(video of pre-meeting protest in the board room, added at 6:28 pm)
We’re now at the John Stanford Center in Sodo, headquarters of Seattle Public Schools. Tonight’s school board meeting was preceded by a raucous protest against teacher layoffs, with more than a hundred people chanting in the parking lot on the building’s north side.

The protesters then proceeded inside and chanted for several minutes just before the meeting started; we’ll add video of that shortly. Many are holding up signs, such as “Cut from the top, NOT from teachers and students.” Public comment is under way now – you can watch live on cable TV – and the first to speak was Chief Sealth High School junior Duron Jones, talking about a student-run program, as part of a new initiative to have the first speaker at every board meeting be a local high-school student:

We’re expecting to hear more tonight – probably not until after 7 pm – about enrollment levels at local schools, looking ahead to fall.

6:25 PM: This is the rowdiest meeting we’ve been to since the school-closure process; chanting is breaking out between speakers: THEY SAY CUT BACK, WE SAY FIGHT BACK (as you can hear in the video just added atop this story) and THEY SAY LAYOFFS, WE SAY NO, GOODLOE-JOHNSON’S GOT TO GO. The president of the Seattle teachers’ union is speaking now (6:26 pm).

6:40 PM UPDATE: Jesse Hagopian, one of the Madison Middle School teachers who’s being laid off, has just addressed the board, with Madison students at his side holding protest signs. He said they’re asking nicely now that the decision be reversed – but hinted that more drastic action could follow if their concerns are not heard and acted on:

7:50 PM UPDATE: A district staffer is now updating the enrollment figures.

CLICK AHEAD TO SEE THE REST OF OUR AS-IT-HAPPENED COVERAGE:

She says 68 percent of students got their “first choice” school this year, down from 75 last year. Enrollment is up over the year before. She listed which schools were top tier and second tier with number of “first choice” applications – Lafayette and Schmitz Park had between 100 and 125 first-choice kindergarten applications each, second-highest tier, and she says Lafayette is adding an extra kindergarten class next year, as is Roxhill. The group of middle schools with the second-highest number of first-choice applications included Madison; for high schools, the second tier included West Seattle HS. No West Seattle schools were among those with the longest waiting lists, but Libros did say that both Lafayette and Roxhill have added a kindergarten class.

8:01 PM UPDATE: More from the district staffer: Regarding students affected by school closures (including the eliminated Cooper Elementary “program,”) she said that 489 of the 1300 students applied in open enrollment for something different than the reassignment they were given in January. The largest numbers who didn’t want their official reassignment, she said, were from Cooper and Summit K-8. She didn’t have a lot of Cooper specifics but did say that 388 of the 489 districtwide who wanted a new assignment got one, while 101 are on waiting lists. West Seattle school board rep Steve Sundquist requested more information on the Cooper families’ choices – she said most who wanted a new assignment asked for something in the West Seattle North cluster, and “most of the ones who were reassigned ended up at Lafayette and Sanislo.”

8:26 PM: The board’s getting a budget briefing now. With cuts including the aforementioned teacher layoffs, board members are being told that they will be presented with a balanced budget at the next meeting June 17th, but if current trends hold, when they get ready to budget for Fiscal Year 2011, they will be starting with a budget hole around $12 million.

9:30 PM: The part of the meeting where board members actually take votes has only just begun. Right now board members are discussing transportation changes that are linked to start/end times for the school day. A few minutes earlier, West Seattle’s rep Sundquist had noted that the executive session before the board meeting did address Superintendent Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson’s evaluation but that it was not finalized – he says they are “working through” the evaluation now. Back to the transportation vote – just passed, with only Mary Bass voting no. Here’s the list of proposed bus arrival/departure times and school bell times for next year, school-by-school.

9:50 PM: Now they’re voting on the math textbooks. Board president Michael DeBell says he’s disappointed that he hasn’t seen as much use of Singapore Math as a supplement as he was led to believe would happen – a more classic version of math than the “Everyday” curriculum that’s dominant now. Chief Academic Officer Carla Santorno (who’s leaving soon) has just come up to the microphone to say that the spirit of “concrete computation practice” IS alive in the teaching and is NOT being ignored – “Singapore Math is not the only way to achieve that.” Santorno says they’re moving toward an aligned K-12 curriculum. Board member Sherry Carr says, “Singapore Math may not be the only way to achieve that, but it was the decision of the board.” Santorno finally admits that Singapore supplementation has not been implemented and is “delayed.” The math item passes 4-2 with DeBell abstaining.

9:57 PM: They finally get to the “initial part of the Student Assignment Plan,” as Dr. Tracy Libros describes it. Here’s the PowerPoint with full description of how it’s supposed to work. There have been some questions asked about tiebreakers that would be used if needed – the two major criteria will be “sibling (at the school?)” and “lottery” (numbers drawn). Libros says tiebreakers will be less relevant because more kids will be assigned to “attendance area” schools based on where they live – since the district has been run by “school choice” till now, that’s a big change. A lot of discussion is ensuing now about how families could make sure siblings stay at the same school — Libros says having them at the “attendance area school” will be the best bet.

10:30 PM: Still discussing the first phase of the Student Assignment Plan, leading up to a board vote. (10:43 pm) Board president DeBell says the whole thing is going to be an “evolution, rather than a revolution” in attendance policy. Libros says they’ll be doing “boundary planning” soon. That in turn will be tied in with a decision on which schools are declared “option schools.” 10:59 pm, discussion ends – this was an introduction item so no vote tonight.

(By the way, the meeting ended after 11:30 pm – five and a half hours long. An automatic switch actually turned off the lights over the board members’ seating area at 11:30 sharp.)