001I'm going to welcome everyone to our regularly scheduled board meeting. And so with that, I'll ask you to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. And with that, I'll ask for a roll call, please. Director Tidholm. Present. Director Hagos. Here. Director Van. Here. Director Petrini. Here. President Alvarez. Here. And with that, I'll call for any changes or additions to our board meeting agenda this evening. I'd like to move 6.3 personnel report off the consent agenda. I'll second that. So can you repeat that? I'm sorry I didn't hear that. That's OK. Can we move. 6.3 personnel report off the consent agenda? Yes, please.
002I'll second that. Can we do a roll call vote for this? Yes, please. Roll call. Director Hagos? Yea. Director Petrini? Yea. Director Tidholm? Yea. Director Van? Nay. Director Alvarez? Nay. This motion passes 3-2. So with that, then we will be then taking off the personnel report off this agenda. And will we be going into executive session or-- No. We will discuss the items removed from the consent agenda during item number 6.7. OK. And then at that time, you can make a motion if you want to remove a name, if that's the desire. OK, thank you. Not right now, but we do it during number 7, items removed from consent agenda. Perfect. Thank you so much for that help. And with that, we moved on to recognitions. I'm sorry, I have a motion. Go ahead, Director
003Tidholm. Yeah. I'd like to make a motion to move. 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7, 8.8, 8.9, and 8.9 to the consent agenda. Can you repeat that one more time, which ones you're asking for? Thank you. 8.4 through 8.10. Just give a few minutes so the directors can see quickly, which ones she's discussing to move to consent. I'll second that. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? So then 8.4, 8.5, 8.6., 8.7, 8.8, 8.9, and 8.10 have been moved to our consent agenda. So with that, now we can move into recognitions. So for June recognitions, while we're not highlighting any particular recognition tonight, I want to name and recognize the following for the month of June. We invite you to visit our website's calendar to explore these recognitions. It is Caribbean-American Heritage Month and Pride Month as well.
004And so with that, at this time, we go into the other-- OK, the scheduled communications. Here we go. Thank you, guys. I have a whole lot of paper up here tonight. With that, we go into scheduled communication. And before I call, I want to just make sure that on behalf of the board, we'd like to thank you for coming and speaking this evening. Our norms and rules are posted as you see on the screens. Please be mindful that you are here to speak to the board, and that there may be students here or watching that are paying attention to your words. In addition, the board will not be able to respond directly to you about your testimony during this meeting. Thank you again for coming and speaking. So again, our scheduled communications, our first scheduled
005speaker is Alex Myrick. Good evening, directors. A newcomer to the Highline School District might take a close look at the budget and the curriculum and conclude that the district has done a good, or at least an adequate job of educating all the students, and has moved on to social engineering. As most of the people in this room know, only the second half of that would be correct. All the schools are infused with cultural marxism while education is being sadly neglected. The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction in the state of Washington has noted that despite spending over $21,000 per year per student, the majority of the students do not meet standards in English language arts, math, and science. A few months ago, all of the students in one of the elementary schools were read-- all
006the fifth graders were read a book which, among the plethora of misinformation, contained the following two sentences. "When you were born, the adults looked at you and made a guess as to whether you were a boy or a girl. They may have guessed right and they may have guessed wrong," end of quote. This is egregious. This should not be happening. You should return to your mission of educating the students, not indoctrinating them. Thank you, Mr. Myrick. And our next scheduled speaker, Jessi Traughber. Help us pronounce it. Sorry. Good evening, community members and school board leaders. I'm Jessi Traughber-- pretty close. I am currently the Dean of Culture at Maritime High School and I am coming in tonight because I want to talk a little bit about the district's strategic goal around fostering a culture of
007belonging. So firstly, I think it's important to say that this is a goal that is near and dear to my heart and also aligns with my core beliefs as an educator. For those of you in the room who are unfamiliar, this is a goal focused on fostering school communities where students feel as though they are accepted, cared for, respected and just included as their most authentic selves. So I am grateful for this goal. My feedback, really, to the board and my request is really for more clearly outlined information. The strategic plan on our website goes through some of the metrics that are included and indicates some strategies. But one of the things that I have noticed is that there is not consistent, like, SEL instruction, material, resources made available to staff across the school districts.
008I am lucky enough to attend a monthly SEL gathering led by our SEL Department. Melissa Pointer, Tracy, and Erica are incredible. And it would be amazing to see some of that fold over into the work and support given to administrators and other school staff. I think it's also important to consider some of the metrics that have been laid out against some of the data that has been collected and some of the data that has been missing, including some really critical feedback from staff and students, considering some of our data and surveys have very low response rates. I'm about out of time. [BEEP] Thank you, Jessi. If you have any additional information. If you have anything in writing, you can send it to Adriana, and she'll make sure we get it. Thank you. And so with
009that, that concludes our scheduled communications. And I hand it over to our superintendent. Great. Thank you, Director Alvarez. I want to start off by welcoming our Family Action Committee. On Monday, I attended our Final Family Action Committee meeting for the year. And I'm so appreciative of the valuable feedback from the diverse group of families. I always leave these meetings feeling inspired and committed to doing everything I can for every one of our students and family members in Highline. So at this time, I'd like to welcome Lita O'Donnell and Kisa Hendrickson up to the podium to present the Annual Family Engagement Report For Policy 0050. I also want to thank the families that are here to be part of that presentation. Thank you for being here tonight. Lita? Good evening. As Dr. Joe Van said, I'm
010Kisa Hendrickson, the Chief Engagement and Partnership Officer with the Student Support and Family Engagement Department. And we are here to provide you with the annual update per Policy 0050 of our family engagement efforts this year. I'm going to stop talking because I prefer for you to hear from Lita O'Donnell, our Director of Family and Community Partnerships, and of course, a couple of our parent leaders who are here this evening. Thank you, Kisa, and thank you, board directors. I'm going to move this down just a little bit. For those of you who know me, I can speak about family engagement forever, and ever, and ever. But I have 10 minutes tonight, so I'm going to stick closely to my slides and my notes. I know that you were provided with a board memo, but I want
011to make sure that you have time to hear from our fabulous FAC families who are here. I'm just going to start us with our family engagement vision in Highline. And I always like to highlight this because this vision was co-created with our families and our staff. Our theory of actions emphasis is on supporting our educators and building relationships, sharing critical information for partnership, and working together with our families to support students. Aligned with existing research and best practices, the dual capacity framework serves as our compass, outlining the goals and conditions for essential, effective family engagement efforts that are linked to student learning called out in Policy 0050. Family engagement measures are essential to meeting our strategic plan goals and are monitored on Highline Strategic Plan Dashboard. The first goal I just want to share is
012the percentage of families responding positively to strategic plan questions on the family engagement survey will increase annually. That survey is currently open. And I'm happy to report I checked before I came this evening, and we've had close to 600 families complete the survey so far. The second goal is every school is achieving the established criteria on at least one family engagement strategy from the Highline Public Schools family. My eyesight, and my glasses, and the mic do not make for a good combination. That every school is implementing a family engagement strategy from the family engagement catalog and that it's documented in our schools annual action plans. So articulating family engagement strategies in the annual action plan is also called out in Policy 0050 and is crucial for ensuring that family engagement efforts are aligned with school
013goals and tailored to each school's community's unique needs. Also outlined in Policy 0050, we want families to have access to a variety of opportunities to be involved with their children's education and information about how to support their children's learning at home. In Highline, we have a Family Engagement Catalog. And these strategies are vetted by our Family Action Committee. To be able to be in this catalog, you need to score a four or a five. So if you score a three or lower, they don't go in the catalog. And our Family Action Committee shares with us what we can do to make these strategies that our schools can use. A key family engagement strategy in Highline, also aligned to the vision of Policy 0050, is academic parent-teacher teams. And I'm just going to go quickly through
014the next few slides, but they'll highlight family's experience with APTT. And as you will see, the strategy helps families understand where their children are academically and how to partner with their child's teacher to support learning. And I just want to share a little snapshot of where we are with Academic Parent-Teacher Team implementation and where we are looking for expansion. Also aligned with Policy 0050, we want to expand partnerships with our families. We host family universities on a variety of topics that you can see here. And we offer these sessions to provide families with tools and information to support their engagement with their child's education. And I want to highlight we've done 19 family universities so far this year, and we have one scheduled for this week with our community partner, Para los Niños. Policy 0050
015calls for staff to communicate with parents effectively, respectfully, in a culturally-appropriate manner. We provide a wide variety of professional learning options for educators throughout the year. By equipping staff with the knowledge and skills necessary to engage families effectively, we ensure that our schools are welcoming and inclusive environments where families feel valued and supported in their children's education. And this year, we've offered 16 professional learning sessions for our staff. And now the fun part are some celebrations where I want to highlight work that's happening in our schools. Des Moines is on its first year of APTT implementation. And I just want to give a shout out to Christine Alexander, Jennifer Matthews Hammock, and Kayla Dowell. They're the kindergarten team at Des Moines who are implementing this strategy. And all of our reports back from surveys from
016families, they are expressing that this is a valuable strategy that's helping them with their children's learning. Shorewood embraces Tea with the Principal. And these teas provide opportunities for families to meet with Principal Fosberg and other staff for collaboration and partnership. I often hear when I'm in communities, specifically from our Somali families, their appreciation for these teas and the relationship that they've been able to build with the principal and school staff. Success nights at Tyee take place twice a year before winter and spring break. Principal Victoria Terry and staff created a strategy geared towards making sure families know where their students are academically and just knowing how their students are doing in general. And what's great about these events is they take place before winter and spring break. Resources are also shared with families during that
017time. Latino Civic Alliance, who's one of our community partners, has a parent leadership group. The majority of the families are at Glacier, Sylvester and Highline. And at LCA's request, they asked for information on college and career. And we partnered with Sativa and Jeanette from our College and Career Department to create a family university for those families. And then also, the highlight today is our Family Action Committees. I'd like to ask folks from our Family Action Committee to please stand. They have been very busy this year. They have provided us input on the budget, strategic plan goals, evaluation of those family engagement strategies in our catalog, and instruction on race and identity. We had our celebration on Monday that Dr. Duran talked about. And we did an exercise on hopes and dreams and planting seeds. And
018you will see on the stage before you the hopes and dreams that our FAC has as we plan for next school year. Please sit down. [APPLAUSE] And as an accountability measure in Policy 0050, we have invited members of the FAC to report to the board. And I'd like to welcome up Tam Wynn from Evergreen and Ileana Arano from Innovation Heights and Highline High School to share their experience on the FAC. Tam, would you like to go first? Good evening. My name is Tam Wynn. I have two children. One graduated last year and one is freshman this here. And first of all, I would like to thank you, Dr. Duran, to still continue with FAC. And I'm afraid that he not when he started. But especially, I would like to thank you, the family and team.
