School Board Study Session: January 16, 2024

001good evening everyone let's make sure oh there we go I'm everyone can hear me so thanks so much for um for coming together for this study session on an update on our student wellness and safety task force work from last year that is continuing to be implemented this year so this is an update for the board on that work um it is a reconvening of a postponed study session from last week so I will just go ahead and hand it off to you superintendent Tully to get us going thank you president Cass so as you stated this is a postponed meeting uh from last week so um an opportunity for us to um do three things one we uh we do have new school board members and we wanted an opportunity to uh brief our

002new members on the work of the task force and you know how we arrived at where we are um and then provide some um overview of the recommendations that came from the task force and then current year work plan updates so that's the primary purpose of this evening and uh I know in consideration of time I'm going to turn it over to Carrie Campbell to be in that discussion can you hear me okay great thank you and I just want to note that Dr Craig Foster is here um because we rescheduled from last week to this week we only have him for 30 minutes so I am going to go very quickly because I assume there are going to be some questions about the research and the community engagement that he'll be able to answer

003so to start us off I'm Carrie Kimbell I'm the executive director of communications and engagement and as superintendent Tully mentioned we are going going to be uh presenting in three parts part one is to provide background information part two is to provide the recommendations provided by the task force last year and then part three is to talk about the one-year work plan and the progress to date so as a reminder um for those who were here last year and maybe new information for board directors that have come on or for the community last year there were uh four facilitators that were asked to facilitate a student wellness and safety task force and these were some of the deliverables helping to Define what welcoming safe supportive looks like in our classrooms in alignment with parameter 7

004to recommend new services and supports to provide feedback on um po uh board policy 4311 and the procedure that's associated that with that bringing us into compliance with state law as well as to do Broad and deep Community engagement to get feedback from our constituents I'm not going to go through the details of parameter 7 you know this very well um you talked about it last week at the board uh meeting but this is the parameter that we were working towards as our primary goal in the development of the strategies and tactics recommended by the task force so the task force worked together for 8 months it started off as a group of 30 we had a student who wasn't able to participate we got another student to fill that spot as time went on

005we had two folks resign and then or three folks resign including that student and then two who kind of dropped off towards the end so there were 25 active members representing all of the regions of the district different perspectives and different roles this is a timeline of activities so a lot of our time in the beginning was spent in knowled knowledge sessions knowledge sessions were so that the task force had a um common understanding of areas that we would be focused these were at the request of the Task Force action planning Community engagement study sessions and then final recommendations in June to the board we went through a consensus protocol to develop the goals associated with parameter 7 and you see them outlined here goal one student center diversity equity and inclusion so you could

006also think about that as belonging goal two Mental Health Training and support of adults goal three policies procedures and accountability and finally goal four for comprehensive safety security and supervision both proactive and reactive so a way to think about these goals is that they really are interrelated they're braided goals all in support of parameter 7even and then each goal had a working subcommittee this was a subcommittee charge to review and clarify the current goal strategies so as part of that consensus protocol there were lots of activities also listed did to rank order the strategies what's most important to accomplish to conduct a strengths and GAP analysis where are we as a district related to those strategies to confirm the commitment of the group to those strategies to brainstorm specific actions so really thinking about what

007does that look like in a one-year multi-year work plan and then present those strategies and recommended actions to the task force for additional feedback before bringing the work to the board and now I'd like to introduce Dr Craig Foster to talk about engagement okay um thank you I'm just going to go real briefly through uh some of the engagement that we did in order to be better informed about this issue uh this is a a broad view to um just set a context for you there's really three uh uh four main areas of information that we gathered one would be theal survey some of you would know this is the Panorama survey uh this was one of the early uh distributions of Panorama that went out in February 2023 there were the conversations with the

008school board there were student focus groups and then there was a questionnaire that we designed uh here within the administrative Center that went out and it was a followup to the seal survey and I'll review that briefly okay so the um social emotional survey is anonymous students could self-identify race ethnicity gender grade uh it's voluntary there were 20 items the scales range from 1 to five or occasionally 1 to 7 uh the in Panorama more positive scores always or higher scores always indicate what you could construe as more positive scores there were three yes or no items items included topics about support respect online bullying worry about violence and then a variable that I would call interaction maturity uh this is a kind of a broad term that accompass a lot of things that you

