001right you ready to start with hello everyone thank you for joining us we're going to call the study session to order we have a lovely agenda of important topics that we have to discuss today so um I think we'll just go ahead and kick it off with you superintendent T thank you president Cass so we have an opportunity to complete our discussion around a goal three um report that was being done at the last board meeting but unfortunately we lost power during that time and we were right right at the very end looking at the last um measure within that gold um as it relates to disproportionality within our uh discipline and suspension so um we've asked uh Dr Wellington to return to continue that um conversation with the board and then following that we
002will be continuing our bond Levy preparation uh planning around the 2026 Bond and Levy as well as taking a look at our enrollment projections so at this point I'm going to turn it back over to Dr Dunham um so you can remind us where we were and then go from there yeah thanks for having us back again hopefully no lightning tonight make sure Dave gets his time um we are going to go over as as superintendent H said just the last part of goal three that last measure um couple things just as we jump into this one is one of the things we wrestle with as we do this is how much data is too much data and then what kind of data and where are we showing um and then how are we staying
003consistent so that year to year you guys are able to the public is able to kind of look at measures um there are layers to this data that other people within the staff um are also looking at one of the requests from last time is uh Dr Wellington was explaining some of the what we're noticing as we dig deeper into the data um there's a request of can you provide us with a little little bit more data around that so we have added a couple slides that you wouldn't have seen had we finished the presentation in the lightning but I think uh Dr Wellington will convince you that this is a way to help kind of frame what he was telling you verbally without kind of showing you the numbers and certainly again there's always
004more ways and more opportunities to dig into a disaggregate the data we're trying to main consistency from year to year goal to goal so with that um Dr Wellington thank you I think what Obie was implying was that I made the lights go out so that I could add more slides I think is what he was saying which I would not put it past me I do appreciate this opport Unity to um finish up the goal 3 presentation and to talk about discipline a number of you know this has been important to me and I've tried to keep this front and center um frequently and so um we're going to go through it we're going to see if I can walk and chew gum at the same time and that's a good start so last
005year uh this slide will set the context for us um incidents were up 15% uh as you see on this particular slide um much of the increase in incidents was driven by Middle School uh which was up 43% about 300 students High School uh which we've seen so far this year or last year and this year is a leading indicator of our work uh saw a decrease in discipline incidents by 21% in elementary school remain for the most part steady decreasing slightly at 2% looking more closely at specific incidents um which I know is important to you that created the biggest impact there was a 56% increase um overall in misuse of Technology um an additional 381 incidents disruptive conduct and failure to cooperate were up 15% and 63% respectively and I'll be talking about
006that um towards the end um and uh hate speech was up by 80 incidents an increase of 145% those were the biggies that that drove much of the of the increase um in each of these categories high school was actually down with the exception of hate hate speech which was up just a little bit and I'll talk about that at the end as well it is as you know I always have to put the discipline within the context and first and foremost remembering that um I think as director mordi said last time these are numbers on the screen but each one represents um an individual student and the question that we have to ask ourselves is how are we serving our students and tonight how are we serving our students when they do things that
007they shouldn't and I think that's uh that is very very important um as I say every year discipline is a product of rules and policies and expectations of adults um data is a product of the systems that we create as Educators um it's not a reflection of the children that we educate and I think that that's a really important thing to start off with it's also important to note that our children are working within systems and structures that we establish and that we maintain and so we create all of these structures and systems and if we find they're not working then it's incumbent upon us to make the the changes that we need to secondly these numbers represent actually a small percentage of our population which I think is always important to remember um approximately
00822,300 students are represented um in k12 and 3,24 of them got in trouble in some way over the course of the year that's roughly 14% so it's also important as I think um was noted up here um 50.2% had only one incident actually 70% of all disciplines um uh were just two or fewer right so we're not talking about very many students getting in a lot of trouble which I think is important as well as we also see here while the numbers of incidents was up the number of suspensions and we're going to talk about this in a little bit our highest form of sanctions for students in our system was actually down we're going to talk about that uh in a bit and uh it's important to note on this first slide that we
009had to that regard 91 fewer students suspended um this past year um and I I think this is important as well when you go all the way back to 2223 um we had almost exactly the same number of suspensions as we had way back in 2018 before the pandemic which is actually the last time you can we actually had a year of school right so if you look at that it was about the same as 2223 in 2018 522 students were suspended well this past year we had 408 so I think we're headed in the right direction we're coming out of the pandemic we're continuing the work and so I think that's good news so the numbers however are half the story and this is what I started to talk about yesterday but it was
010too confusing so I shut off the lights so I think this slide tells a story that I'm going to keep coming back to because I think it's important for us to think about an incident actually is a representative of two things right it's a a violation of a rule or an expectation and there's a consequence associated with it now we obviously we know that students do things that they shouldn't all the time and it doesn't end up in the system right as a um in Synergy as an incident but what we're going to talk about today are incidents and so it's important that we just get a context and a frame for it with with this particular slide I like this slide because it's a little bit confusing the numbers don't quite add up but
011they actually do because they're telling you two different things so over on the Le hand side you have uh all of the um disciplinary consequences that um have been Meed out for all students across our system if they got themselves in trouble um over the last three years it actually includes uh the first semester of this year I probably wasn't supposed to do that but I did it anyway what you know there is the is the number is the number of incidents the percentage and I've got to make sure that I explain this right the percentage is actually the number it's the percentage of times that a student who had that incident would end up with that disciplinary consequence right for example in 2223 if a student got in trouble 11.4% of the time their
012consequence would be an administ ative uh conference if you look down at detentions and lunch detentions 63.8 6% of the time it would have ended in a detention does that make sense so if you look at all of them by year you'll end up with 100% um which would be the number of incidents that had occurred that particular year I am sorry this ends up on two different pages but you can see here Saturday school the same so in 2223 there were 541 incidences that ended up in Saturday school we have two types of Saturday school they're both represented here one's a 2year excuse me one's a uh 2our and the other is a 4H hour Saturday school and so if you notice there you can see when you look at and this is for
013all uh grades you can see the percentage actually changing slightly even though the number doesn't always change at the same ratio so for example uh actually I'll show you when we get to middle school you can see that actually you may have a less of a percentage but more students actually like getting detention but when you look at all of the different options that were available to the administrator the administration is choosing that particular form of discipline less that will make more sense shortly so this is all students I want to talk about Middle School real briefly here do that do that make sense so far is everybody with me okay because I think that's going to be important moving forward um behavioral contracts as you'll notice on the last slide have doubled they've extended
