Scott Seaman
[00:00:09] Hey welcome to another episode of AWSP TV we are so excited today to have another special guest in our studio. [00:00:16] We've got Ross Hunter the secretary for Washington State's Department of Children, Youth and Families. [00:00:23] Ross thanks for being here today.

Ross Hunter
[00:00:24] Great, thank you for pronouncing the second comma in our name.

Scott Seaman
[00:00:27] Hey you like that?

Ross Hunter
[00:00:28] It's good. [00:00:28] Good pause.

Scott Seaman
[00:00:29] Well practice makes perfect.

Ross Hunter
[00:00:31] Grammar matters.

Scott Seaman
[00:00:32] Yes it does. [00:00:33] Well thanks for being here. [00:00:34] We're excited to have a conversation with you about what's currently happening in the system and what potentially could happen in the system to help our kids. [00:00:42] So why don't you start by giving our viewers a little idea of your background experiences that have kind of landed you in the role that you’re in now.

Ross Hunter
[00:00:51] Your e-mail intro to this to me was kind of interesting that you were, bemused wasn't the word, but like wondering how was it that I got from come into Washington to work for a software company that had fewer than 300 people that turned into Microsoft, how did I get from there to here? [00:01:12] I built, I spent almost 20 years in Microsoft building software. [00:01:16] It was fun, it was pretty lucrative, it was the basis, this is in the 80s, the basis for the modern economy of the state of Washington. [00:01:25] And that was exciting. [00:01:29] After some period of time you’re like, do I need to do this again? [00:01:34] Can I do something different now? [00:01:35] Like what do I do when I grow up? [00:01:38] And so I retired and six weeks later my wife said, So this whole retirement thing is OK, but not for lunch. [00:01:48] You have to leave the house. [00:01:49] You can come home for dinner but you can't be here for lunchtime. [00:01:52] I was like, OK. [00:01:54] And so our kids were in elementary school so I did a bunch of volunteering, Rob McKenna talked me into being on a school levy campaign, and my job was to explain school funding all over the Bellevue School District. [00:02:09] And 2000 it was screwed up. [00:02:15] It was really awful. [00:02:17] Made absolutely no sense to do. [00:02:20] There were 17 different formulas that can go into my whole school funding thing, and I just got angrier and angrier. [00:02:26] And then I met my legislators and because they were so you'd get to the end of this you say, who controls this? [00:02:33] Because I was raising money, private money, for a science curriculum for the Medina elementary school. [00:02:39] So of all of the elementary schools in the state like us and Mercer Island and Clyde Hill are the three that you could think would not need to raise private money for a science curriculum, but we did. [00:02:52] And so I sort of like made sure I got used in the whole school district including our Title I schools. [00:02:58] But I guess what did they do in Yakima. [00:03:02] Well it turns out they don't have one, at the time. [00:03:08] Exactly the right moment, someone mentioned to me you know that legislator you fought, you could beat him. [00:03:14] I was like really? [00:03:16] And I need something to do during the day, remember the whole lunchtime thing? [00:03:20] So I ran for the legislature in 2002 in Bellevue, Bellevue Redmond Kirkland, Medina, the Gold Coast. [00:03:29] And I was the first Democrat elected there in state history which I didn't know when I started running, because that might have been a little daunting that the district had never elected a Democrat before. [00:03:41] But I had the great joy of, in Bellevue, running against a Gun Lobbyist which turned out not to actually work out so well. [00:03:51] And I worked on school funding, and I'm an engineer, so I'm good with numbers, and I wound up doing tax policy and then the recession hit and our budget chairman lost her re-election and they needed a budget chairman and I was able to convince all of my members that I should actually do that work. [00:04:14] They were gracious enough to allow me to do that. [00:04:17] And during that time we did the work that redefined what basic Ed was, which was what my PTA volunteers really wanted me to do. [00:04:29] I built this group. [00:04:31] We had the basic education funding task force that came after Gregoire’s effort on Washington learns to actually try and produce changes to the funding formula. [00:04:43] We had six legislators, we had two Democrats, two Republicans and two Democrats who used to be Republicans, one of whom switched back on the group. [00:04:52] And we tried to work out what was the model school formula. [00:04:56] What was the best way to actually make a school funding formula make more sense than what we had before. [00:05:03] And we were able to implement that with a lot of histrionics. [00:05:07] It was a hard, hard year to get that done and that really created the legal structure that made the McCleary suit work. [00:05:17] And we were then able to use McCleary as a lever to force the school funding to increase and we doubled state spending since that time, we've made a big difference. [00:05:28] I don't know where we are today at the time the cost adjusted cost of living adjusted per capita funding in Washington was forty seventh in the nation. [00:05:38] My guess is we're closer to the midpoint today, we'll never be New Jersey, we don't have the tax code that would enable that. [00:05:44] But this seemed like a more reasonable place to be and it's more equitable than it was before. [00:05:53] When I looked at how our levies worked, they really advantaged my district and really disadvantaged Yakima which I used as counterexamples in my peregrinations all over the state, many of your listeners may have seen me appear in their district at that time 10, 15 years ago. [00:06:11] So talk about what what could we do, what would work and understand what was different in Pomeroy, say than it is in Bellevue. [00:06:19] We tried to build a system that worked for the whole state. [00:06:23] I think we made reasonable progress. [00:06:25] Well it's not perfect from my point of view but it's also a very political process. [00:06:30] There are a lot of people who made it better on both sides of the aisle. [00:06:35] And I think that for a while but being the budget chairman during the recession was really a fundamentally depressing project. [00:06:42] And so I did five state budgets and they were two party negotiations which made them take forever and be really painful. [00:06:54] And so again after 13 years it was time, I felt like I'd gotten done what I'd come to do. [00:06:59] And it wasn't good for your soul to do that for a long time. [00:07:03] And I had the opportunity to run the department early learning came up which was really a fun job and I was excited to do it. [00:07:11] People seem to like the work I was doing and decided that my 300 person agency should have 4600 people and have foster care and juvenile rehab at the same time. [00:07:24] So we've been trying to implement and build a system that really thinks about outcomes for children. [00:07:30] That is a counterpart to the work that we do in the K12 system. [00:07:36] A lot of the work pretty much all of our work in the birth to five spaces and our responsibility plus worrying about at risk kids, kids in the foster care system, kids in the juvenile justice system, sort of more broadly defined, is how do we ensure that these kids have a path to success so that we're not creating this sort of prison to pre-K back to prison pipeline again. [00:08:04] I'd like to get out of that loop. [00:08:07] I think we have an opportunity to do that, and so that's what I'm doing now is go from being a Microsoft engineer to somehow running this thing with all these all these social workers.