009would agree are not mature like getting in fights or um behaving disrespectfully uh there were 10,000 about 10,400 respondents a few more in the a lot more in the grade 6 through 12 data set uh 6500 there approximately and then um still a good number in the grades three through five data set of the findings uh first one thing that I want to highlight for your attention going forward is the two or more races group is growing every year and it is something that we just need to be prepared for uh in terms of how we understand ethnicity at um Northshore School District going forward there is the worry about violence item in the social emotional survey and what was interesting with this um item is the item is just about worry about violence so

010where might that violence come from it it could be from anything the item doesn't specify it's intentionally non-descript but it does correlate fairly strongly with concerns about disrespect and bullying so that doesn't mean that's the only source of concern that students have but students that were more worried about online bullying and and students that saw more disrespect worried more about violence I would point out that there's um consistently in a lot of our surveys but in the social emotional survey there's consistently a halo effect so students who respond more positively about their social emotional environment on one item tend to respond more positively on other items so it's just good to understand that to some degree students just feel more positively or negatively and the all their ratings tend to follow to some degree obviously

011there's some item spe there are plenty of item specific differences but there is something to be said for students just they either really feel good or they feel sort of good or in rarer cases they don't feel very positively about their environment uh the results were commonly you could imagine them as a four out of five so the results were commonly pretty pretty good uh that's a way to generalize it the worry about online bullying is low so that was a 4.54 remember more positive positive scores on this item indicate less worrying so uh grades three through five aren't worrying about online bullying obviously because they're probably not online very much the biggest difference uh on this survey was the uh race race and ethnicity the biggest difference was their ratings about worrying about violence

012and then you could see there from least to most students identified as Asian reported the least worry about violence and then uh that worry grows uh with each group that's listed there please keep in mind that um even at the highest ratings it's still relatively infrequent so don't let the uh ethnic differences um um distract you from the fact that overall the worry about violence was still fairly low across all groups but there is a ethnicity difference within that particular item same halo effect for grades 6 through eight uh the it's a little less positive you can imagine the results generally approximating about a 3.5 out of five so still on the positive side not as much so for our younger population um being shown respect was only a 3.25 out of five uh mattering

013to others was a bit lower still on the positive side of the neutral point observing disrespectful Behavior student Behavior was a 2.86 out of five so here it just tips over to the negative side if you just imagine a 1 through five 2.6 is obviously below the midpoint of three so this is a little more than sometimes but it's still pretty far short of frequently so that gives you a context for what students are saying in terms of that item the biggest statistical difference on U for this population was the adults perceptions of the adults treatment for um individuals of different races ethnicities or cultures and the overall mean there was a Po in terms of um being treated unfairly um once in a while the most frequent response was five which would be almost

014never but you can see that students identified as white and Asian viewed the treatment as more fairly than students from other groups Dr Foster yes quickly I think you may have addressed it somewhat but I was wondering in terms of the question about observing disrespect and bullying M did it specify whether it was observing someone being disrespectful or bullying someone else versus experiencing it themselves I believe it is Observer only but in the follow-up survey we did we actually split that out by observing um receiving and then acting um did are you the Buller and um those findings honestly turned out as predicted but but we'll we'll get to those shortly okay so um next slide here's uh for findings from grades 9 through 12 across all students connected to adults was one of the

015lower items again it's near the midpoint but on the negative side of the midpoint uh the frequency of observed student respect was essentially neutral access to emotional support was a 3.2 out of five getting help for being bullied was was a fairly highly r rated item so it I would assume that the strategies that have been put in place to ensure the students know how to get help if they feel bullied have been effective uh ratings of physical Space by school this was one of the stronger results in the survey when you look through the survey you see a lot of um the schools tend to look fairly similar and then this one number really stood out and this was the item uh that ingelore students feel that the physical space is less ideal than

016North Creek students do so anyway uh the biggest difference by race and ethnicity for this population was their perceptions about how the adults treat them based on race again you could see the rank ordering it's similar to the younger population I did want to point out here especially given what I mentioned earlier um when you look within this item so sometimes you get this U sort of General Student Response and then within it you see variation and those variations are meaningful but the students might be still somewhat similar here I think it's fair to say when you compare students identified as white to students who are identified as black or African-American you do start to see a fairly different perception of um how they feel the adults are treating them with uh 4.5 being the

