AN ORDINANCE relating to regular property taxes; providing for the submission to the qualified electors of the City at an election to be held on November 6, 2018, a proposition to lift the limit on regular property taxes under chapter 84.55 RCW and authorize the City to levy additional taxes for up to seven years for the purpose of providing education services designed to improve access to early learning and high-quality preschool, K-12 school and community-based investments, K-12 school health, and post-secondary and job readiness opportunities for Seattle students; implementing exemptions for low income seniors, disabled veterans, and other people who are disabled as defined in RCW 84.36.381; authorizing a creation of a designated fund; directing the application of levy proceeds; establishing eligibility requirements for partners; establishing accountability and reporting structures; providing for the facilitation of communication between the City and stakeholders; providing for partnership agreements with Seattle School District and Seattle Colleges District; requiring a forthcomi
The Report of the Select. Committee on Families, Education, Preschool and Promise. Levy. Agenda Item. For Council. Bill 119 25 eight. An Ordinance relating to regular. Property. Taxes. The committee recommends the bill passed as amended. Very good. Cast Member Gonzalez. Council President Harrell me ask that agenda item five also be read into the record. Absolutely. That'd be the resolution. So why don't we read council? Agenda item number five as well. Agenda item five Resolution 31821. A resolution relating. To education services accompanying an ordinance requesting the. 2018 Families Education, Preschool and Promise Levy to replace two expiring levies to fund early learning and preschool. College and K-through-12 education. Support and job readiness and providing further direction regarding implementation. Of the programs funded by such levy. Introduced June 18, 2018. I can just for the viewing public. This allows us to talk about both the bill and the resolution, the spending plan, if you will, and we will vote on them separately, but we could talk about them jointly since they work together. Councilmember Gonzalez Thank you, Council President, for indulging my request to be able to speak to both agenda items four and five at the same time as we have this discussion. I know that there is one proposed amendment. It is a friendly amendment to the resolution. So I will let Councilmember Bryant's speak to that. But I would look to you, Council President Harrell, in terms of at what juncture you would like to handle that. Very good. I could sort of go with the flow, so to speak. We could sort of work that in down the road a little bit, if you like, Councilmember Bruno. So please proceed. Perfect. Okay. So after six and a half months of committee work in collaboration with Mayor Durkin, it is my pleasure to bring to full council votes along with my co-chair on the select committee, Councilmember Johnson. Council Bill 119258 and Resolution 31821. The passage of this Council bill and resolution would place a renewed and enhanced property tax levy on the November six, 2018 ballot for authorization by Seattle voters to continue and to implement the City of Seattle spending in four broad educational categories first, expanding quality preschool slots and classrooms throughout the city of Seattle to allow the city to serve up to 15,003 and four year old children through 2025. When this levy, if passed by, the voters, would be set to expire. Our revised proposal also invests in the early learning workforce to increase the number of educators available to teach in a Seattle preschool program. Secondly, continued investments in K through 12, including community based investments that provide children from K through 12 additional learning time. And it provides additional resources for more instructional staff, such as the math and reading intervention, as they had a pleasure to meet last Friday at John Muir Elementary School in District two, a new addition to the city of Seattle's K-through-12 Levy Investments will be to allocate $7 million towards assisting the over 4280 K-through-12 students currently experiencing homelessness in Seattle. Those new investments will allow the estimated one out of 16 Seattle public school students to find housing stability to allow them to make academic gains throughout the school year. Third, it will expand the number of student health centers to fund student health centers at Robert Eagle Staff Middle School, Meany Middle School, Lincoln High School and Nova High School. Like our current student health center model, our partners at Seattle King County Public Health would administer these programs, including identifying health partners to provide these holistic health services to students. Lastly, we would transition funding of our 13th year program investments into this levy by establishing the Seattle Promise Program. This funding, in partnership with the Seattle colleges, would provide public school graduates to receive tuition and other supports to attain a post-secondary degree or a certificate. If passed by the voters, the median homeowner would pay an additional $9.36 per month than they're paying now. Two additional important components, including those included in this ordinance, relate to a property tax exemption and accountability and evaluation requirements for these investments. And I want to just take an opportunity to talk both of them now before we move into the discussion around the resolution. The first is that pursuant to RTW 8436 381. An rc w 8450 5050. This ordinance that the City Council is considering today exempts qualifying seniors, disabled retirees, disabled veterans, or other