001Well, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to our special board meeting, today's work session around tribal consultations since time of memorial and title date. So, can I please get a roll call? Director Holien. Aye. Director Tidholm. Oh, present. Director Espinosa. Present. President Vian. Here. And Director Alvarez is running a little bit late. She'll be here momentarily. Dr. Grant, right off to you. Hello, and as Director Vann said, this is our Native Education Program Board Work Study Session. My name is Ledo O'Donnell. I'm the Director of Family and Community Partnerships. And we will be providing a high-level overview of our Title VI and Title III programs, our Native education policy since time of memorial curriculum, and again, share information to prepare for tribal consultation. I just want to acknowledge that I know that we just have an hour.
002And it is a lot of information for us to go through. And we may not get to all of the questions that you have, or something might come up later. And I'm saying that because as someone who's worked for the district for 25 years, I am still constantly learning about our Native Education Program. So please know that we are happy to provide additional information. If you have any questions that we don't address today or arise later, please send those over to Dr. Duran. And we'll make sure that we are able to respond. And with that, I just want to take a moment and have the team at the table to introduce themselves by their name and their role. And I'll start right over there with you. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. Dina Russo, Haida Katesi,
003First Nations. And I'm the Director of Professional Learning and Human Resources. Hey, everyone. John Rehmer, enrolled member of the Makah Indian tribe out of Cape Flattery, Nea Bay. I serve as the Native Education Literacy and Culture Specialist for the district. Quatsi Alpa. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Sarah Marie Ortiz. I'm an enrolled citizen in Pueblo of Acoma from New Mexico. And I've been in my position, my tenure as the Native Education Program Manager here in Highline for almost 12 years. Kind of hard to believe, but it's good to be with you all today. Hi, my name is Kyra Fernandez. I'm an enrolled member of the Lower El Duwak Klallam tribe. I'm an alumni of the Highline School District and an alumni of the Native Education Program. My name is Bernard Kuntz. I'm an executive
004director here in our student learning group. And I've been working with the Native Education Program for a long time. And we have someone joining us by phone. Hello. Lisa Hendrickson, Assistant Superintendent for the Student Support Division, which includes the Native Education Program. And although I can't be there in person, I just couldn't miss today's work session. So I will be here by phone joining you. Thank you so much. And I'm going to have Sarah Marie give our land and people's acknowledgment. And then Kisa will come back online and share a few words with us. So I'm going to ask for something special. We don't always do. But there have been leaders in Highline previous that have modeled good, creative, and ever-evolving practices around our land and people's acknowledgment. It's important that it's personalized. It's important
005that it's in context moment to moment, that it's a living document, that it's not just a rote practice that we do because we're supposed to do it. We do it because we stand in our commitments in Highline. Our land and people's acknowledgment is an extension of that. If you would just close your eyes for a moment and just be in your body as much as possible. Many of you have read the land and people's acknowledgment and heard it read over and over. But I invite all of us to just take a moment to truly be in this moment, think about the ways in which the land, the water, that beautiful mother mountain, Tacobid, Tacoma, or Mount Rainier, as many people know it, takes care of us every single day, takes care of our bodies, takes
006care of our spirits, and allows us to do the sacred work of our life, which is caring for our community, caring for one another, caring for our beautiful, sacred children and youth in Highline and in our whole region. Our land and people's acknowledgment is a really important moment for us to truly stand in our commitments, individual and collective, and really honor those relationships that we all share with the land, the water, the environment, and one another. And think about that responsibility that we all have to one another and to the land. Thank you for taking that time. And just know that the land and people's acknowledgment is always changing. It's not going to stay the same forever. We wrote this and had it vetted. And we're in good relationship and have been in good relationship
007with the language itself, the process and protocols that went into crafting the statement, the relationship that we share with Muckleshoot Indian Tribe. Muckleshoot is our primary and official tribal partner. They are our closest federally recognized tribe. This was all their usual and accustomed territory pre-settlement and to this day. They still use it to fish. They hunt in our areas. They clam over on Bashan. They still dig for oysters. And they care very much about protecting the land in the way that their ancestors have done since time immemorial. And just very quickly, our promise, we know that our promise is extremely important in Highline. We wanted to shift over to the next slide. Little Eleanor here, Turtle Mountain Chippewa. She's now a fourth grader. I think she was probably about five here. But we like to
008acknowledge in all of the ways what we're doing this work for. We want to know our students by name, strength, and need. Always know their families, know their realities, their experiences. And so it's one of the reasons why we have have Eleanor on this slide reminding us of our commitments. Thank you so much, Sarah-Maria. Now I'm going to invite Kisa. Yes, thank you so much, Lita. Did you introduce yourself, by the way? I think I did, but if I didn't, I'm the director of Family and Community Partnerships. OK, so I am not on the land that you're on. And so before I talk a little bit around the federal ongoing, I just wanted to acknowledge that I am on the traditional lands of the, it's called the Costonian Grimson Carmel tribe. They are not a
009federally recognized tribe. It's quite complicated, the history out here with the missions and fame and Mexico and the United States. However, there was a treaty signed in the late 1800s, but it was never ratified by Congress. And people down here do not have federal recognition, and they have since relocated to southern California. So I did a little research. I'm in Monterey, California right now, and I did a little research about the area while I was down by the aquarium and the Canary Road down there. Lots of in-depth history all around, but I just wanted to acknowledge where I was today. I wanted to talk very briefly about the ongoings with our current federal administration. As we know, decisions, executive orders, and other things are being made on a day-to-day basis. Most recently, there was some
010communication that came out regarding Title VI. And I just wanted to clarify, the Title VI we've been hearing about over the last week or so is Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. So the demands that school districts and others sign a declaration that they won't engage in DEI education is related to the Civil Rights Act. Today, we are going to hear about Title VI of the Every Student Succeeds Act or ESSA. So please know that we are watching and tracking all the ongoings. This is a federal grant that's under the Department of Education. And as decisions are being made about the Department of Education, we are watching where this work might live, because there are laws around the requirements to serve our Native students who qualify for the Title VI program. So we are
