My four years on the Seattle School Board
Centering Students and the Community is Good Governance
When I ran for school board in 2017, I never imagined I would become the first out-LGBTQ and Native (Citizen of the Chippewa Cree Nation) President of the Seattle School Board. I was honored to serve alongside my colleague and friend, as Vice President, Chandra Hampson (Ho-Chunk).
What I started my service journey with was a commitment to centering students and community in how I approached my service and work. I believe every school board director should orient their service in this way.
After being sworn in, NAACP Youth Coalition (N-YC), a newly formed student group, reached out to me to figure out how to collaborate during my term. Specifically, one of the immediate projects we worked on was to create the first #BlackLivesMatterAtSchoolsWeek resolution, which included their demands for an anti-racist District and encouraged district-wide participation.
“This is just one step in a process of making sure that we’re elevating [students’] voice. I think that [the School Board] has an opportunity to have a really critical relationship with them in helping us to make sure that we’re held accountable and also doing things in the best interest of our students of color and historically marginalized populations.” — my comment after passage of the resolution [Seattle Weekly].
Now, four years later, and under the vision and leadership of President Chandra Hampson, we have approved a transformation in our governance model to student-outcomes focused governance (SOFG).
SOFG is a research-inspired framework that relies on the adage: “Student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors change.”
Research shows that the behavior of board members can have a profound influence on student outcomes, including collaborative, non-negotiable student outcome goal-setting and routine monitoring of progress. It is a framework that, combined with public input, allows the board and superintendent to intensify their focus on improved student achievement.
This centering of students hasn’t always been the reality at Seattle Public Schools, but it’s a value I ran on.
What usually happens is that we adults center ourselves in the work and then try to make young people fit into what we’ve created. That approach doesn’t work.
All of my talk of representation, working on the #BlackLivesMatterAtSchoolsWeek resolution, and even the conversations about equity I was having on the campaign trail, people knew what I was about. I ended up receiving a letter in the mail, right away in early 2018, from a student who felt there weren’t enough comic books or graphic novels in SPS libraries with Black or brown heroes as main characters.
I had a friend at Elliott Bay Book Company and I asked her if she could think of any ideas of how to support this student’s request. About a week later she came back and said Elliott Bay Book Company could donate boxes of those types of books to SPS.
I delivered a cart of books to the student at Daniel Bagley Elementary and then delivered another cart of books to Washington Middle School. It was a small, simple response to a bigger issue of representation but it felt so nice to see smiling faces receive all of these books.
Shortly after the experience of delivering books to schools, a young trans student named Luna, and her mom Tyler, contacted me about an issue with the District’s databases.
The District has multiple databases and they weren’t set up to communicate with each other effectively. Basically, students like Luna were named correctly in one database but in another their “dead name” was used. This can be problematic because if, for example, a substitute teacher uses a database for attendance and called out that students dead name it could be both harmful and traumatizing. No kid deserves that.
Luna and her mom were tireless in advocating for a solution. But Directors aren’t supposed to get into the day-to-day of the District. So I worked with the Superintendent to organize a meeting of the right SPs staff members to examine the issue and come up with a solution. Over the course of a few weeks and attending multiple meetings, the District was able to resolve the issue and now all of the District’s databases utilize the name and gender that each student requires.
The database fix had a directly positive impact on trans and gender diverse students — we needed to celebrate. So I initiated the now annual Pride Flag raising ceremony. As part of that inaugural event, Luna joined me to share remarks and help raise the flag.
That summer, the School Board was beginning our process to develop the BEX V Levy, which provides critical funds from Seattle taxpayers to fund our schools, particularly our capital projects like renovations and retrofits.
Because I had developed relationships with the students from N-YC, I could hear directly their perspectives during the Board’s deliberations on what needed to be included in the levy. Not only did these students’ advocacy and collaboration pay off — Rainier Beach High School was at the top of the list for a full reconstruction in the levy — but we required equity be used more strategically in scoring projects for the levy. A first for the District. These students, as well as some passionate advocates from Kimball Elementary, helped us make those realities possible.