019They support me any time of the day. Whenever I have need some time, I check them at night time. So I really appreciate them and thank them. And so in the future, I would like to grow more connection with family and also our school leader. And I would like to see if our FAC can go to Olympia to advocate for more funding for future. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] [SPEAKING IN SPANISH] Good evening, everyone. My name is Iliana Arano Rodriguez. And I have two students in Highline, one at Highland High School, and the other one at Innovation Heights. And I'm very excited because my student is graduating from Innovation Heights this year. [SPEAKING IN SPANISH] And it's a pleasure to be a member of the Family Action Committee with Dr. Duran. And it's because I have learned
020a lot about it, about how to support my students. It's very important that we are engaged in the student education and that they know that we are here supporting their learning. [SPEAKING IN SPANISH] And my hope for next year is that more parents join the group with Dr. Duran to make sure that all our students are able to graduate and there is no student left behind without graduation. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Thank you so much, Ileana and Tam, for coming to share. And Thank you, Rosa, for helping with interpretation. So before I open it up to questions, I'd like to recognize members of my team who are here tonight. So Rocio, Rosa, Roderick, Rebecca, and Rosie, can you please stand? [APPLAUSE] I get the pleasure of working with these remarkable individuals, many of whom are former
021students in our system and many who are parents, current parents in our system. And they are deeply, deeply connected to the Highline community. They work closely with our schools and families to create a welcoming environment, develop family engagement strategies, and promote student academic success. I want to thank you, again, for allowing us to come and do our report on family and parent engagement for Policy 0050. And Kisa and I or the team are happy to take any questions you might have for us. So I'll open. Sorry, guys. I want to open it up for any questions from our directors. Director Tidholm, any questions? I don't have any questions. But having sat on the Family Action Committee before sitting where I am now, I am very grateful for everything that you guys do and the time
022that you dedicate. I know that there's food, which is great motivation. But you're taking time away from your families to come, and to have a voice, and to hear what's going on. And I really appreciate that, as well as the staff who also take the time outside of your regular work day. I appreciate all of you and thank you for your work. Thank you, Director Tidholm. Director Hagos, any comments or questions? Director Petrini, any comments or questions? Just a comment. I'm sure that your families are just so grateful to have those opportunities to share and to talk about the things that are important to them. I'm interested in about the family university. Is that open to the whole district? Is that something? Because that was something I heard a lot last night. A lot of
023people didn't understand what pathways were available for their children or what opportunities or programs that their children could have participated in. So getting that information to more families would be amazing. So how do more people learn about or can participate in the FAC? Yeah. Family University is open to any of our families in our district. We do it in a variety of ways. We often partner with community partners that have parent groups, and we will do that. We've done that with Supporting Partnerships in Education and Beyond, African Community Housing, Latino Civic Alliance. We also work closely with our schools. And at their request, we will come and do a Family University. With the reduction in staff on my team, one of the things we're shifting to is more centralized opportunities for families. And we have
024planned for next year scheduled Family Universities that families can come and be a part of. One of the things is we've worked with Deshaun and his team on learning more about how to do hybrid and in-person meetings. And we really want to utilize that technology so it's accessible to a lot more families. But thank you for that question. Director Duran? Hi. I just wanted to thank everyone. I know that everybody feels-- well, you all make it look so easy. But like Director Tidholm mentioned, you take time away from your families' evenings. And I want to say thank you to the parents. It is not easy to come here in front of all, but to come and tell your story is really important. [SPEAKING IN SPANISH] And with that, I thank you both for just always
025keeping us informed and always trying to make it better. So thank you, director-- I mean, superintendent. I have a few more. Is this working? Yes? OK, cool. I can't tell from here. That's all we have for tonight for the Family Action Committee. I just want to thank everyone for all the work, all the great things that you do. It's been just a great joy to be able to go there for the faces, good food, good conversations. And I would just say that at the end of the session, one of the things I love is when we circle up and we do one word of expression just on how we're feeling. And so many times we just hear appreciation, gratitude, happiness, and joy. And that's because of the wonderful contributions and connections that we have within
026the group. And I just want to thank everybody for the work you've done that we continually hear from voices from families in our community. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Back to you, Dr. Duran. Thank you. All right. Well, today I met with the superintendent student leadership team for the last meeting of the school year. I really want to publicly thank these students for sharing their ideas and feedback with me throughout the year. We honored our seniors today who are heading off to the next phase of their life. One of the things that I really loved about hearing from our students is that many of them are off to college and have ideas of what they want to do for their future, which for me just really resonated because it's about our promise. And I know that many
027of our students are off to great things because we've been really helping to ensure that promise comes through for them. I think, as you all know, as a board and community, I'm committing to centering the student voice in our conversations. And our superintendent student leadership team is key to achieving that goal. We will be putting out applications for next year together, different students to come in. But I was really also struck today because one of the students, Brenna, from Mount Rainier High School, was part of the interview process when I first was here over two years ago. And it was just great to have that full circle with her and send her off as she is off to UW to study chemistry. Last night, I also had the opportunity to attend the Years of Service
028and Retirement Celebration. And I just really want to thank everyone for their service ad commitment to Highline students, and really wish them best for what comes next for them, whether they're retiring or just many of our staff are just being recognized. But we had anything from honoring recognized people with five years of service who were retiring after another career all the way through our member Tom, who was our former building manager here with 46 years. So it was just a great celebration of good food and good times. It was really great to have so many families there. June is Pride month, a time when the community recognizes LGBTQ+ individuals and their history, achievements, and struggle for equality. Pride Month is an opportunity to reflect on the importance of culture of belonging. In highlighting we are
029committed to ensuring that our LGBTQ+ students feel welcomed, valued, and safe. It's part of our culture of belonging and all the other goals that we have in our strategic plan. This is especially important at a time when transgender and non-binary people are being targeted by those who deny them the right to be who they are. We know that LGBTQ+ young people are more likely to be bullied, to experience depression, and to attempt suicide. This should not be. We stand with our LGBTQ+ students, staff, family, and community members, and we say we support you and you belong here at Highline. And now I'd like to welcome Clint Sallee, president of the Highline Association of Washington School Principals, to the podium to offer a labor partner update. Welcome, Clint. Good to see you. Thanks, everybody. Director and
030Superintendent Duran, it's great to be here in June. I had a staff meeting today in which was the final staff meeting of the year. And I think there was whoops and cheers from teachers and staff who've put really hard work over the course. And when you're looking down at the calendar and it says June, you're holding on tight, but you start to breathe a sigh of relief. It's great to be here this evening on behalf of the HAWSP. And I thought I'd, in part of my remarks, just share some updates. Last time I was here, or maybe if not last time, the time before, we talked a little bit about the Panorama Staff Survey and the data around our assistant principals and principals represented by the association. And I want to share some good news
031and then some stuff that we want to-- excited to partner with the district on next year. Principals and APs continue to be positive outliers in terms of being more positive about the Highline promise and the strategic plan goals than just about any other staffing group in the district, right? And so I'll just start by saying that our membership are so happy to be in this district and so engaged, and it comes through in our Panorama Survey when asked the question, do you support the Highline promise and do you agree with the strategic plan goals? Our group really stands out there. There's two areas, and I think it makes sense. It resonates with me as a comprehensive high school principal that maybe we've lagged a little bit behind some of our other staffing groups, both in
032the area of belonging and well-being. For belonging, it makes sense to me. Being principal can be a lonely job. And so sometimes, you sit in that office. Heavy is the crown in terms of trying to make decisions for a huge community of folks. And it can be lonely, and some of those belonging questions reflects in our data. But even as we've lagged behind some of our other staffing groups in belonging, our data this spring compared to last fall has shown some real progress. We've seen for assistant principals a 5% increase in questions like, I feel like I belong at work. I feel like people understand me. And for principals, this is really encouraging. We saw a 12% increase between fall and spring when we asked questions around belonging. And so I really I think it's
033indicative of our district's focus on culture, belonging, and being inclusive of school leadership. And that focus is making a difference in terms of our data from fall to spring. In questions of well-being, which include things like engagement, excitement, happiness, we continue to outstrip our other labor groups in happiness, and excitement, and engagement with work. But when it comes to questions around stress, overwhelm, sometimes effectiveness, we can lag behind. And our data suggests that we're about flat with where we were in the fall and then where we are in the spring. And then when we look at the question like, I fully expect to be working in this job three years from now, we're fairly consistent with assistant principals. But with principals, we see a little bit of drop in the spring. And that just may