017the mean of the Stu of the students who were identified as white versus 3.34 with students who were identified as black or African-American uh then We examined the uh I I decided to look at this another way and look at what about the population that expresses what I would call high anxiety about violence it's a small population but it is concerning to think of a student responding and saying putting a one the lowest possible response meaning I I worry about this a fair amount there is some mild suggestive evidence I don't feel comfortable saying anything more strongly than that because it's a small sample size but if you view the problem this way there is a little bit of evidence that students identifying as black or African-American or as Hispanic or Latino or other they

018are slightly more likely to give this kind of response uh at that point I then examined this by school because I wondered if maybe there was one school where something was going on that was creating this anxiety and I didn't find it this seemed to be spread out across schools so I just didn't see any evidence for that there were there conversations with the school board and um the student focus groups and the responses that we got based on this sort of more qualitative approach um many of you were there for these and I examined the responses there were four common themes that we saw in that one was a uh concern about bullying and taunting and the degree to which that happens wondering if Northshore can do more to address that mental health was

019a strong theme in these conversations safety was a strong theme and not limited to the um safety related question it included the presence of officers it included the presence of armed security Personnel it included measures that could be taken do we should we have a closed campus and doors that lock um there were there was some expressed concern in a small Sample about the openness of the NorthShore School District campuses uh one parent said a student was avoiding the bathrooms because of drugs concerns about discipline included inequity and discipline the lack of cross institution or Cross School consistency and bias bias probably referred to race or gender but there was one comment and I thought this was really interesting I'm personally grateful to the parent that brought this up um one one concern was that

020students who get in trouble get labeled and then they continue to get in more trouble there was concern about social media and phones this is an ongoing uh issue obviously with the district it came up today with the uh uh Bell to Bell no cell or no cell Bell to Bell sorry I got that wrong um and then of course the flip side to this is the um needing the social media to create access and then the concern about people who might not have that type of access uh a concern about notifying students when uh they need to be notified about events there were Comm there was concern about school communication um in terms of uh trying to make that streamlined social support came up uh as I recall this discussion a lot of this

021was helping students find their people um psychologically speaking I think this is a really valuable concern and then there was a couple of uh people raised the concern about teachers identifying or somebody identifying students by intelligence publicly like you know these are the students performing well in these that aren't um so that was a a concern that was raised within the student focus groups the Bothel discussion looked considerably different than the ingelore high school and the North Creek discussion uh these discussions were limited by sample size particularly the uh ingelore and the North Creek discussion but the engelmore North Creek discussion felt uh generally consistent with the Bothel High School feedback except for the discussion about the school resource officer which was highly salient for the B botel students but um really didn't come out

022as a theme as saliently for the other schools there was strong support for officer wear as part of the existing SRO model at Bal high school there was concern that removing uh the SRO model would decrease safety and then a request for communication and transparency with students during emergencies other themes were perceived variation in educ Effectiveness um why are some why do some Educators seem so great and others don't there was appreciation for the efforts that Educators make not just with the material but with the um personal connection with their students uh safety in the bathrooms came up and then bullying I thought this was interesting to see some recognition that bullying is a a nebulous concept um it's not easily defined um concern about students having to be in class with students that are

023bullying them and wanting more to be done and then this was a really interesting comment um somebody raised hidden bullying and it what they expressed was that the bullies at least some of them know how to get around the rules and so the bullying is occurring in a way that is not identifying them or getting them in trouble this relates to the um questionnaire that followed the seal survey the Panorama survey that we um that I referred to earlier and the main thing that I was really interested in doing with this survey was to examine the perception of of the students for school culture and my interest in this came out of the fact that um different listening to the conversation different people have different theories about what different SRO models does to the educational

024environment and their theories are not necessarily consistent so um there will be a uh you could have a group of people that say the a campus officer is you know is necessary for the school environment to succeed and there would be people that would say no that's going to make students uncomfortable and what we have at Northshore is four high schools with for their own unique situation and so I thought it would be interesting to just ask the students about the main dimensions of school culture and then examine whether those perceptions on the students behalf vary by school to see do they really feel differently at school even though they are experiencing these different models I didn't draw attention to the model because when you draw attention of the model you create the demand characteristics