011diligently watching, diligently taking the direction of our state superintendent's office, and tracking. We are committed to continuing to serve our Native education students. And so I've already had conversations with Jackie Bryan, our chief financial officer, about what other possible funding sources might be available to continue supporting our students. And I just will say this before I hand it off. I believe that what we do for those who have been most impacted by K-12, our Native students being amongst those, are good for all students. So serving them is a model for how we can serve everyone. With that, I will pass it on to the next person, but I will be here on the phone on mute in case anyone has any questions for me later on. Thanks so much, Kisa. That's why I think our
012promise is so important. And I think about our Native education program and how our promise is aspirational, and it challenges us to ensure that each student's identity and potential are uplifted. And I know that Sarah-Marie already introduced us to the beautiful little picture here of Eleanor, who I have just been so happy that I've been able to meet in person at some of the Native education programming events that take place in our district. I also just want to touch base on how the Native education program hits on our strategic plan goals. And so we foster a culture of belonging through events like the celebration of Native voices present in life ways, and that's one of the places where I've met Eleanor. And these times or these convenings really honor Native tradition and perspective in making
013our students and families feel valued. I also think about the innovative learning, and I'm going to try to do a pronunciation, and I hope I do it justice. We implement the John McCoy Le Oroosh Since Time Immemorial Tribal Sovereignty Curriculum. And this curriculum ensures that we are enriching all students' understanding of tribal sovereignty, history, and resilience. And then I hope you guys have had the opportunity to see the posters outside that are in Lushootseed. And I just want to say that these are more than just decorations. They really celebrate the rich cultural heritage of the Muckleshoot and the Coast Salish peoples, and they promote the significance of tribal languages, nurturing multicultural skills, and supporting our bilingual and biliterate goal. And then finally, I just want to talk about, through opportunities like the Native Student Success
014Summit, we equip our Native students with the tools and mindsets needed for college, career, leadership, and the future that they choose. And with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Sarah Marie. Thank you, Lita. Thank you, Kisa. I'm not going to spend too much time with this next slide. Adriana just stepped away, so we skipped ahead. All are familiar with our four pillars, but did want to just give a shout out to the person who's on this side. Thank you so much, Adriana. Eliza Domany, who is another one of our student leaders. We're going to hear from Kaia shortly here. But she, along with Kaia and so many of our Native student leaders who are graduates or current participants in the Native education program, they are exemplars. They are absolutely living expressions of
015our highline promise, of all of these commitments that we've made and the focus areas where we know that our students, when we focus on a cultural belonging, innovative learning, making sure that we center and elevate that bilingual and biliterate goal and our future ready, including, as Lita said, connected to our secondary offerings, like the Native Student Success Summit, we can see in action how beautiful and powerful and meaningful it really is when students really get that extra support and really are centered in these individual pillars. I think even though they've sort of emerged over time and we're in a new era in highline, these have always been important to us, particularly within our Native education framework. Anelika, welcome, it's good to see you always. And it's just an interesting thing that over time that there
016has been that attention to alignment, to coherence and to cohesion, but making sure that our goals and our values in the Native education program are also directly aligned with our highline values. I'll go really quickly through our objectives because we do have some very specific targets for this session. I know we don't have a whole lot of time, but just providing that really high level overview of what the Native education program is, what our scope of work is in highline, a little bit about the history of the program as well. Engage in just a little bit of learning about board policy 2197, which is totally a celebration point for us because we are one of the only districts in the entire nation that has a board level policy that's very specific and explicit on Native
017education. We should celebrate that. And then the John McCoy Lulealosh, since time immemorial tribal sovereignty curriculum update. I'm gonna talk a little bit about some of the requirements and new pieces around that policy based state mandated curriculum that we are honored to be able to implement here in highline in a really full way. And then we'll round out by preparing, sharing some information about training opportunities and the tribal consultation that's gonna be taking place in only a few days. It might as well be tomorrow. I'm a little stressed out just to be completely honest because it's a huge opportunity. We don't get that much time with our tribal partner in that particular way where we're able to share a highline story, able to celebrate all things Native education, our student successes, our staff successes, and
018hear from them about how important this work is to them and see where that alignment lies. And I don't wanna speak for everybody, but I think that everybody gathered here and everybody who's been a part of the relationship building and the consultation process knows just how meaningful it really is and how our values really do align with Muckleshoot in so many ways. And we're lucky that it's that way because tribal relationship building, LEA and tribal relationship building can be very difficult and delicate. And not that it isn't for us, but they are so generous and so good to us and in such alignment with our highline values that they make it easy for us in a lot of ways. So we're gonna go very quickly through our primary scope of work. We sort of went
019back and forth on what to title this slide also, because though we often focus on the funding streams and the way in which the Native education work in the district is supported, that's not the main component. It's so important that we celebrate in addition to having that policy on the books that's so special. Title VI and Title III are not our only funding streams. We as an agency have made a commitment over several years to make sure that our program is robust, that it's well supported in all of the ways in ideology and practice and also funding. And so a combination of Title VI, Title III, Title I at one time private funding, basic education and LAP funding supports all of our incredible work. So I just wanted to make sure that that was clear.
