SPS SCHOOL BOARD
Meet the School Board
District 1 – Liza Rankin
District 2 – Sarah Clark
District 3 – Evan Briggs
District 4 – Joe Mizrahi
District 5 – Michelle Sarju
District 6 – Gina Topp
District 7 – Brandon K. Hersey
Student Members – Colin Bragg, Safiya Ilyas, and Sabi Yoon
2024-25 Seattle School Board with Student Members and Superintendent Jones
Board Meetings
Regular Board Meetings are generally held on Wednesdays, but are occasionally rescheduled around holidays. Regular School Board meetings start at 4:15 p.m.
Board meetings are held at the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence. Regular Board Meetings are live streamed on SPSTV. Regular Board meetings can also be viewed on Comcast 26 (standard-def) 319 (hi-def); Wave 26 (standard-def) 695 (hi-def); and Century Link 8008 (standard-def) 8508 (hi-def). Regular Board Meetings are recorded and can be viewed on YouTube.
Public Testimony
The Seattle School Board welcomes members of the public to the Regular meetings of the Board and dedicates time at these meetings for public testimony.
It is important for all community members to feel welcome and safe in the Board’s business meetings. Audience members will be expected to treat all attendees with respect and civility, just as Seattle Public Schools expects of students in our schools.
Public testimony will be taken in person and by teleconference from those who sign up to provide testimony and who are placed on the testimony list per the process described below.
The School Board Office will generally take sign-ups for the public testimony list starting at 8 a.m. on the Monday before regular Board meetings and continue until 12 p.m. on the Tuesday before the meeting. These timelines may be adjusted when meetings are held on days other than Wednesday.
Board Policy
One of the most important responsibilities of a School Board is to develop policies to guide the direction of the school district. The School Board’s role is to set policy, while the role of the Superintendent is to implement those policies and use them in the day-to-day management of the district.
Student Outcomes Focused Governance
The Seattle School Board is responsible for ensuring that the district is achieving the community’s vision for Seattle students while adhering to the community’s values of safe, anti-racist, high-quality learning environments.
Under Student Outcomes Focused Governance (SOFG), the School Board sets goals for student outcomes, based on the community’s vision for the district, and guardrails, based on the community’s values for how the vision will be achieved.
The SOFG Goals and Guardrails, adopted by the board on August 25, 2021 and revised October 26, 2022*, are aligned with Seattle Excellence and the Targeted Universalism theory of action laid out in the strategic plan.
The goals and guardrails make the strategic plan more focused, actionable, and provide clear metrics for accountability for the board to monitor student outcomes rather than adult inputs. It is in this manner that the board works, continuously, to create the conditions for superintendent, administrator, teacher and ultimately, student success.