qualifying persons from this proposed property tax. Because this is a renewal of two expiring property levies that did not have such an exemption when they first passed persons qualifying for an exemption under this proposal may actually realize Seattle voter approved property tax savings. Even if this levy passes. Second, like our expiring levies, this education levy will be subject to rigorous evaluation and ongoing oversight. This ordinance establishes a levy oversight committee comprised of 17 members, including representatives of the Seattle School District, the Seattle School Board, Seattle Colleges, and community members with professional, personal and research experience related to the growth and development of children and their academic achievement. This ordinance also requires that the Mayor's Office and the Department of Education and Early Learning develop an implementation and evaluation plan for vote by the Seattle City Council that includes priority priority criteria, measurable outcomes, evaluation methodologies and achievement outcomes to determine to determine the effectiveness of investment strategies designated through the resolution and through the ordinance. Secondly, Resolution 31821 goes into granularity around specific areas of investments that reflect mayoral priorities, council priorities and community priorities. I am happy to answer any specific questions on those investment priorities, as I'm sure my co-chair is as well. But my preference would be to maybe take a pause here and allow some of our into some individual council members to have an opportunity to speak about their own priorities as reflected both in the ordinance and the resolution. And then I'd love an opportunity to make some final remarks before we vote on the bills. Very good. Thanks for that opportunity, Councilman Gonzales. Now would be a time for consumers to talk about, I guess, components of the resolution of the levy they'd like to speak about. Councilmember Suarez my mind. All right. And your hand raised helped you. I just want to make before I begin, I want to really think Councilmember Johnson and Councilmember Gonzalez for working with us and their colleagues in being so transparent and getting information to us and talking to us about what we were doing. But particular thanks to the mayor's office and meeting with the mayor and their staff and working through the levy proposal about what's important to us. I think our city can take great pride I'm sorry, great pride in the past effort for children's education. But in particular, I want to focus on this old public school, the Promise program. I'm pleased with this levy that we are expanding the 13th year program to a full fledged promise program. Again, I think we should emphasize to everybody, particularly the taxpayers and the voters, that the Promise Program will ensure that Seattle Public Schools students, that is our kids that are in the Seattle public school system, who work hard, complete high school, can receive a college education and enter the workforce successfully. I'm happy to, and I think I shared this during the committee hearings, particularly in focusing on Ingram High School, that with the Promise program, we already are targeting, number one, children who are in the Seattle public school system. Number two, we are targeting high schools that are low income or children that have free or reduced lunch. And we learned that for many of these students, of the 80 students at Ingram, 60% of them, this would be the first time or the first person in their family to attend college . And over 40% would not even be pursuing college or any kind of trade. But for this program, and that speaks volumes, Northfield College remains a pillar in District five. We have over 18,000 students year around. We have two high schools in D5 and at Northfield College. We have over 800 faculty and also a pre-K program. So you can see that this program has an immense impact in the North End, at least for this district. And I should add that everyone that goes to North Sel College does not live in divide. They live all throughout the city and also come from Shoreline as I'm sorry attend or live in Shoreline as well. But again, the focus is on sale public school students. In any event, North Steel College does incredible work to prepare students for professional careers. North, south and central are all important resources for all of our students. Education is one of the most cost effective tools we have for ensuring that residents and families in our city will be able to support themselves in the future. And I'm glad we have such a strong network of colleges to ensure our students are workforce ready. I want to thank particularly again the co-chairs in working with me in restoring the K-5 funding. I thought that that was very critical. I appreciate that. I know that a lot of the decisions we made weren't easy ones, but I'm always proud when we come to some consensus. I'm also pleased to learn that the sale college. This will be contributing toward the Sale Promise program, ensuring that it remains at a high level. A higher level proposed by the mayor so that more students can participate. I'd also like to acknowledge the work of this Council to increase funding, like I said, such as the summer learning that benefits the K-12 students. The schools in my district work hard to provide a great educational experience. Councilmember Gonzalez mentioned the Bobby Eagle Staff School, which they believe is K to eight, and it's a brand new school. And we also have Hazel Wolf and some other schools that now have pre-K programs. Sweetie, when we're ensuring kids can keep up their learning, not only with the pre-K issues, but also over the summer months, and that is invaluable. The