025and they might want to defend or not defend different models so we just asked you know is your school environment safe is it good for learning is it good for your um well-being we had about 1500 responses across a variety of different roles middle middle school students high school students parents teachers Educators and staff and school administrators some people wrote in roles but they were so sporadic they're not worth reviewing here's the three broad Dimensions does my school support learning does it support social emotional growth and does it support safety and within our Northshore Community if one of these models is clearly uplifting or destroying School culture with enough responses you would eventually detect it um again we have a bit of a halo effect students that feel more positively tend to feel more positively

026on the other dimensions so if um students parents see this uh their school as supporting learning they tended strongly to also see their school as supporting social emotional growth and safety the strongest correlation was provided by parents parents who saw the school as supporting learning also really tended to see the school as supporting social emotional growth so when the participants look at this issue They Don't Really separate them if they see the school stronger in one dimension they tend to see the school as being stronger in the other dimensions particularly for parents in their responses about learning and social emotional growth um in terms of the schools Bothel High School by the way was underrepresented on the Panorama oral survey I referred to earlier Bothel high school was over represented on this survey so um

027they had a lot to say about at this time about how they felt about their school which is great I was really glad to see the Bothel participation it was really helpful and of course we examin these issues uh unfortunately Innovation Labs high schools their participation was small to include so then there were six tests and they were these three broad outcomes for the students and then these three broad outcomes for the parents and none of the tests were statistically significant statistician at least a good one will tell you the lack of statistical significance doesn't mean nothing is happening but if there is a big effect with a sample size this big you would usually detect it at at some point so maybe there's a small effect there probably is because the schools are different

028but there was no clear big outcome the one um test that was statistically significant was student perceptions of the school climate supporting safety and then you can see the rank ordering there with North Creek being the highest followed by Bal ingelore Woodenville but again don't mistake those responses as being wildly different um students generally see their environment as safe you just see there that from a statistical standpoint North Creek was rated the highest and Woodenville was rated the lowest I have that correct right I didn't flip-flop these thank you uh regarding Middle School culture the participant wasn't uh wasn't high enough to analyze by school but then here you could see the overall ratings from the 118 students that responded to the survey the sample size is big enough um 118 is a lot of

029people the concern is of course which students are responding to the survey it's it's not like Panorama where when you get that response rate as high as we have it you don't really about resp worry about response bias or selection bias and here we we do need to but these results are still consistent with what we see other places students generally respond positively about their school environment and and um they tend to respond like this on the seal survey uh here is the perception of bullying and disrespect as I mentioned earlier we asked about bullying we also asked about disrespectful Behavior we did a parallel thing with both items and that is we asked them from the perspective of do you see it we asked them from the perspective of does it happen to you

030and then we asked them from the perspective of are you the one doing it uh which is an odd question but you can see even under bullying I think this might have been only one participant who had the courage to say with the number I am the I am sometimes that bully um you know anyway um so you can see a couple things that I want to draw your attention to bullying and disrespectful Behavior are not exactly the same thing and I think the uh the results here back that up students see more disrespectful Behavior than they see bullying they actually don't see a ton of either but disrespectful behavior is obviously a broader category my two cents I think sometimes when students talk about bullying I think they're actually talking about disrespectful Behavior but

031bullying is a a psychologically very difficult thing that people go through so even if it is less frequent it doesn't mean we should dismiss it it's just that we use these terms sometimes interchangeably and I'm not sure that we should the uh self-serving bias about whether I am seen bullying or whether I am the engaging in the bully is quite evident so um for the amount of bullying and disrespectful Behavior people see the participants don't tend to say they're the ones doing it um with which goes to show that I think sometimes people say things and do things that they think might be good fun and other students don't perceive it that way I then took these items and I used a technique uh called uh simultaneous regression I don't normally I don't need to

032do things like this so I don't I try not to use uh statistical tools that aren't easily accessible but but in this case the reason I did this was to examine what it does is it takes your predictor variables and it examines all of them at the same time and so when you have four things that correlate with something it is a statistical way to say when you put these things together which one really stands out as the one that is more important than the others and in this case what I was curious about was to see of these different um experiences people are having observing disrespect receiving disrespect bullying um observing bullying and receiving bullying which ones are really predicting their perception um about the overall environment and there was definitely a relationship there