Scott Seaman
[00:08:18] So your retirement is going well.

Ross Hunter
[00:08:20] Well I'm not I'm not at home at lunch. [00:08:25] So I work down here and I live in Kirkland so I'm not at home at dinner either. [00:08:30] Yeah. [00:08:31] We just moved dinner later. [00:08:32] Kids are out of the house now. [00:08:33] So it works out. [00:08:36] I play soccer a bunch of nights a week.

Scott Seaman
[00:08:39] That does work out.

Ross Hunter
[00:08:39] Yeah. [00:08:40] So that's the Ross history, of how do you get from being a guy who thinks about systems and building complicated systems have lots of moving parts, did that with database software at Microsoft, did that with the school funding system, try and get all those pieces to balance so that we had a reasonable system that was adjusted for cost of living differences, adjusted for the difficulty of hiring staff in rural districts trying to manage all of these things together too trying to build a system that prepares kids to be successful in school.

Scott Seaman
[00:09:21] That is perfect and falls right in line with their school leader paradigm. [00:09:23] I wish I had a copy of that sure it's over my left shoulder. [00:09:27] It talks about systems intelligence. [00:09:29] And I think it's fascinating that you have such a strong picture about what could happen in our society through the beginning of early learning.

Ross Hunter
[00:09:37] Well you look at kids coming into kindergarten and we have kids that are about 47 percent of the kids today hit all six nationally recognized kindergarten readiness targets on the WA kids assessment, which is a subset of something we use a kneecap called TS Gold, Teaching Strategies Gold. [00:10:02] The OSPI uses some incredibly long non pejorative name for is this kid ready for kindergarten or not because all kids should go to kindergarten, whether they're ready or not, but this is a measurement, are they likely to be successful? [00:10:19] And you look at kids who come in the level of a three year old. [00:10:22] And that level stays the same through their entire K-12 experience. [00:10:27] I mean they just never catch up. [00:10:30] The story of this year's numbers were wealthier whiter and more Asian kids increased their scores and lower income kids did not increase their scores as much and the average stayed the same on all of our K12 assessments and that is not the direction that we want to go. [00:10:48] We do not want to create this bi modal distribution in society in the way, I think the most effective way to do that is to have five year olds is to bring up a lot of our at risk kids. [00:11:03] So we as an agency are responsible in the birth to five space for ECEAP which is the state's version of Headstart. [00:11:12] We're also responsible for subsidized child care so we run the subsidy system for child care for about 45, 50.000 kids. [00:11:22] The number of kids is declining slowly because there's a lot of income cliff problems in that space, that's not today's interview, but we have work to do there. [00:11:32] We also do the early support for infant and toddlers program that is sort of commingled with the school funding model and it's been growing rapidly since we started doing development assessments in the pediatric practices in the Medicaid suite. [00:11:49] That program’s been growing about 15% a year and we're trying to make sure that we're actually getting high quality services for the dollars that were spent, we spent about a hundred million dollars a year on that. [00:12:00] We also do our Home Visiting Suite. [00:12:02] So when we look at ECEAP which are about 40 or 50% of our seats are in the K12 system, they're in elementary schools, which we love, you are our best partners, please, thank God, thank you. [00:12:15] And we're trying to help reduce the gap for low income kids coming into kindergarten and we're remarkably successful. [00:12:23] Kids who are in that income bracket which is less than one hundred and 10% of the federal poverty level, about 28% of them will hit that national benchmark whereas if you look at kids who don't get free or reduced price lunch about 60% of those kids will come in completely ready to learn and the bulk of them who are not ready it's because of math. [00:12:46] So we want to move kids up in ECEAP. [00:12:50] If a kid has two years of ECEAP, they are more likely to be ready for kindergarten than a kid in the top half of the income distribution. [00:12:57] That's remarkable impact for low income kids. [00:13:00] It has a preventative effect for being in the child welfare system. [00:13:05] But we look at those kids, 28% of the kids in an ECEAP classroom are involved in the child welfare system. [00:13:12] So the level of trauma that those kids have experienced plays out in their lives. [00:13:18] In most preschools they get kicked out remarkably frequently. [00:13:22] Foster kids are kicked out all the time as they are in the K12 system, and some I want to talk about sort of towards the end of this. [00:13:30] But how do we get, how do we get more kids ready? [00:13:35] We’re at about 14.000 kids now, in the next three years we're gonna need to get to about 20.000 kids in ECEAP and we need to make it simpler for school districts to run.

Scott Seaman
[00:13:46] Yeah, that was my question. [00:13:47] What are the barriers that you're running into that are preventing reaching that number?