020But to Kisa's point, because we are in unprecedented times in so many ways and Title VI specifically may very well be harmed or come under some fire under the new administration just based on the non-alignment of understandings. So we constantly use the framing of shared understandings that we all understand that being American Indian and Alaska Native is not primarily a racial category and that what we do when we're honoring the treaties, when we're honoring our commitments that are legal and political as opposed to within the house of DEI, it's so important to make that distinction. Our American Indian and Alaska Native students are descendants and often citizens of sovereign tribal nations. And Title VI is very much rooted, grounded in policy and deep reporting research that the federal government did back in the 60s. And
021the ultimate outcome was that they acknowledged in a way that they never had before that American Indian, Alaska Native students had been harmed stemming from their removal from their homes back in the boarding school era, but also the fact that so many of our Native students, the majority of our Native students are now in public school systems and that harm was iterative and ongoing and that they needed additional and very explicit special supports, hopefully by Native educators like we have here in Highline with very specific expertise in American Indian studies, Native education specific, indigenous research, and we are the living embodiment of that dream in so many ways, the policy dream and also the architects who really wanted to see our Native students taken care of and not harmed in the way that they had
022been historically. Some of the ways in which we carry out our mission around Native education and our service objectives, but also just standing in our ethos is offerings like the Celebration of Native Voices, Presence and Lifeways. We partner in a really deep way with multiple partners, including higher ed and community partners, historic and culture partners like Highline Heritage Museum. We're so, so fortunate to be able to do that. We host our events both in our schools, but also around the community, so Native Student Success Summit happens at Highline College. Our most recent event with Owen Oliver, who is Quinault tribal citizen, as well as a Pueblo relative, not from my Pueblo, but he did an incredible presentation at Highline Heritage with elders all the way to babies, sharing his writing and really hitting home the
023importance of our literacy, our literacy goal and commitments, especially within the House of Native Education, because we are very fortunate also to be working not just at the local level, but the state level on building out a framework of sorts for Native student specific literacy support, whether it's John and I, and we'll talk a little bit more about that a little bit later. And then this is so not a representative list, but we do so much support all year long. Even in the summertime, we are not on a teacher calendar. John and I work year round, even in the summer, especially in the summer because we have a summer academy, but we support all of our central office, staff, administrators. I've been so fortunate to be in my administrator role and be able to build
024relationships with our system leaders across departments and help them to understand the treaties, understand tribal affairs, tribal sovereignty, what our obligations are at the federal and state level, and just really dig deep in building those relationships and helping others to understand how we are all supporting Native student success in one way or another, and we can always work harder. Yeah, I will say just a couple of things really quickly about these next slides on iReady growth. We wanted to celebrate the fact that we have made gains across student groups, across the board in Highline with our ELA and math work and interventions, and our Native education program. We are so, so, so privileged and so fortunate to be able to work directly with students all year round, including in the summer, to help them to
025be more proficient around literacy and also language, giving them access, not just to really high quality resources that help them to be better readers across the literacy domains, but also accessing tribal language resources, which is really special and not always the way of things in districts, but we have lots of resources available to our urban Native community, and we truly believe that there is a link between that culturally grounded and informed approach to serving our students, accessing resources they wouldn't necessarily always be able to, but our urban Indian population here in Highline is so special, and it's bigger than this end. I wanted to mention that as well. It says that there's only 53 students in this particular data set, and I won't go deeply into the identification issue, but one of the rights violations
026that's happened across Washington State and across the United States is that many of our Native students are invisibilized in the data, so even this great celebration that we have here where our Native students have made great gains in their iReady scores, even outpacing the other student groups in this particular data set is not even fully representative of all the Native students that we have in the district, and I'm gonna turn it over to John to talk about his work. Oh, sweet. To reintroduce myself, I've seen a few more people walk in. John Reamer, enrolled member of the Makai Indian Tribe. Easiest way to describe that is Washington looks like a thumb and it's out there on the tip, but I've been in the district almost three school years, however that translates. I have a very
027unique position, and I enjoy the work quite a bit. I'm at probably seven different locations every week. Those are the same locations each week, but I rotate between Highline High School, Evergreen, Glacier Middle School, Beverly Park, Big Picture, Iraq, and Mar Vista. These sites are decided at the start of the year where we find the largest congregation of Native students in our T6 and T3 student lists, and when I spend the time at these schools, I offer tiered supports that looks different for each student. I'm really big on fostering community and mending the relationship pipeline of Native people in the school system, and I feel like through doing that, if you give the student someone to look forward to seeing or something to look forward to each week, inherently the school performance will increase on
028its own, and that's something that we've been able to see through our family events, through these supports, getting students out to the community through various different opportunities. We just brought 14 kids to UW yesterday, Go Dogs, for Native Student Day, and that was a lot of fun. I think the kids really enjoyed the time there. We've had kids go to NAILA this year, which is a Native American Youth Leadership Academy. We've had students go to UI Tech, which is United Native Tribes of Education Coalition up at Daybreak Cultural Indian Center, but that's just some of the secondary supports. A lot of the stuff that happens in the elementary schools is small groups, small group check-ins throughout the day. What would literacy, me reading to them, having them read culturally grounded materials, Native authored materials, while