014to 40 students um 181 students have have experienced some form of um detention alternative which wasn't really available to them the year before these are small changes in the number of uh students that are impacted but they're the kinds of of changes that we've been trying to make it's the right direction the more significant impact that I want to talk briefly about is this incident category administrative conferences and you can see that at the very top it was up 81% across all grades from 863 incidents in 2223 to 1,564 incidents this past year what that means is that students who would in previous years have received detention suspension Saturday school more of those students instead of receiving those things had a restorative conversation with the principal or the assistant principal in the office in middle
015school as you can see on the board these administrative conferences were actually up over 260% from the numbers on the slide it's clear that students are still of course facing a host of consequences but what's different last year than it was the previous year and this current year as well as you can see is the shift in how our schools are thinking about the behavior and the potential consequences and I think that's significant so I'll leave this slide up there and here's another way to think about it in 2223 when a student in Middle School got in trouble uh some form of a recordable incident occurred 72% of the time that student would end up in some form of detention lunch detention after school detention Etc 11% of the time that incident would end in
016a suspension 6% of the time they would spend their weekend in Saturday school and 7% of the time they would end up in a restorative conversation with an administrator or an administrative conference which you see at the top in 23 24 when students violated a rule or expectation they served detention less often 65% of the time found themselves in Saturday school less often 3% of the time and would be suspended less often almost half 7% of the time instead a student would work with an administrator and restorative capacity 18% of the time which was a significant increase what you can see and again I cheated a little bit by letting you see this semester's numbers is that that doesn't seem to be an anomaly right already from 17% to 30% of the time what you
017need to when you start to do the math actually the second semester is we have about 53% of our consequences happen May is a rough month so just think about that when you look at the numbers 50% is about right but it's actually closer to 1,564 of the 93 uh 9,321 incidents in every demographic category seen in the slide began and ended with a conversation in the administrator's office said a different way 271 Asian students 84 black students 316 Hispanic laic students and 67 students in two or more demographics and 711 white students spent time building relationships in a restorative way with their principal than facing a different form of discipline excuse me as I told her Middle School assistant principles last week that's I think a pretty significant win two more Thoughts with regards
018to the utilization of these conferences that we starting to see being used significantly more I believe the year-over-year difference that you see here and I'm going to talk more about this as we go forward and the number of students served in this more restorative way indicates a direction towards Justice in the same way that the reduction and suspensions you'll see in the next few slides and this is what I mean white students saw a 223% increase in this opportunity that you see up here of an administrative conference black students saw a 250% increase and Hispanic 44% increase so I think that's in the right direction secondly administrative conferences follow the same cyclical pattern as all other forms of discipline as you can imagine it takes time in fact today this uh this afternoon I went
019into a principal's office and I couldn't find a place to sit down because their conference taper was filled with these notebooks and books full of all of these um various ways that students could re-evaluate their behavior read a cool story um engage in some kind of a conversation where they had a script I mean there was just it was it she didn't know I was coming it was it was pretty awesome so that's uh it does take work it does take time what I have been impressed with is that principles are actually front-loading this and the most that you'll see is actually in September and October and November which I think is impressive because that's the direction you want is to frontload these things so that students have a different way thinking about how we
020think about consequences and this is when the lights go out questions about any of that before I move on a lot yeah okay I know that uh expulsions are very rare are those included in the count of suspensions or do does has it even come up they are so rare that wouldn't actually be here yeah this this list is certainly um a lot but it's not exhaustive if um if there weren't 10 or more incidences when I looked at all incidences then I left it off the list just so you wouldn't have three pages and that's one of them that wouldn't wouldn't make the list yeah yes sorry um Wanted go back to the um statement about the misuse of Technology being the largest and and there's my children showed me many ways that you
021can misuse technology I'm wondering if there is a correlation between that increase and the changes in our expectations of cell phones availability is that perhaps why that has gone up so much is that we have a change in our policy but I wouldn't be surprised yeah there's definitely a focus on it um both here at the district office but if you go out now to a number of middle schools in fact we were at Canyon Park yesterday and saw the you know the the new homes or hotels or whatever they're calling and where students need to put them there and so what what are they calling Spas yes cell phone Spas so um that's likely one of the reasons yes we're we're paying attention to it not an action for the district but having a
022middle schooler at Canyon Park who has left his device at school we should probably come up with a system where they remember to grab it when they leave too I think that will be that'll be important and and students of course as they get used to this will also pick that up for themselves but yes that makes sense all right so continuing our conversation regarding the number of incidents uh which is the heart of this particular measure the reduction of disproportionalities and discipline which is what we're really working towards um just a note about the math as you can see some of them have uh blank lines if they're 10 or fewer students um this is our uh policy is to actually um leave those out we've already talked about what a what an incident
023is so I won't go back through all of that uh what I will do is work to tell you which of these numbers is up and down by how many cu I think that that's important you'll see that these are um from the 23 24 school year I've gone back to take a look at where it was the year before so the 02 incidence per student in an Asian demographic is slightly higher than last year when we had 951 incidences and 0.16 uh incidents per student last year 8% of our Asian students had a disciplinary incident noted in Synergy so when I I going to need to rethink that when I say last year I mean 22 23 as opposed to 23 24 so uh last year there were 68 incidents per student in our
024black and African-American population and the 24.7 is a percentage Point higher than the year previous for our latinx students 72 is a tenth higher than it was the previous year and a little more than a percentage Point increase and white students experienced a 005 increase in the number of incidents per student and an increase of a full percentage Point students in the two or more demographic stayed relatively the same as they were in the 22 23 school year as noted previously we had 91 fewer students in the 23 24 school year than we did did in the year previous the breakdown is uh what you see there on the slides while the suspensions per student was fractionally down across each demographic the percent of students receiving a suspension in many of our populations was noticeably
025reduced black or African-American suspensions dropped from 5.5 to 4.3% suspensions for Hispanic and Latin Latino students dropped from 4.1 to 3.2% suspensions for students in two or more races category drop from 2.3 to 1.5% % our Asian and white students saw the smallest decrease uh virtually no change in our Asian students and a.3 uh% drop for white students year-over-year the backstory here is in our high schools who decrease the number of Hispanic latinicity there is not a lot of nuance to this particular slide boys are twice as likely as girls to experience discipline of students experiencing disciplinary consequences girls are more likely than boys to participate in administrative consequence girls are slightly more likely than boys to be removed from class they're more likely to receive Saturday school but significantly less likely to receive a
