SPS Budget Realities and Students Using AI. Plus, Do Bite of Seattle Texts Vindicate Mayor Wilson?

0:00This is CityCast Seattle. I'm Jane Seahoe, and here's what Seattle's talking about. Your kids soon be taught by a chatbot. Plus we're breaking down the minute-by-minute text between the Seattle Police Department and Mayor Wilson's office after the bite of Seattle shootings. Finally, if you remember, sassy squirrel season, but first, what is the vibe at Seattle Public Schools after this almost strike? I'm Brett Hamill, writer, performer, cartoonist, and SPS parent, filling in for Jane this week, and joining me to discuss is Seattle Times Education reporter Claire Bryan. Hey Claire. Hey, how's it going? And we've also got publisher, editor, and reporter at Publicola, Erica C. Barnett. Welcome. It's great to be here. Now, let's just get right into it. On Wednesday morning last week, school was back in session, and it felt pretty normal overall. But parents and teachers and probably lots of other folks were breathing a big sigh of relief at 11 p.m. the night before, when the union representing the teachers,

1:02the Seattle Education Association, announced it had reached an agreement with Seattle Public Schools. Claire, can you briefly tell us how this all got worked out, and for lack of a better word, who won? Yeah, it's pretty crazy that we all just went to school on Wednesday, and everything was kind of normal because the days leading up to school really felt like there was going to be a strike parents, and kids were kind of trying to scramble for childcare, figure out what was going on. A lot changed on Tuesday and Tuesday night, I would say. The superintendent had press conferences on Monday and Tuesday, and I think it wasn't until Tuesday that we were starting to hear this messaging that things were going really positively. Folks that I was talking to at the union were also hopeful, and that I think surprised everyone. I was surprised Tuesday night that they actually reached an agreement, and were able to close on something before the school year started. It must have required lots of really quick decisions right

2:07in the end, because the week leading up to it, we were definitely hearing that they were pretty stalled on some big issues. One of the biggest ones being special education. Yes, and can you get into more what was being proposed in what the union rejected? Yes, so the superintendent was trying to change special education. In Seattle Public Schools, there's four different pathways of where special education students, or what types of services special education students get, and the superintendent was wanting to kind of rework the system, I think with the hope that it was more efficient, and that there weren't duplicative staff in classrooms. I think he had a sense that there were some classrooms where there was almost too many adults in the room, and then other classrooms that there weren't. My understanding was that he was hoping to reduce the number of pathways, so options, and have those available at every school, instead of students having to travel to a different school to get one of the four specific pathways.

3:10So only have two pathways, but have them be at more schools. And the union felt very stressed out about those types of changes, worried about, first of all, that maybe students wouldn't get specifically what they need, like they get forced into a pathway where they weren't getting enough, or they would get forced into a pathway where they're actually getting too much. And then they were also worried that it would result in a reduction of adults in the room and staff. The agreement that the union and the district decide on can often have ratios of teacher to student ratios, so that guarantees for teachers that, okay, I stuff my change, but I know that I have only this amount of kids. And so they were really worried that they wouldn't feel protected in that way, that they would all of a sudden, either there would be layoffs, or they would have more students than they could handle. What they decided on the agreement is basically to do a pilot program, like do a year or so of research, then try out this new system for at some schools, and then decide later how it gets

4:15expanded. And it depends on who you talk to. Like I think in the beginning, some of us felt that, oh, that's kind of kicking the can down the road, and that's maybe a compromise on the district's part. But then I've also talked to teachers that are still feel pretty worried about it, and feel like they did give up a lot of control to the district by agreeing upon joint partnership to figure this out and change this. But I think they still feel worried that we are still going to have really big changes, even if they happen in the next two to three years. So another case of kick the can down the road just a little bit further. Yeah, yeah. Erica, as someone who does not have a kid, does not apparent, how does this impact you? Or do you feel the electricity in the air of frustrated parents as we're entering into a potential strike like this? Well, I certainly do. I mean, having lived in Seattle for a long time now. I mean, it does feel like this is just a perennial problem, whether it's special education, whether it's student teacher ratios, whether it's the potential closure of schools. There is like a regular panic over, you know, our regularly scheduled