Ross Hunter
[00:13:52] Well, so the big barrier, a couple barriers. [00:13:54] One is we don’t pay enough, the rates are too low, particularly if you're in a school building and you want to use certificated staff. [00:14:02] You don't really have to pay rent but the certificated staff is really expensive and gets better results. [00:14:09] So we love it. [00:14:12] We produce about 11 grand a year for a full day ECEAP slot compared to about 17,000 dollars a year for a slot if you were to say run transitional kindergarten. [00:14:22] Which many of you are now doing. [00:14:24] And more of you should.

Scott Seaman
[00:14:26] That's a hint.

Ross Hunter
[00:14:27] That's a hint. [00:14:27] It's a big hint. [00:14:29] We would like to have… I would like to do a project this year to figure out how do we get all of these pre-K programs to be able to run in the same classroom. [00:14:40] And I'm willing to get out of the way on licensing, a lot of licensing issues that are problem for ECEAP if you want to spin up a new classroom it takes us a while to get the fire marshal in. [00:14:49] It's just sort of a legal requirement but some of this we can figure out how to do better. [00:14:55] The other place where we should do inclusion is what we call Part B which most school districts would call developmental pre-K which is special ed for three and four year olds. [00:15:05] It's not a super well-funded program. [00:15:07] Most schools run about a two hour a day program which I would point out is useless for working parents. [00:15:15] If you work at Jamba Juice, how are you going to get your kid there and how are you gonna get your kid home? [00:15:19] Like this is this is not reasonable. [00:15:22] My CFO is in this situation and she's like, the only way that works is because her mom does full time care and that is not a typical experience for working people. [00:15:37] There's no reason that we can't run all these things in the same classroom, we can't make the rules work better together. [00:15:43] Chris and I are working on, Chris Reykdal and I are working on how to how do we figure out how to get out of our own way and make that work. [00:15:51] So the comp is an issue. [00:15:53] The licensing can be an issue, we're working to simplify that and we'll be happy to take advice from people. [00:15:59] You've got particular problems, let us know. [00:16:02] We'll be happy to get out of your way, if we legally can. [00:16:06] It depends on the money source.

Scott Seaman
[00:16:09] How do we let you know?

Ross Hunter
[00:16:10] ross.hunter@dcyf.wa.gov. [00:16:15] You can find me. [00:16:16] I've been in the narcissism business for 20 years, just search for me on the web. [00:16:19] You can find me. [00:16:21] The movie star is dead, I'm not that guy. [00:16:24] I'm the other one. [00:16:26] There's some guy in Australia and there's a guy in England with my name who coaches, honest to God, the English… it's like the over 40s blind cricket team or something. [00:16:40] Got some wild project. [00:16:45] And there's a guy with my name I mean, I mean I have a search, I get notices. [00:16:52] Somebody is like that speed skiing, like crazy high mountain skiing champion of Canada with my name. [00:16:59] All right. [00:16:59] That's not me. [00:17:00] I guarantee you that's not me. [00:17:01] I can’t remember what it was, it was some crazy athletic van. [00:17:05] It was like, that looks like a death wish. [00:17:08] So but pretty much you can find me in Washington. [00:17:12] You know we're happy to take feedback. [00:17:14] If you work with our ECEAP program you know how to provide feedback, let us know. [00:17:17] I mean we really do want to hear and figure out how to make that work better but the improvement in kindergarten readiness for those kids is stunning. [00:17:27] And if you look at the Washington State Institute for Public Policy study they looked back at kids who'd gone through ECEAP and carried the results, they had 23% percent better math scores in fifth grade than similarly situated kids who did not go through ECEAP. [00:17:45] It's a reputable study was it does great work. [00:17:49] Heavily relied on by the legislature to do these sort of cost benefit studies when they look at ECEAP compared to other states, our program is twice as good as most states, it's also small. [00:18:01] Pre-K programs don't work unless they are high quality programs and there are a number of different measuring sticks that you can use to measure them. [00:18:10] Really some key elements have to have a curriculum. [00:18:13] You have to have a way of assessing the particular cadence of how teachers work with students and we provide that training, we provide coaching and mentoring in the ECEAP program, it really makes a difference over similar programs that don't have all of those elements of quality. [00:18:31] They just don't work.

Scott Seaman
[00:18:33] So if I'm watching right now and this is new to me and I'm curious and you're saying a lot of stuff in lights are going on what are some best practices or systems or districts where I could maybe get in contact with the practitioner?

Ross Hunter
[00:18:45] Bellingham. [00:18:46] Look at Bellingham, they're sort of doing some work with transitional care that we're pretty excited about. [00:18:51] Every region has somebody doing ECEAP. [00:18:55] And if you want a tour we'd be happy to set one up. [00:18:59] We have to add thousands of slots of ECEAP over the next two or three years, and we are looking for people who want to host. [00:19:08] And we want to make it so that particularly in rural parts of town, so you can include multiple groups of kids sometimes rural communities that don't have enough kids really to fill a classroom. [00:19:20] We want to find some other ways to combine some of the other streams of money to make it easier for people to fill a classroom and do this. [00:19:28] The impact on your kindergarten will be amazing. [00:19:32] You'll have less variation, which means you'll be able to teach more to the middle of the distribution in that class and the whole class will move faster.

Scott Seaman
[00:19:44] One of our fastest growing membership slices for principals in the state are elementary principals. [00:19:52] So what message would —

Ross Hunter
[00:19:53] You’re welcome. [00:19:55] The reason that you got that is because we lower class sizes in kindergarten through third grade and we had a full day kindergarten, which adds an enormous number of new classrooms when you think about going from 25 down to 17 on class sizes. [00:20:13] So you need a third again as many classrooms just to do the class size reduction. [00:20:19] And there weren't all that many places that had full day kindergarten before we started phasing it in. [00:20:24] It was the first thing we did was to try and phase that in and we started with high poverty schools first. [00:20:31] This was Bruce Dan Meyer and I put a lot of work into trying to do that, Pat Sullivan, trying to really drive that across the state. [00:20:41] And it worked. [00:20:42] I mean that's I think why you've got a lot of new elementary school principals.