026suspension our non-binary and gendere expansive students who face disciplinary consequences almost always experienced an administrative conference as opposed to any other form of consequence boys received some form of consequence most this past year for disruptive conduct fighting and attendance girls receive consequences most for attendance and misuse of technology and our non-binary and gender expansive students were disciplined most for attendance in fractions the number represented on this chart mirors the data that we've seen in other charts with incidents increasing slightly um because of course that captures every student in our system so you would hope that that would work out that way mathematically these numbers do as well uh they're similarly down from the previous year the numbers of Fe the number of female students suspended in 23 24 dropped by 35% while the number of
027males suspended dropped by 12% going too fast or doing okay perfect the numbers on this chart again and let me make sure I'm looking at the right chart I am are integrally connected to all the other numbers that came before it and so it mirrors them in some key ways of note our multilingual students saw an increase in the number of incidents from 041 to 050 and an increase in the percentage of group impacted by discipline for from 13.08 to 15.3 mirroring other demographics there was a significant increase in the number of administrative conferences an increase in detentions and a reduction in suspensions in Saturday school special education students saw an increase from 88 incidents per student to 1.03 incidents per student there were significant drops in both Elementary and high school but an increase
028in incidence for students in Middle School the percent of students in special education across all grades experiencing a disciplinary incident increased from 26.07.2013 24 this applied to 628 students while suspensions detentions and Saturday schools decreased for special education students the likelihood that they would end up in an administrative conference increased from 12% to 20% of the time for Middle School the difference is more Stark from 7 to 21% of the time by way of comparison non-sp special education students saw an increase in administrative conferences from 7 to 17% and suspensions is going to be the same for each of these demographic categories um has decreased from the previous chart students in our elll and special education program saw a decrease in the percent of their demographic group with a suspension um by 04 and 7%
029respectively so a decrease in both so what have we been doing as with last year I'm going to break this down into both Technical and adaptive changes that have been made um both on a district level but really as I think um I've tried to share with you um at a school level as well I think that that's been really a significant effort on the part of our principles and assistant principles technical changes are those uh levers that we can pull to make adjustments in policy or practice training out of a new skill adaptive work is far deeper it's more difficult it takes more time time but it's also more sustainable because you're getting to the underlying heart and mind work the philosophy of what we believe and how we behave the most technical thing
030that you can do is adjust the rule book which we did this year um last year at this time I think I telegraphed our frustration that we had been having with uh disruptive conduct and failure to follow procedure that had been creating for us I had already started at that time to have conversations with principles about what would happen if that just disappeared right the definitions were nebulous consequences were variable and they seemed to be invoked in a disproportionate manner so we got rid of them if students are going to face disciplinary consequences for Behavior the system needs to know that appropriate lower level attempts have taken place to actually correct the behavior those two categories actually put all of the responsibility on the student rather than having it be shared between student and the
031adult the much more um appropriate uh consequence for that particular category is failure to submit to um discipline or corrective action because the assumption is that first the correction was attempted to be the action was attempted to be corrected and then choices were made that may require additional consequences what I was initially worried about was that we would then see a spike in that particular one right because we got rid of two consequ quences so I thought we would suddenly see a spike in that and we haven't um that particular category right now stands at 20% of what those other two were before so we'll see what second semester brings us but I think again that's a result of some really thoughtful work on the part of our our principles and administrators um where I
032believe the biggest impact however has come is from some trainings that have taken place um and I talked a little bit about these last year because obviously we're talking about the 230 24 school year so last year I told you about some things that were coming up we had two trainings last year for administrators um that are definitely in the technical category the first was uh uh our attorneys came out and actually reviewed both um the laws and regulations regarding um discipline but also specifically around special education and so that was a a pretty significant review um director Fel and his student services team also trained administrat ERS in our harassment intimidation and bullying investigation and Reporting structures as we built out more categories in um the RNR to actually help us parse that out
033better so that we can know better what's going on this year director forel also spent considerable time during our Leadership Institute as he do every year highlighting changes and expectations with regards to the rights and responsibilities and of course engaging principles and conversations about some of the consequences being taken out the reasons why and the way that we needed to uh begin to think about that which I think was important technical is important and great but obviously it's the Adaptive that actually is where we need to spend most of our time last year as a result of adjustments that were made to how we delivered professional development we were able to provide all staff a series of training and restorative practices um as I think I said last year at this time these trainings were
034a way of reframing our objectives around student Behavior to be more student centered and involv environment focused how do we create classrooms and school cultures that engineer success for students around behaviors and support learning Behavior needs to be about learning I think that's one of the things that uh I was talking to another assistant principal about the work that they had done and he kept coming back to this notion of assuming confidence that when an individual a student ends up in the office and is in trouble we always assume confidence right you knew better than that and we need to reframe we need to think about what didn't they know what skills do they not possess how do we now engage them in a different way so that behavior can improve and they can learn
035and the culture can change I think that was significant um sorry we started with uh teaching styles learning styles and the impact of both on student behaviors and then moved to the importance of learning who is in the classroom their strengths and needs I think that that work that was done it was actually done with all staff but principal obviously participated as well and I think that that's some of the results that you've seen when I asked some assistant principles recently what was making the difference in how they now viewed student behavior and discipline the recent work from Dr Ava Thomas and her team was uh has come to the top um for many of the administrators and so I wanted to call that out as well um in this slide they highlighted the work
036that she's done with them personally and with individual students and groups of students and cited a training at the beginning of the year on discipline protocol for discriminatory incidents in fact one assistant principal admitted and I don't know why she did this the way she did but it was like she wasn't supposed to admit this but she looked at it almost every week to actually make some changes and how she was doing things which I thought was awesome I told her so as I noted at the beginning Slide the number of incidents cataloged in hate speech um that met the definition of abusive or threatening speech intended to demean or Prejudice increased from 46 to 108 students I think that's potentially a good thing I don't think that that's more students that are actually engaging