029also offering support to staff and admin, vetting any materials that they may be going over, co-teaching in the STI curriculum. If you, a lot of teachers access the, we have a Canvas page that has a lot of the teachings that was developed, I think, the year before I got here during the COVID craziness. So that's what a day in the life looks like. I think, just kind of thinking of it all, I think my favorite part of the work is getting to know the community here. I'm not from this area. I come from a really small town. I think I graduated in a class of about 18 students, and everyone knows everyone. So I'm a bit away from home, but Berrien provides that, it's starting to feel like home to me, and I'm happy to
030give back to the community and be here, and pour all these resources back into the students, and then see what comes from that. I think we can go to the next slide. We're gonna, I have some direct quotes from students coming up. I tried to get voice recordings, but with kids everywhere screaming, it was kind of hard. So I just ended up taking them for words. I think the first one, this is Judah Wolftail. I met him about two years ago, and when I had met him, he was struggling with coming to school, and attendance wasn't really there, and engagement was low, and he started coming to Daily Native Club. We had a special name for it when we started. We kind of divided away from that. But this student in particular, he's really into
031art, native art styles, and we're able to provide him with native coloring books, but he's more into the freelancing ones, and we have materials like that. So able to provide those resources for these students, and they're able to express themselves, they feel seen and heard. And like I was saying, if you give students to look forward to, I've seen students that weren't, they didn't have their skills recognized when I grew up, and that's how you have students fall through the cracks. And so I feel like if we provide the support for these students, and whatever web they go down with, what they're interested in, it will provide greater engagement. This is another student, Justin Snook-Peterson. He's one of, he's a really good kid. They actually are both from the same school. I think there are
032about a group of 11 of them that come, but these two are my more vocal students, and they were really happy to share. I'm not really sure where the photos were. They just have these hung up all around the school, and I was like, hey, that looks cool. I'm gonna steal that. But yeah, they enjoy coming to Literacy Club, and that's crazy. Now they're gonna be going to middle school, and being there, you get to see the pipeline. Like I said, I'm at Glacier in Beverly Park, so I get students from Beverly Park that inherently go to Glacier after that. It's kind of crazy. You start to feel a little bit older. But yeah, that's just some of the work I get to enjoy to do, I enjoy doing weekly. And we have another student
033quote here, Carter. He's been in the district since he was pre-K, and I think even his older siblings have been in the district even longer than that. His mom is actually a member of the NFACT, the Native Family Advisory Council. They serve as a resource to us to help guide the work we do. And they, you know, it's kind of grassroots. I don't ever claim to know the most or anything. So I think it's really nice to have NFACT to support us and help all these ideas be fostered from the families themselves. We actually have a really nice event coming up at the end of the month at the Highline Community College that will be kind of our big one for the elementary students. We're gonna be bussing students out from four different elementaries. Crazy,
034right? And we're gonna have a book reading. We're gonna have a powwow dancer, Lauren Naba-Haycom, have the students up dancing. We're gonna feed them. But yeah, it should be a good time. And I'm gonna turn it over to our very esteemed guest, Kaia, who's been a student of mine since she was, I believe, in seventh grade. I think that's when we met. But is legacy in so many ways. Those connections are abiding within our Native education work. Those family connections that John referenced. The fact that Carter's mom is now serving as a family leader. He'll likely become one of our student leaders. She is, she works for a very important organization in our community called Sea Alaska. Those, and the siblings also. But those iterative family connections through the years are so hugely important. Kaia's
035grandpa, Roger Fernandez, is, talk about legacy, legend, status. He actually was in my position way back in the 70s when we first made our commitments around Indian education, Native education in Highline, when the Indian Education Act had just passed. It was just a couple years after that that Roger came on to lead the program and taking students on trips the way that we do, working with teachers, doing small group instruction. So it's been a theme in the district for a long, long time and we should be proud of that. And with Kaia now being an incredible community leader herself, it's just really special to see that legacy continuing. Hi, I'll reintroduce myself really quick. My name is Kaia Fernandez. I'm an enrolled member of Lower Elowah Clallam Tribe. I grew up here in Berrien. I
036started at Cedarhurst Elementary School in kindergarten. Then I graduated from Highline in 2019. I am currently working as a preschool teacher, so I'm also an educator. And yeah, I joined the Native Education Program in seventh grade and that's when I met Sarah. And I remember going on different trips, different community events. Definitely my favorite was NALA, so I'm really excited that's still going on for the other kids. I met a lot of friends there and gained a lot of leadership skills and it was always a lot of fun being able to build that sense of community around us. And as an alumni for the Native Education Program, I've come back and got to share stories at the summer camp and different events. So it's really great to build that community with everybody here. Thank you,
037Kaia. Yeah, that's one of the most special things is seeing our little one grow all the way up and then doing work in the community. We have so many success stories like Kaia's as well where it's just come to life. We dreamed that they would come back into the circle, be educators. Hopefully she'll come to Highline and work for us too. She's up north, but we are just so happy to see our student leaders, now adult community leaders working in the nonprofit sector, other industries, education for sure, art, culture, and becoming leaders with our tribes. It's just an incredible thing. I wanted to mention really quickly, I'm not gonna go back in the slides, but one of our main service objectives as stated to the feds is actually to advance cultural awareness among our Native