034be exhaustion, but I think it's an area of focus for next year in our partnership with the system. How can we both empower our leaders to do their best work in service of our kids while taking care of themselves and their families so they can keep at it for a long time to come? We look forward to continuing partnership. So I continue to be so honored to represent the principals in the district as they are so honored to be part of the service of the Highline promise. Thank you, everybody. Well, thank you, Clint. We really appreciate that. All right. Also now, I'd like to welcome Jeb Binns, the President of the Highline Education Association, to the podium to offer a labor partner update. Welcome, Jeb. Good evening. It's like I see you everywhere. So this
035week, the last couple of weeks have been crazy busy. We had our substitute social where we recognized HEA substitutes throughout the district for the hard work that they put in to make sure that our system keeps running when people need to take well-earned vacation, or leave, or daily illness, and things. So we really appreciated them. We had our HEA retirement celebration down at Billy Brews. We had a bunch of HEA members who are leaving and retiring. I was able to attend the retirement celebration here a couple nights ago-- that was wonderful-- in the years of service. Also. Director Tidholm's safety meeting over at Evergreen High School over at the tag end of the Memorial Day holiday, it was nice to go and see family and community getting together, talking about tough issues around safety. Last
036night, I was able to trend Director Hagos and Dr. Petrini's meeting over at Mount Rainier High School talking about curriculum. I appreciated the opportunity to engage and to listen to interested, and concerned, and passionate, and invested parents. So that was a great event, so thanks for hosting that. Nice job. Our representative also came to PSSC earlier in the week, so it was nice to go over and see her and see the state legislature taking an interest, an increased interest in Highline Public Schools-- looking at funding streams, looking at the good things we're doing, taking a look at PSSC programs. So that was awesome to go through there. Speaking of PSSC, I met with CT Director and Principal Lozano and my vice president, Shawna Moore, the Dean over there, and two NEA staff talking community schools,
037and really doing a deep dive as to the idea of community schools, and thinking that we might be able to figure out something once we all sit down at the big kid table and talk about potentially community schools, and a partnership there. How to tie in the great work that's happening with the business industry around, and really thinking about one fun way to do that, and to tie-in with the great relationships that communities have in their schools already. And then how can we streamline, and bring that in, and make our make our communities even more connected with our schools? That'd be amazing. We've had two days of bargaining this week. We have one down today, one more tomorrow on deck. So we'll be here in the building. We remain optimistic that you guys are going
038to take a look at a deal at the end of June. Fingers crossed, no promises. It's been a while since we've actually finished a deal in June, but you never know. It's sunny and we had meetings all day, so you never know how things play out. And then finally-- or actually, I have two more things. So PSSC had-- I was part of the PSSC Teaching Academy, which is a lot of fun. One of the advisory board members, which is neat, and was able to attend the last meeting of the year with the NEA executive committee member Shannon McCann, who was a former president of the Federal Way Education Association. Former President Sandy Hunt was on the committee. I'm on the committee and a bunch of other folks from other districts around. And it great to
039just see the work and recognize this first-year program for the Teaching Academy and the opportunities that kids have to get their para tests done while in high school, as opposed to needing just about three years of college credits to do that. So lots of kids were successful with that. That's pretty awesome. And then to join them in their celebration. And then finally, in recognition of Pride Night, we've got our 50 HEA members all going to the pride baseball game next Thursday. Hopefully the weather holds and it's a beautiful, wonderful night to celebrate people and some baseball. And with that, thank you very much. Have a great night. Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate that. That concludes our update tonight. Thank you. Dr. Duran. Thank you for the labor partner updates. With that, we move to school board
040reports. So any legislative reports? We do not have any legislative reports at this time. I was just going to add, Director Tidholm, myself, and Holly met this last week to go over a recap of what happened this last legislative session, and also to talk about what kind of priorities we might want to support next year, and how we can get ahead of that. So even though we usually don't have a report right now, there's no legislation happening. But conversations with local reps is always a good idea during this time. Thank you, Director Petrini. And with that, we move on to director reports. So we'll start on this side, Director Petrini. I've got a couple of things here. So it's been kind of a busy month, I think, for me. I've been making the rounds. I
041first started off, I guess, two weeks ago visiting the Museum of Flight, finally. And it was accompanied by Dana Black. And Parkside Elementary was there visiting that day and getting just a tour as well of the area. And I was just really impressed. I had mentioned I had never been there before and I just was overwhelmed. I had no idea how awesome it is, and all the things that they're doing, all the opportunities for our students, for those at Aviation Heights-- or at Aviation Raisbeck. I'm sorry, I'm getting all my other ones mixed up. But we were really excited for what our students are participating in, and so I thought that was really awesome. Then I visited Tyee with Principal Victoria Terry and a couple of our central staff here. And just kind of going
042into different classrooms, and seeing what's happening in each of the classrooms, and getting to talk to some of the students, and listen in, and ask them questions about what they're learning about. So that was really fun. And I think the energy at Tyee is pretty amazing, and a lot of the students are pretty excited about graduation coming up. And then I went over to Choice and met with Michael Sita, and again, just was able to talk about, what is secondary redesign going to look like for them? What are their hopes? Talking about the different programs that are right there on that campus that he oversees. And what can we do to get more visibility to our special needs groups that are over there? There's a whole building. I was able to tour it because they
043were not there at that time. But just to kind of see the opportunities for students after they kind of age out of school, and what we have over there. And then yesterday, I was able to meet with Ms. Shawna Moore and a couple of amazing students. I think Sofia and Josiah took us around-- really knowledgeable students, one who's actually graduating as well. I had no idea. I've passed by PSSC several times and never been inside to actually see the classrooms, to see what they were doing. I just was so excited about what's happening over there and the opportunities for students. So just, again, another learning experience. And to hear from the students, so knowledgeable about what their experience has been. And then this morning went over to Innovation Heights per invitation. I got to meet
044with Kevin Takisaki, and Stephanie, and a couple of other members. And we also sat down with a bunch of students to talk about what their experience has been at Innovation Heights, what they hope people will understand about Innovation Heights. It's not a school for bad kids, but it's for kids who are striving to re-engage. And that can look different for so many different students. So just hearing from the students and to be able to ask those questions was pretty powerful. And I was definitely touched by a lot of the stories that they had shared with me. Director Hagos and I are part of the Port of Seattle. And they had mentioned that there's a public engagement coming up right here at Highline in June. I did not catch the date, though. So if anyone knows
045it, they're doing a noise study coming up. So for community members who want to be part of that, if you are influenced by the noise, that's something that people can look into. And then last but not least, our community meeting last night that we've been preparing for, we had an amazing turnout, to say the least. We had two separate tables, one for Director Hagos to have her discussions and one for me. And it didn't matter actually which table people chose. But I think I had, like, three circles around that table. And my guess, best guess, we had almost 90 people there last night, so just a really good indication of people's interests. A lot of families that came out with their children. We had a children's table and people to help with that-- snacks, and
046the conversations. And I would love to hear Director Hagos' experience. But for mine, I just felt like it was very engaging. And there was a lot of things that I heard and kind of took away, and I just thought I would just report real quick, just kind of themes that I had heard. So more asks for classes that are challenging, opportunities when it comes to math and earlier access, better communication between teachers and parents, more information or clarification about pathways and programs, what's available to their children. A lot of concerns about that they didn't know, and so that's where I would love to find that connection made. Safety concerns in classrooms and bathrooms and religious communities asking for equal respect and understanding of beliefs, cultures, and traditions. And so always room for improvement. It's never
047going to be 100%. But the engagement, I felt like, was amazing for people to come, and share, and feel heard. And that was my main priority is that they know that we're listening, and we're taking this back, and continuing those discussions as best we can to support our community. So that is all I have for today. Thank you. I have a follow-up question. Did you hear anything good that the district was doing? Yes, we did. And I think that was also my point. I wanted to make sure that we're sharing accurate information, because sometimes there is different ideas of what certain things are. So I wanted them to hear. And so we had three of our district team members there, Melissa Pointer, Bernard Koontz, and Janet. I don't remember her last name. Blanford. So I