investment that, as you all know, we're making today is going to do more than pay, pay off ten, 20 fold a hundredfold five, ten years from now. Finally, I'll be looking at the implementation implementation plan when it comes to council to ensure that all children are able to be successful, including children from populations that have historically been disadvantaged or not encouraged or marginalized to attend college. Our success is our ability to graduate smart, civic minded students with skills to keep our city thriving. I believe this levy gives voters an excellent option. And again, I want to thank my colleagues in the mayor's office for bringing this levy forward. Thank you. Thank you, Catherine. Whereas in other comments, Customer Impact Show. Thank you again. Thank you. Councilmembers Gonzales and Johnson for your leadership. I know you've had a lot going on this year. I also want to recognize the Office of Education and thanks to all of you for your good work and and the hours and and years of effort that you've put in this and to our mayor for her vision on the Promise program. But I also want to acknowledge the work that's happened here that's really data based. We've been focusing on early education. We know that the quality preschool, getting our children ready to go into kindergarten has made a big difference to close the opportunity gap. And I want to acknowledge our former colleague, Tim Burgess, that was something that he started working on, I think, around 2010. And he pushed for the real data based work, knowing that when kids are ready for school and get into kindergarten and have that sense of pride and respect and confidence that they then can move on into third grade. You know, we talk about the learning to read and then the reading to learn effort. We know that this is a continuum. And what our mayor is seeing and as she's pushing with the promise which we are supporting, is that our students are prepared for college or career and recognizing the good work that many of our partners are doing and I want to shout out to Dave Gehring is just one example cor plus having in our high schools and getting our students prepared and also to feel like we don't have to go to college to get a family wage job. You can get the skills, the certificates, the work that you need, background, you need to do this. And I do want to call out in special thanks to some of our school board member colleagues. Jill, Gary and I took a trip to Tacoma just a couple of weeks ago. Leslie Harris, the school board president, has been active as long as Rick Burke on this career preparedness and Betty Patu and others. Zach, appreciate the work that he has done here as well. This is a partnership in our community and the voters stepping up and saying that they want to support all of our our kids and each one of our community shield children has an opportunity to succeed. And that's what this is all about. And I appreciate this that you did Councilmember Gonzales and Joseph PR to draft something that's very readable and for us to acknowledge that yes, we are asking the taxpayers for more money and yes, we are asking for an increase to our property taxes. And we also want to acknowledge that somebody is now paying $11.34 a month or $136 a year. And yes, it will be going up to $248 a year of the voters pass this. But what we're investing in is worth the price and for an additional $9.36 a month. I'm happy to participate as a as a taxpayer and condo owner. So I'm in and I hope that we can all look forward to having our children succeed. Thank you. Thank you. Customer in Bexar County from Johnson. Thanks. So there's a lot of work that has gone into getting us to today. And I want to take a couple of minutes to talk about how much I've learned as part of this process and why I'm excited to have this levy in front of us. You know, when Councilmember Gonzalez and I started on this pathway, you know, a little more than six months ago, we started having a round of community conversations. And those community conversations asked us to really weave. Together critical investments throughout the spectrum from birth to 20 and beyond. But for us, fortunately, we were standing on the shoulders of a set of investments that is made in partnership with the school district going all the way back to Mayor Norm Rice in 1990. So for those who may think that this is a little out of the blue because you may have been focused on other conversations that have been happening at City Hall, this is a set of investments that we have been making to support kids in our public schools for now, almost three decades. And for me, I think that I'm sorry. More than three decades. For me, this opportunity to have a fifth measure back in front of voters is really critical to the success of kids in our schools, because it supports those kids in a way that the school district doesn't necessarily allow for right now. The first of which is it expands our pre-K program. And time and time again, we've shown that investing in high quality preschool is one of the best investments that a city can make. And we also continue the legacy investments that the current program has made and rigorous evaluation and teacher support to make sure that the kids in those pre-K programs are getting the best education that we can possibly provide. Secondly, we take the investments that we make in our K through 12 space, and we rebalance those in a way that allows for our elementary school kids to sustain the gain that they get from that preschool investment. By continuing the education and investment in 21 elementary schools that are currently getting the city's innovation funds, the four middle schools that are currently getting those same innovation funds and five high schools will expand