038students and through every single practice, every single learning opportunity or offering that we have for our Native students, that is top of the list when it comes to what we're aiming for with them is them understanding more about their own tribal cultures, traditional knowledge systems, systems of governance, but also learning more about how incredibly dynamic and diverse our indigenous community in general in South King County and the Highline area is, both those who are from local tribes and also learning more about what it means to be self-determining indigenous peoples from all around the world. We have that opportunity with our students, so that cultural awareness advancement piece is huge. And connected to that, as I mentioned, John and I, and I won't say a lot about this, but John and I were invited to serve
039on the OSPI Native Literacy Workgroups, so what that means is that we're essentially building some guiding principles, indicators, a document that is going to go out across the land to teachers, instructional specialists, anybody who works with American Indian and Alaska Native students, both in our public schools, but also in our tribal compact schools. We're also hungry for instructional resources and making sure that they're as student-centered, family-centered, culturally grounded, place-based when possible, and this is our goal. So John and I are in the lab with an incredible collective of certificated teachers, instructional specialists, administrators, language leaders, and our state leaders within the Office of Native Education. Our previously Director of Native Education is now the Assistant Superintendent for the entire agency, and we think that's pretty special because Henry Strom is an incredible leader from Yakama
040Nation, and he has flexed from instructor to superintendent, and now to Assistant Superintendent for OSPI, so it's incredible, so he's also a part of our workgroup. Really special stuff, we are developing not just some of these guiding documents for the state of Washington, but we're also in the lab internally on something called the Native Student Literacy Success Framework, so that's very Highline-specific, but that's one of the reasons why we were engaged and invited to be on the workgroup, is because we are regarded at a state and also a national level as being a model, being a leader in our Native education work. So yeah, kudos to, I'm gonna say shout out to John and shout out to his predecessors because we wouldn't be here without all of those incredible literacy and culture specialists, liaisons that
041actually sort of built upon the work that they initiated. I will say just very, very quickly, we wanted to make sure that we gave some celebration time to Policy 2197. There's Kaia again. We love that picture of her graduation day, this one when graduated from Western, yeah. I love that photo. We sat down with Holly Ferguson, Yay Holly, and our Native Family Advisory Council, as well as what they call the Indian Unit at the Northwest Justice Project, as well as a few other stakeholders in 2013. I just wanted to learn more about the Indian education program that I had been supported by when I was just a youngin in Albuquerque Public Schools, long way away from Highline, but a lot of corollaries in so many ways. Wanted to know if there were policies on the
042books within agencies like ours, as big as ours or bigger, serving high numbers of urban Native students specifically. And I was shocked to find that there were almost none, so the one that I looked to was actually, ironically, the policy of Albuquerque Public Schools where I graduated, where I struggled as a Native student myself, but also excelled ultimately. I gave birth to a little girl when I was only a freshman in high school. But I was supported by my Native education program ultimately, and so it was an honor for me to reference this document that I know is a labor of love, our Pueblo people, Dene people, a confluence of tribal people in Albuquerque Public School system that made sure that there was this guiding light, this guiding framework in place to guide the work
043of Native education in Albuquerque Public Schools, which is a much bigger program than ours. They're at a million dollar plus price point, but they work really, really hard to honor the treaties, to honor the obligations between Pueblo, Dene, and all the tribal nations that those students descend from. So the conversations, and I will always be so grateful to Holly and everybody who worked on Policy 2197, worked on it for about an entire school year, maybe nine months, and actually had it passed before the end of the school year in 2014. We all were very thoughtful and very intentional about that work and making sure that we understood. We had, as much as possible, that we had our own minds around the treaty obligations, the policy basis of Title VI, then Title VII, and our Indian
044education work at large in public school systems and how high stakes it actually is. So language, I don't know if you received the policy as part of your pre-reading, so I hope that everybody got a chance to read it, but there's lots of work to be done to redraft the policy, but the work that did go into drafting the original document and getting it passed, just know that there was a lot of love, that there was a lot of passion and a lot of intentionality on the part of our family leaders, lawyers, and of course, our internal guru in so many ways on the policy front, Holly, who really took it seriously, and so other districts come to us now and say, tell us how to do it, we know that this is important and
045that it can be the spark that can start a huge fire in so many ways that will ultimately benefit our native students in a powerful way. So we're currently redrafting the policy and we are always open to feedback, we're taking it low and slow in the same way that we have had that approach with the implementation of since time immemorial, we don't wanna rush it, we wanna make sure that as many voices are gathered as possible, that we even have student voices in a more intentional way, a part of the process, and we just invite all the feedback and all of the engagement on it as much as possible, and if you have questions on its origin story or what the ultimate goal is for this next iteration, we love to be in that conversation,