048appreciate that they came out and shared some information. And then we had at our tables 15 minutes to talk about each of these subjects and kind of just gauge like where families were feeling supported. Where did they feel about this or that? So we had a couple of guiding questions, but then also just took questions. And just being able to hear from the community is always, I think, really powerful. So as long as we're continuing to listen and learn from each other, that's what school's all about, right? OK, thank you. Director Tidholm? Yes. Please excuse my voice or lack of. I'm going to keep reiterating that until it's back. A very busy last couple of weeks with it being the end of the school year. We had the pleasure in between our retreat last week
049to visit PSSC's carnival where the students put it on. It was amazing. They were showcasing their projects. We were able to engage. They were selling some of the things that they made, and there also was an amazing car show. Also, a huge congratulations to the 65, I think it is, students from PSSC who just signed contracts. They have not even graduated high school yet and just signed contracts with Boeing, which is super exciting, because that also comes with funding for their college education, should they choose to pursue more degrees, higher education. Also, really happy to attend the board recognition ceremony recently where we celebrated the recently certified teachers as well as those that have maintained their national board certification. Really excited to see that, and then also the ceremony celebrating our retirees as well as
050those with years of service. Super impressive, super happy for those that are retiring and grateful for all the years that they've put in to our district and our babies. I also got to attend the scholar athlete recognition event where our scholar athletes were recognized and were given scholarships, thanks to a number of people, including, but not limited to the Highline Schools Foundation and Dr. Duran and his wife. Really nice to see that. My baby runs track, so seeing a lot of these kids that are on the team with him and being able to give them their awards was really nice and exciting. Native Student Success Summit at Highline High School was really nice. We got to learn more about the language and hear some stories. There was a gentleman there from Puyallup School District who
051ran one of the workshops and actually speaks the Salish language fluently. And it was nice to see that being kept alive and well. And also an amazing keynote speaker. Lauren. I don't recall her name. I apologize, but yes. And also a huge Thanks to Sarah Marie Ortiz who does a lot to support our Native students and families in the district. I got to attend the Highline Memorial Field groundbreaking just this last week. Thank you to the Seattle Seahawks and the NFL Foundation for giving us $250,000. Highline is getting a new turf. That's super exciting. I'm missing one. Cascade, I got to go to their multicultural showcase last week. It was great. We have all kind of performances there. The students were singing, dancing. There was mariachi. We had the Vietnamese students did a dance. It
052was really cool. Senor Gomez even joined in and sang. And I did not know that man can sing. Like, he can sing. That was impressive. And then I also got to go to Cascade's Storm Fest Field Trip yesterday. I got to chaperone that. It was definitely weather for it, and learn about just how we can be better stewards of our environment. I did have my community event last week. Very grateful for the community that showed up to let me hear their thoughts and their opinions. Grateful for the staff that supported in having that happen. I look forward to a recap of what happened as well as a quiz for those who were not able to make it. I really want to be able to hear just from the community. And then going forward, I would
053love to obviously host more events like this. I got a lot of feedback about how much people appreciated just being able to be heard and potentially even having something like this where we can have the babies come and we can hear their voices. And then I'll leave you with my regular bimonthly reminder that White Center Heights has their Family-- excuse me-- Family Resource Center every Thursday. It's coming up to an end, obviously, with the end: of school year. But 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM and Fridays, 2:15 to 3:45 where they have a food bank which includes fresh fruits and vegetables, a clothing bank. They have household items, toys, shoes, like, everything that you could potentially think of. Please utilize it. Anybody in the district is welcome to it. And that's all that I have for
054today. And I also had the pleasure-- I'm sorry-- of attending Director Petrini and Director Hagos' event. Great turnout, really grateful for the community that did show up to lend their voices as well. And I'm done. Thank you, Director Tidholm. So with that, I'll hand it over to-- Oh, lo siento. I'm sorry. The WCCDA event, the groundbreaking, my apologies. And then I'm done. Aaron Garcia and his-- You're done, you promise? [LAUGHTER] OK. I promise. I said I wasn't going to talk much today because I don't have a voice, and look what happens. I just kept going and going. WCCDA had a groundbreaking for their new hub, which is going to include housing for our families, subsidized housing as well as resources. Huge thank you to WCCDA for their leadership in the community and their partnership, Aaron
055Garcia. And that is all that I have. It's my final answer. Thank you. OK. This time, thank you, Director Tidholm. And with that, I'll pass it over to Director Hagos. I'm already exhausted listening to all the things that you guys have been doing these last few weeks. That's a lot, and it's great. I'm really excited to see us out and about in our communities. I attended the Des Moines Memorial Drive Preservation Association's Annual Memorial Day Observation-- or Observance, I should say. And I had the privilege of meeting Rose Clark, who's the current presiding chair of the association. But I was excited to also hear she's a retired Highline Public Schools employee, having spent decades putting books in our students' hands working in our school libraries. And through the conversations and the exhibits, I had learned
056about the eight-mile stretch of road that winds through all five cities that make up Highline Schools District. And it's meant to honor those individuals who died serving this country. The sacrifice of those heroes and many others in our collective history provided the freedom necessary for our Highline students to be able to fulfill our promise to be future-ready for a life that they get to choose. The significance of that was felt really strongly that day. I also learned of the red poppy flowers adorned on the street signs-- they're on the flags down Des Moines Memorial Drive-- I was surprised to learn the iron medallion at the Sunnydale Elementary was created through an Eagle Scout project put together by some of our Highline students from Cascade Middle to Mount Rainier High School. And one of my nephews
057comes from a really long line of veterans serving our country on his dad's side. And I agree with Rose on the importance that all of our students should know their very local history as it fosters a sense of pride and connection with our local communities. And the staff there had encouraged that if we can, teachers can bring students there on educational field trips to learn more about that local history. So that was kind of right off the bat in terms of what I was doing around Memorial Day weekend. I wanted to mention a couple of other things. Over in Des Moines Elementary School, they've got a pen pal program. Really I heard about this, I want to say a few months back. And I was excited to see there was a little statement around the
058kindergartners sending over and having pen pals with the senior citizens at Wesley Garden. Yeah, it was really cute to hear about the pen pal program, according to the teacher, is cherished by the first-grade kiddos. Students are usually motivated to read and write because they have a real-life pen pal who is reading their letters and writing back to them. And they usually have some sort of annual event where they get to meet-- and I think it's annual from when they get to meet and hang out with their pen pals from Wesley Gardens. And so I just thought that's a sweet and neat idea. And I hope to encourage it further and support that. I want to go check out. I'll be there when they have their little annual celebration next year. And I do want to
059mention a couple of other things. Bear with me. Oh, that's right. So I wanted to talk about the-- Director Petrini had talked about the Port noise study. And so at the Highline forum, they talked about the workshops there are going to include information on the Part 150 study process, the scheduling and information about modeling aircraft and noise exposure. And I talk about this a lot. My own home is within that flight path and kids in our communities also are impacted by this noise study. So I did want to follow up and give some details if folks wanted to go out and share some of their stories at this study event that it's happening, actually, tomorrow. I'll be there. It's at the Mount Rainier High School. And it's going from 6 PM to 8 PM. And
060there's language interpretation, special accommodations. They've got the works to make sure that there is as much opportunity for one-on-one interactions and sharing information, ideas, and concerns directly with them. So if you've got the time and you've got something to say, please show up. That's where I'll be tomorrow. And then it sounds like we've got-- I've got lots of other things that I want to say. But mostly, it's really just the national board recognition ceremony, I was there as well with Director President Alvarez and Director Tidholm. And just got to watch and celebrate some of our teachers who have put in the work in time. In fact, I think one of the facilitators not only facilitated the cohort for this year, but also renewed her own teaching cert around the national boards and also was implementing
061some sort of portion of a special program at the school that she's at with the special education program. So I'm blown away. I know she's got tons of energy, and she is doing it, and she is supporting others who want to do it as well. And it's good to see that people are excited around teaching excellence. And then there's-- oh, I went to the Pacific Middle School transition night. That was a great event. Lots of families were there and asked a lot of logistical questions around what's going to happen when they start building the new Pacific Middle School. And how is it going to work with busing and those kinds of things? And so it was interesting to see what's on the forefront of the minds of our families as we move into next year
062with Pacific Middle School. And I think that's about it. I've got more, but I can hold off. That's about it for now. Thank you, Director Hagos. And with that, Director Van? Thank you very much. Just a couple things here. Looking forward to graduations next week. What an exciting year. And just looking forward to that, starting on Tuesday through Saturday. So let's get out there and celebrate with our seniors and our staff and students. This past week, I wasn't able to attend the Success Foundation, but Dr. Duran and Director Hagos was able to go and listen to what their purpose was-- bring in our local workforce locally here and sharing how they can partner with us. Jeff, you were talking earlier about our mentorships and the vast amount of businesses that want to support. So I