5:19freak out. And so, you know, I wonder how much we are sort of failing to solve these structural problems. Claire, I mean, does it feel like this is just sort of pushing the problems forward until the next potential strike and the next one and the next one? Is there any way to break this cycle of last minute bringsmanship exactly? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about this a lot about why is the bargaining timeline in the summer. I think other districts, they started a little earlier. And I do feel like it creates this panic right before school starting to answer your question. It's hard to say. I think there's a lot of hope that the new superintendent is going to make some big changes that are actually, you know, going to be lasting and reduce this panic. So SPS went on strike in 2022 and then also in 2015. Prior to that, they hadn't been on strike for 30 years. I do think it's kind of common in large urban school districts and liberal cities to strike

6:21sort of frequently. I don't know if SPS is an outlier in that sense. I don't know if any huge structural changes are going to change. And then there's never going to be this panic in the landscape. I think there is a lot of hope that the superintendent, they feel like has the capabilities to make these big swings in ways that other superintendents have in. But I think we're still kind of waiting to see what he actually delivers. One of the things that struck me was, and what is not discussed at all is just the structural budget deficit under funding statewide. We heard Ben Scholdner say, we're broke. And is that an accurate way of describing it? Is there things that can happen in the legislature on a state level that will address this directly? And I would address this to you as well, Erica. I think it depends who you talk to. There is this question about budgets and budgets shift in change. And are we really broke or are we just in a

7:27really risky financial situation, which is we don't have a fun balance like other school districts have to spend. We don't have a reserve, an institutional chunk of money to spend that makes you feel like you're financially in a good place. I will say the superintendent has been very clear about, yes, there might be declining enrollment. Yes, the state under funds education across the board. But SPS also has made decisions where they essentially have decided to fund a lot more positions than what the state gives them. So structurally, he says that it's not just that you can enroll your way out of this budget crisis. You can't just add a bunch more kids and that would solve the problem. Like structurally, the way the district has decided to fund positions is you're just always going to be broke or you're always going to not have enough money because you're you're deciding to fund a bunch more positions than what the state actually provides. So he seems

8:28pretty determined to change that. He wants to make sure that the adults, the staff are efficiently doing all of the jobs. He's even talked about like central office staff could go into schools and do some work. Like he really wants to change it so that structurally, the district is not in this position every single year where they're spending way more than what the state gives them. And then I think he also obviously advocates for yes, the state should fund. I should give him more money. Yeah. Erica, if you were in charge of legislature, what would you do to fix this perennial problem in school funding? Yeah, I mean, thank God I'm not in charge of the legislature because I actually have no idea. But I will say, I mean, I think that this is obviously a perennial problem. I also think that we are not as bad as a lot of school districts across the country. I mean, if we look at Seattle Public Schools and our performance and just the amount that we pay teachers, it is

9:32significantly better than a lot of the other places in the country where you know, you have the state taking over school districts because they're so poorly performing. And I think that's something we can keep in mind when we have these kind of perennial threats to strike. I do have a question though about kind of the structural problems at the school district itself, not state-wide, but just in the school district. It seems like we're always getting new superintendents that always have new ideas how to fix the problems. And I'm curious if that is part of the problem too. I think so. I mean, we talked last time I was on the show about just the turnover with super intendents. A superintendents will last about three years in Seattle Public Schools. So obviously, I think the hope is for longer. Sholdonner has said, you know, he wants to have a family in Seattle and stay a really long time. I'm curious to see if that's going to be true just because it seems like he's very ambitious and you know, has just taken on more and more and more in his career.

10:32Like if you look at his resume, which isn't to say, maybe he will just keep those ambitions to making Seattle Public Schools the best school district, but I'm curious. Do we have to worry about any other potential strikes or is this pretty much ironed out for this school year at least? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, technically, the membership of the union has not voted to authorize it. So it's not official yet. But I think the general consensus is that they've recommended the membership to go ahead and vote that. So I think the census that it will be, they will be meeting on Friday to start voting. So I'm going to take it from you as a SPS parent that I can at least be chill about this for a good long time now, at least until next time. Yeah, hopefully for three years, the contract will be for three years. So, Oh, even better. Yeah. Good to know. Okay, let's take a break. And when we come back, let's talk AI in Seattle schools. How is AI being used in Seattle schools this year? Slides from a recent SPS teacher training have

11:48circulated online that layout a policy called Seattle AI literacy or sale that suggests AI integration is fully underway, which has created a bit of a preemptive backlash among some parents. Now, I know the LA has banned access to all AI and New York City has restricted it to high school and up and called for a one year moratorium in AI use in schools. Claire, what are SPS plans for AI? Yeah, it's a question that I think we're all looking out for if there's any upcoming changes. The superintendent has said he's going to be making announcements about changes in technology in schools in the next couple of weeks. And I'm really curious if that includes changes to AI or if it more includes changes to laptops and other sort of hardware. But yes, the slides that have circulated. And if you look on the district's website, their policy, their handbook, it's got a lot of guard rails around, you know, we're going to use AI appropriately. It's going to be for the intention

