by that deadline gets assigned to their first choice if there’s space.

Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, right. 

Christie Robertson: And that is not true. Like, we know that even at that point they're taking into account the "assigned school considerations". Because, like, hundreds of people did not get in who had their application in on time. 

Then there's the secondary phase of: you can keep applying until May 31st, and they'll add you to the end of the waitlist. You're very unlikely to get in at that point. But that to me is a separate problem. 

And then the third part of the timeline is that they keep those waitlists in their system, for all the people who have applied through May 31st, until August 31st. So you could be assigned all the way up until basically the first day of school.

Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. And some people do get assigned up to the first day of school.

Christie Robertson: And some people do. Yep. 

Jasmine Pulido: It's a very anxiety-provoking process to wait until the day before. But yeah, I heard Director Rankin say that she was part of making that decision to extend that. 

Christie Robertson: Which might actually serve as a great example of how individual directors being involved in very detailed, specific decision-making at the operational level – this might have downstream effects that are very difficult to undo.

Changing choice enrollment timing? 

Jasmine Pulido: But let's just go back to this whole idea about the timing.

Christie Robertson: I think what they won't do, and what they were dancing around about is that they won't move staff even for that very first lottery. Like they won't say, "we have 60 more kids who want to go to Pathfinder. And so we'll assign two more staff there.”

Superintendent Jones was trying to compare this to the October shuffle, which I thought was really not an apt analogy, because the October shuffle happens in October. After school has started. That's the problem with the October shuffle is kids are in seats and they have to move to a different teacher.

Jasmine Pulido: I, yeah, I didn't understand that metaphor.

Christie Robertson: So here's where they did a whole bunch of runaround about “couldn't we move the timeline so that it would be early enough that resources could actually follow the kids as opposed to the kids being assigned to where the staff already are.”

Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, that's right. That's what Director Mizrahi was saying is “if you moved the process earlier... so if you had people apply in December, then you would have a really good runway for moving staff. Could you do that?” And they were like, “we could consider that.”

Christie Robertson: Well, they did say something vague like “we can always play with timing”. But as I'm listening to the rest of that back and forth between directors and Dr. Campbell and Fred Podesta, I am not hearing that they want to make a move like that. But let's just listen to what they say.

Gina Topp: So we say that this is a construct we've created: “resources follow students”. But we decide on where those students are gonna go before we actually... we do the assignment?

Sarah Clark: It's getting late. I am getting confused. But I'm just trying to understand. Are we... we project our enrollment based on numbers from October, the year before... 

Am I...?

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: So, let's say February projections are based on the October a few months prior. 

Sarah Clark: Yeah. Right. 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: So that number plus...

Sarah Clark: Sorry, the calendar year before, not the school year before. 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: Right. And plus then looking at how many fifth graders are leaving. 

Sarah Clark: Yes. 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: And how many kindergartners are coming up based on demographic information. So there's a lot of data that goes into the projection. 

Sarah Clark: Yeah. And so, and then we assigned staff first, before we allocate all of the students to the buildings that they're going to for the next school year. Is that what you were getting at President Topp?

Gina Topp: That was roughly my question. So, like, as we look at the timeline here, we, we... uh... Again, resources follow students. So the resources go where the students go. But we decide before we know where all our students wanna go, where our resources are gonna go. Is that correct? 

Fred Podesta, Chief Operations Officer: Because we keep the waitlist open until August. 

Gina Topp: Because you keep... That part I'm not understanding. 

Fred Podesta, Chief Operations Officer: The waitlist is really a creation after the first mass assignment is made. And those early on time school choice options are built into staffing allocations. But... And then the budget process starts, and we keep trying to move the waitlist up until the start of the school year. And that's where things get more constrained based on what's been allocated. 

Gina Topp: So if I get my application in time, I get my first choice?

Fred Podesta, Chief Operations Officer: Uh, well, there could still be other considerations there. There, there just may not be physical space in the school... Um, it, you know, grade configurations... There... All those considerations are part of it. 

Joe Mizrahi: I like what you said, Fred, about this is, like... this is a construct that we've made. So I guess I'm curious with the staffing question, why couldn't the choice process be moved earlier to try and help with that staffing, so you know earlier how many students are choicing into different areas?

Is there a reason, just timing wise, why the choice forms couldn't be in January? Or in December? Or whatever is the right time period to say, “okay, well, actually now we know a whole lot more information about where families want to be...” 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: Mm-hmm. 