from just innovation funds in the ninth year all the way to the 12th year. So we really grow the investments in K-12, particularly with a focus on high school. We also are growing the support that were given to those students, whether those students are experiencing homelessness or whether those students need to come to a nurse or health care center or need additional family support. The city is step up in all three of those places in ways that allow for us to continue partnerships in the school district that don't exist. Right now, we're going from 25 health care clinics to 29. We're investing in 15 full time family support workers, which is about half of the family support workers that would be needed if we had family support workers in all of our Title one schools. We're investing another $13 million in our opportunity and access funds, which will allow schools to competitively apply for programs that they think will help close the opportunity gap within their schools. And I think that's another way we can continue to allow for innovation to come to schools and allow principals and educators to come to the city with an innovative and interesting idea that they think will make a difference for their schools blessing. And finally, that promise program that folks have talked about, I think is a pathway for those 550 or some odd students that we anticipate will graduate from SPS high schools and give them a chance to have a leg up so that they can start on a pathway that will make them competitive for those next generation jobs. So for me, as a parent of two in public schools who in September will have three in public schools, I'm really excited about the work that we have done to put us on a foundation which I hope will continue to build off of the legacy of almost 35 years of investments that previous councils and previous administrations have meant we wouldn't be here without a whole lot of support. Councilmember Bagshaw mentioned several members of the school board who've been critical in helping us get to this point. I want to recognize Dr. Pan and your leadership with the Seattle colleges who've been excellent partners throughout this whole process. Many of our colleagues who are here tonight from the advocacy community, this wouldn't have been possible without you. Nor certainly would it be possible to have us be here without the strong participation from the Department of Education and Early Learning. And the hours that you've spent with my staff and Councilmember Gonzales staff have been incredibly valuable for us, as well as Chris Albano from the mayor's office. Finally, I want to say a big thank you to V Wynn and Jerry Morris from Councilmember Gonzales and my officers as well as to Brian Goodnight and Ali Panetta of our council central staff who spent a lot of time and energy developing the really rigorous work that went into both the ordinance and the resolution. This is a really big step forward for us, and I'm hopeful that the voters will embrace this work and excited that this measure is back in front of us and excited to have a lot of time and attention focused on this over the next couple of months. Grateful to the leadership of Councilmember Miguel Gonzalez for us to get here. And with that, happy to ask for your support. Council President. Thank you, Councilman Johnson. Councilmember Mosquito Thank you, Mr. President. This is a really exciting day. I just want to say thank you again to the co-chairs, Councilmember Gonzales and Councilmember Johnson for their incredible work over the last few months on this effort. We have had a lot of conversations with folks in the community as well about early learning and the promise program. And I know it's a huge priority for. For working families to be able to have access to high quality, early learning. And I to echo the comments that Councilmember Johnson just made, I am very hopeful that the voters will embrace this levy and they will pass it overwhelmingly on the ballot, because we have seen that increased investments in children throughout the years have maintained a balance for property owners while creating significant improvements for our kiddos in preschool in K-12. And now we have the opportunity to look at birth through three and beyond high school in the Promise program. We know that investing in our youth ensures that we have a resilient economy. We have included components in this levy that promote equity by closing the opportunity gap. And thanks to Councilmember Bagshaw for her commitment to increasing access to health care and the chair's commitment to that, we're going to see more health clinics open throughout our schools, throughout Seattle. Part of the excitement that I have today comes from the investment that we're putting into child care for our kiddos, really in 0 to 3, expanding our city's ability to try to reach those kiddos who've been left out so far and trying to address the long waitlists that we have, increasing the number of highly skilled and trained providers to serve our community's needs. And when we invest in making sure that families are able to have access to high quality childcare, that also means that parents can go to work. The parents can be productive members of our community if they so choose to go back to work, and that we're not pushing them into impossible decisions of whether or not to pay for childcare or to have to stay home. So we want to create the opportunity for families to make that decision on their own. We also know that many of the childcare providers are women, many are people of color, many are immigrants. And we want to make sure that we're investing in high quality training programs and providing those child care providers with the mentorship and the training opportunities that they