Scott Seaman
[00:20:45] Yeah. [00:20:46] So for them obviously they know how to find you now, they're going to find the ski coach.

Ross Hunter
[00:20:51] Yeah right. [00:20:52] Right. [00:20:53] You want to do crazy skiing. [00:20:54] Call me. [00:20:54] Don't actually. [00:20:56] Right.

Scott Seaman
[00:20:56] So as far as resources for them, launch them into….

Ross Hunter
[00:21:00] We have a whole program to help people launch. [00:21:04] We'll help you spin up a high quality pre-K program. [00:21:08] If you run sort of a step down version of your kindergarten program you'll have a really high priced childcare system. [00:21:15] You'll be OK. [00:21:16] Well I mean like that's better than a lot of places are gonna get, if that's all you can do, do that. [00:21:21] But if you can run a program that has a curriculum, that has coaching and mentoring for the teachers, that has the way we do assessments, the way the classroom actually works really helps kids learn the sort of serve and response method of working with kids. [00:21:41] It works. [00:21:42] I mean there's a reason that there's an enormous body of research that all agrees with. [00:21:49] Unlike most K12 research which is all over the map, everybody's got their thumb on the scale, pre-K stuff is all very consistent, it says do this, it'll work. [00:21:58] We'll help you do this. [00:22:00] I'm not gonna tell you all the details, remember I'm a computer guy. [00:22:03] I'm not really the policy guy on exactly what do you do in the classroom. [00:22:08] No one would ever let me teach a classroom of four year olds. [00:22:10] I mean it would be a bad idea. [00:22:11] But it would, but we do have a package and we'll help you implement that package. [00:22:18] So in five years where do you see our system? [00:22:21] I mean, I love the fact you've got this dream and this vision for our state in five years, where are we? [00:22:27] I'd like to see us have blended classrooms. [00:22:29] So I'd like to see school districts have classrooms that have the transitional kindergarten if they're doing that, that have special ed kids involved in the ECEAP classroom, and we're blending the money together so we get sort of more general ed students mixed in with students with more challenges. [00:22:48] It's good for everybody. [00:22:49] Everybody gets a mix. [00:22:51] I'd like us to continue to grow our focus on disproportionality on how do we… how do we do culturally appropriate classrooms a classroom that we would do in Yakima is different than a classroom that we would do in Highline. [00:23:05] In highline we might do something in Somali or in Oromo in the languages the top languages from the big Somali community there. [00:23:14] That would make very little sense in Yakima. [00:23:16] Right. [00:23:17] But in Yakima we have a lot of Spanish immersion classes and that works super well. [00:23:22] We'd like to see that. [00:23:23] We'd like to see the diversity of the teacher base increase. [00:23:27] Ours is pretty strong, partly because we grow our own. [00:23:31] We have this enormous linked together training system where all of the community colleges across the state provides stackable certificates that people can earn. [00:23:40] They can learn while they're earning money, being an assistant teacher and then they can move up and we'd like to continue to grow that so we grow our our teacher base. [00:23:50] I'd like to have a system that a little less turnover. [00:23:52] So I'd like that. [00:23:53] The more I can get in the K12 system, the more likely I am to have stable pay.

Scott Seaman
[00:23:59] So you've got this….

Ross Hunter
[00:24:00] I do have one other. [00:24:02] I don't know where you're going to run this thing, but I talked to Sue Birch today from the Health Care Authority. [00:24:06] She says you've got till the 15th, like if you're a teacher and you haven't signed up for SEBB yet, you've got to do it. [00:24:12] So I put my pitch in for that.

Scott Seaman
[00:24:13] That's just a little commercial break.

Ross Hunter
[00:24:15] Little commercial break right.

Scott Seaman
[00:24:16] We can flash the logo up there. [00:24:20] So you've got ninety principals watching right now. [00:24:22] You mentioned there are a few other things that you want to make sure you hit, foster kids was one, take this opportunity to know that your taking to K12 principals across the state right now. [00:24:33] Stressing the K part of that.