063thank you so much for attending. I also had the pleasure of attending the College Success Foundation that really pulls the full circle, right? We take care of the K-12. The Success Foundation helps our students look at opportunities outside of college. And then the College Success Foundation takes our students from middle school all the way through college and supports that. They are in our four comprehensive high schools. And I was really blown away by the resources that we have and how our students are being supported. Really, really happy. I would love to share that with the board very, very soon on that. So thank you so much for being there. As well as our student athletes, I know that a lot of our directors were at the scholar athlete. We had quite a few teams that
064made it to state this year. Two boys soccer teams played in state tournaments. Evergreen High School played in the 2A state tournament. Mount Rainier High School played in the 4A. We had a young lady, Lynna Hoang, from Raisbeck Aviation that represented Highline High School at the state golf tournament. She did really well. And then we also had quite a few track and field compete at state. We had Evergreen, Highline, and Tyee track and field athletes this year. So congratulations to those who completed it. So that concludes mine. Thank you, Director Van. And for myself, also a huge thanks to Principal Clint Sallee and Jose de Jesus Torres Munoz, I got invited to festival at Flores y Cantos. It's a flowers and song festival. It was incredible at Highline. That was last Friday. Just to see,
065they had a group from Yakima in their traditional dressing-- I'm not sure what tribe, but it was just incredible. They came with their dance and really offered really good guidance around making sure that they were there to support the students in their future they chose. And so it was just all-around amazing, so I was so thankful to be invited. But also just to remember, Family Engagement Survey, we value our family's feedback. So last week, we launched our first annual Family Engagement Survey. This survey takes about 10 to 20 minutes to complete. The survey will help us understand how well we engage with our families and how we can improve. Families should plan to complete it by June 9. So there's still a little bit of time left, a couple of days left. So please, I
066encourage you all to complete the Family Engagement Survey. And with that, that concludes our school board reports. And so we'll move into consent agenda. So I'll ask for a motion to approve our consent agenda. I'll make a motion to approve our consent agenda. I'll need a second. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? And I think at this time is when we discussed any items that have been removed from consent agenda. So I'll open it up. Or how do we proceed? Yes, this is the time you discuss the item 6.3 that you removed from the consent agenda. So then I'll open it up for the discussion on the item that was removed, which was 6.3, our personnel report. So I wanted to move to remove LeShannon Jackson from the personnel report for further discussion
067or review. I'm not sure what we're supposed to do with that one. So Aaron is coming up to the podium. Thank you. Yes, I need help. Thank you, Aaron. Good evening, directors. If there's a name that you would like to remove from the personnel report, the motion would be to remove that name and schedule an executive session for discussion at a later date. And then once that vote happened, you would then vote on the remaining personnel report. There are times when they've done-- they're asking that is, can it be done on the same night? We already have an executive session this evening. So they're asking-- they thought it was happening tonight. It doesn't necessarily have to happen on the same night. You could indicate, schedule an executive session at a later date to be determined.
068And then that date could be determined or you could have it on the same night. It's dependent on the schedule and the time of the board. Since we do have another executive session that might take time tonight, I propose or I make a motion that we schedule this executive session for this particular person for another night. Do I have a second on that? So can we-- yes, can we reread the motion? Sure. I don't have the exact verbiage, but I make a motion to remove LeShannon Jackson from the personnel report to have a further executive session at a later time determined. I second. So is that a roll call? Yes, yes. OK. Director Van? OK. Director Hagos? Sorry. Just for clarification purposes, are we scheduling for a different day? OK. Are we stating the date
069that we're-- we're going to be stating the date when that happens, or is that something we're just going to coordinate within ourselves? We need to coordinate. Coordinate, OK. Yeah, yea. Director Petrini? Yes. Director Tidholm? Yea. Director Alvares? Yea. This motion passes 5-0. OK, so now we'll go back to we need a new motion to approve the 6.3 without LeShannon Jackson on the personnel report. I'll make a motion to improve-- I'm sorry, to approve 6.3, excluding LeShannon Jackson. I'll need a second. I'll second. All in favor? We're going to do a roll call to vote now. We need to vote now. OK, consent. Vote, please. Director Tidholm? Yea. Director Van? Yea. Director Hagos? Yea. Director Petrini? Yea. President Alvarez? Yea. This motion passes 5-0. All right, so now we get to move into our action items.
070So action item number 8.1, motion to approve interlocal agreement for partnership with cooperation-- partnership and cooperation between Highline Public Schools and Port of Seattle. Any questions, comments, or discussion? Hearing and seeing none, I move that the Highline School Board approve the interlocal agreement for partnership and cooperation between Highline Public Schools and the Port of Seattle. So roll call, please. No, we need a second. Oh. Second. Thank you. Now we can do roll call. Director Petrini? Yea. Director Tidholm? Yea. Director Van? Yea. Director Hagos? Yea. Director Alvarez? Yea. This motion passes 5-0. So 8.2, motion to approve the 2024-2025 regular board meeting calendar. And before that, I just wanted to just give us a reminder on that. So per board Policy Number 1400 meeting conduct order of business and quorum, the school board annually approves the
071following year schedule of regular board meetings, not later than the second regular board meeting each June. The item includes the proposed regular board meeting schedule in attachment 1 to the board action report that you received. While this agenda item is to approve only-- and I just want to make sure that we only the regular board meetings per Policy 1400-- additional information about anticipated special meetings, work session, board retreats, and executive sessions was included for reference. As mentioned in the Background section of Board Action Report, board directors had an opportunity to discuss potential '24-'25 work session topics at the June board retreat. In addition, the discussion included identifying potential partners to recognize at future board meetings. Other elements of the year at a glance document will likely be part of the September board retreat discussion. And
072I just wanted to read just to make sure because I wanted to just confirm that these are only for the regular board meeting, so more clarification for me. So any question, comments on that? Seeing and hearing none, motion to approve the '24-'25 regular board meeting calendar. I move that the school board approve the schedule of the regular board meeting as described in attachment 1, and I'll need a second. I'll second. Roll call, please. Director Van? Yea. Director Hagos? Yea. Director Petrini? Yea. Director Tidholm? Yea. President Alvarez? Yea. This motion passes 5-0. In our next one, 8.3, motion to approve new Policy 2415, Performance-Based Pathways. Any questions, comments, concerns? I just wanted to make a comment. I was just again, you know, at Innovation Heights today, as we were talking about performance-based and project-based learning, and
073what that looks like for the students, and just doing a deeper dive in what that is, and the rigor that is available to these students for deeper, meaningful learning. And so I really appreciated it to continue, as I've had lots of questions around this. But really, my full intent is to make sure that our students really are graduating just ready to continue with whatever challenging progress-- I can't even speak tonight. I'm sorry-- just whatever future they choose. And I know that sounds very cliche, but it's true. That is truly, like, my intent. So I just wanted to put that out there. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Yeah, I have a comment as well. I looked at the revised bar since the introduction, the second go-around. And I'd like to say that I am
074really pleased with the new addition that we have in there. Thank you, Holly. One of the requirements that I I've been speaking about is that we provide students in grades 8-12 and their guardians with comprehensive information about pathways offered. And that is now in there. And I really do appreciate your partnership on that in making sure that we have that there. I can also say that I know that working with Dr. Duran and talking with him about this in the past in terms of high school and beyond planning and engaging families, this work has already been started way before. I want to say last year. It's already started in terms of being able to get the information out to the students and their families starting-- and we do it in sixth or seventh grade. So
075we do it even earlier than what's being noted here. But now it's codified, and it's something that will live in our policy, and I'm really excited to see that. So thank you. Is it too late to also ask or add that we'd like to do some kind of annual review about how this is working and hearing from students their experience with this, since this is like a new thing that we're engaging in, just to-- Yeah, annually or something like that. I did catch that in our policy as well. It's there? OK. It's a new requirement, but we also have that codified in language. I must have missed that. Thank you. Yeah. Any other comments or questions? I just have a comment. I'm just grateful for the opportunity our students have to be able to-- was
076stated to choose to be able to participate in anything that they want that's going to be impacting their own future and their choice. And so I appreciate that. So with that, hearing or seeing no more comments or questions, I move that the Highline School Board approve new Policy 2415, Performance-Based High School Graduation Pathways. And I need a second on that. I'll second that. So roll call, please. Director Tidholm? Yea. Director Van? Yea. Director Hagos? Yea. Director Petrini? Yea. Director Alvarez? Yea. This motion passes 5-0. Thank you, everyone. And with that, we move on to 8.11, motion to approve Resolution 1024-- delegation of authority to WIAA for the '24-25 school year. Any comments, questions or concerns? I had hoped that we would have had-- and I recognize my failure to follow up for a meeting, because
077we had talked about at the last school board meeting. But I did want to know why do we renew this annually when there's no other options? There's no other associations that we could even engage contracts with. So what would be the purpose of that? So I am not the expert, even though I am the representative. My understanding is that even though-- so we have an option not to renew. So if we don't renew, then our kids can't participate in any kind of competing sports. So it is our option. So that is the option, so renew or not. But there are no other competing associations for us to choose from. No. The only one there is in the state of Washington is WIAA. OK, thank you. All right. Any other questions or comments? Seeing and hearing