037in that activity I think that's our system that's calling it out that's educating into it and I think that uh Dr Thomas and her and her team are the ones that are actually doing that work and should get a lot of credit for the fact that we're paying attention to that um and I think it's making an impact um and uh finally the last thing uh Dr Dr Riley and I meet with principles uh once a month we meet with assistant principles on once a month as well and bring um the information that you're seeing today to them and engage in those conversations both on the technical side as well as the Adaptive side all the slides the lights stayed on perfect it's still early I want to say thank you for making this report
038and and um the data is incredibly important and behind each number is an actual student and when you're the parent of the student on the chart it doesn't really have I been there it makes all the difference that you know that your student is being cared for even though they're the ones that are sometimes causing the issue um on the reporting of hate speech I I um agree that it's probably due to but I have no you know information to back it up with but just a feeling and the the Rumblings of community members that it does have to do with being more Vigilant and being um more open as students as community members as parents to report um just having s that in community um meetings parents are now like okay who do we
039go to to report people are actually wanting to share whereas before they would dismiss it they'll like well there's not really a pathway to do this um we'll just let it slide and we'll just make sure you're resilient enough to as a student to take it and it's changed that conversation is definitely changed um anecdotally I just also want to give a shout out yes to Dr Thomas and team and also um to the family engagement Center cuz some community members are going there when they don't know where else to go um and so it's been wonderful to hear that people are finding Pathways to report it and not um just kind of dismiss this stuff absolutely than so whatever we can do to continue that to encourage folks to find whatever pathway is appropriate
040to to bring light to the situations that their students are going through I think that's important MH absolutely and in educating into it as well which is another reason why I suspect that we're seeing an increase because as students know more and as adults know more we do better right and so as we educate people they can then say Oh that's what that is that's why that's a problem that's why that needs to change absolutely thank you and if thank you um and to tie on the this you know this goal goal three is kind of in parallel with P9 which is the racial and educational Justice superintendent parameter and I just want to remark in a incredibly appreciative way is that when we wrote the superintendent parameters we took what was the equity policy
041at the time and just copy and pasted it except for one addition which was asking for the monitoring of of hate incidents and how we were going to address them so this has been a long conversation and but what I'm so appreciative of this is that not only are the students being supportive in a restorative way but everyone is being supported in a restorative way so everyone the adults in the system as well as the students can learn how to do this work better instead of just flipping a switch when we typed up some words a couple years ago like I I feel like it it's it's been a little long and coming but at the same time this is how you again the Adaptive work right how you get the actual growth so I
042just I got a little bit of a warm fuzzy when we started talking about that so really appreciative of the work so thank you um I just wanted I had a question about uh the suspensions and I see some standout group groups with the suspensions children or students receiving special education and kids who are lwi Income are were in whatever last year not last last year but last year we being suspended uh at a much higher rate and I know that in this demographic group there could be overlap between kids who are um lowincome and special education so they could be both um but that the number that we have for total suspensions on this uh graph and then at the beginning where it talks about total suspensions is a different they're slightly different so
043there uh in the first big long two-pager it says that there's 751 in 23 um in uh the where it lists out everything by percentage and then number is that just number of students and then the number on the other one is the number of total suspensions right yeah right yeah those are those are different and part of the part of the challenge is is that students unfortunately do things more than once and so that does so you've always got to separate the students and the the incidents out yeah okay there are two different things and then I you know I think something to think about for the future is the high number of suspensions for kids receiving special education and kids who are low income um is worth investigating quite a bit because the
044both of those groups are inherently at a disadvantage in a lot of different ways and the fact that they're getting suspended a lot more than other groups is um goes to what you were speaking about about the adults needing to change the system so that students can be successful um and I think perhaps that's an area of growth for the adults um particularly you know special at is it stands out quite a bit as for me um thinking about and I'm hopeful that this will change over time because we are looking at different ways ucation because they have a hard time accessing education anyway so if they're not in school they are not learning absolutely thank you thank you for calling that out um so just to follow on that um I'm have a wondering
045if the special ed includes incidents that are determined to be a manifestation of their disability and it's written into their behavior plan plan that they go home and have a break um and I know that we call those as suspensions don't you remember that Infamous yeah yeah well it turns out that's a state law um we learned the hard way yes anyway so I just have a wondering how many of those were later determined to be part of their a manifestation of their disability and that was actually part of the behavior plan that was just a wondering I had with that um my question was you talked about uh discipline for attendance and I am wondering if there are some more nuanced conversations giving given that National politics have two groups of our kids right
046now afraid to go to school and do we need to be disciplining kids that are afraid to go to school I don't think that's who these students are yeah so that's those uh students who are struggling with school refusal is in an entirely different non-disciplinary category with the school working with students typically if you're in trouble for attendance you skipped third period or you stayed out at lunch too long or those kind of things yeah just on that note too is National politics have changed director FR sent out a reminder to all of our school leaders that um there are certain excusal rights that the state provides us for attendance issues and that was one of them is that if students fear coming to school for um a host of reasons then they're that's not
047a it's not considered an unexcused absence or something subject to discipline okay so you guys know me in numbers and there's so much packed in here thank you for all of this I mean it's clear that the work is being done and progress is being made difference between the number of suspensions versus the admin conference it's that's just fabulous um and I'm I'd have to swim through these numbers to try to you know get get um feel like I'm not just drowning but um with respect to um disproportionality between our demographic groups um particularly ethnicity I guess um the the way the the percentages are compared we have the percent of any particular ethnicity group um sorry I'm looking at uh table 40 um the percent of that group that received a a suspension and
048this is just by way of example of what I'm trying to get my head wrapped around um I guess in a um in a perfect completely unbiased world the relative percent of students receiving a percentage would correlate to the relative percentage of that group in the total student population does that make sense so if our um Hispanic or Latino students are 20% of our student population then they would be receiving 20% of the suspensions is that I I can't quite tell if that's what we're looking at or if that's if we have that broken out by that by that kind of approach thatn Tak okay that column percent of group group is the leftmost column so that means that 3.2% of students identified as Hispanic or Latino received a suspension it is that's that's the
049way that I framed it to make it clear in this way group isn't the school it is um those are the percentages of each ethnicity this it's the percentage of students within each ethnic group that received a suspension so another way of saying that is and this is true for the column suspensions per student or percent of student with this suspension if there was absolutely no dispropor disproportionality those numbers would be all the same yeah and I I could have explained this more clearly I believe that if you take 103 and you divided by 3,189 you will get the 3.2% there there'll be egg on my face of I'm wrong about that but yeah but that's that's how those numbers are calculated so this is an easy way for the district to look at this