Joe Mizrahi: “...Before we make even that initial allocation of staff.”

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: Mm-hmm. I think that's a great question. I think we can always look at our timelines. 

Christie Robertson: I think what they're trying to say and that they were not saying clearly is that – they don't wanna move teachers even before kids get there. They don't want the number of staff to change from one YEAR to the next. I think that's what they're trying to say. So then they're just filling in kids to meet the staff that they already have.

And then at Option Schools, I think what's additionally happening is they're lowering their expectations every year of how many kids they're expecting to be there. This is what we're hearing from people at option schools.

Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, that's definitely what I've been hearing.

Christie Robertson: Yeah. 

Jasmine Pulido: ...that over like a period of, let's just say five years, that they just project lower and lower.

Christie Robertson: And then they won't move more kids there 'cause they would have to add more staff.

Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. Another way to say it is that since resources follow students, the best way for a central office to control resources for each building for stability is by deciding in advance how much staff is in the building. Because even though resources aren't allocated based on staff, the central office can dictate the number of staff and use that as a backdoor way to cap how many students come in and thus stabilize the resources coming or going for any particular building. So it's a loophole in a sense where central office gets to have the choice of where resources go.

Christie Robertson: They probably could have cleared the whole thing up if they just said, flat out, “We just don't wanna move staff.”

Jasmine Pulido: Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's just it sounds like they just don't wanna move staff, period. And that was basically the end of the discussion.

Christie Robertson: Yep.

Communications

Okay. Last piece was about communications. And here's where we'll play Hersey's quote.

Brandon Hersey: Do we give what rationale a decision is made off of if it goes not the parent or family's way, right? 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: Mm-hmm. 

Brandon Hersey: Like do we say, “because of X, Y, or Z reason, we can't move your kid into this school?” 

Christie Robertson: And then there was a long dance around the question, where first Dr. Campbell tried to say that they do explain it to parents, because it says right on the first form that they're not guaranteed a choice.

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: Um, this is pretty specific. So, when a family submits a choice application, it says repeatedly on the application, “this does not guarantee your assignment.” That's pretty clear from the start. You're requesting something. There are some factors that will push you up the list. So if you have a sibling at that requested school, that puts you, because we have valued that, right? So if you live within the geozone of that school, that puts you up. So really I think that to me is the clearest. There's no guarantee, but here are the factors that could result in an assignment.

Christie Robertson: And then she said they'd get an answer. And then she finally said the answer is basically like a form letter. And then she said, “no, I know staff do talk to people.”

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: I think I would say on the back end when we tell people, “this is not a guarantee and here are the variables, please give us your five options.” That's where we really do explain that.” We have had people reach out specifically to enrollment planning and say, “Hey, what gives? My kid’s on the waitlist?” There is a standardized response that comes back that does detail some of the policies around that. So that tends to be... But I know that we do engage in specific conversations. Because people reach out. And we do want to explain that. We wanna make that clear.

Christie Robertson: And Director Sarju chimed in. And she said, “I'm not hearing people saying that they're getting an explanation that they want.” So I think Campbell finally had to back off and say, “okay, we don't explain.”

Michelle Sarju: I need you to check my ears. Because what I thought I heard you say is that you tell every family why they were declined. That you have a conversation with the families so they understand. Can you clarify what you said? 

The families that are sending me emails and coming to me 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: mm-hmm. 

Michelle Sarju: Don't understand. 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: Mm-hmm. 

Michelle Sarju: They say they don't get any calls back. They don't get their emails answered. And so there's a disconnect. And so I wanna understand exactly what you said 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: mm-hmm. 

Michelle Sarju: In terms of how you communicate with families when they've been declined.

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: Thank you. Um, I would say first, the starting place is to say, “here are the conditions under which you would receive... or at least be prioritized and be likely to be assigned to a choice school.” None of it is guaranteed. So I think that's really important. 

Michelle Sarju: No, you said that “it's all over the application”. I'm talking about after.

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: So after, um, no. But every family that, um, emails or calls does receive a response. And I can check that with my team, but I know that I have seen the responses. So, again, if that is not the case, I will make sure that that is not the case. Um, but, uh, families that do call or email are... do get a response from someone on the team.

Michelle Sarju: And they're, they're actually getting an explanation? 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: yes. 

Michelle Sarju: Of why the why?

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: yes. 