Ross Hunter
[00:24:37] Yeah. [00:24:38] Well I've been stressing because that's where I came from was really trying to think about what worked in the education system and where should we focus our funding. [00:24:46] It's no surprise that we focused new funding on teacher comp, which needed to get worked out, but on the classroom innovations in the lower grades, because we have so much more leverage there, so lot of work there. [00:25:01] But we have a group in Washington in every state in America of young adult adolescence. [00:25:09] Some of them become young adults some of them you would be stressed to call them that who are disconnected from the education system. [00:25:17] And if they remain disconnected they're likely to be connected to the corrections system eventually. [00:25:25] And we don't think that's good for them. [00:25:27] We don't think it's good for the state's economy. [00:25:29] And we've got to figure out a way to engage these young people and foster kids in particular have experienced a lot of trauma in their life. [00:25:41] And it's not their fault. [00:25:43] And one of the things that's most powerful when you approach a young person who has behavior that you do not understand why they are doing this, why do they have these incredible fight or flight reflexes, that they get in a lot of fights, or you know that you just, you see outbursts of and this all comes from the trauma. [00:26:04] It's a predictable response to abuse as a child. [00:26:08] And if you approach the behavior as these children are being disrespectful and I'm going to suspend them until they get better I can tell you it ain't gonna work. [00:26:20] So if you want to approach it and say well what happened to this kid rather than what's wrong with this kid you could start figuring out how do we wrap some supports around kids who've experienced a lot of trauma to help them be successful they need an adult in their life that cares about them. [00:26:36] That might be you, that might be a principal, that might be a teacher. [00:26:39] It might be an aide. [00:26:40] It might be you know Fraz the janitor. [00:26:42] I don't know. [00:26:43] Right. [00:26:43] It's somebody. [00:26:44] They need an adult who's consistent in their life, who supports them, and they need that adult to understand that there's going to be some behavior that is not behavior they would experience in kids who've not. [00:26:56] If you live in a jungle where dangerous stuff happens all the time your adrenaline system is always up. [00:27:06] And one, this causes you to live less time, it's a reasonable response to living in that kind of environment. [00:27:14] You lash out at the slightest bit of problem because that's what protects you. [00:27:22] That doesn't work. [00:27:24] You know in the library which is sort of where the rest of us live and we've got to understand that and create an environment that works. [00:27:31] And I don't have as good a research based story here but I can tell you that if you suspend kids the likelihood that they are going to learn new behavior is high, and you won't like the new behavior. [00:27:46] We've stopped using juvenile detention for kids who run away from foster care because all of the evidence says it makes them worse. [00:27:54] We're all worried as an adult because we like I want to put this kid down and have them still be there when I, you know, and put him in detention, all they learn is how to steal cars. [00:28:05] And it adds more trauma. [00:28:08] These kids need less trauma and we need to help them figure out what is their plan because they probably don't have that supportive adult at home. [00:28:17] Because there's a reason that they have these behaviors and helping us figure that out is an important place where principals need to be with us and we need to build a discipline system that is intentional rather than accidental. [00:28:31] I mean the accidental system winds up where we are today. [00:28:34] Incredible racial disparities in outcomes, in behavior and system. [00:28:39] Black boys get suspended all the time. [00:28:42] A lot of these kids are kids who've been in and out of the foster care system or have had a CPS involvement, so they've had this level of abuse and now the whole system that might support them doesn't. [00:28:57] Where are they gonna go? [00:28:58] So we've got to provide that supportive environment because nobody else is and it's our job.

Scott Seaman
[00:29:04] And our principals are reporting upwards of 80 — 90% of their day spent on responding to trauma. [00:29:12] Our principals are on the frontlines and they're working diligently to not suspend. [00:29:18] And we know that the relationships that they build with kids are crucial.

Ross Hunter
[00:29:23] Okay.

Scott Seaman
[00:29:25] What we're trying to tackle is, like what you said, consistent relationships is huge. [00:29:31] And we just really strongly believe in having principals, assistant principals — they are oftentimes those key relationships in buildings. [00:29:40] So that's what we're really working hard at AWSP to do is to create that sustainable, consistent leadership in our schools.

Ross Hunter
[00:29:47] Okay, so if I go pull discipline reports for foster kids in every school across the state, am I going to see a downward trend in every school?

Scott Seaman
[00:29:58] Not yet.

Ross Hunter
[00:29:59] Ok.

Scott Seaman
[00:29:59] But we're working toward it.

Ross Hunter
[00:30:01] Are you pulling those numbers?

Scott Seaman
[00:30:03] I know that systems are and that's where we're getting pushback across the state.

Ross Hunter
[00:30:07] If you're not pulling those numbers, if you're not looking at — so we all say we can all provide lip service all day. [00:30:17] Those of you have met me before, worked with me before, I'm not that guy. [00:30:22] How many did you suspend last week? [00:30:23] Did you suspend fewer this week? [00:30:26] What's that trajectory look like and does it get us anatomically closer to zero?

Scott Seaman
[00:30:31] Yeah.

Ross Hunter
[00:30:32] Because if you're not measuring it, you're not getting anywhere.

Scott Seaman
[00:30:35] I like it that it's a conversation, because it didn't use to be a conversation in the system, and now it is.

Ross Hunter
[00:30:39] It is.

Scott Seaman
[00:30:40] Now you have districts saying zero suspensions.

Ross Hunter
[00:30:43] Right.

Scott Seaman
[00:30:44] And that's a bold move that didn't exist before.

Ross Hunter
[00:30:46] So I sat in front of a panel at Greenhill School which is a juvenile detention or large juvenile detention facility in Chehalis, and a whole row of young men we're talking about the experiences that they had in the K12 system. [00:31:04] And these are young men who are at the deep end of the corrections system, and 80% of them have been foster kids. [00:31:10] And they start talking about when they started getting suspended. [00:31:18] And it was like a competition. [00:31:20] And finally they got down to one kid said, I got suspended in nursery school a dozen times. [00:31:28] So kids in nursery school get suspended four times more frequently than they do in the K12 system. [00:31:35] And we don't allow it in ECEAP and the ECEAP system seems to be working. [00:31:38] So the world has not come to an end because we can't suspend a four year old. [00:31:44] And I think the same is probably true for five and six year olds. [00:31:47] Kids in elementary school get suspended a lot. [00:31:50] We've got to figure out how do we build a world where we can manage the behavior of kids. [00:31:53] They're short people, they weigh less than 100 pounds. [00:31:59] And we ought to be able to figure out how to train our teachers and how to actually build a supportive environment before a kid spirals to a place where they're going to behave in a way that is very predictable based on the trauma they've experienced. [00:32:15] And there's stuff that we can do to help.

Scott Seaman
[00:32:17] Yeah. [00:32:17] I think it's exciting because we're tackling a decades old system of toss’em out.

Ross Hunter
[00:32:22] Yeah.

Scott Seaman
[00:32:26] So to me it's exciting that we’re getting there.

Ross Hunter
[00:32:28] I mean it seems like a system designed to perpetuate racial disparities. [00:32:35] I mean because the disproportionality of that behavior is stunning. [00:32:41] So I think we all have to take this on as a mission. [00:32:45] I've seen… there’s mostly elementary schools who seem to have a tighter culture than middle schools. [00:32:52] I personally have always felt that middle schools was a bad idea, that we should just basically lock those kids up for two years until the hormones settle down. [00:32:59] But that’s probably illegal.