need to be able to either open child care centers or home based centers to increase access to high quality childcare that's affordable for all of our families. We also want to make sure that we are creating a mentorship program that means that people don't get burnt out in this industry. That's incredibly difficult sometimes and that they have the tools and the resources they need to be successful. And so I'm excited about this opportunity. I want to thank again the co-chairs. I want to thank their incredible staff, Jerry and V and my staff for her work on this effort as well. And Brian and Allie provided a significant amount of background for me on how we could make sure that a mentorship and training program, opportunities for enhanced learning for professionals who want to be childcare providers were included. And so I want to thank them for their endless efforts to address questions that I had. And also I just want to say how great it is that we have a Seattle Promise program that not only looks at opportunities for two year and potential four year opportunities, but looks at nontraditional learning through apprenticeship opportunities, through working with the building and construction union trades to make sure that we are getting more people into highly skilled, well-paid opportunities in post-high school apprenticeship programs. This is a huge, huge day and I'm excited to be proud of it. And I know that you've been working on this for years. Co-Chairs, so thank you for your work to make sure that this is possible. And it all came together within the last six months here. And with that I am I'm excited to vote. Yes. Thank you, Councilwoman Skinner. Council members who want. Thank you, Fresno. I will be supporting this education levy because it provides essential funds, especially in the context of the state legislature having for years criminally underfunded our statewide public education system. I do also want to be clear, though, that this it is disappointing, though not surprising, that in the midst of a very public discussion on progressive versus regressive taxes, the mayor has proposed education funding that still continues to depend on property taxes, which are becoming harder and harder for working class and middle class homeowners to afford, rather than using taxes on big business, which would have begun a much needed reversal of the regressive tax system of Seattle and the region. It is worth contrasting the generosity and social involvement of regular working people who vote to renew this and other important levies year after year, to the Dickensian response of Amazon and other big companies, to paying even a minuscule tax that would have amounted to just pocket change for them. In fact, the Amazon tax, which would have been on companies like Amazon, Starbucks, Nordstrom's, Facebook and so on, the largest group, 3% of the corporations was going to be half the size per year of this education levy. And yet these big businesses fought ferociously against it rather than supporting it. So despite my disappointment over the source of funding in this levy, I want to be completely clear. We need to support this levy because our schools have nowhere near the resources that they need, and our young people and our educators deserve better. Thank you. KATZ First, want a swinging hands? Councilmember Herbold. Thank you. I just wanted to echo the thanks from my colleagues on the council to all of the folks who have participated in the process. I think we had a number of different, really important objectives that we wanted to try to juggle. We wanted to see increased enrollment in pre-K, and we wanted to move into. A new area. Of support with the Seattle Promise program. And I think while we have. Reduced the growth that was originally. Proposed in the mayor's proposal, we still see significant growth in the pre-K program. We have somewhat reduced funding in the Seattle Promise program, and our ability to do so again, thanks goes to Seattle College. Seattle colleges agreeing to help work with private donors and advocates to help us make sure that we make a conscious decision that tuition subsidies from public dollars are prioritizing historically underserved students and those most in need of financial support. The combination of those tweaks in the mayor's proposal has allowed us to maintain funding for for K through five, which I think is incredibly important. It's a it's really, as we are realizing gains in in pre-K and getting folks getting our youth ready for for for college. It's really important that we maintain support through the the K through five years. And I'm also really pleased I think we'll talk about this a little bit more when we get into the resolution discussion, but really pleased about some of the particular investments in in K through five that we're able to maintain. Very good. What I thought may make sense is for us to vote on the accounts bill first, then the resolution, although it's been read into the record since it takes seven votes and then comes from O'Brien's resolution to be articulated that that's what makes sense for everyone. Yeah, I'm ready to go with that. So but I would like to comment on that. On the base legislation, which you could do on the resolution, part two could do it, too. I'll wait. Okay, let's let's vote on the council bill. And then we got a little more dialog on the resolution. And Councilmember O'Brien is going to say a few things. Okay. Okay. So please call the roll on the passage of council bill 119258. Whereas Macheda I. O'BRIEN All right, so on back to Gonzales. I herbold i. Johnson President Harrell nine in favor and unopposed. Bill passed and the chair was silent and we should have a resolution. Councilmember Bryan, later through which I'd like to