046and this is, we call him the littlest love, he's actually one of the kids of our Native Family Advisory Council leaders, Dr. Sosha Love, who's a medical doctor down in Puyallup, yeah, we're lucky to have an incredible group of family leaders, thank you John for sharing that. We love to share more about that as well, we don't have a lot of time to talk about Native Family Advisory Council, but they are actually a really core piece of our work together, and they guide everything that we do in the Native education program, including the implementation of the since time immemorial curriculum now, Ule'a Lush legislation was passed recently to not just call it the STI curriculum, the since time immemorial curriculum, but the John McCoy Ule'a Lush since time immemorial curriculum. There's so much history that
047goes into how this curriculum came to be, the pieces of legislation that sort of evolved over time, there was a little bit of pushback in the early days, didn't wanna make it required, then in 2015, the House finally said okay, this is not happening, they sort of collected the data, local education agencies just weren't meeting their commitments, and part of that was because the language in the legislation said that the curriculum was recommended, so they did change it to required, and at that time, it really did serve as a motivating force for us in Highline to get pretty serious about developing a teacher cohort, we passed our since time immemorial board resolution, which was a huge step in the right direction, making sure that we knew at the highest level amongst our board directors, our
048cabinet members, that everyone understood the importance and the seriousness that goes into implementation of a curriculum as special as a tribal sovereignty curriculum. I want to say just one more thing about the curriculum, I'm gonna turn it over to my colleagues who have been some of the biggest champions amongst a body known as, and we probably will still continue to call it the since time immemorial, Highline since time immemorial leadership team, but that is such a special group of people, instructional specialists of the highest rank directors across departments, Bernard has been such a champion on that board since we first established it, it's taken on different forms over time, but the leaders including Kisa, Lita, Dina, Laura Snyder, Lexi Somerano, Tanisha, and Rachel Hoff, I'm forgetting a couple people, Gil also serves on, it's changed
049over time, but everybody who has gathered in that space to continue to reaffirm our commitments and build out our practices and strategies around the implementation of the curriculum, my mind is blown all the time, and so are our sister districts and partners even across the country who are learning from us as we go along about how we're getting this done, and I'll pass it over to Dina. Thank you, those of you, I'll introduce myself again, Dina Russo, Hyde and KC First Nations, I'm the director of professional learning, and I'm on the since time immemorial leadership team, she mentioned the members on the team, I get to share with you some highlights of a few of the ways that Highline is living out our commitment of learning and co-designing the learning experiences of tribal history, language,
050and culture, and so I passed out a one pager, the first page I'd like you to look at is called since time immemorial partners convening, about a year and a half ago, the STI leadership team meeting, actually I think we planned it for more than like a year before that, we knew we wanted to hear from our tribal partners and people who were leading the work around our state to give us feedback on our implementation, and so we invited them out, it was such an amazing event, we had almost like a work session like this, but it was bigger, one side of it, the people at the front are all of our VIPs, if you wanna call them that, they are Muckleshoot tribal members, they are local leaders from universities, people who have been implementing
051a native education, who are like our heroes if you, I call them my hero, my heroes, but anyways, if you look at the other two pictures down there, all around the room we had displayed what since time immemorial looks like in Highline, and they got to walk around and hear from different people from student learning in schools, and then in the end we got to get their feedback, and it was one of the most amazing events I have been to since I've been in Highline, a lot of you were there, Dr. Duran, cabinet members, HR, student learning, and some of the questions we asked too are in this box here, we didn't wanna just hear about our implementation, sorry I keep coming off the mic, we also wanted to know what is our responsibility and
052accountability to our tribal partners, and about implementation, and also we wanted to know how can we shift our relationship from one that seeks support and consultation to one that recognizes our accountability to fulfill the agreements of the treaty, so it was more than just STI, it was really about our treaty, upholding our treaty that we have with them, and so flip the page over, and fast forward to this school year, the equity symposium in 2024 was called Journeys, we launched again with this model of hearing from our tribal partners by inviting them in as our keynote speakers, those are our three keynote speakers that we brought in, we were so excited to have Warren King George, Madrine White, and Willard Bill Jr., in the blue boxes is what their sessions was called, and then below
053that is just a snippet of staff feedback that we received from our staff, as you can see, very positive feedback, I'll just read one of the quotes, this one was one of my favorites, it's at the bottom, the historical context provided, coupled with insights into current initiatives deepened my appreciation for the tribes enduring contributions and the importance of honoring their sovereignty, it was an enlightening experience that underscored the value of cultivating strong, respectful relationships with the Muckleshoot community as we move forward together, thank you, I'm gonna pass it to Bernard. All right, so again, my name is Bernard Koontz, and part of my role in the system is to work with the deputy superintendent and all of our principals to make sure that we're teaching all the things we gotta teach, and so I make
054sure that instructional materials are where they need to be, I make sure that our standards are loaded so that we can ensure that we're teaching the full range of what we're committed to teach our students, and STI is absolutely part of that core, and one thing I wanna highlight as we talk about this curriculum is that it is part of our core general education program, it's not something that's on the side, it's not an extra thing, it's for everybody, and it's critical that our students understand the history of the place we're in and how we live in treaty relationship with each other in this place, and that's been made clear to me, you know, really by the, what I would call the very patient teachers we have with our tribal partner, who I think are