050and interpret it and we would interpret it the same way you just described it in in a perfect world in a perfect system those numbers should be within what you random error or something like that and that's what we're working towards but um but we need to calculate it this way and and obviously I'll use what language I can to make it clear but we put it out this way so we can take ownership of it and work with it any other questions on this just as a reminder for the board as our makeup for the Windstorm we will have the monitoring report on the March 24th board meeting that we would have had the month earlier but it looks like that's our conversation around the the last part of the go three presentation so
051thank you so much appreciate it we're going to transition here um to have a conversation around our bond and Levy planning and enrollment projections we don't sit down there we sitting up here we prefer to be comfortable yeah that's how you look minutes that's how you really look you need to work on that buddy buddy okay what am I supposed to be doing here okay see look at that B all without you [Music] all right well thank you everyone so feel free to kick it off when you're ready Deputy superintendent Bergie thank you so much for pulling this together yes absolutely um good evening everyone we were asked to talk about Bond funding as part two so you'll remember that when we met in February we talked about technology and the EPO Levy funding and
052now we're adding Bond funding and some scenarios to that so we'll talk about that and then the board asked for some additional information on enrollment and as it's related to uh Staffing so we have some of that as well so first when you see the watermark up at the top we do contract with esd112 as our financial plan partner for bonds and levies so these are slides that they have created for us that we worked on together and the key input so these were our assumptions that we used to create the next set of slides that you're going to see so number one uh we are selling the last $75 million of the bonds that were authorized by the voters in 2022 so we had plan to do one last sale uh late this spring
053early summer so that will happen and at $75 million and you'll see that impact on the slides in a moment uh we are estimating current Levy Authority so we've held Levy Authority for the EPO Levy that is the enrichment program and operations Levy um under current law we have not modeled anything for any of the bills that are currently going through its current law we have uh assumed in the 2026 the renewal of a 4-year Tech Levy at $30 million per year I will tell you based on everything that I'm seeing and hearing from preliminary um conversation now the tech Levy I think that number is going to need to go up um based on uh just cost projections that was our initial one I think you're going to see that come in higher or
054at least come to the board with a recommendation that is higher but in this scenario we've kept with what we showed you in February and left it at $30 million and then there are four different scenarios so the 2020 Bond authorization we've modeled 375 million all the way to $700 million and I will just say that you know that we have ingelore and Leota two very large projects going on and so really that first number I'm goinge I'll say some words and Dre can correct me if I get off off course her and William are both here but that 375 really is what's needed to carry those projects to next phase not really anything else after that we do have many elementary schools that also need work and so when you start floating up to
055the 700 million now you start talking about some other major projects that can be done I'll get the thumbs up uh a couple of other factors that we're using change in assess valuation this is where we're being pretty conservative where this has been higher at maybe 9% over the last few years but we're using four 5% and 4% % as assumptions in assessed valuation growth if assess valuation would grow higher than those percentages it brings your rate down your rate per thousand down so these are conservative estimates for assess valuation and then current interest rate what we might have to pay to issue our bonds and you know to fund those current rates plus 75% and then right now we're estimating repayment over 21 years so uh first projected tax rates really quick Deputy superintendent
056do you want questions as we go or is there a point okay questions as we go director Hayes okay mine isn't a question but I feel like this um level setting has not happened yet and there are some new board members plus just for the community's sake it is our decision to make whether to run these or not yes and so we have been moving forward like we've made that assumption that we're all in agreement and I wouldn't be surprised that we are not but it is important for everyone to understand that is our decision it is also our choice of when we do those so we have a practice in Northshore and this is not Universal where we run all three measures at the same time every four years and there are pros and
057cons to that um one there's a sticker shock of all of it happening at once there are other districts that choose to spread it out so people aren't don't see the whole figure at once we have done this for years we've been successful and I think partly because of the transparency of it's one time it's every four years but we need to acknowledge that our current Levy if we do not run it next February we will stop collecting those Levy dollars at the end of 2026 and then there will be no more Levy money coming in if we do not run an a levy an &o Levy at some point next year the same with the tech Levy um which is a capital Levy and Tech we just do it for all technology and because
058it doesn't have the restrictions that the epno O Levy and the bonds have that's why we do all technology with that but that also our current one will end at the end of 2026 so if we choose not to run one we will not be able to raise collect dollars after that bonds we will still be paying on these bonds we'll also be paying on the 2018 bonds and the 2014 bonds for years because you borrow the money for uh a number of years so we will still have to pay those off but we will not be able to um borrow any more money after this $75 million is borrowed on if we do not run another bond in 2026 so the projects of ingelore and Leota if we don't run a bond we won't
059be able to finish those so those are all choices and everybody is working over time to create a EPO a tech Levy and a bond for 2026 and we're going with February and we looked at why that's an advantage over the other options but if for some reason there's anybody who doesn't want to do any one of those three you need to speak now before people put a ton of work into this I'm looking forward to seeing the comparison of whether or not we run all three at the same time or we kind of change how North short does it it'd be good to consider the options and that way you know Elizabeth or director soac and I can also learn from pros and cons of it all my question is around the current Levy
060Authority and these are you mentioned that these are all assumptions that are being made is the current level auth Authority for the 20 26o is that like worst case case scenario and since it's not dependent on anything new that might be coming down the PIP plane from the state it would be the most conservative okay thank you any other questions thank you all right so moving on to the first scenario you can see historic and projected property tax rates and this is all inclusive it's colorcoded so you can see how much is related to the operating Levy uh in green the tech Levy and brown the existing Bonds in dark blue the 2025 bonds which you can see is just a little bit and then what would be the 2026 authorization if it were to
061be a $375 million authorization so we're currently paying about $2.95 cents this year we estimate with the issuance of the 20 the last round of the 75 million that rate would go up to about $36 and then we would have in the out years once we have the new bonds issued and coming online um $316 and then you can see what we've really looked at is if the district were to stay on the four-year cycle the next time that we would go out would be 2030 and what would that rate be then in or about those years so what you try to do is you try to make room for the next Bond issuance uh to be able to come online without a dramatic rate increase so you can see that rate then Falls to
062$272 uh which would make room for a 2030 uh additional Bond or Bondo Levy all right the next one is 600 million so almost double not quite so you can see that rate change not the the first three rates do not change because we have it would not have started paying on a 2026 Bond you can see right there whoops I'm going the wrong way um apparent because I'm done so uh at $600 million it's 288 and it was $272 so you can see that it's a few cents change what is that 16 cents per thousand so not as much room for a new Bond issuance at that amount and then we moved to $675 million um again we moved to about $293 so from 288 this is another 5 cents for that $75 million