talk about either on the Bass legislation or the resolution. Yeah. So they both really briefly. First, I really want to thank all the hard work again that has gone into both the legislation which we just passed and the resolution, particularly my colleagues, council members Johnson and Gonzales, for leading us through this process and folks in central staff who've been doing a lot of work, really. And I applaud all the folks in the community who do this work day in, day out over the years and bring their expertize to the table to help us balance so many important needs. And my colleagues have mentioned in a way that I can be really proud of for the city of Seattle to support and hopefully see support going forward. So thank you for all of that. I also really appreciate the work on the resolution specifically to help outline what's going how we will move forward on this. I appreciate my colleagues willingness to put language in there that supports some of the recommendations and considerations I've had during this process. I do have an amendment that I'd like to propose today. It's simply inserting one additional sentence for, I believe, for clarity. And this would be an amendment to Section three of the resolution under Part A, which is titled Parent Child Home Program. The resolution currently reads in the first sentence, provide full funding for the parent child home program with sweetened beverage tax proceeds or other general fund resources in future proposed budgets. My amendment would insert a sentence that then reads in determining funding availability from sweetened beverage tax proceeds. Council expects the executive to follow the guidance of the Sweetened Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board. And then the last sentence, as written in the resolution, says If the sweetened beverage tax or other general fund resources are insufficient to support the parent child home program, the executive chef shift funding priorities and propose amendments to the A-fib plan to ensure that PCH is fully funded. So I will move that amendment, which I'll call amendment number one. Secondly. It's been moved in. Second Amendment number one, as described by council member Brian has been moved. And second, any further comments on the amendment only? All those in favor of the amendment. Please vote I. I oppose. The ayes have it. So that was just. The amendment comes from Brown. And you like to talk a little bit more about the resolution? I'm good. You're good. Any other comments? Councilmember Johnson. Just briefly, I want to say a couple of quick things. You know, there are various levels of specificity to the work that we do here, particularly as it relates to measures that we put in front of the voters. And so the ordinance that we adopted just a minute ago is basically the authorization that allows us to go out to the voters and ask them to raise their property taxes, to pay for families, education, preschool and promise. This resolution outlines a lot more detail and specificity. So for those who are interested in peeking behind the curtain, a little bit more about how the council intends for us to spend this money should the voters adopted the resolution as a great place for you to look, I want to call out a couple of things specifically that are called out in the resolution here, one of which is that we expect 54% of the levies funds to go for the preschool components of the plan, and that 54% of funding will support approximately 2500 students per year as we get to the end of the levy cycle. So an incredibly important investment that we're making. Secondarily with with the preschool program, we also ask the Department of Education or Early Learning to do some additional work around some things that we had heard from the public outreach process for critically important to preschool providers, including things like a unified application process across subsidized tuition model, coordination with the state interested in a length of the day. We currently fund a six hour day. Can we go to a ten hour day? There are some really good ideas that were generated during the course of public comment. Those are outlined in the resolution for the Department of Early Learning to continue to continue to do, work on and report back to us. There was a question that came up earlier from our friends from the Seattle Education Association about what kind of investments are we really making in the K through five space. We clearly call out in the resolution a $56 million investment in the K five space to put at ease those who may be concerned about whether or not there's a deal here about the investments annually at $8 million a year that is very clearly identified as are additional dollars associated with opportunity and access funds. The Seattle Promise Program and several others have layers of specificity related to health and homelessness funding. It should also be pointed out, Councilmember Bagshaw, that very clearly does the resolution ask for $1.4 million to be spent on a school based health center at Noble High School? So the resolution has a second level of specificity. And then we intend, should the voters be successful in adopting this, to get an implementation plan from the Department of Education and Early Learning, that will give us an even higher level of specificity other than what's outlined in the resolution. But for those folks who are looking to dig into some more details, the resolution is a great place to do it. I'm thankful to the deal, folks, the mayor's office advocates and our central staff and our staffs for getting us to this place, because I think that this is the level of detail that many of my colleagues were looking for in the ordinance, in the resolution. This is the place where it's