Michelle Sarju: Okay. 

Joe Mizrahi: Is it, sorry...

Michelle Sarju: Yeah, no, I... but that... I'm gonna say that that is not... that's actually not in line. 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: Okay. 

Michelle Sarju: With what I'm hearing. And I actually don't think it's in line with what we heard tonight during testimony.

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: Okay. 

Michelle Sarju: And so there's a disconnect here. 

Joe Mizrahi: Do they get an explanation like, “here's the criteria that we use”, or is it specific to that family? Is it like “you did not get into this school because of this criteria that we were using and it's because”... you know, I think the example you gave, “because you applied for a fourth grade class. 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: Mm-hmm. 

Joe Mizrahi: And here's the class size right now”? Or is it like, a sort of generic email of “this is the criteria that we use”? 

Marni Campbell, Executive Director of Operations: I think there is a generic email when people email. I know that when people talk on the phone, they get a more, maybe specific explanation. But I will make sure that the team understands that that communication needs to be as clear as possible.

Jasmine Pulido: That took so long to get that answer out. 

Christie Robertson: I know! 

Jasmine Pulido: Oh, so infuriating. 

Anyway, so should we move over to guardrails?

Guardrails- Old and New

Christie Robertson: Guardrails. There were two guardrail discussions. You probably missed that there were two different guardrail discussions if you're not in the thick of things, because it's very confusing. 

Guardrails- Old – Progress Monitoring 

The first one was a progress monitoring on the guardrail about welcoming schools. sense of belonging. And that devolved because it turned out that they had completely changed the criteria by which they measured welcoming schools. So they had to walk that back. 

Here's Director Briggs, who was the one to point out this data manipulation. 

Evan Briggs: If we're saying that our baseline was 56% and the goal was to get to 75%, but then we're using different metrics and ending up with a totally different number set that is actually saying that in the fall of 2021, it wasn't 56%, but actually 81%. 

Christie Robertson: So that is the shortest way I can describe progress monitoring. 

Guardrails- New – Developing interim metrics for the new strategic plan

And then they talked about new guardrails. Do you wanna talk about that up

Jasmine Pulido: Yeah. And, just to remind listeners, guardrails are basically like a "do not do this" list to the superintendent. So “do not do inequitable practices” is basically, like, a generalized version of a guardrail.

Guardrail 1, which was Geographic equity, which is like, “no matter where you live, you should be able to go be able to get a quality education,” right?

After they reviewed the guardrails for the new strategic plan, they talked about metrics they would use to measure whether or not they were following those guardrails.

So, they introduced the metric that we're going to use to measure that. 

Christie Robertson: This is Mike Starosky, assistant superintendent of academics.

Mike Starosky, Assistant Superintendent of Academics: So, Guardrail 1 is geographic equity. The superintendent will not allow a student's school assignment, family income, race or ethnicity, need, or identity to determine access to high standards, rigorous programming, high-quality teaching and supports. 

So our key metrics for Guardrail 1. 

The first one: “the percentage of foundational schools as measured by the Washington School Improvement Framework will increase from X to blank, indicating improvement in consistent high quality educational experiences”.

Two: “The percentage of students receiving a appropriately paced, instruction as measured by their participation in the curriculum, embedded assessments will increase from X to Y”

And finally: completion of advanced courses. “The percentage of students of color furthest from educational justice who complete advanced courses during high school, as defined by Advanced Placement International Baccalaureate classes, college in the high school, tech prep, or Running Start will increase from X to Y.” 

Jasmine Pulido: And then Director Rankin brought up the point of, “these metrics feel like they're for goals. They don't feel like they're for guardrails.”

Christie Robertson: Yeah, I think director Rankin and Director Clark were spot on with pointing out that the three metrics that they laid out for Guardrail 1 did not seem to have anything to do with the guardrail. 

Liza Rankin: So what I'm looking for in an interim metric is evidence that our guardrail is becoming more true. So, if we're saying “the superintendent will not allow a student’s school assignment, family income, race or ethnicity, need, or identity to determine access to these things,” I don't think that the percentage of students overall receiving appropriately paced instruction, measured by curriculum-embedded assessments actually tells me whether or not that's true. Or becoming more true. 

And the same with the completion of advanced courses. I don't see how knowing the percentage of students of color further from educational justice who complete advanced courses would tell me whether or not the superintendent is or isn't allowing a student’s school assignment, family income race, et cetera, et cetera.