063in those out years and then finally if we went to $700 million it's another two cents it's 200 $2.95 per thousand so I I just want to again provide some basic information given where the the district given the EPO Levy we haven't collected the maximum amount Allowed by law and it has hurt the general fund budget we need to go it is my going to be my recommendation that we go out for a rate that is enough has enough capacity in it that we can collect if the legislature makes changes beyond what they might change this session because this is what likely could could happen to us given what's going on with the ledge they're going to make some change to the levy I am sure about it this session and then they may or
064may not give us enough funding in other buckets and districts are going to work through those scenarios and go huh we still need something else and so the legislature has had a long history of continuing to Tinker with Levy policy that increases what districts can collect because they aren't funding they aren't increasing the funding formulas themselves and so there is very likely over the course of the next three years four years some kind of tinkering that happens with Levy policy and the the district our district needs to be better prepared to be able to collect and respond to that so you only ever collect the maximum allowed by law which is currently the per pupil maximum amount um but giving oursel capacity for either enrollment increase that we don't currently see today or more likely
065legislative policy change is important for us as we plan forward but what it will do is it will lift our rate at least the rate we have to put on the ballot because that we need to say this is the maximum amount we will collect if allowed to by law and that directly helps the general fund Tech Levy is equally important to pay for those things it's that second set of dollars that our district needs to have onetoone technology all the software licenses we've had several meetings about AI what that looks like so now we're projecting out starting to collect dollars in 2027 for four years out so think about the changes from you know what we experienced in the pandemic when we started in 2019 all the way to today we're going to see
066that jump in technology and again trying to be prepared for that for really an unknown is super important for the district to consider and for the board to consider and then finally the bond projects and what does that mean and how do we continue to Maybe not immediately have growth where we need more seats but we def definitely have a lot of buildings and we have a lot of projects in the midst of a phase one out of phase two or a phase one out of three phases and so what does that look like all for consideration uh for the board to make a package deal about what is that total rate um that you believe the taxpayers will support I'll stop there Dre anything you want to add so um my question is and
067I think you probably are going to get to it at the next slide but just so just so we C we can all understand at this point in the process of planning for it the what we're going to ask the community to support what do you need from the board at this point so is it direct feedback on numbers yet is it okay we still need information on this XYZ um is this uh some you know a structural question to consider what would be helpful for everyone from the board at this point I think if there's any hard stop s or places that the board says well we can't we can't even Explore that that would be good for us to know because we do have the capital Bond planning task force and the technology
068advisory committee and soon to be the Safety Committee that we're revamping all working very diligently to bring forward recommendations to the superintendent which then get in turn rolled up to the board and so if there's anything that's like we can't even go there let's not talk about it otherwise this is really just information to start building that foundational information and where we really think that we're headed as far as total rate consideration that the board will need to look at um do you mind giving a little bit more detail about where we're getting information from you just listed off maybe three committies there sure I'm going to have Dre uh come up and then maybe Allan just for like a 15 background on who who's working right now we're all so William trible and I
069um run our Capital Bond planning task force which is a group that's made up of staff and community volunteers we look at a number of things and we have several different buckets which you've all heard about over time that includes Safety and Security so that's one of the things that that group talks about about we also talk about the building conditions that we have we go through an indepth um study of each of those every Bond cycle so we're looking at not only those new large projects but also the infrastructure of the district our physical plant so um you will see as we come and report back to you from that group a lot of the big dollar projects are more infrastructure related as opposed to necessarily big adding seats uh but uh for instance
070last time you remember us talking a lot about seismic safety talking about ADA access so you'll see us coming back with projects that relate to both of those so that is really what that group does as well as getting the input from Safety and Security uh getting the input from Food Services for FFN so it goes well beyond just the big um projects to what it takes to keep our aging physical plant um rolling so our students can uh be housed in a way that is safe and warm uh or hopefully cool for them uh but that's the capital Bond planning task force and Safety Committee hi uh technology advisory committee is a group made up of uh staff in this building staff that are out in the schools um parents community members and students
071we started off with about 117 members thankfully on Zoom um the group has uh has met I think five or six times to talk about projects and a variety of capacities um we largely bucket them into obligation projects which are things like contractual obligations things that we need the district needs to fund one way or another um maintenance projects we you talk about just maintaining systems that we already have in place so that they don't die on the vine and then expansion projects that that people are looking to U move into some of the big buckets that we have are professional development once you put systems in place the most expensive part is training people on using those systems anybody who's installed these large systems understands that um staff to make these systems work make
072these systems run software licensing that jool Lyn talked about uh as we move to more of a digital environment um there are more software systems that we rely on to run the good news is the state is set up uh in a way that we can fill a lot of those um those dollars from technology Levy in some ways that we couldn't before so um so that's a good thing to do and we've got about I think three more meetings so really just a lot of outside stakeholders a lot of our community and our parents coming together to give recommendations um up through our committees to the superintendent and then finally to the board all right so moving on next things the Committees will work on a project list in scope working on the project
073costs if we decide to move forward we'll work with Bond Council later to draft our resolutions uh the board will need to come to a final decision package based on generally starting with recommendations from staff superintendent but then the board actually needs to decide how big the box is uh and then we have dates that we have to file with the county and so on and so forth and running alongside that is community outreach and information so for example we're doing some surveying about you know what are people interested in working with strategies 360 on some of those things information gathering really other questions about Bond and Levy so we're estimating that we'll have more from the capital Bond planning task force in June right so I'm guessing we're about to segue to talk about
074an enrollment update but so maybe this is the point to get board feedback so again we're it's sometimes hard to know before you're being presented with the actual okay this is you know because I remember last Bond cycle they they were literal packages of okay we could do group a we could do and it would cost X we could do group b it would cost y we could do group C it would cost Z and there was a little suggesting and rep prioritizing but basically we went with the bucket that was presented since it had gone through so much fetting to begin with so that will that will come that is the more detail right so so we will have some buckets to move around and add up and and and such things so the