landed. So thanks to everybody for giving me a couple of minutes to talk about that, because I think it's critically important for success. Thank you, Councilwoman Johnson. I'll see some brief remarks and then perhaps Councilman Gonzalez could say a few remarks. Then we can vote that council Councilmember Dwayne Chappelle, thank you and your team deal. You've been awesome. We have a phenomenal opportunity in front of us. And it's precisely that, an opportunity people will ask for the next several months. Can we afford it? In. My response will be we. We can't afford not to pass this levy, that the future of our kids, the future of our city largely depends on addressing the opportunity gap, addressing the opportunity disparities, addressing the education for all of our kids, even the ones that are doing extremely well and those that are doing poorly that we have to design an ecosystem through this kind of investment to. To educate the types of employees and leaders and workers and the types of people that can make this city great. So this is a great opportunity. A comedian once said a quote, If opportunity doesn't knock than build a door. And I always think of that, that what we're doing is we're building a great opportunity for this city. What I'm most excited, I think about is when we look at the work we did during the preschool phase, when we looked at the brain development of children and how the disparities occur. Something that a lot of people don't think about, particularly where they're in their fourth or fifth grade, about what either occurred or did not occur during those formative years, you know, zero, three, three, three and four year olds. And then we started looking at in K through 12 where kids just get off track, whether it's during the summer because they're hungry. And we look at those interventions that you all are so well versed in. But what I think is equally bold about this, and when my daughter was at Madrona Middle School and graduated from Cleveland High School, it became so apparent that so many kids right now, right when they're getting ready to graduate, just don't have a clue as to what they're going to do. Unfortunately, they don't have the three eight GPAs. Many of these kids are, you know, to six to 7 to 8 GPAs. And and to see the light in their eyes when they say, I'm going to college through this program. The energy, the synergy. It's amazing. And I've sat in classrooms with these kids, have been on campus and talk with these kids. Many of these kids have testified in front of us. And so this is bold. This is the opportunity, I think, that warrants the word promise in this letter with the promise we're making to our kids. And so, Councilmembers Johnson and Gonzales, you did the hard work. You listen, you gather an information, provided data, you work with deal. The advocates did their job. And we have come up with a phenomenal package. And like I said earlier, we can't afford not to get this levy passed. So I'm very excited about supporting it. Councilmember Gonzales, you have the floor. Thank you. Council President, those are really on point remarks. I really appreciate you and your leadership as council president for the council as well. And I know that you were the prior chair of education, so I know you've had a lot of involvement in this, and we're a little leader in establishing funding for Seattle Promise in the first place. So I'm really excited to have your continued support in this area and your what I'm hearing is an endorsement of the package. So thank you. I have some final remarks that I wrote up that I want to share with folks. In 1964, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr accepted a Nobel Peace Prize, and in his speech over 50 years ago, he said, quote, I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture, for their minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. Close quote today. Those words are solidly in my mind, and it is exactly that sentiment described in that quote in those words that it is that I fundamentally believe it is critical for the city of Seattle to reaffirm its commitment to the ideals encapsulated and described in that quote By continuing to invest in our children from birth through college, we know that the opportunity and kindergarten readiness gap affects all students, but especially students of color, low income students, English language learners, students with learning disabilities, and students experiencing homelessness. The persistence of these gaps tell us the equitable access to education and supports to achieve academically. Academically continues to be the civil rights struggle of our time. And while the Seattle Public School District holds the paramount duty to provide basic education to Seattle's children, we know that their ability to fulfill that duty is interconnected with the investments that the City of Seattle makes through our prior and expiring families and education and preschool levees . The City of Seattle and its residents play an important role in supporting our public school system success in their efforts to help each child fulfill their potential. We do this in several ways through this levy that will literally transform the trajectory of the children living in our city forever. When children show up to kindergarten, they'll be ready to learn. Thanks to our investments in early learning and expansion of our quality preschool program, quality preschool programing plus wraparound services are where the education pipeline begins for our children and their families. Participation in quality public preschool positively impacts a child's school experiences by reducing the demand for grade repetition, special education placement, mental health services, judicial system involvement and