12:52of best education and improving education. And the AI goals are, I think, could be read as kind of embracing AI. They're like, AI should be used to help make more personalized learning. AI should be used to create more responsive teaching where they can respond quicker to maybe student grades or student answers that are entered in. If you go online, you can see they've reduced the number of products that use AI. They say now that the only things that use AI are magic school AI, Kianva, and Adobe. But I mean, I've heard anecdotally from parents and teachers that there's work around that like students are able to still get on and be using AI. And so there's a lot of distrust that kind of what the district has set out is the goals. Maybe it's not what's actually happening in the classrooms. I get the impression that a lot of overburden teachers are actually fairly amenable to this sort of automation in teaching because it definitely cuts down on their workload. It

13:55allows them to assess where students are at a lot easier. Maybe SPS in the teachers union might actually find common ground on that and also might find themselves on the outs with actual parents who don't want their children using AI products. Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know for sure, but I think what you're suggesting could could be the case. It probably depends on what teacher you ask. I know that teachers give they have a classroom full of kids who have all different types of reading abilities and they want a tailor a homework question to different types of kids. AI can help tailor that language so they don't have to think through like how do I write this a little bit more simple for one student and a little more advanced for another student or with like language and translation. There's been some useful things, but I think it's also a slippery slope because you still want the teacher to be teaching. Yes. That would be where I would stand on the issue as well. Of course. I know you have some strong opinions as someone who actually types things onto a keyboard

15:01for a living. What do you think about all this? What do you think about the use of AI in schools? I mean, yeah, it does. It's not just sort of perspective use of AI in schools. It's the way AI is being used in schools right now across the country. I mean, you have situations that I don't know how bad it's gotten at SPS yet, but where you have like teachers that are using AI to write lesson plans that make assignments and then students are using AI to do the homework and then AI to make the homework look like AI didn't do it. Then the teachers are using the AI to grade the homework. There's not really a human in the loop and when you're talking about education, that really matters. When schools are saying things like we need to teach AI literacy, it reminds me of when it was all about coding, we need to teach everybody to code. I think we keep following for the same thing over and over again from these companies and I don't really know why. I understand they have a lot of money and that they're putting Chromebooks into the hands of students in a lot of other districts.

16:04Microsoft, but we don't have to say yes to every shiny new promise that the big tech companies come through with because frankly, I mean, they say I think like yeah, maybe it's the whole future, but history would suggest probably not. Do we want to sort of experiment on a generation of children that they don't need to be talking to each other, they just need to be talking to their chatbot? I do think that there's growing numbers of parents that are very resistant and feel kind of similar where they're saying like why does this have to be the foundation of what is actually in school? Like why can't this just be something that kids can explore and learn more about if they want to? I do think it is an oversimplification to say oh every kid just needs to learn about it and be able to use it and manipulate it and it reminds me of we used to just think of social media as like this inevitable thing that kids are going to get on and use and it's like now

17:06years later the company is actually putting in some restrictions in place because you know, it has been so harmful and so like why are we accepting this as the inevitable? Yes, it makes me wonder is apparent what is the settlement going to look like for this whole catastrophe? Okay, one last question for you Clara, while we have you here, SPS human resources is being audited and the head of HR is out on leave currently according to KOW, children are wants to improve the district's investigation process, what's going on there? Yes, so there have been sort of long standing complaints about the district's HR investigation process of a teacher or a principal, there's been a feeling that these investigations take a long time, teachers are out on administrative leave for a really long time, there's not a clear transparency about why and so the superintendent from pretty early on said, you know, we need to fix this, we need to make sure investigations go quicker and teachers are either

18:09disciplined or they go back to the classroom and they're cleared, the school board is formally doing an audit process, they have also been reviewing and working to sort of fix these processes and then in the agreement that the union reached, there's like stronger language around transparency and notifying teachers about investigations, there's stronger transparency around how the disciplinary process works, there's like a commitment to decreasing the length of investigations all around trying to fix the problems and yes, the HR director being on leave, we don't exactly know how that ties into all of this but one can imagine that if the department is being reviewed, maybe there's something going on there. Oh, well provocative, well hopefully we will soon find out, but for now the kids are in school and the teachers are back, uh, mining their peas and cus. Claire, thanks once again for joining us today.