Scott Seaman
[00:33:00] It’s a day to day decision.

Ross Hunter
[00:33:02] Day to day decision. [00:33:04] But elementary schools seem to have a culture that's reasonable. [00:33:07] And the ones that I've seen who've chosen to implement a violence reduction strategy or respect strategy and build, and say this is what we're doing as a school have been remarkably successful. [00:33:19] There's a number of these programs, I'm not sure it matters, I mean it probably does, but picking one and doing it seriously is probably more important than picking the right one. [00:33:28] And so I think that's a really important part of building a world where kids who experience a lot of trauma at home, they like going to school. [00:33:37] Because it's stable and predictable. [00:33:39] And the rest of their life isn’t.

Scott Seaman
[00:33:41] And they’re getting those relationships.

Ross Hunter
[00:33:43] And they need, and we need to build that for them. [00:33:46] So how we support these kids is really important.

Scott Seaman
[00:33:51] You mentioned earlier McKinney Vento.

Ross Hunter
[00:33:53] Yeah I did. [00:33:54] And its intersection with foster kids. [00:33:59] These kids need stability. [00:34:00] And so imagine you’re a seven year old and you're in second grade. [00:34:07] You just got ripped out of your home because of unbelievable craziness. [00:34:13] You still don't understand it because that seems like a normal home life to you, but you're now living with a stranger in a different part of town. [00:34:20] Ideally in the same town. [00:34:22] That kid needs to go back to school in the morning. [00:34:24] The same school, the same seat, the same hook to hang the raincoat on. [00:34:29] And we need to figure out how we communicate with school districts when we have a kid in a foster placement. [00:34:37] We need to know what school that kid is in and we need to figure out the transportation. [00:34:42] And I totally get it. [00:34:44] That is unbelievably aggravating. [00:34:46] This may be more for superintendents and principals, but you as a principal gotta lean on your system to make sure that we're getting those kids to school. [00:34:59] Kids who have special needs in the foster care system can have really crazy behaviors. [00:35:07] It's the law, and it's humane and it's really important to get these kids. [00:35:13] The earlier we can stabilize and give the kid a really stable environment the more likely we are to all be successful in watching this kid walk across a high school graduation stage with something planned to do after high school. [00:35:27] Write something useful.

Scott Seaman
[00:35:28] Yeah, and there's a big recovery that you're doing as these kids show up in the front office of the school and it's usually a vice principal or principal that is the first meet and greet that where their relationship is fostered. [00:35:42] So it's crucial. [00:35:43] Yeah I agree.

Ross Hunter
[00:35:45] And so this is a lot. [00:35:49] I totally get it. [00:35:50] It's crazy. [00:35:51] I get it happens, there's no planning time, K12 system does better when there's time to plan for things, plan all the school bus routes out in August. [00:36:00] It doesn't really work out. [00:36:01] You got to redo them in September. [00:36:03] At least you had a plan. [00:36:04] This is January 2nd because actually we have a huge spike right after the Christmas holidays when the kids come back and all of a sudden you've got to provide a bus to get a kid from across town to their elementary school. [00:36:17] It is really important. [00:36:19] And I have a project where I'm going to start calling Sups when I'm when our people, our kids aren't getting transported. [00:36:28] So be waiting for my call.

Scott Seaman
[00:36:31] Yeah we might have to flag that specifically on Twitter when we send this one out.

Ross Hunter
[00:36:37] I don’t know, but I mean we got to do it. [00:36:39] And this is a place where we all have to work together. [00:36:42] We need to get better information to you guys about what's happening with the kid and it's not always our highest priority. [00:36:50] And you guys gotta recognize that these kids through no fault of their own have experienced a lot of trauma and we need to help them be successful in school because that is the best place in the world for them. [00:37:03] These are kids, I've talked to a lot of these kids in the correction system where 40% of the kids are foster kids. [00:37:10] In juvenile corrections. [00:37:12] 80% of them have a CPS history. [00:37:16] So the overlap here, you can see the pipeline and the earlier we interrupt it the cheaper it is for all of us and that's why we're in this business. [00:37:24] You don't get in this business to make a mint. [00:37:26] Go be a stockbroker. [00:37:29] We're here because we actually care about the outcome for these kids.

Scott Seaman
[00:37:33] So if you could create a position that doesn't exist in the current K12 space, we've often refer to it as a hope coordinator. [00:37:45] As a recovering High School Principal myself I found I had key people that I leaned on whether in my teaching staff or classified staff that connected with any kid regardless of their background. [00:37:59] And those are the people that I didn't like rules, regulation and certification to prevent reaching a kid. [00:38:07] So I'm always dreaming about what would if we had this particular rule. [00:38:12] Well what do you think we could use in the K12 space that's way out of the box and different than what we currently have.

Ross Hunter
[00:38:19] So I’m going to move away from the whole preschool thing which I think we ought to do a better job of coordinating the resources that we currently have. [00:38:27] And let's talk about disconnected young men in particular. [00:38:35] The best elementary schools that I've visited in my legislative career that worked with challenging kids, in the principal's office somewhere in the office complex there was a whiteboard or something or there was a list up on the board and it had every kid on it, and they were tracking what needed to happen with that kid. [00:38:58] Elementary schools, 400, 600 kids, smaller in a lot of rural communities, you could do that. [00:39:05] You knew what Joey needed. [00:39:07] And for some kids there was a teacher who was assigned to make sure that Joey knew at the end of the day what all the homework that needed to happen was. [00:39:18] That he needed some help coordinating it or he needed this or somebody needed to get some stuff involved in getting to his house. [00:39:27] I don't think we'd do that in high school. [00:39:30] Middle school, high school. [00:39:31] I worry a lot about the middle school — high school transition ages, it’s a time when kids who, particularly kids who don't have a lot of connections to adults, start getting siphoned off into the gang problem. [00:39:43] And so if we had someone who made those lists, and I was going to say checking them twice but it's too much. [00:39:53] But there's a list and every kid that needs an adult connected to them that we've figured out which which adult can connect to that kid and it's really part of their work, that it's got to be part of their personal mission or it doesn't work. [00:40:11] It's got to be authentic. [00:40:12] But we've got to make sure that we've got at least one for every kid and then we figure out how do we feed that relationship and stuff like that doesn't happen unless someone really cares about it. [00:40:23] So that would be where I'd go, but that may not work. [00:40:25] I don't know.