075question is if you know just getting bored thinking in terms of okay where are you coming from again the idea being um you know how how do we want to help everyone who's working the literal hundreds of people who are working on this and so I I'll kick it off if that helps so the thing that sticks in my mind um given the and this isn't an exact number but maybe this framing will be helpful given um you know watching very closely other initiatives and bonds by other districts in our neighborhood that have happened is that I one reason I think norshore has has been so successful for so long is we ask for exactly what we need and um I know there's a tension with that with the levy situation 100% get get that
076but maybe you know we can watch Olympia for a couple more months here luckily but um for the technology and the capital side you know there's um a saying that goes you if you go out you don't go out for you know cost X and then have that Bond fail and then lower that and go out for cost why because that fails even worse and we've seen evidence of that right so that's why Northshore goes out with what we need um and so that's just what I would ask the task forces to consider that um we do have a history also of trying to keep an eye on that tax rate and not really play with it too significantly without explaining where it's going making it really easy for people to understand where that tax
077rate's going if it does go up so that's hopefully that's helpful anyone else who wants to throw out ideas that would help the folks putting together the buckets yeah um basically a ditto um what I remember from how we've done it in this past is we start with the ideal tax rate that we're shooting for and then we kind of Squish and squash the three measures in and that really where our work comes in is the the three different proposals come forward and we say okay we're going to do a little bit more for this and a little less for this one um so understanding I think where the Point Break is for the different measures EP Ando is a little harder but for technology and for the capital kind of having that sense of
078and and definitely we did that the last time around we could do this many schools for this much um I think it's good to remind us that our current Bond was 425 million and we don't have a history of going backwards with the amount that we ask in our bond so I I'm not sure there's much value in bringing forward a $375 million proposal I think I would started at 425 and then go up from there um I also think it's helpful to see what the districts around us are asking in their bonds because that's been a an advantage for us because we typically are less than so knowing where they're at if you look back in the packet from last time we did have the rate scheduled by District we were kind of lower
079part of the pack yeah time and and yeah to remind everyone why this is so crazy confusing the the um ballot measure requires the rate as well as the dollar amount and we can only we collect the dollar amount but the rate is what we fixate on in the campaigning so that's why it is important to do that but the dollar amount in bonds again of neighboring districts it's helpful to see what they're asking for and and what's succeeding and what's not I just thought I'd add just for sort of general information you our new members may know all of this already but the rate and the amount obviously are connected with each other the amount is what we what we get and what our taxpayers will pay the rate may differ depending on whether
080or not um home values go up assessed values go up whether we have more homes and more people coming in so that it's spread out a little bit more business Core Business core um but the absolute amount that we can collect stays the same so if your your home assessed value goes up your rate will go down but you're still going to pay that amount um now tiny question the the orange boxes on there for 225 225 bonds that's just the last $75 million that we're selling right but there's that orange bar on multiple years they so the top one so yeah and then in 2026 there's another bar and three okay can I can see that but then you jumped to 2030 is that just the residual amount from what would be our 2026
081bonds okay good um the other thing um that that is the last trunch of of the 20 that's the last $75 million that we're about to sell so it would just would just be a little bit left okay that's why it's like tiny okay um where was it going with respect to the the packages that we were presented last time around and I again I don't know if you the two of you have seen these or might be familiar with but but the T the task force did you know they all did a tremendous job they went through every building this building needs a roof this one needs new HVAC you know this one needs to just come down and be starred all over again but all of these things the playground equipment and so
082forth everything every detail was listed out there with an estimated cost and you we had to make the decision and the task force prioritize these things what the community felt would be the things that are most important to to tackle and you know on the lower PRI we got to lower priority we had to kind of you know wiggle wiggle around things but one question that I has does the task force start with what was left from that last tally that they made and I mean I know things have changed with the buildings in that time so so we've been extremely meticulous this time around more so than last time we've always doubled the list from the information you were talking about we've gone into seismic we've gone into Ada uh We've split that list
083into even more um kind of mini buckets so we've got really old schools and they're only getting older and we've been building nice shiny stuff and so we've got a lot of old stuff which is going to cost us even more if we continue to put Band-Aids on so we've got bigger buckets which you you'll see in June uh for those kind of infrastructure repair infrastructure replacement items um and so you'll see that level level of detail and so we looked at the past yes and what didn't get funded last time but we also Revisited it revalidated it made sure it was still the highest priority so when the costs come to you will see at the top of that list where we fill the priority items are and the ones lower down are ones
084we could potentially punt to the Future it it does yes thank you um one other thing that just occurred to me given the the kind of inflationary pressures that we've had over the last four years these num thinking about how much more might be required to yeah even do a similar yes similar projects what kind of an increase are we talking about it might start with a six I mean we are the ones who recommended uh the numbers that they ran uh to look at where the rates would be um as I mentioned the buckets for some of those smaller projects that aren't so small really um you'll likely see increased uh whereas maybe the number of projects that we're doing as far as the larger which I'm going to start referring to as major
085projects uh instead of growth projects because those two don't always go together uh but major projects might will will be less than what we saw in 2022 but the overall number counts for that um inflationary pressure you may have um we've talked over time about using some of the deductive change orders from 2018 that have helped augment some of the inflationary pressures we've seen from the 2022 Bond we likely won't have that same um luxury going forward so William and his team and all of the folks who are helping us with all of these detailed information that we've done have been very careful to include some anticipatory inflationary pressures but it is there still is a lot of unknowns as you are seeing in the news every day all of that impacts construction really directly
086so I'm going to take advantage of being new to all of this to ask questions and also director Hayes was like ask your question um I was looking at the time too uh so going back to the the dark orange bar on the 2025 bonds and how we're going to sell the 75 million Bond why is there a Gap in the 28 20 n bars is that just because we don't sell until 2030 that's repayment so that's payment so it we've structured it so that there's a there's a large repayment right out of the gate on when we sell the 2025 Bonds in 2026 and then it goes way down and it's very thin little sliver so we're recall we're paying off those bonds at just a different rate we're not paying them off evenly
087you're really trying to have rate you want consistency in your rate and so that's what we're trying to bring about okay like you were saying with the rate changing but the the dollar amount staying the same okay and then the other request which I think you're probably going to do anyway is when we get the packets is understanding the reason why we're doing things the way we are just so I you know we as people who will remain I don't know how to frame it understand the reasoning and can be transparent with the community about it so in the pros and cons list of like oh this is why we we've been doing it this way and this is why it's beneficial for the community and for the students yep yep I mean we know