19:10Yeah, thanks for having me. And Erica's going to stick around, let's take a break and when we come back, let's talk about the bite of Seattle shootings timeline. Further investigation into the timeline following the bite of Seattle shootings in July shows that the SPD new critical details within an hour of the shooting, including the fact that it was not a random mass shooting or a terrorist attack, but they didn't put any of that info out until four to five hours later. Erica, you've reviewed all these teams messages and texts and whatever, what can you tell us about those those hours between the shooting and the eventual press conference? Yeah, so the city put out all these texts and teams messages last week and they only include the ones that are with the mayor's office. So we don't actually know of sort of what was going on on the SPD side. Why just let me stop you there already. Why do we not get access to all those other texts? That's a great question. SPD has not put them out. And as you probably know, Brett, um,

20:12SPD is much more reluctant to put out public information whenever you do a public disclosure request, it always takes way longer. They're very slow about releasing information. I think they should release a similar, um, you know, tranche of texts and teams messages, but they haven't yet. So, so what we know is what was going on in the mayor's side and any participation SPD had in that. So basically, there has been a question about this timeline between when the shooting happened and when there was a press conference around a little before 11 o'clock. What these messages show us is that SPD knew by about 730 and informed the mayor's office by about 730 that this was not a random shooting. And from that point on, um, SPD sort of has the reins as far as when this information goes out to the public. This is information that SPD always controls when there's a shooting. Typically, you know, what will happen is, you know, like, let's say there's a shooting, it's getting attention from the press. The camera show up at the site. And so the police chief goes down, talks to the

21:17cameras. Um, in this case, the mayor wanted to go to Seattle Center, um, starting at about 630. She started asking, you know, when should I go down? When should I go down? Um, and SPD just kind of kept saying this is not a good idea, you know, it shouldn't come down, um, and not releasing that information. Around 830, the mayor's office started asking SPD, why have you not put out any information beyond an initial post on X saying that there have been shots fired? That was a last thing that SPD said before this press conference, you know, some five hours later, Jonas Beganthali, um, who was the mayor's, uh, temporary press secretary at the time. Basically, he was saying this is a fucking PR disaster. And, you know, and you guys need to get your shit together. Sarah Smith, the chief operations officer for SPD, you know, just kept saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, it's not going to be until after 9. And so bottom line, I mean, the delay was on SPD. It was not on

22:21the mayor. And there has been a media narrative. And I think it's continuing that the mayor was responsible for information not getting out. SPD determines that. And I mean, there are good reasons for that. If it is an active shooting, for example, or if, you know, there's a suspect at large, which there was, I can see them, you know, saying, let's not put this information out for a while. But the fact is, you know, unless, you know, beyond that press conference, unless you were tuned into that, SPD had no widely available public information between 6.30 at night and 108 in the morning when they finally put up a blog post on their blog, which is just, you know, an excessive amount of time. And if you were a casual news consumer, the conclusion you would draw from most of the TV and radio news coverage is that this was a horrible failure of the mayor. Yes. And that shows her an experience, et cetera. Why are they massaging it this way? Because the mainstream media want Katie Wilson to fail. It's hard to reach a lot of

23:22conclusions that don't involve bias and narrative. And I mean, those are kind of different things. I think that the narrative since the beginning and actually since the campaign has been that Katie Wilson is inexperienced, doesn't know what she's doing. And, you know, it's constantly tripping over her own feet. And I think there is, you know, there's some basis for that. I mean, she has made a lot of kind of misstep. She's had a lot of turnover in her office. But it doesn't mean it's true about everything. And, you know, I think there's frankly a lot of misogyny that goes into this narrative, had dare this young woman do this thing. And that is just kind of across the board. And I think it's playing out in this SPD narrative too. I think the media is very reluctant to sort of blame SPD after spending years creating the idea that it's woefully understaffed and so beleaguered. And officers, you know, are it's just amazing that anybody would be willing to work here to then turn around and say that SPD fuck this up really badly would be a big turn for the media.