078none, I move that the Highline School Board approved resolution 1024-- approving the delegation of authority to the WIAA for the '24-25 school year. I'll need a second. I'll second. A roll call, please. Director Hagos? Yea. Director Tidholm? Yea. Director Petrini? Yea. Director Van? Yea. Director Alvarez? Yea. This motion passes 5-0. So thank you. With that now, we don't have any introduction and action items, but we have a couple of introduction items. We have motion to approve resolutions 09-24, fixing and adopting the '24-'25 budget. So any comments, questions? I do have a quick comment. I just want to thank Jackie and team for our board budget session earlier. Thank you so much for the presentation and the numbers. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Our next intro item is motion to approve adoption of grades K-5
079health and and grades 4-12 comprehensive sexual health curriculum. Any questions, comments there? We do have a presentation for this one tonight, please-- Thank you. --by Bernard Koontz. Thank you, Bernard and team. Thank you for coming. Thank you. And Laura Schneider. Please introduce yourselves. Good evening. Im Dr. Laura Schneider, and I'm here with Jill Reeder-Gibson, our health program specialist for K-12. And we're excited to be recommending to adopt the Quaver Ed Curriculum for K-5 health and FLASH for grades 4-12 for comprehensive sexual health. We know from recent reporting and survey data that health instruction is really critical for our students now more than ever. And so the curriculum that the committee has recommended for adoption will ensure that our elementary students receive instruction in health and wellness and that we'll be able to provide standards-based instruction
080there as well as for grades 4-12 students in comprehensive sexual health. So the process began for adoption back in December of 2022. It's almost been a two-year process. We had 10 individuals on the committee, including elementary teachers, high school teachers, several of our committee members who are in the room, actually. Gratitude for Director Petrini and for Dean Shawna Moore, who are also on the adoption committee. And we had special Ed teachers and central office health specialists and various folks, all who came together really because they have strong conviction around the need for health instruction for our students. So based on the review, we had two rounds of requests for proposal. The committee developed the criteria, did a thorough review of everything that we received, and voted to recommend Quaver Ed for grades K-5 and FLASH
081for grades 4-12. Teachers were overwhelmingly positive about the curriculum. Elementary teachers who piloted it found it engaging for students thorough and easy to use and implement within a busy elementary school day schedule. And we wanted to just highlight what is covered in the health standards and that what is covered in the Quaver Ed curriculum. So Jill's going to speak to that for just a couple of minutes. There are six Washington State Health standard topics-- nutrition, safety, wellness, social-emotional health, substance use and abuse, and sexual health. There you go. It's taller than me. That's the problem. Upon reviewing the curriculum for all criteria, the committee recommends Quaver Ed Health for the nutrition, safety, wellness, social-emotional health, and substance use and abuse standards while continuing use of FLASH for comprehensive sexual health instruction. The committee felt that
082this combination of resources provides the strongest learning support to students aligned with the standards and state RCWs. You probably also noticed in the memo that it was a K-12 adoption. And we've paused on the secondary component of the adoption, as there are a number of things we have to work out in the system to be able to provide the health instruction. So while a pilot was recommended, we weren't able to follow through with the pilot as we need to. And we're going to be continuing that work and revisiting how we strengthen and provide resources for secondary health in the upcoming year. So that's where we're at. I just put a mint in my mouth. [LAUGHTER] I'm having my throat-- so any other questions or comments for them at this time? I do have a couple
083if that's all right, if anyone else wants to go ahead of anyone else. So back when I was a community member, I was on this committee as a concerned parent, wanting to know for myself and be part of that. One thing I felt like at the end was the lack of community involvement was disappointing to me. The lack of diversity of thought and community members who come from different faiths and backgrounds who would have different opinions about this I felt like was missing. So that was one thing that I felt like we could have done a better job. I don't know how we could have done that to get more people involved. But I know that there was a meeting probably, I don't know, two or three months at some point where we were presenting
084the FLASH curriculum. And we had a whole group of people show up all upset. And I felt like, well, where were you when these committees were being formed? We needed you then if you wanted to get your input, sometimes a little too late. My hope was that Quaver Ed-- which I thought was a fantastic curriculum as I was able to actually go through it, very engaging-- I had hoped that we had approved this all the way through grades 5, mostly because as we went through the FLASH curriculum, at least for grades 4 and 5, I found a lot of things that were really concerning to me as a parent. Being that our state standards say that it must be medically-accurate, and age-appropriate, and culturally-responsive, respectful of different viewpoints and religions. And so that's where I
085felt like we were falling short when it comes to those things. One of the things that concerned me the most as I went through the reproductive systems lesson-- I know I've talked to Laura. We've talked about this, so I'm just reiterating for the group. But as we have pulled out different terms such as "man," "woman," "male," "female," and "boy," "girl" from those lessons that are when we're talking medical, we're talking biological, right? There's two reproductive systems, period. So when we're talking about that, we have definitions where one is what's generally known as female and male and talking about those systems. But suddenly we're now using terms with our students as persons, with a penis, persons with a vagina, persons with breasts, persons who menstruate, persons who are birthing persons. And it gets very confusing. So
086when we talk about medically accurate for a student of fourth, fourth and fifth grade, at least, I feel like when we're just introducing this stuff, for me and for my students, I would have said, no. I would have pulled my children out of this lesson because for me, that's not medically accurate. I didn't feel as a parent that's age-appropriate. I didn't know how we could help parents to understand what's in these lessons and if they want to review them. I think having maybe perhaps not just a curriculum preview night where people pass around one binder and have only two seconds to look through it, but maybe a work session more about what's in it. Because even when you go look at these summaries, it doesn't get into what is really in them. As I read
087through the surveys-- or not the surveys, the summaries of the different chapters-- it doesn't really get into how explicit some things are. And so parents want to know that information. I feel like that's really valuable, important information. And that's not to disparage any groups who feel differently. We're talking about biology versus identity can be two totally different things. But we have to acknowledge that there are a lot of people who want to know and have that information to their students that is just biological truths. It's something that has nothing to do with how we think or feel. It's just the functions of our bodies. That's why we have different bathrooms, because we have different functions. You either have a penis or you don't. And those bathrooms serve those needs for those biological outputs. And women
088don't usually-- I should say a person who menstruates doesn't usually want to share a bathroom with someone who doesn't because it's a very personal thing. And so just without getting into the political divide over it, it's more of a if we're talking education, I want to make sure we're always presenting the most viable, truthful facts, things that just have nothing to do with political bias. It's just what it is. So for me, I would like to, if we could, amend this, that maybe we say that FLASH 4th-5th grades is not quite included. I know as a board we have a right to approve sex ed. I love the rest of what was presented as far as for hygiene, and mental health, and all those other things were just awesome, and really important resources that we
089want to make sure our students have. But when it comes to things like this, when we have a larger majority of families of faith, Muslims, and sex, and identity and all those things are so important. And it's a hot topic for them. So being respectful of those people and making sure not only do we have an opt-out option, but that we're being respectful of those opinions as well and that those are also reflected. So without throwing out everything, we should always, in my opinion, just have that balance, making sure it's a neutral place for everyone to feel that they're represented as well. So I guess what I'm asking in our further review of this, because tonight's just an intro, is that we talk about maybe some amendments we would like to make sure that we
090review it and that it really does meet those state standards of being medically-accurate, age-appropriate, and culturally-responsive to people of faith and different values and beliefs. So that's kind of more of my comment, more than a question. May I respond? Absolutely. OK. And as you said, we've had these conversations as well. I think what's complicated with the Conference-- and we'll just talk about the Conference of Sexual Health. Part of the health adoption, because as you're noting, there's multiple health standards. And that particular set of standards is why we felt there was additional-- we felt like Quaver did not do an adequate job of actually addressing those state standards. It's not included in the curriculum. So we need to make sure per state law that students are receiving the instruction. Some of the things that we try
091to do in the process that I just want to make sure the board understands is that as a committee, the committee worked through all of the same criteria. And the criteria start with the state standards. So every curriculum that was reviewed, including FLASH, we had to really go through and say, are these state standards being met? FLASH is a strong alignment with the state standards that we're required to teach. The challenge I think that you're expressing is where if parents have differing feelings or beliefs about certain lessons, that's why we have a state law and a policy that says, I can opt my child out of lessons that are about gender identity or things that don't align with my beliefs. But our job, really, as a curriculum adoption committee and as a district is to