055incredibly gracious with their time here, here with us in the Muckleshoot, but really across the state, in working with our educational system to make sure that we understand, we have to understand these things, we have to teach these things, because it's critical to understand who we are as a people and how we live in community with each other. So what does that look like? What does that look like in practice? We are, as I think Sarah Marie mentioned, we've gone, I think at a pace that's ensured we have really high quality materials, we've had a lot of trainings for people over the year, and I'm proud to say that this is the first year when we're holding ourselves fully accountable for teaching this curriculum at the secondary level. So there are specific expectations in seventh
056grade Pacific Northwest history, in 11th grade US history, in 12th grade civics, to ensure that this curriculum is incorporated and taught. And we also make sure that this gets taught in schools that may not have those structures. So, you know, in schools like Big Picture, or schools like Choice, it may have slightly different structures, we're also working with those schools to ensure that this curriculum is taught in those places. At the elementary level, we're layering in as well this curriculum into the literacy core so that the content is there and happens at some specific points as well. In the same kind of accountability we have this year at secondary, we'll have that next year at the elementary level. One thing to say about the accountability, we're holding ourselves accountable because in Highline, we believe it
057matters, and that's why we're doing that. And we are also pretty sure that the state is gonna have an accountability measure pretty soon. The legislature this year had a bill that made it through the House, made it through the, or started in the Senate, made it through the House, didn't quite make it over the finish line, but we do anticipate that there'll be legislation in the next few years that will hold us accountable for this as well. We're ahead of the game in that because we've got a structure in place. We did an interim report with our schools and teachers this fall to make sure it's on syllabi, to make sure that people have the materials, and we'll be doing a final report at the end of the year showing how close we got to
058the target of ensuring all of our secondary kids at those specific grade levels are working with this content, and at the same time, getting feedback. And for me, that's so important that we're able to do that, to show that this matters as much as all the other things that we teach that we hold ourselves accountable to, and to really continue and honor that partnership we have with the Muckleshoot Tribe to show that we're taking the work seriously. That's a little bit about what we're doing with the work and the curriculum in. Thank you, Bernard. Okay, we're gonna go lightning fast with this last part, and just know that this is not the only opportunity for engagement around these topics, and particularly when it comes to our government, government processes and tribal consultation, which is a
059federal requirement within the Every Student Succeeds Act. It's been required for about five years now, even preceding the official mandate. We saw it coming down the pipeline. We have good friends at both the state and federal level, so we kind of knew what the requirements were going to be. So we got out in front of it. We started partnering with the Governor's Office of Indian Affairs, bringing in trainers, going out to Muckleshoot, working with tribal officials, making sure that we were ahead of the game, for sure. So we've been doing this for a minute now, knowing that the process is ever evolving. Consultation, in the federal instance, happens across agencies, happens in the context of healthcare, natural resources, and education is a relatively more recent update to the consultation mandates. But we're privileged and honored
060to be able to engage in a good way in consultation. We ensure that it's timely and meaningful, and that can mean so many different things, but we want to make sure that we meet the deadlines. We are in data gathering mode right now. Muckleshoot asks of us very particular things. They have, in their own way, gotten their own process and protocols around consultations to focus just in the past couple of years, where they have very specific data metrics, very specific data asks that they send along to us, and then we fulfill those asks with our data team. These are the areas of consultation. Specific to funding, not all of the title funds that we receive in the district apply, but most of them, these are the ones that we receive, and all of these are
061written into the policy around the Tribal Consultation Mandate. Some people still are out of their depth and don't understand that it is so far beyond Indian education funds, Title VI specific. It's our Title I dollars, Title III, Title V, all of it. That's a lot of funding that goes to our students, and we are doing this in service, not just to our American Indian and Alaska Native students. I want to make sure that that's underscored, that this government-to-government process and standing in our commitments around tribal consultation and relationship building is beneficial to all of our students in Highline. We have learned so much about what it means to do culturally grounded, student-centered, community-centered, place-based teaching correctly for our Native students, and we like to push those practices out, let our teachers know what's working for
062our students, what's not working for our students, and a lot of the feedback that we put out there, we receive from our tribal partners. We receive from some of the utmost Native scholars in our region, tribal education leaders that have been there at Muckleshoot for decades. It really is an incubator. It's a lab for Native brilliance in so many ways, and it is iterative going out across the community to our Native students, but also we like to believe that we're essentially tending to the garden of education in Washington State and our region that's gonna impact everyone. Our sole consultation is coming up right away. It's coming up next week on April 25th, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. We've already got the commitments of some of you esteemed directors. Hopefully, as many of you can be
063with us as possible. It's going to be a great experience. It always is just to, again, stand in our commitments, reaffirm the promises that we've made, understand from our tribal partners what they are asking from us when it comes to serving both their tribal citizens, because yes, we do have Muckleshoot students in Highline more than ever before. Shout out to Shana Moore, who actually has engaged more Muckleshoot students than ever before in PSSC's programs. We're really, really proud of that, so we'll be celebrating that at this year's consultation. And that's Sincere. The last photo, I just wanted to shout out Sincere. He's the little one holding the cedar star. Yeah, also was a student at Beverly Park, but yeah, he's such a smart little guy and really dove into the cultural education that we offer.