Passing the levy was no small feat, but we really had to work to encourage lawmakers in Olympia to allow us to use more of our levy dollars to address not being fully funded by the legislature. We were successful and they increased the cap so we could collect more from our levies. Thank you legislators, especially Sen Joe Nguyen, Rep Nicole Macri, and so many more!
After the levy passed in February 2019, we followed through on our promise to conduct the Board’s work sessions out in the community by meeting in public at one (and eventually three) of the District’s 104 schools.
Springtime in Seattle is always gorgeous and as Board Directors we are invited to accept the graduating class of the schools within our Director districts.
I remember sitting on the stage at Memorial Stadium on a cool June evening, never imagining the imprint that young people would leave on my heart. Midway through graduation ceremony, then-Principal Ted Howard invited up the class valedictorians — all 18 of them for their portion of the program.
Every valedictorian stood in a line in front of the podium holding a 3x5 index card with a few sentences scribbled on it. They recited a shared speech — each delivering two to three sentences before the next person walked up to the microphone to speak their part.
It was maybe the sixth student in when it was clear this speech wasn’t your normal goodbye-to-high-school speech. The valedictorians called out every adult in the audience about the impending climate crisis.
“What kind of world are you graduating us into? Our planet is on fire! You have ten years to aggressively address our warming planet or we won’t have a future worth graduating into!”
They came with data, they came with evidence, they came with their stories, experiences, and fears.
Those students used their power and spoke the truth to us all. What they said has never left me.
It was around this time, after months of working to bring the conversation forward as a District and with the help of my former Board colleague Director Rick Burke, we created a task force. This was the first task force I created and it was designed to elevate recommendations to the Board on a proposal I had been passionate about called Project Labor Agreements. In our case, we named it a Student and Community Workforce Agreement (SCWA) and those who helped us create it were Black leaders, students, labor partners, CTE educational experts, and developers. The District was cautious and concerned about our hopes but remained open to the possibilities.
By July 2019, the Student & Community Workforce Agreement Task Force was approved. The opportunity to improve our workforce by prioritizing students, student families, BIPOC, women, and low-income people on our construction projects and execute real economic justice in our communities drove this work for the next two years.
By late August, the School Board heard about a Youth Climate Strike that was to happen the next month. Armed with the experience from the Garfield graduation, I tried desperately to prepare a resolution supporting the students and listening to their demand for an excused absence to attend the strike. The Superintendent nor my fellow Board Directors supported my resolution. Once again, adults centered ourselves.
By Friday, September 20, 2019, the world’s largest youth climate strikes took place with millions of young people illustrating their power to demand significant action needed to protect our planet and our very way of life.
This experience of not being able to be responsive to our students really fired me up and I never backed down again. Almost immediately, Seattle Public Schools Senior Legal Counsel Ronald Boy and I started working on revising Superintendent Procedure 3121(which now states as of December 2020):
“WAC 392–401–020 permits school districts to define additional categories or
criteria for excused absences. The following is an additional category and criteria of the district: Participation in one civic engagement activity each semester. Participation in civic engagement provides students an opportunity to learn firsthand the important role each of us can have in our democracy and communities. Civic engagement activities can include, but are not limited to, legislative visits, campaigning, peaceful protests, awareness walks, or advocacy efforts.”
Now, Seattle Public Schools allows students two excused absences per year. It was young people and their collective power who made this a necessary change. At around this same time, we approved one of the most inclusive dress codes in the country, which was driven by students and families.
By late 2019, newly-elected Director Rivera-Smith and I began scheming. With the advocacy of young people concerned about the climate crisis and both of our interests in environmental justice and protection, we wanted to use our position on the Board to commit the district to transformational change for the environment. The students demanded action and we understood that the district needed to do its part to address the climate crisis. Thus, began a year-long process to craft a climate resolution that centered students and community.
Not only do young people clearly have power, they have a voice and are writing books.
