Agenda

7:15 Community building question: What is one thing (big or small) on your calendar in the coming weeks that you’re looking forward to?

7:30 Budget update (Ms. Gray)

8:00 Budget group discussion (all)

8:30 PTSA officer search process (Charissa)

8:40 Check-out

Community building question: What is one thing (big or small) on your calendar in the coming weeks that you’re looking forward to?

Budget Update from Ms. Gray:

PPT shared with group – Kimball Budget 2022-23

A budget presentation was shared for review; the private Drive link was omitted.

Background: Allocated staff and funds based mostly on enrollment; some money is flexible and we have a shared leadership model and school staff gets to vote for how that money us used; staff votes on options and it’s a quick process

Feb 28 received from SPS; shared with staff last week; need to done by March 22 done with decisions

Slide: Guiding Principles

Are our resources aligned with our CSIP goals? Does this budget promote equity or reinforce inequities (there is an analysis process)? Why is this budget best for student achievement? Are we consider positions, not people?

Slide: Racial Equity Analysts Questions (5 bullet points)

Good to review with PTSA but also outreached to other parents to ensure we have the right inputs when making budget decisions

This year is interesting b/c we’re coming out of the pandemic and recalibrating

**Slide: CSIP (school improvement plan) Goals **(below are the main goals with additional details noted on each slide)

https://www.seattleschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/kimball_elementary.pdf

• English Language arts

• Math; will also use levy fund here

• Social/Emotional Goals – use family surveys to get feedback and it’s been positive the last few years

• Family Engagement – seek at least 3 authentic conversations with teachers and families

• Eliminate Opportunity Gaps

Levy (city funded grant) Status – how long do those funds last?

• Total of 6 years (with a renewal process during that time)

Enrollment – big part of the budget projection

• Oct 2020 – 424 (actual) and Projected Oct 2021 – 418

• Oct 2022 – 367 students (actual); this was not unusual as numbers dropped across the district but the change is significant

• Enrollment today is 373 (March 9)

• Fall 2022 Projections: 377

Looking at a robust Kinder projection (84); assumption that parents were keeping kids home during pandemic

These numbers drive how many teachers are allocated

Q: Does SPS reach out or ask families why they didn’t come back?

Ms. Gray: I don’t know that they did.

Slide: Another budget and staffing factor: Free & Reduced Lunch (43% eligible at Kimball);

Elementary teacher allocations (>40% poverty)

K and 1st: 18: 1

2nd-3rd: 20:1

4th and 5th: 28:1

Slide: Special Education ratios

We don’t have a projection for these classroom slies yet; we were allocated the same number as we have now

Slide: ELL

We are projected for 111 students in ELL; 70:1 Students:Teacher ratio

Slide: Allocation (these aren’t salaries):

Specific callouts:

We are losing some teaching staff overall (21 this year), but we are getting to keep counseling staff and specialized teachers like art, music, etc. (on the latter, it’s good news considering our enrollment numbers will be down).

We will have pre-school with the new building

Nurse is 1.5 day allocation (so this is a cut)

Qs: Can you create a slide that shows changes over time so we can see where cuts have been made over the years?

Ms. Gray: Yes, I will work on that.

Here is a link to last year’s budget (page 81): https://www.seattleschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Allocation-Book-2021-22-revised-thru-03172021.pdf

Slide: School Equity Tiers

Slide: LAP, Title 1, Equity, Levy breakdowns (other funds the school gets and how we need to use them/not use them)

Slide: Budgeting for Additional Staff

Slide: Possible Configurations (just a draft based on projections – this will likely change before school starts)

of classes: 4 - Ks; 3 - 1st; 3 - 2nd; 3 - 3rd; 2 - 4th; 3 - 5th

We will need to hire a few teachers; some are retiring or changing career paths

Q: Are you worried about hiring?

Ms. Gray: I have to respect people’s decisions to leave and change careers; it may be tough but I think it’ll be OK; we usually have lots of great candidates interviewing at Kimball (usually 60-100 applicants); we have good interns so that’s positive showing people are still going into the field

Q: What is this year’s classroom breakdown?

4 – K; 4 – 1st; 4 – 2nd; 3 – 3rd; 2- 4th; 1 – 4/5th; 2 – 5th

Q: How does recruitment work?

Ms. Gray: We have a recruitment director through SPS and there are job fairs at surrounding districts; we focus on DEI;

Q: How does SPS justify a nurse onsite only 1.5 days?