033I believe I'm sorry I don't remember this I believe that the um actor because the acting is so infrequent there wasn't any variance there and there was no point in examine it statistically I mean I'm not going to go ask that and I couldn't but you know the one person that said I bully once in a while so you put these four variables together and say which of these is uh influencing or at least from a statistical standpoint related to these outcome variables and what you see is we had um three that still stood out for learning um and that would be the observation of disrespect receiving disrespect and receiving bullying receiving bullying less so than the other two regarding the um School helping with social emotional growth you see disrespect uh both of those

034and bullying and then regarding safety it was really the observation of disrespectful behavior that was the most strongly linked with their um student perception about the school's promoting safety I I found it interesting and I I think somewhat complimentary of our students that their observation if you look at this together their observation bothers them more so than their experience and I think that reflects on our students some really nice concern about you know that it isn't just when it happens to them it's when it happens to other people that they they get frustrated by witnessing these these things that they perceive examinations based on race received uh revealed inconclusive uh results high school females report the climate being less supportive of social emotional growth relative to males but males relative to females report being more

035likely to receive bullying and being more likely to disrespect others so that was a bit of the actor effect there uh middle school students reported more positive ratings on social emotional growth than high school students did this is a little bit consistent with that St storm and stress model of adolescent psychology that our high school students might be coming out of uh middle school students did report observing and receiving more disrespectful and bullying Behavior than did high school students Educators reported positive evaluations of the school climate uh they reported perceiving significantly greater levels of disrespectful Behavior than bullying again disrespectful behavior is a broader category than bullying and school-based support staff reported moderately positive assessments of the culture at their respective schools they reported perceiving significantly greater levels of disrespect and bullying any questions one

036and I I apologize if you've already addressed this but kind of related to my previous question was there any indication when students or parents or staff reported observing disrespect and bullying as to whether it was coming from an adult or from the students toward each other it was just in general anywhere on the school campus it would be in general anywhere I can't remember if we specified other students or just Behavior just Behavior I think um I would assume that that was generally student-based but it's a good question because we don't know that thank you hello everyone I'm Rick Rick Fel and I'll be talking about my progress with my subcommittee student center diversity equity and inclusion the goal is this subcommittee was overall to provide a good sense of belonging for students so they

037can Thrive and be successful in the NorthShore School District we started with about 10 strategies and there was some overlap but we were able to limit it to these six strategies inclusivity regardless of cogn cognitive physical ability um providing an advocate for every student um that could be from PA professionals to teachers to counselors just making sure students have those appropriate supports in schools extracurricular diversity and encouraged opportun for engagement we find that some students students like to participate in extracurricular activities compet competitive sports but we they also want to have those clubs available to them so they can flourish outside of sports and be involved in different clubs and be involved with their peers as well when it comes to daily time for student staff Community Building all of our schools do not have

038an advisory that's something that they wanted to explore F further and it can also be related to the previous strategy extracurricular diversity and encourage opportunity for engagement because the staff could be involved in leading some of those activities which could cause them to have more collaboration with each other and they were very interested in healthy meals and dietary restrictions respect of e ethnic backgrounds we had a very great very good discussions about that and how they can some students wanted more vegan vegetarian options and I'll share some of that information with you all a little bit later about the progress on that and increase bullying prevention supports at secondary schools we were able to come up with um curriculum for our elementary schools we're still working for consistent curriculum with our secondary schools it's not

039as if we don't have the supports in place we might have a number of supports might that might be available to our SEC secondary schools because there's different curriculums that different schools have utilized over time and they've been comfortable and been successful with working with students and we might just have a library of resources rather than just having one resource that they're required to use and for the draft outcomes increasing student belonging inclusion it would be good to see what what the information will come out from our Panorama secl survey this is going to be the first year that we actually have had the screener from the fall to Spring to compare them both so I'll be interested to see what those P what those survey results will be regarding the reduction in HIV complaints