unemployment support in the future. We also know that the number of children experiencing homelessness has drastically grown since the passage of the 2011 Families and Education Levy. We now have an opportunity through this levy to ensure that students experiencing homelessness are not left out of our education system. Through this renewed levy package and its associated investments, we also increase our investments in student health centers that are public schools. A historic area of investments. Since the 1990, Families and Education Levy first passed. Research finds that poor health severely limits a child's motivation and ability to learn, and that school based health centers improve student health and emotional well-being. This, in turn, AIDS academic performance by increasing attendance rates and a student's grade point average over time. Likewise, a student is 21 times more likely to access mental health services at a school based health center if it's available. These are important, historic and new investments in the K-through-12 space that do not qualify for McCleary funding. And that will end if this levy does not pass this November. We round out our education spectrum investments by investing in a student's opportunity to attend college to obtain a degree or certificate. This is an area that the city currently funds in partnership with the Seattle Colleges via our general fund. This proposal that we just passed shifts those investments to the levy to provide a sustainable. Will revenue stream over the next seven years to continue investing in those kids, graduating from our public high schools, graduating from high school and completing a post-secondary training improves a person's earning potential and economic self-sufficiency. And recent studies have told us that two thirds of the jobs projected to come to Seattle in the next seven years will require a post-secondary degree or certificate. So we have before us a unique opportunity for Seattle taxpayers to provide tuition and supports to bridge students into living wage jobs of the 21st century. And lastly, I would just like to say thanks to all of my colleagues on the dais here today who were willing to dig in to the work and and be ready to vote today. And one time in particular, I think Councilmember Rob Johnson from District four, sitting over here to my right for being such an amazing partner in developing this proposal and just really staying true and committed to what our principles and goals were in terms of making sure that the full spectrum of education was going to be invested in here and in truly, your knowledge and commitment as a parent was just instrumental in in my own learning in terms of what it means to operate within the Seattle Public Schools system. Since I went to a public school in central Washington and really just appreciate all of your insight to making sure that the priorities in this package were reflective of student needs, parent needs, educator needs, school district needs, the whole the whole gamut. So thank you so much for being an awesome partner and colleague in getting this to this point. And then I also want to thank Mayor Durkan for our ongoing commitment to continued investments in this particular area. I know she's done had to do a tremendous amount of work in her first six months of her administration. And to get us here and I really appreciate her willingness to make sure that our individual priorities were able to be reflected in this final package that will be considered by the voters. And, of course, a huge thanks to folks over the Department of Education and Early Learning. Duane Veronica, monica said, So many of you have put in countless hours over the last year and a half to develop a package that is reflective of the countless hours of community engagement that I know all of you did, and to lend us with your expertize in terms of developing the individual policies that are reflected in the underlying bill that we passed and in this resolution that were about to take a vote on. So I really want to thank you for all of that, but more importantly, I want to thank you all the entire team over at Deal, including those that are not sitting in the audience. And there's probably like, I don't know, 20 people back in the office right now. There's a lot of you here, but I really want to thank all of deal for your steadfast commitment to our kids and to our families and and to the educators along the spectrum. They are and we are very lucky to have you all be with us and to be as dedicated as you are to achieving equity in this space. So thank you so much. And then lastly, I want to thank all of the staff, Gerry and V for my office and Brian Goodnight and Ali Pankey and so many others for all that you did to make sure that we are prepared and that all of my council colleagues were prepared. So I've just been truly honored and humbled to work on this lovely proposal. And I hope that the voters will agree that this is a investment that is worth not just worth making, but that it's an investment that is honestly the single most important thing we can do as members of our community is to invest in the future of our city, which. Is our kids. So thank you. Thank you, Councilman Gonzales. Okay. Thank you. Well done. Well said. I will move to adopt Resolution 31821 as a minute as a second. Second. Moves. And second, the resolution to be adopted. Those in favor of the resolution, please vote i i those opposed vote no. The motion carries resolution adopt and chair will sign it. Very good. Yes. All right. Is there any further business coming for the council that. I'm looking at Council Herbal today. I'm not seeing a room. Okay, we're okay. We stand adjourned. I want to have a great day. Thank you. Thank you. Well, then.