Ms. Gray: It’s frustrating. We were lucky to get bumped up during the pandemic and get more days but beforehand we were only at 1.5 days. I am trying to figure out how to solve this and make it better. Agree that it’s crazy. This year, we also had an hourly person to help with Covid testing and next year those funds are going away for that staff.

Q: Is the nurse a FTE?

If we wanted to increase a nurse time, it would cost 12, 822 for each additional 0.1 FTE

This budget is where the admin budget process intersects with the PTSA budget and where we want to consider what and how to fund things with the PTSA’s support. A potential ask is helping with more time for a nurse – something to think about.

Also consider paying for Team Read (afterschool reading intervention programs) which is $7k.

Family Support Worker being covered by only the school budget and not PTSA budget (which it has been in the past) could impact school supplies for all kids at the beginning of the year.

Q: Timeline for making these decisions?

March 15: BLT Meeting; Staff vote on Mar 16

Any staffing decisions that PTSA decides to cover needs to be decided by March 22; other budget items for school supplies can be decided later

March 25 – school budgets finalized

Info about School Based Health Center: https://wasbha.org/sbhcs-in-washington-2/

Could be an option for partnership/nurse and medical support

Building Leadership Team Meeting happened recently:

• Family Support Worker (identified as a need)

• Youth Services Assistant/Counselor (identified as a need/this is expensive for an FTE)

As a PTSA, we need to consider allocating any PTSA funds to support a school staff position. We decided to do it last year as an important need and it broke precedent but didn’t want it to become relied on. But now that we know there is still a need and the school’s budget won’t cover it, do we reconsider it as an option? Or do we only want to use budget for items like school supplied, RazKidz, etc. It does free up some money that the school can then use elsewhere.

Q: What do people think about putting budget toward staff positions?

Q: Why did we decide to not keep funding?

The decisions to not continue to fund came from the equity discussion – some schools with a lot of PTSA funds can take care of all of this every year but that doesn’t help SPS make the right decisions; it supports bad behavior and inequity.

SPS sees it as ‘schools making it work’ – and as hard as it is to know our kids may not get all of the same things, we need to push and advocate for SPS to change their ways; it can’t just be OK b/c of the schools that can afford it – that’s what they’ve been doing – the system isn’t fair in that regard.

As a PTSA, we are moving toward advocacy, and pushing state lawmakers to make the right decisions. We are diverting our energy to this work and hopefully make the right decisions. It’s a slow process so we feel a bit stuck in still having to make these hard decisions.

Q: Does anyone have more info on the SBHC option for help?

Not all of the details. They have a partnership with Beacon Hill Elementary School already (it’s a center onsite) so not likely to have another one in the same area of town.

Q: How much does our PTSA typically pay of the school budget?

Charissa will ask Adi and follow up; Adi will also present the budget to PTSA in two weeks

Ms. KT recalls PTSA has paid for tutors and RazKids (things like that) but last year was the first for a staff position

Advocacy Update:

Charissa and Kelly attended D7 meeting to info-exchange; the language access bill that we all made a push on looks like it got approved.

So if you consider how that model worked, we’d do the same to support for nurses and family support workers and more.

Q: PTSA = students too. So what do the students need and want? How are we hearing their voice?

Is there something we can fund that’s FOR them? Have we done something like that before?

Q: Are students ever invited to these working meetings?

It would be exciting to see and try.

Love this idea but it’s challenging – we are still trying to do more to do more to engage more of the “P” in PTSA. And for budgets especially, the timeline is so tight to make decisions. We know it can happen but we welcome ideas for the right way to approach it.

A parent shared positive feedback about Team Read and Raz-Kids; the student-specific anecdote was omitted.

Ms. KT is an advisor for student council. They have a meeting tomorrow and Ms. KT will ask them what they would like to see and what’s important to them.

MB: Based on the proposed budget and reserves that PTSA is looking at and the PTSA budget reco coming, Team Read and RazKids fit into the budget.

Team will follow up on Slack to discuss options and idea on this front. If we need to set up a follow up working meeting to make decisions before the deadline, we will.

PTSA officer search process

Seeking co-Treasurer to work with Adi – what makes a good treasurer? Who do you know that fits this bill?

Enjoys working with numbers; Capable, no need to be an expert; Able to (and enjoys) communicating concepts & answering questions at a non-technical level, makes things easy for others to understand; Ideally commit to 2 years, with first year getting up to speed, 2nd year bringing someone else along to take over; Comfortable navigating PayPal, online banking, spreadsheets and other platforms; If you enjoy being the banker when playing Monopoly, you’d be a great Treasurer