Azure Savage, a queer, Black, trans high school student while writing their book, had it published in 2019, entitled “You Failed Us: Students of Color Talk Seattle Schools.” In it, Azure illuminates common struggles with identity, mental health faced by marginalized youth, and the trauma of the District’s Highly Capable Cohort (HCC). HCC is a problematic model of instruction for a select group of “gifted” students but has only perpetuated segregation and racism in schools, it is overwhelmingly white.
At a certain point, when you keep students at the center and let them use their power for change, you can’t unknow what you know and learn.
In January 2020, after months of collaboration and discussion, the School Board formally approved a partnership with Technology Access Foundation at Washington Middle School that effectively dismantled the HCC model to make way for a STEM-focused academy [We formally dissolved HCC in May 2021]. Centering the experiences Azure and their peers shared in their book made this possible.
The next day after our HCC vote, KUOW ran a story about teacher misconduct in our schools and harm to our students. I asked my colleague Director Brandon Hersey to join me on stage at the Quincy Jones Auditorium at Garfield High School with the express and singular intent to just listen to students and families stories of harm and abuse by teachers. It was shocking and revealing.
Brandon and I committed to change. He took the lead on revising Policy No. 3246: Restraint, Isolation, & Other Uses of Physical Restraint. [As of September 9, 2021 — the Board formally an updated Policy No. 3246. Read it here.]
In spite of all that was taking place, I had a previously scheduled meeting with students at Meany Middle School in Capitol Hill. I was invited to visit with the ASB class and I remember feeling so grateful they entrusted me to be in community with them.
After our hour together, I asked the students what they need or would like to see since they were speaking to the current School Board President. The absolute first thing they mentioned was, “we want LGBTQ curriculum and history in our schools.”
What they didn’t know was that I had already started crafting a resolution based on a community conversation organized by Luna, her mom Tyler, and my former colleagues from Pride Foundation.
I reworked the resolution and collaborated with organizations such as, NAACP, Pride Foundation, GSBA, LGBTQ Allyship, Seattle Pride, Ingersoll, and Gender Justice League on a final version of the resolution. It was on our agenda for March 18, 2020. I felt so excited we could move such an exciting resolution forward with students at the center and created with community.
Then, COVID hit. Seattle Public Schools was one of the first large urban districts to close buildings.
Much of the response to the pandemic met the moment, some didn’t. I believe the Board and Superintendent made the right choices when we did, including a more student-centric grading policy that received national attention for its innovation and for centering students.
Due to the nature of the pandemic and the closures, legally we were only allowed to focus on work directly related to responding to the crisis. That meant no new resolutions, policies, or projects.
The state started to slowly open back up in May and the student-centered, community-developed LGBTQIA+ Inclusion Resolution was finally allowed to route through the Seattle School Board’s approval process. This historic resolution (SPS Resolution No. 2019/20–28) contained the following provisions with corresponding ties to policy and procedure:
- The District supports all students and staff by affirming their right to be their authentic selves, including the right to be open about their sexual orientation or gender identity and to speak about their personal and family lives in the same manner as their non-LGBTQIA+ peers
- Requires all new construction to include multi-stall gender neutral restrooms
- Audits all buildings to identify space to convert a restroom to gender neutral
- Creates an LGBTQIA+ studies course
- Requires LGBTQIA+ history, contributions, stories, and achievements be explicitly included in all English and history curriculum
- Requires one school to be named in honor of a local or national LGBTQIA+ hero
- Created Policy № 3211: Gender Inclusive Schools Trans & Gender Expansive Student Rights
Two weeks later a racist white police officer in Minneapolis murdered George Floyd, a Black man. And it was filmed.
I immediately reached out to my then Vice President, Director Chandra Hampson and Director Hersey. We needed to respond to this moment and we needed our students to inform that response.
We began gathering ideas and insights from the community on the development of the resolution, titled “2019/20–38 Affirming SPS Commitment to Black students.” Director Hersey worked directly with WA-BLOC and N-YC to ensure student voice and needs were represented. We pulled this resolution together in a matter of days and approved it within the month of June 2020. It specifically:
- Affirms our belief that Black Lives don’t just matter, they are worthy, beloved, and needed.