Scott Seaman
[00:40:26] Well it does work. [00:40:28] Because I've seen it work, our system had that in place and we met every Monday morning, looked at the list, said who's got Johnny, who’s got Sallie and that's what we're doing. [00:40:39] And let's make sure we're rallying the supports around him. [00:40:42] And it was always relationships before anything else.

Ross Hunter
[00:40:45] You know the other thing that's new learning for me in this space is when I look at the kids in the foster care system, I look at adolescents, kids from 12 to 18, now up to 21 in the foster care system, 30% of them are LGBTQ+. [00:41:07] I don't understand the mechanism, that's about four or five times the percentage in the population. [00:41:14] So something, there's some agent at work that I don't have to understand, I would like to understand, I don’t have to, our system has to be more supportive of those kids. [00:41:30] And it's particularly important in places where the culture of the community is not as supportive and we had an incident this year, in Goldendale actually, we're we flew the Pride flag during Pride Month, and we got some community blowback from that. [00:41:51] And I sent out mail to my whole staff saying, we got some blowback here I want to thank our area administrator for not sort of bending over on this. [00:42:02] And why it was important for us to fly that flag is because I got the same percentage of kids gay and lesbian kids in that community trans kids and they don't have the community support that you might feel in in Bellevue or in Seattle and they need to know somebody has got their back. [00:42:25] So that was a statement that we could make. [00:42:28] And I think it's a statement that schools can make particularly with kids that are really struggling. [00:42:35] They're struggling at home and they're struggling trying to figure out who they are. [00:42:39] It is a hard thing to be an adolescent. [00:42:41] And how do we help support that kid so they don't wind up homeless. [00:42:49] An enormous fraction of homeless teenagers are gay and lesbian kids. [00:42:55] They're particularly susceptible to commercial sexual trafficking. [00:43:00] I get to learn all sorts of wonderfully exciting new uplifting things. [00:43:06] And how we identify kids that are being trafficked, how do we think about supporting gay and lesbian kids in that space is really important. [00:43:17] And schools touch these kids and you've got to think about how do I support this kid where he is. [00:43:25] You may not personally think it's a great thing, the kid is probably really confused and they need to have people be supportive too.

Scott Seaman
[00:43:37] Well that's the work that we do at AWSP is to try and support this complex work principals have, because it's changed.

Ross Hunter
[00:43:44] It’s hard work.

Scott Seaman
[00:43:44] It’s changed a ton in just a decade, what has landed on the laps of principals is tremendous. [00:43:52] I mean what's happening in society walks through the front doors of our schools every day.

Ross Hunter
[00:43:57] And it always has. [00:43:59] And what I'm excited about is that people are being more out front about, yes it actually is our responsibility to make the world a better place.

Scott Seaman
[00:44:11] And we need to change these horrifically, historically inequitable, bad for kids systems.

Ross Hunter
[00:44:17] Right. [00:44:18] And you know it’s actually in general not bad for kids. [00:44:23] There are aspects about it that are not supportive to many kids. [00:44:27] And I think we've got to be deliberate about that. [00:44:30] We're either building a system for white middle class kids or we're building a system for what Washington actually looks like and that is not what Washington looks like. [00:44:40] That's not even what Bellevue looks like. [00:44:42] Bellevue is a majority minority district now. [00:44:45] And so we have got to think about how do we build a more supportive K12 system so that I get fewer clients. [00:44:54] I'd love to put myself out of business.

Scott Seaman
[00:44:55] Retire again?

Ross Hunter
[00:44:56] Yeah, I don't know that that's gonna work. [00:44:58] But I'd love to have this job go away because we all solved the problem.

Scott Seaman
[00:45:04] We did it right.

Ross Hunter
[00:45:05] I could go do something else. [00:45:06] It could be a stock car driver, I don't know. [00:45:12] We need to like I would do something other than turning left. [00:45:15] That seems boring.

Scott Seaman
[00:45:16] We could put you in a middle school.

Ross Hunter
[00:45:18] Oh my God.

Scott Seaman
[00:45:21] I mean we'll put that on the shelf and think about it.

Ross Hunter
[00:45:23] Eight hundred kids just starting to go through adolescence, just going through puberty…

Scott Seaman
[00:45:30] You could be the morning check in person. [00:45:32] That's it. [00:45:32] You're just checking in with them how you're doing today. [00:45:35] I’ll work on that job description for you.

Ross Hunter
[00:45:38] I remember when I was running a Cub Scout pack and our Pinewood Derby got a little bit out of hand and it was too big for the gym at the elementary school. [00:45:50] We had a hundred boys in the pack and it was like an all day event. [00:45:54] It was over the top crazy. [00:45:57] We broke it into multiple sections after that. [00:46:00] And so I went to go, I rented the gym up the middle school and I went to go check it out. [00:46:05] And you know both my kids were in elementary school and I went up there and I looked and it's like this is a different species. [00:46:12] Is my daughter going to turn into, Oh my God. [00:46:15] It was like I don't know. [00:46:16] I don't think I could do it. [00:46:18] You guys do hard things. [00:46:21] High school I think I could do. [00:46:23] But I think I don't know about middle school.