So there's something not quite lining up here. These feel a little bit more goal-y than guardrail-y. 

So, yeah, the information for me that's missing is, I wanna know – how do we know whether or not our guardrail is true? And I don't think that the answers to these questions tell me that.

Sarah Clark: I just wanted to add that I had the exact same comment/question. They don't seem to me to be, providing the information that we are meeting the guardrail.

Christie Robertson: So yeah. Then they were like “let's look at Guardrail 5. Maybe that's more like what you're asking for.” And Guardrail 5, I don't think that they had a very full or satisfactory discussion about that. 

Jasmine Pulido: Mm-hmm. I don't even think they got to discuss all the guardrails at that point.

Christie Robertson: No. They were really starting to rush at this point.

Jasmine Pulido: Historically, Christie, do guardrails usually have metrics to measure whether the guardrails are being followed? I’m not clear on that.

Christie Robertson: Yeah. They're supposed to have ways to make sure that they're being followed.

Jasmine Pulido: Okay. And then did we follow that before?

Christie Robertson: This was one of the things that I was making a big stink about last year, was that they stopped monitoring the guardrails. They just started putting them as informational items. I feel like they're going back to paying more attention to them, which I think is really important.

Jasmine Pulido: Got it.

Christie Robertson: Because, you can say, “I want a welcoming school”. But if you never pay any attention to that at the board meetings, student outcomes focused governance guru AJ Crabill would say, “staff are gonna pay attention to what you pay attention to.”

Jasmine Pulido: I think the one thing I'll say about this is that the staff were really open to feedback of changing these metrics if it didn't land.

Christie Robertson: Mm-hmm. 

Jasmine Pulido: So I guess we'll see what happens with that.

General Concluding Notes

Christie Robertson: Yep. They ended up skipping two major items that were on the agenda. The most major item that they skipped was the strategic plan update from Superintendent Jones. And there was lots of very interesting information in here that I really hope that they come back to soon. But I'm gonna link to that slide deck.

Jasmine Pulido: They're supposed to always go through your strategic plan update, so I'm sure they're gonna come back with that next meeting. And I think the only two other things I just wanna add to this discussion:

One, if you watch the entire meeting over seven hours, you definitely see the vibe start to really disintegrate around like the sixth or seventh hour. Just, like, everyone is getting pretty cranky. Everyone is getting confused. And there was, like, having brought up this idea that doing this one meeting to pack and everything is just not sustainable is entirely legit. And there maybe needs to be like a meta conversation put on the agenda about how to rectify the fact that you can't make good decisions if you're in meetings for 6 hours straight. Or even taken enough information in order to even get to the point of having the discussion before decision making. Certainly I think that was demonstrated in this particular meeting. And so, yeah, I totally don't blame the dynamic that starts to play out at the end.

And then, the second is, also would like to see the things that come up in public testimony that we know are gonna come up maybe be prioritized as a higher item. So, for instance, the enrollment planning meeting update I wish was higher up in the agenda. I think that was more important to go over than the guardrails for instance. Because that's what a lot of people came there to listen to. I don't know if that's structurally something that's more possible. but certainly that was what I was thinking about.

Christie Robertson: And certainly they tend to do what we also are guilty of where – spend much more time at this, whatever's at the top, and then they start rushing through the stuff at the bottom. 

Jasmine Pulido: It’s so true! Ok, yeah. Oh, and one more thing I wanna add is I've taken a lot of like notes on facilitation practices, and one of the things that that was pretty common in facilitation groups I've been in is to limit comments to two minutes. And I really feel like if that was a standard practice for these board meetings that they might be able to get through more. I do think that sometimes the directors repeat things multiple times that they don't need to. And that time could be more efficiently used in order to get through more agenda items.

Christie Robertson: I'm Christie Robertson.

Jasmine Pulido: And I'm Jasmine Pulido. 

Christie Robertson: Check out our transcripts and our comprehensive show notes at rainydayrecess.org and contact us at hello@rainydayrecess.org. 

Jasmine Pulido: This podcast is supported by listeners like you. You can do your part at patreon.com/rainydayrecess.

Christie Robertson: If you like our podcast, rate and review us on your podcast app, and spread the word. 

Jasmine Pulido: And thanks to Lester Mayo and the Manzana movement for our music.

Christie Robertson: Stay curious, stay cozy, and thanks for listening to Rainy Day Recess.