24:30And I just don't think that most of the mainstream media have been willing to go there. That gap between when the shootings happened and when the SPD finally, you know, gave a press conference, that was when the police chief at the time and his top two deputies were frantically trying to fly back to Seattle because they were out of town. Where does that fit into the whole narrative? Is that is that what you think happened? Well, I think that was part of it. So former police chief Sean Barnes was in Dallas at a conference, you know, one of the issues that I've written about a lot is that he spent just a ton of time. And I would say an excessive and anordinate amount of time compared to other police chiefs. You're one of the only media outlets that has covered his absenteeism at all. Yeah, it's weird. I mean, I think it's a huge story or it was a huge story. I think it's a huge part of the reason that he got fired, although Katie Wilson has not chosen to badmouth him. I think because that would violate a settlement that they both signed saying that they would not disparage each other. But anyway, in this case, he was at a conference in Dallas and he needed to be briefed.

25:33I think there was a section of, you know, a part of the delay between like 830 and, you know, 930 10 where he was just kind of getting up to speed from afar. We don't really know about that. Again, because we don't have those SPD messages, those might shed some light on that. But, but yeah, I mean, he had to get briefed. He wanted to have a teleconference. He had to bring all these elected officials together and that took time and added to that delay. Do you think that the Wilson administration sees this investigation as vindicating their response? And do you think any changes will come in terms of emergency response to this? Yeah, I mean, I do think some changes are already happening. They didn't get a lot of coverage. Again, because I think the mainstream media doesn't like Wilson and wants her to fail. But the city is now going to require, they are going to require that no more than three members of the command staff be out of town at one time, which would prevent a situation where you have the chief and his two deputy chiefs all out of town

26:38at the same time, which I mean, just creates chaos to a certain extent, because you've got an assistant chief in charge. And in this case, there are also communications people who are out of town. So it's kind of, you know, not to say the B team, like they, it's not that they aren't qualified to do this stuff, but it's just good to have the people in charge in town. So that is changing. The city plans to release information within an hour of an incident whenever possible in the future. So that will also be a change on the SPD side. So, and there's going to be some changes to alert Seattle, which is an app that I actually hadn't heard of. I guess that maybe that makes me yeah, okay, that makes me feel a little better. So I don't know who all is on this app, but I think it's the last time I checked it has about 80,000 subscribers. And that pushes out basically push notifications about, you know, various kinds of major incidents. So they are going to put some guidelines around the kind of information that goes out and how often so that people will hopefully

27:40get better updates more often, at least those who subscribe to that. So some changes are happening. There's also an actual formal investigation going on by the Office of Inspector General and the report on that is supposed to come out this fall, but I think we'll know more when that comes out. And so yeah, I mean, I think the release of these messages was in fact, vindicating for the Wilson administration, but I do think that the media is largely portraying them in the opposite light. I think I saw a third story on a city council member Bob Kettle saying that the mayor did a bad job and shouldn't have fired the former police chief. So you know, that's the narrative we're going to keep getting spoon fed. Will the OIG report shed any actual light? Or do you think it will be mostly pro forma? I think it might shed some actual light. I think they're taking this quite seriously. It's unusual for the OIG to do this kind of report on do something so specific as, you know, basically, why was the press conference delayed five and a half hours?

28:44Ultimately, doesn't this seem a little absurd in general? We're talking like people died and we're talking about the timing of a press conference. How how did we get here? You're absolutely right. This focus on why did the press conference get delayed? I mean, you would not see this with another mayor. I just I cannot imagine the press turning against Bruce Harrell. If he said, well, we're waiting for police and it's an active scene and we don't want to put anybody at risk and, you know, I think they wouldn't swallow that. So I think it's entirely because it's this mayor. Well, we're going to leave it there for today. Thanks for joining us, Erica. Thanks, Brett. That's all for today here at CityCas Seattle, unless you're a neighbor, in which case, stay tuned for this week's bonus segment on Sassy Squirrel season, aka this season we're currently entering. If you're not already a neighbor and you want to hear that, you can pause the episode and join us now at membership.citycast.fm-seattle. I'm your fill-in host, Brett Hamill. Our usual host is Jane C. Who. Our executive producer is

29:45Ashley Smith. Our creative producers are Sam J. Leeds and Liam Billingham. Post-production this week was done by PJ Shah-Hamatt. Our audience development manager has been keen in. Music is by Aaron Taylor Waldman, all the kimonos and Los Mucocetes with additional mixing by Tyler Lingerie. Our ad music is by Sven Linball and Sarah the Ilstrumentalist from Epidemic Sounds by a Getty Images. Listeners, we want to hear from you. Send us your news tips, questions, hot goss for your thoughts about AI in schools by sending an email to Seattle at citycast.fm. You can also text us or leave a voice mail in the citycast hotline at 206-880-3931. Until next week, see you Seattle.