- Calls for the immediate and indefinite suspension of Seattle Police Department officers in Seattle Public Schools.
- Requires the Board to urgently focus on five Board policies that are focused on student interactions and safety to revise with an anti-racist lens
- Requires creation of Black studies courses
- Requires the Board introduce Policy № 0040, Anti-Racism
After all the work we’d done and considering the pandemic’s impact on student’s lives and traditions, such as no prom and no in-person graduations, I decided to do something special. I raised more than $4,000 for 2020 graduates to plant one tree per graduate in their honor [covered in King5]. The Alliance for Education hosted the fund and One Tree Planted planted trees in the Pacific Northwest. The Alliance continues to accept donations to this day to plant a tree for graduates moving forward.
The month of June was a busy month. We passed the LGBTQIA+ resolution, we passed our Resolution on our commitment to our Black students, and we were formally adopting the recommendations of the Student and Community Workforce Agreement (SCWA) Task Force.
By July 2020, we agreed to enter into a formal agreement with our labor partners, the District, and our contractors.
The reason a Student and Community Workforce Agreement is so transformative is that it is among the first in the nation to build a construction training and employment program that places equity and students, former students and student families at its center.
It is true racial and economic justice built into how the District does its business.
The agreement creates access into high-wage, no-debt construction careers for students, families and neighborhoods that need it most. Black, indigenous, and all people of color, those from economically distressed zip codes, women, and veterans need this systemic change for the opportunity to achieve economic stability and achieve stronger career outcomes.
This is my proudest achievement and the best part about Seattle Public Schools’ SCWA is that it will have direct and meaningful impact on people’s lives. The City of Seattle’s CWA (their version of SCWA) put almost $21 million dollars into black and brown communities since starting their program.
The SCWA means real jobs, real wages, and benefits. It’s real security and economic opportunity. (The SCWA was signed on October 1, 2020 and is already being deployed on Rainier Beach HS and all other BEX V Levy projects).
The 2020 election notwithstanding, there were still a handful of exciting policy and long-term visioning on the horizon, including a true student-led, community collaborated climate resolution and bringing student representatives onto the Board.
Starting in the summer of 2020, Director Brandon Hersey and I worked with the N-YC on an exciting new policy that both our students desired and us two Board Directors had been mulling, as well. We met with N-YC, Jon Greenberg and Rita Green, and Ronald Boy on crafting not only a student-centered policy but one that was created with and by students.
The awesome young people from N-YC prepared presentations, met with each Director, organized conversations and feedback from their networks and became experts in how to create and pass policy at Seattle Public Schools.
Policy №1250, School Board Student Members (officially approved in February 2021) requires the School Board have three (-to seven depending on the Board’s needs) student members of the School Board who will have a committee assignment and be tasked with working on one of our four committees, excluding Executive Committee (Operations Committee, Audit & Finance Committee, and Student Services, Curriculum & Instruction Policy Committee). Students will be brought on next fall.
Simultaneously, the climate resolution I had been working with Director Rivera-Smith, students, community, and environmental organizations was coming up for its final vote. In February 2021, we passed unanimously the “100% Clean Energy Resolution (Resolution № 2020/21–18), Committing to transitioning the District to 100% clean, renewable energy with the goal of improving student health and the creation of more sustainable and equitable communities.” Some of the major provisions include:
- The District commits to 100% clean energy (which does not include natural gas) for our electricity by 2027,
- The District commits to 100% clean energy for all other sectors (HVAC, cooking, transportation) by 2040
- Requires the District to include climate curriculum into science courses
- And creates a task force to support implementation, planning, and monitoring the progress
And, finally, in advance of the Buildings, Technology, Academics/Athletics (BTA) V Levy, for the first time, I worked with student groups, parent/family groups, educators and principals to create a set of guiding principles for levy development. The process took more time but each group from the school community ecosystem got a say in the values and intentions we all agreed to for the levy. It made the whole process more meaningful and centered on our people.
Given the excitement about the beginning of 2021, the year was starting off on a great foot!