092really make sure we're adhering to the state standards for what has to be taught. And I just want to name that that process was very closely followed by the whole committee, and that when it came to voting on, how are we going to ensure that these standards are taught, the committee unanimously voted that we would keep FLASH. And that we would make sure that families knew through the website, they have access to the curriculum. They have access to the lessons. We host family FLASH nights. We do really want to have family communication. And as you noted, Melissa, last year's Family Sexual Health Night was much better attended than this year's. We don't really know why. The same kind of communications went out. But we do want to continue to be in partnership and conversation with
093families. But we are also really strongly wanting to make sure that kids have opportunities to learn what is in the state standards around sexual health. And that was really the call of the committee to do that work. I do agree with that, I think. Sorry, it's like echoing something. I think that there are families that do want that sexual health lessons for their students, but maybe not so much bringing in the identity when it comes just to those biological, here's the functions of your body. And recognizing what those chromosomes do to different people. And so I think that's important. But yeah, I feel like this is further discussions to be had. But also just one of the ideas that I had that I thought would actually be very impactful, regardless of what anyone believed, was
094to have perhaps these kind of lessons as a-- I don't know, like a community night with your child, and having these maybe over the next three weeks. We're going to get together. We're going to be talking about these different things. And when you have a parent and a child together hearing the same things, regardless of what's the belief at home, at least the parent is like, OK, I know exactly what was taught. Now let's go home and talk about it. And you're building that bridge with your child in talking about these things that a lot of families don't know how to talk to their children about or culturally, it's just not acceptable to talk about. But if they're learning it at school, it's an empowering tool for a parent to say, oh, I understand that
095this is what you're being taught, and let's talk about it. And that way, we can be respectful of providing that information, as we should, as the state law requires. But then also putting that trust back with the parent to continue to engage with their child. And I think that always makes for a better educated child who's got that support-- school, and parent, and teacher, and all that. So just different ideas that we can also embark on. And how do we engage with our families together with their students so that a student doesn't come home having learned a lesson that maybe is different than what they've been taught their whole life, and they don't know how to talk to their parent about it, right? We don't want-- that disconnect is what I don't want to see.
096I love engaging with my kids about stuff. I tell them, I hope I'm the first person you come talk to when you learn something new at school, because they are going to learn stuff from each other regardless. But not everyone has that kind of open-door policy or knows how to talk with their kids and be willing to listen to what their kids are saying, which sometimes I'm shocked some of the stuff they say. I'm like, I didn't even learn about that until I was like 25. I don't even know how you guys know that. So again, information is power. Giving our kids this information, obviously, for many communities, I understand is really impactful and it's important. I would never want to take that from anyone. So what I'm asking is, can we find a way,
097A, to engage parents better to make more knowledgeable decisions for their children based on what they believe, but also respecting, I don't know, what I feel like are biological truths, which I don't think has to go in the face or be combative with identity. I'm speaking for myself. But I just feel like that's something that I wanted to share. Thank you, Director Petrini. Director Hagos? Yeah. So I just had, as you were talking, I had a follow-up question. I remember last year when there was a family, a couple of families who were asking me questions around this as well. And as I was looking into it, I realized that-- at least if my recollection, my memory serves me right, the FLASH curriculum doesn't have translated versions in a variety of languages that we see across
098our district. And I had submitted some sort of question around it, and it may be more of a question for OSPI, but maybe for you all as well. With a linguistically diverse district, does the curriculum offer translated versions for other families to be able to read, understand this material. It's being translated FLASH is working on doing Spanish, but they don't have it done yet. Do you want to say that? Sure. You can say that. [CHUCKLES] As a district ourselves, we have translated the middle school FLASH lessons to use in the dual-language middle schools. So that is available to anybody. The elementary and high school are not, but King County FLASH is working themselves on developing the Spanish versions and hope to have that out soon. As a district, we have the letter that goes home
099to families in quite a few different languages. But are you talking about the curriculum itself? Yeah, the curriculum itself. When folks wanted to review it, they would ask me questions. And I'm like, well, let's go take a look. And so as we were doing that, that's one of the pieces. It's incredibly detailed and has a wealth of information. It's just not accessible for our families without it being translated in a variety of languages. I know we talk about the top five languages. And at least those top five languages, it would be nice to see people have access to that. Right. King County is working on that, so they will have Spanish soon. And I think they will work on other languages. I don't know their timeline. With that, I also want to say that that's
100the beauty of having a diverse board-- that we are able to express our own feelings, our own opinions, and that's what makes us a strong board. So any other questions or comments before-- I do have a question. So I don't see a timeline in regards to this. And I also would like to listen to what Director Petrini has to say. Would the verbiage really change the curriculum if we do make those changes? I'm just looking through the bar here. There is really a timeline that we have to implement this, the curriculum, correct? We are annually required to implement comprehensive sexual health curriculum. We have been doing that for years, and years, and years. It's a state requirement. And most schools in our district do that. In the spring. The Quaver Ed Health Curriculum, we're working
101on a soft implementation in the fall. But again, those are sort of two separate pieces, the Quaver piece and then the FLASH piece. FLASH has been already in use in the district for many years. It's used widely in the region. And it's recognized as a very well-researched, well-developed curriculum. But we're required to teach comprehensive sexual health every year. With the state-approved curriculum. With the state-approved curriculum, yes. Correct. I guess I wasn't clear. It was in regards to Quaver, and that does not have a timeline. Our curriculum does, but-- So Quaver, we're under a sort of soft rollout with Quaver due to there also being elementary science adoption at the same time. So we're still working out the exact timing with that, although we had a pretty large number of elementary teachers pretty easily implement the
102pilot lessons without-- where they had a couple hours of training. So it's going to be available for this upcoming year for teachers who are feeling sort of ready to implement that. But because there's a science adoption implementation happening at the same time, we're trying to be mindful of how much we're asking elementary teachers to do all at one time. Yeah, it would be a full implementation for the following year. OK, thank you. I have one more follow-up question because I just thought of this. This was something that when I was on the committee, something I heard. A lot of teachers were also wondering, how is this going to be implemented at the middle and high school levels when in middle school we don't have health classes and in high school they only have to take
103one or two their whole time in high school? So which teachers are being asked to now teach these lessons that maybe, A, aren't as comfortable with it, or B, haven't been really trained in these things to conduct these kind of conversations? I'm concerned about making sure that we have the right personnel teaching these lessons as well. So for secondary, it's been science teachers. It's been taught in science classes for the last several years. We've worked with the state over the past year with a group called WA PREP and provided quite extensive opportunities for training for our secondary and elementary educators who are not as maybe comfortable or feeling as equipped to teach comprehensive sexual health. They've gotten training explicitly in how to do that in the classroom and support around that. We've got really positive
104feedback from teachers on that training and support. So we kind of made sure that this year, while we were working on the adoption, that we were also supporting our science teachers who are implementing the FLASH curriculum in middle school to be able to confidently deliver that instruction. Thank you very much. Thank you again. Thank you. All right, thanks. All right, and then our next intro item is motion to approve resolution 11-24 for trust for public lands and King County conservation easement for Waskowitz property. I just want to invite our Chief Operations Officer, Scott Logan, to come up. And he's got a couple guests with him today to talk a little bit about this, as I think it's an exciting opportunity for the future of Highline and the future of access to mountains and amazing scenery
105of the Waskowitz. Thank you, Scott. Absolutely. Thank you, superintendent and board members. I'm hoping my voice holds out here. I'm also struggling tonight with trying to talk. But I have an excellent team here with me, Lori Benson here, and then the world-famous Roberta MacFarlane here also to share some thoughts and answer any questions that you may have about this. We've been working for a few years now on trying to protect the natural assets of camp Waskowitz in perpetuity. There's an opportunity here to do just that, to protect the natural resources of that region, that site, forever and have a win come back to Highline School District in with the ability to create a trust that will then support Camp Waskowitz, or Waskowitz Outdoor Education Center, into the future, put together a trust committee that will