088remember the slides that we showed last time we need 10 or 20 cent rate increase just to get all the EPN know if everything else were to be held steady so just that EPN know what we left on the table and that we didn't collect has significantly impacted us and so we need to revisit what that looks like going forward and that's without legislative change that allows us to collect more and thinking about that so again this is just really trying to build that foundational information about what it might look like the components moving forward and then all of that detail is coming to the board beginning in June and I perused the FAQs from the previous Bond and lovees just now um which is easily accessible on northshore's website right um but one of
089the things that I think was helpful I was doing a little napkin math about you know what those rates were going to look at if let's say your house is worth like 1.5 million like what your um tax rate is going to be per year and it was already done last time which makes it really helpful um and houses were a lot cheaper yeah we'll model years ago Aver an average home price and then we'll model that out as we move forward yep yeah cuz I I think like for me wrapping my head around like what is that going to look like for me when I'm paying my my taxes um and then how does that translate into this building won't fall down with the small children in it when there's an earthquake is I
090think really a helpful Arc and just one little tag on if it helps everyone crunching numbers is that what happened to the tax rate in 2023 because of how King County did their assessment I I just want to not even consider that part of the graph because that was just a huge Aster because the assessor's office had to correct yes so if that helps in terms of what we think about as a steady tax rate I think 2023 should have an aster on it yeah you know a lot of the analysis that you do I would just offer this it's it's about your taxes it's about how your income has grown over that same amount of time it's about the value of your house all of those three things working together um so we'll talk
091more about that in the months to come yeah all right so next we were asked just to give some um more information about budgeted enrollment we have sent out Staffing to uh schools and to school leaders and so I just want to walk through what we're seeing as far as those numbers go and we have this is afte this is how we are funded so I will say this in high school in particular when we get to October that's our high point for enrollment for the year you don't fund to the October number you fund to the 10-month average that's how you play Staffing out because you start to lose enrollment As you move through time and we can see some of that here so 2425 this is our budgeted enrollment we were at 21662
092we are under a little bit we're currently at 21 61476 this is no running start so this is FTE attending in person so running start numbers have increased so if we look at total numbers for our district we up but it's that running start component that's going to Cascadia College that's increased not kids going to comprehensive so our budget we are at 2991 and then you can see the difference budget to budget and then you can see the difference February counts to the budget because the budget to budget looks large than it is because we actually did not make our enrollment projection all the way this year right so we were right there we're like 60 kids off um but 60 kids is a million bucks so it's a lot for us uh and so
093that's how that plays out so this is FTE okay so then we move on to Staffing and how that relates to Staffing and you can see again those budgeted uh enrollment numbers for 25 26 you can see the adjustment so the adjustment that we made is not a cut to special ed Staffing at all what it does do is it provides a more closely aligned enrollment Staffing number based on how much time kids need a gened seat in secondary so a child and special ed always has a special ed teacher all day long for for them but they're also in gened either maybe none of the time maybe all most of all the time and so what this does is it takes school by school reporting that theyve reported to us about least restrictive environment
094and it tells us how much time students are spending in genad and we've made a small adjustment for that um to not we've adjusted Staffing for time not spent in genad so then we have the net budgeted enrollment and then we have the budgeted teacher FTE and we can compare that to the 2425 enrollment and so you can see that we are going to be down um 20s something FTE and Elementary we're down a little bit in Middle School not a whole lot um same with high school and then our special service programs really are are funded um as a program not as specifically enrollment driven and so one more number and this is really the difference so this is 2425 budget to budget and you can see those differences where we have the we're
095budgeting 671 FTE down then we have some adjustment for some special ed time for secondaries we have our new budgeted enrollment so in total it's 950 students that we're adjusting for you can see that total amount is 41 FTE questions questions so obviously that's that's a lot fewer Educators um you know it's and I do have a question I just and I've told this story a lot of times but I think it's very relevant here because my children went through Sunrise when my oldest started in Sunrise there was six Portables there so we went through the whole people love my neighborhood they don't want to move and so their kids go through the system and they stay in their houses and so you know I've experienced it where year after year there's another teacher transferred
096out to ferwood another teacher transferred out another teacher transferred out and it is hard on a building um but so I think it's important to talk about this and acknowledge that that's super hard at the same time I'm curious what our attrition is over the summer and how much of this can be absorbed just through retirements and teachers moving as opposed to actually having to impact through the Riff process so we're estimating maybe a handful of riffs at the high school level depending on endorsement area and what the high schools tell us their master schedule dictates as far as course offerings and what they need as far as FTE by endorsement especially when you get to more specialty elective areas and they've you know um North Creek's adding fashion design they're maybe giving something else
097up so there's some changes there there's enough attri at elementary everyone likely has positions right we have plenty of teachers who um move on or move out of the district or retire that sort of thing it's when you get to the endorsement component that we will likely have a handful so we expect to have um some of those but nothing like last year nothing like last year but it still doesn't feel good when your teachers have to go to somewhere another building yeah I think the situation varies greatly per obviously per school um so Sunrise is one of those special um schools that we see decline mainly because people are staying put and that's that's great for them um there's also schools that are feeling that increase in class sizes and so if we can
098find a way as um a team here to message it so that it meets people where they are and how they understand their students life cuz folks that are like North Creek as an example is like booming class sizes um whereas some other schools are dropping and losing their favorite teachers yep and and and um ironically it's the smaller schools that tend to have the larger class sizes because if you've got five first grade teachers and like three kids move in you can you can disperse them whereas if you've only got one and so large class sizes isn't necessarily correlating to the schools that are over enrolled yeah Sunrise I think ran with one kindergarten class this year one yeah it was big because that's how many kindergarteners they ended up getting yeah all right
099that's all that we have for you tonight so thank you so much um a little bit of a hodge podge tonight but keeping the wheels moving um anything else from folks before we conclude so um to to the question I raised earlier there's there kind of a point where we're just going to say if we haven't heard anybody say no we're going to go with the plan that we're running all three measures next February um I did not hear anyone when we were asked okay what should what should the board say I I didn't hear anyone say we're not going to run measure X or measure y I think I think we can assume the board is all supportive with this Pro the process continuing as it is and going forward with all three I
100think there's something to be said for predictability and and if our community uh anticipates that this is what's going to be happening then by all means we should definitely go ahead and fulfill that for them I second that all right well thank you very much then we will adjourn well um we don't need to be in session for it but something I forgot