Scott Seaman
[00:46:25] Well, come back and check with us and I bet we can find something for you to do.

Ross Hunter
[00:46:28] I did run a Scout troop when I was in college. [00:46:31] We and the housing projects are back behind the gym in New Haven. [00:46:35] I ran a Scout Troop for a couple of years and that's all middle school boys. [00:46:38] That was fun. [00:46:38] I could do that. [00:46:39] So maybe I could. [00:46:40] I don't know. [00:46:42] I don't think so. [00:46:42] I don’t think I would be good.

Scott Seaman
[00:46:44] You've done incredible work in the state and have such a incredible vision of what is possible for kids. [00:46:49] I really appreciate your advocacy for early learning. [00:46:52] It's incredible. [00:46:54] I can't wait to see what our schools are going to look and feel like in five years. [00:46:58] And in 10 years.

Ross Hunter
[00:47:00] I think we'll get a significant change in preschool in the next five and 10 years. [00:47:08] It's gonna take a while. [00:47:08] We've got a bunch of classrooms to build, just like people have had to build elementary schools all over the state again. [00:47:13] I'm sorry. [00:47:15] I think it'll make the world a better place that fewer kids in a classroom for sure, but how we build those support preschools so that our kindergartens start getting better. [00:47:25] I mean we also do you know we look at those classrooms, those pre-K classrooms, and a bunch of those kids have had more trauma than the normal. [00:47:34] And we focus we do home visiting. [00:47:36] We do a lot of other supportive work for those and we'd love to be integrated with schools more. [00:47:42] Because all these kids live in families. [00:47:45] How we provide a supportive family environment, coordinate with the schools is pretty important to me.

Scott Seaman
[00:47:50] OK. [00:47:51] Well thank you for your time. [00:47:53] We want to respect your busy schedule but nobody sits in that chair without this question. [00:47:58] So I want you to reflect back on your time through your own learning, your journey, your educational journey. [00:48:04] Can you think back on a principal or assistant principal that had an impact on your life?

Ross Hunter
[00:48:09] You mean when I was a kid?

Scott Seaman
[00:48:13] If you can't go back that far, you can't think of something and maybe think through the lens of your own kids if you like.

Ross Hunter
[00:48:18] Let's talk about the one that… Betsy. [00:48:22] Betsy Hill, Medina Elementary. [00:48:26] I got to see her through the lens of our two kids. [00:48:31] I think being in elementary school in an enormously rich community is really difficult because the parents are so aggravating. [00:48:44] And she, I thought, did that with grace. [00:48:48] She made placement choices that were appropriate for our kids. [00:48:53] You know like matched kids and teachers super well, which meant she knew every single kid in that school. [00:48:59] So that's us looking at like what worked with our kid. [00:49:03] But I'm a systems guy. [00:49:05] I sort of step back and and I look at this and say How did you make that school better. [00:49:12] And she's not in Bellevue anymore so I could say this, but she sure gamed the hiring system. [00:49:20] So every time somebody retired or left to go somewhere else, just turnover in schools, the person who came in was better. [00:49:28] So incremental improvement in the quality of the staff. [00:49:31] And that transition, like people didn't retire in April and then had big hiring panels and stuff. [00:49:37] No. [00:49:39] Oddly everyone retired after the transfer day within the school district. [00:49:44] So that open slot at this really desirable school didn't open up until just after the last minute. [00:49:51] And somehow there was someone who was still available and ready to be hired and got hired instantly into this spot. [00:50:00] I always wondered how.

Scott Seaman
[00:50:02] Sheer luck I'm sure.

Ross Hunter
[00:50:03] Oh, and you think that, and for her it happened every year I was there. [00:50:09] It was like, How did she do that? [00:50:13] Because once I started doing the politics of working with the school I realized this was not actually the normal experience. [00:50:19] And so that was a focus on improving the quality of the school through hiring quality staff and supporting that staff. [00:50:29] The teachers we had they were great. [00:50:31] The work we did there on national board certification. [00:50:34] Shelley Bass was doing a lot of that work and it was awesome. [00:50:39] We had a lot more nationally certified teachers in Bellevue than really anywhere else because of Mike Riley was doing that, but she was smooth and competent and everything just got better every single year. [00:50:58] It was astounding.

Scott Seaman
[00:51:00] I appreciate you answering that through the lens of systems leadership. [00:51:04] Because that is a great example and I'm pretty sure a lot of people are writing that down right now. [00:51:09] Timing of hiring.

Ross Hunter
[00:51:13] Whatever scam works for you in your district. [00:51:17] But it's like deciding what is important and then figuring out how you focus your work to make that happen. [00:51:24] I'm sure the Sup didn't care. [00:51:27] He just wants people to get hired and not to have some kerfuffle that he's got to go bargain. [00:51:34] So she probably couldn’t do it every time, but it seemed that way to someone who's like wow that was smooth. [00:51:42] Be smooth. [00:51:43] Decide what you want. [00:51:45] And be focused on that year after year. [00:51:48] You can't do this all at once.

Scott Seaman
[00:51:50] Well thank you so much for that great answer. [00:51:52] Thanks for the time. [00:51:52] Thanks for your impact. [00:51:55] I think there's a future for you as a middle school assistant principal and we're gonna work on that. [00:52:00] I'll get some information on the certification program nearest you. [00:52:05] That's it for another episode of AWSP TV. [00:52:08] Tune in next time we're gonna have Governor Jay Inslee. [00:52:11] I'd just like to say that at the end of all of our episodes because one of these days you might join in. [00:52:15] See you next time.