106direct how those funds are spent. And in an ideal world, they would only use funds that were generated by the money in the trust and not use the principal of the trust so that that money continues to support Camp or Outdoor Waskowitz Outdoor Education Center forever. I'd be happy here now to let Lori share just a little bit about what's going on here. This is actually the first time we've met face-to-face, but we have seen each other on screens for quite a while now. So, Lori? Yes. Good evening. I'm Lori Benson. I'm the Washington State Conservation Director at Trust for Public Land, or TPL. And TPL is a nationwide nonprofit that actually just turned 50 years. But we've been working in Washington for a very long time. The Waskowitz property itself, as you know, is
107just stunning. And so it's exciting to have the potential opportunity to put this layer of protection both for the environmental benefits and also benefits to the students that are so important. The conservation easement itself will be about 345 acres. And we've been doing a lot of work with Scott's team and Meredith out at Waskowitz to make sure that the conservation easement is conducive to the operations of Waskowitz Outdoor Education Center and that it really prioritizes the students first. King County will ultimately be the holder of the conservation easement, and they're very excited about the project as well. They actually sought and are covering the partner matching funds on behalf of the district because they're that invested in the property. So yeah, we're excited to be involved in it and for you to consider the conservation
108easement. And I'll pass it off to Roberta. I'm back in Highline. I came out of the mountains to be here with you all today and celebrate this amazing opportunity that this conservation easement has. I started in Highline as the Director of Waskowitz in 1997, the last decade, last century. There you go, two decades ago. And I started with the Trust for Public Land at Scott right before I left and retired. And so this is something that's coming to fruition that we've been thinking about for a long time. I want to give you a little history lesson. So Highline has been an innovator in outdoor education since the '30s. And they've been at Waskowitz since the '40s, right after World War II. And the 340 acres that is going to be in this conservation easement has
109a story with a junkyard, some whiskey, and dead rats. That, I will save for another day. But I want you to know that Carl Jensen, he met with the owners of that land at a junkyard. And he talked to them and asked if he could purchase that land when the funds were available. And it was about eight, nine years later that the funds became available. And on a handshake promise with this owner of the land, they kept the price at that price when it had gone up about 10%, 20%. So the owner of the land wanted to see this to be used for nature, education, for outdoor education. And that's what this legacy, I think, continues there. So now I want to say so I retired two years ago to immediately start an encore career
110with Outdoor Schools Washington. So I work with the Principals Association. We have the contract with OSPI to help enact House Bill 2078. And 2078 is a promise that each and every fifth or sixth-grade student spends a week in the woods. It is modeled after what Waskowitz, what Highline has been doing for over 80 years. So you can be proud of the legacy and the traditions that Waskowitz and Highline has provided, and now the model for the rest of the state to follow. And I go around, and I have visited over 20 sites this year, and looked at their programs, and looked at what they're doing, and helped them to emerge to become the quality that Waskowitz is. And it is so exciting to have the foundation that Carl Jensen, and the boards, and you all
111continue to have the faith of what Waskowitz does. Highline is an innovator and a leader, and keep it up. And the last thing I want to say is as I go around the state, I have learned more and more alumni of Waskowitz are out there, speaking of which, is our Governor Jay Inslee went to Waskowitz as a fifth-grader. Superintendent Chris Reykdal went to Waskowitz as a sixth-grader, and he was able to sing me his cabin cheer when I met with him. He was very excited about that. And we have some of our candidates for public office. They also are Waskowitz alumni, I'll call them. So thank you very much for your consideration and I hope to celebrate with you all later. And I would probably just close with it's been fantastic working with TPL and
112with King County on this process. Both groups have been strongly supportive of writing the language around this agreement so that it supports 100% our program, our students at Waskowitz Outdoor School. Thank you, Scott. Thank you both to you all. Any questions or comments? Seeing and hearing none, thank you so much. You're amazing. With that, we move on to motion intro item. It's the motion to approve purchase order increases for McKinney Vento Qualified Student Transportation for the '23-'24 school year. Any questions, comments? Go ahead. I have a question. Do we have somebody answering questions on this? Welcome back, Scott. Welcome back. I'm curious. So increasing the purchase order-- I'm sorry-- for the transportation, is that expanding on the mode of transportation or is it just increasing the funding for the current transportation options that we currently
113have? This is expanding on the current options that we have. Some may not be familiar with when we started the school year, we had three purchase orders out. One included Yellow Cab. Yellow Cab was not able to maintain the level of insurance that we require in order to transport students along with some other requirements that we have on employees of companies that transport our students. So we were not able to continue working with Yellow Cab. So the two that we had remaining, EverDriven and HopSkipDrive absorbed what was originally going out to Yellow Cab, as well as what they currently were doing. And both HopSkipDrive and EverDriven rates are higher than what Yellow Cab was charging us. And have we explored other options outside of those that we've currently been using? So the best option and
114best solution hands down for this district across the board is more drivers. The more drivers that we have, the more students we can transport ourselves. We definitely are more efficient than what's on here. But separate from the efficiency factor is the safety. These are district employees that we know how they've been trained. We know who they have to answer to. And across the board, if we have more bus drivers, then we will have more drivers available to drive vans. If we have more van drivers, then we can hire less outside help. We're already chartering field trips that we can't fill because we don't have enough drivers. We have office staff leaving their role in the office to go out and transport students in school buses. And then at the end of the day, they have
115to come back and do what they should have been doing during the day. So the number-one solution is help us recruit more drivers into Highline School District. And that's Devin Denny, who is retiring in a couple of months. That's his sole duty for the next two months is driver recruitment. Thank you, Scott. Dr. Van? I have more of a statement. So in the bar, it states that one of the main reasons for the 1.5 request is due to a lot of cancellations. I know earlier in the year, Director Hagos had asked about what is that number? So I don't know if you have that number. But if you can get back to us that, I would like to know if it's repetitive, if it's a few students, or is it-- So a great, great topic.
116That is one of our challenges when we're working with contractors is cancellations. And if they're not cancelled within a certain amount of time, we are automatically charged, at least for a portion of that trip. We are working directly with the two companies that are available to us right now to enhance the cancellation process so that families have an easier solution. We've got automatic phone calls go to every family that has scheduled transportation the following day, confirming they need that transportation there. We have through the two vendors, we have on their websites an app. They have an app. Then they can just go in there and the parent can cancel that trip anytime within 24 hours of departure of that trip. So we're trying to make-- this doesn't sound right. We're trying to make cancellation as
117easy as possible so that we have fewer charges for trips that don't occur. This is a population that's challenged anyway, just with life for the most part. And they're going to have the most incidents of things happen, and they can't be at school. Thank you so much. Uh-huh. Any other questions or comments? And with that, we thank you, Scott. We move to items, if we want to add any items to the consent agenda, I would like to make a motion. As a Waskowitz leadership alumni, in high school I was able to go up there and help and support our sixth graders. I would like to move 10.3 to the consent agenda. This is to really protect our land as well as education and protecting the access for our young people. So I'd like to move
11810.3 to the consent agenda. I second that. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any other items? That would be the only one. I'll make a motion to move 10.1 to the consent agenda. The budget? Yes, ma'am. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Nay. I need some time to go through the-- it's the budget book. I was asking for a printout and we haven't received the printout just yet. This isn't approving the budget. This is moving it to our consent agenda. So you will still have time to review. OK, nay. I was also a nay. We had a couple asks in our last work session, so I'd like to see those first. Yeah, again, that's fine. This is not approving the board. This is moving into consent agenda, so agreed. So we had three
119ayes and two nays. So it passes? I'm looking at Aaron, yes yes. It moves. Yes, it passes and we're going to move it to consent for the next-- It's not approved. It's just moving into consent. And with that, actually, we're going to be going into executive session. So I move that the board immediately recess into executive session for 60 minutes. So that is until 8:45, 8:48. In accordance with the provisions of RCW 42.3110, the purpose of the executive session is to evaluate the performance of a public employee. Do I have a second? I'll second that. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? So we are now recessed to an executive session up in Olympic Room. Yeah, just give us a few minutes. We'll be upstairs. [SIDE CONVERSATION] I love you. Love you. [SIDE CONVERSATION] [LAUGHTER] Pretty
120much, pretty much. OK. [SIDE CONVERSATION] I was working, so I couldn't. [SIDE CONVERSATION] [AUDIO OUT] Are we good? OK. Well, good evening, everybody. Now that we are in executive session, I would like to extend our exec session for approximately 60 minutes to 9:46, 9:48 time frame, and we'll be back. Thank you. [AUDIO OUT] Well, good evening. Thank you. I would like to extend the executive session for approximately 60 minutes. We will return at approximately 10:50. We're having great conversations. The end. So at this time, we're going to extend it for another 15 minutes, or till 11:00. So we're going to extend it to 11:05. [AUDIO OUT] 15 more minutes. So we want to extend the time for 30 more minutes, so we will be reconvening at 11:38. [AUDIO OUT] So we are returning from our
121executive session at 11:22 And at this time, I'm going to ask for a motion to adjourn. I motion to adjourn. I'll second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? So we have adjourned for this evening. Thank you.