064Yes, I think that we'll send out some more information prior to the consultation just to make sure that everybody has all of the most updated information, not just from Muckleshoot, but we're so lucky in that we receive lots and lots of information from our state partners, the OSPI, as well as national organizations like the National Indian Education Association. We have a hub of resources around tribal consultation that you can access on the drive, so there's lots and lots of good information out there about how to conduct tribal consultation in a good and full and meaningful way. But it is a government-to-government process, so we've been good in bringing lots of leaders to the table for those consultations, but the big target is to have elected officials to elected officials, and of course, Ivan, we wanna
065make sure that our superintendent is there. But everyone is welcome to come and observe and participate in the consultation. Okay, now that we're totally out of time. If there are questions or comments, anyone wants to engage, we would love that. Well, thank you so much in regards to the presentation. We have a few minutes, so I'm gonna open it up for the directors to ask any questions. We also have an opportunity to send questions to you and Dr. Durand as well, so. I don't have any questions, I'll try to be quick. First of all, thank you for the work that you've done. I've been to a number of your events, and they are beautiful, just getting to hear the stories and meet the people and see the spaces that are intentionally created. And especially thank
066you to you two for graduating and coming back. I mean, representation matters, so to come back, and you two obviously, of course, but for the youngins to come back and to dedicate your time and your passion to our students, I greatly appreciate that. I'm really proud to be in this district where we are ahead of the curve in creating these spaces unapologetically. Something that stood out to me in the reading, our people have always had a way, you already know the way, and especially in recent years, and the political climate and environment, and it's really tempting to just, forgive me, I'm on the tail end of the cold, so I have a cough drop in my mouth. It's really tempting to just tuck your tail and just roll with the punches, and something that I
067heard and I just keep saying, because it just keeps going through my head, is if you were curious what you would have done during the Civil Rights Movement, take a look at what you're doing today, right now. And I know that some of the material might be uncomfortable, but you know what, it was uncomfortable for our ancestors in the genocide, and it was uncomfortable for our ancestors when their children were stolen with the forced assimilation for the boarding schools, so for the Native American students to be able to learn their history, and for all of our students to learn the history of the Native Americans who own this land and are from this land, it's really beautiful, and I appreciate how unapologetically you hold this space and show up for our babies. Thank you, any
068other director's questions? Well, I will end it here, or you go right ahead. I just wanted to thank everyone for their time and for sharing about the impact of your work, and it seems like you all are sowing the seeds of really powerful work. I wanna ask, what can the rest of us do to bolster your effort? Opportunities like this are huge. We don't get a whole lot of FaceTime with you esteemed board directors, but any time that we do have, and even in the course of the trainings that are coming up, I wanted to mention that very quickly also, which is so important, is that Maxine Alex, who is our tribal consultation specialist at OSPI, she's the one who has built out the training modules for both the administrators that are required to receive
069a certain number of hours on government to government, as well as board directors. You all are required to re-up about five hours every, I believe, three years, but they won't reset the training cycle until after this next election cycle, until after November, so you all don't have to worry about attending a training until a little while from now, but making sure that you just stay connected to myself and my team and keeping track of when those trainings are offered, and even creating opportunities, natural or unnatural, to have more conversations and more engagements like this and just learn more about what's going on in our world, what's going on in the world of tribal affairs, tribal nations, tribal nations are under siege in a lot of ways in this time, because there are so many people
070that don't understand that tribal nations are sovereign entities that have been self-governing for a long, long time, that they're not community organizations, they're not businesses, they're not nonprofits, they are sovereign tribal nations, domestic dependent nations, I don't like that framing, but within the larger United States, but we have to be in relationship with them in that way, and so any time that we get to share space and just go deeper into the critical concepts and realities of that, the stronger we're gonna be in Highland for sure, all of us, so thank you for that question for sure. Well, thank you so much, greatly appreciated, this is not a one-time presentation, but like I said, thank you so much, Sarah Marie, for the presentation. With that, I'd like to have a adjournment, or a motion to
071adjourn. I'll make a motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Thank you so much.