I was also contacted by the young people who are part of UNEA (Urban Native Education Alliance) because they wanted to collaborate on a Resolution to honor and observe Billy Frank, Jr. Day on March 9. I worked with UNEA, Muckleshoot, Duwamish, and Suquamish on any feedback on the resolution.
On March 9, we passed Resolution № 2020/21–22 “Designating March 9, 2021 as a day of observance recognizing and honoring the life and legacy of Billy Frank Jr., Nisqually, with leaders from the Muckleshoot Tribe, whose efforts spurred the Fish Wars movement, reaffirming treaty rights in Tribes’ usual and accustomed areas.”
In March 2021, we were heading toward reopening and the Governor required students to come back more broadly than our plans. We were focused on bringing back students with most need first. His plan was about student mental health — which I can’t argue — but we had to rearrange our planning.
Reopening took a lot of time and so did bringing on a new Superintendent, Dr. Brent Jones, to serve as interim while the Board finds a permanent replacement.
Then, in May 2021, the Board finally had its formal opportunity to dismantle the HCC program and return highly capable services back to neighborhood schools. This decision was huge and I am so grateful to Azure and all students who fought relentlessly for this problematic program to change.
Dismantling HCC means we are officially desegregating our schools.
The School Board is intent on maintaining the momentum toward becoming an anti-racist institution. Holding close the impact of George Floyd on our heartset and mindset, we sought ways to think differently about how the principles of racial justice can be implemented throughout the District.
Based on conversations the Board had with students and community since June 2020 and the summer of racial justice, the Board both required the implementation of an outdoor education model (as a pilot) and the District adopted a participatory budgeting model with a small pool of funds thanks to the leadership of Directors Hersey and Hampson. This process surfaced an opportunity to eliminate a security position within our District.
As of May 2021, the District will instead have its first-ever Restorative Justice Manager. And we are likely allocating over $1.3 million to outdoor and community education (from dollars received through federal COVID relief dollars).
And the School Board and the school district really owe a debt of gratitude to all young people and students. For pushing us. For holding us accountable. To demanding urgent changes. And for continuing to believe in their power and the benefit of collaboration.
As I was working on this chronology in May 2021, a tenant protection idea I had been mulling and advocated for at city council was approved. I presented this idea to Councilmember Kshama Sawant and she took the idea and made a really strong bill.
On May 7, 2021, the Seattle City Council approved a ban on evictions for students, student families, and school staff (from teachers to custodians) during the academic year. Endorsed by Seattle Education Association, MLK Labor, El Centro de la Raza, and Southeast Seattle Education Coalition, this tenant protection is now law. Read more about it here
In addition to transforming our governance model, by approving Student Outcomes Focused Governance, the Board spent the year preparing the Buildings, Technology, Academics/Athletics (BTA) V Levy. This critical Levy fills in major gaps due to the state not fully funding basic education. The District relies heavily on these levies to operate the District.
The District presented the BTA V Levy in October 2021 to the Operations Committee. When it was first presented, the package seemed adequate and appropriate. There was $1,000,000 for clean energy investments, based on our February 2021 clean energy resolution, and $1,000,000 for gender neutral restrooms, based on the June 2020 LGBQTIA+ inclusion resolution. At the time, this felt like a positive step.
Shortly afterward, advocates, community members, and young people began reaching out with a plea to add more money for clean energy investments. It seemed like it was maybe too late to add funds or even disrupt the process but I couldn’t turn my back on this issue. I care deeply about protecting the environment.
I created a resolution with Operations Deputy Superintendent Podesta, Chief Legal Counsel Narver, and with Dr Jones and President Hampson in the loop. I presented an amendment to add $18,000,000 for clean energy investments on the day before the Board voted for the BTA V Levy and it was unanimously approved as part of the Levy package going to voters. It was a huge lift but so worth it.
One poignant reflection I have from my term on the Seattle School Board: seek out students, work with them, center them in all we do at Seattle Public Schools. Youth are the truth and they won’t let you forget it.
When I ran school board, I knew I wanted to leave the District better than I found it. I truly hope I made a positive impact — this four years of service was one of the great joys of my life.