040through Vector Solutions we don't have control over the number of complaints that come in but what we can do is have the appropriate supports on campus to reduce bullying overall so that will ultimately lead to the reduction of those complaints coming through the system and regarding the percentage of elementary school with inclusive playgrounds we currently have two elementary schools with inclusive playgrounds by the end of the bond cycle after working with our capital projects team they expect to have 10 more schools with inclusive playgrounds established and number of nwaa sports I've kind of referred to that previously just students want to be involved more in school and they really enjoyed being involved when it really wasn't that serious sports weren't I have to get a scholarship to go to college and they want to kind

041of go back to that they love to compete academically and athletically in sports but at the same time they just want to have fun so we're just finding different opportunities within school where they can compete without feeling the pressure causing more anxiety which can cause additional mental health issues and degrees the number of students that report frequent are almost always when ask when about disrespectful Behavior we've been working a lot on this topic regarding harassment intimidation and bullying and Dr Foster kind of alluded to this we we have different violations in a rights of responsibilities handbook but we're trying to make sure and bring more awareness to community by calling out disrespectful Behavior or violence without major injury if that's actually what occurred asking more questions to figure out what is the incident that actually

042occurred rather than just going through this incident was bullying not saying that a student can't be bullied in one day and something happens over time in that particular day that leads to bullying but at the same time we want to make sure that we we have really defined that there is a power imbalance and it is a repetition and just clarifying with the community what Behavior actually occurred and what the actual term of bullying is we did work within our rights of responsibility committee this past year and we were looking to change the definition of a bullying in that handbook but after many conversations everyone decided it was a consensus to keep the definition the same and just clarify the term more outlined in the handbook not a question but just for everyone in the

043audience WIA is Washington intercol Plastics Activities Association and Hib is harassment intimidation and bullying thank you I had to look those up sorry about sure and next I'll turn over to Dr Butler to talk about mental health and support of adults great so goal two mental health and supportive adults uh we spent a lot of time in my sub committee uh talking and listening to students we had two students who consistently came along with two parents and the students brought forward their concerns regarding misconceptions about mental health as well as some systemic access points that they felt were lacking and so that's kind of where a lot of our conversation centered around how could we improve some of that access within the buildings and make it just a lot easier for kids to um to

044receive services that they maybe didn't realize were already available to them uh they brought forward their concerns we talked a lot about how we might be able to plug some of those holes in our system and the parents asked really astute questions and also volunteered the um experiences that their own children had had so we spent a lot of time developing our goals and the things that we wanted to learn more about and it wasn't something that I knew a ton about so I leaned on Rick a lot and his um area of expertise to support that as well so we came down to two goals in our area and the first one was uh that no student goes home at risk and that is one that we felt very strongly about the second one

045was that we balance the priorities of mental and physical health and so under those goals we prioritized uh in rank order four strategies the first was that we structure and evaluate um nd's mental health supports and um we've made some incredible progress over the last few years with mental health services within our schools all but two schools right at this moment have mental health specialists within our buildings and that is just a significant um increase to support for our students um the second one was do we train staff on mental health and safety and we are making strides in that not only do our counselors come together once a month but those mental health support Specialists come together as well they talk about case studies they discuss how they are supporting students um throughout all

046of our buildings and and that is just something that I don't think we've ever had in the past and it just allows them to serve our students better and better each day uh the third was to leverage other supportive adults uh I think that we were imagining really coordinated service systems you know when you have a room parent in every classroom and and someone who that coordinated effort I think would take a little bit more for us to figure out but there are a multitude of Volunteers in every building we just probably don't have a point person who is raring to go in every single building to make that all come together and utilize every person to the best uh that we we want but we do have parents who have stepped up when our

047principles have called or put put out a call to action when we want to have maybe a math tutor or a reading tutor we have had people step up not just from our parent Community but from the community at large and so we have had some really um great Outreach I think that have leveraged and those supportive adults who support us in academics also support in our mental health as well because the two are very much intertwined um and finally educate students and families on current issues in mental health uh we will uh continue that education I know that Rick's uh department has already put on one of one education this year for parents and we will continue to have that when we have our mental health month and some activities uh in involved with

048that uh for our draft outcomes we have a percentage of schools that provide daily scheduled check-in time between students and staff we hope to increase the percentage of counselors mental health therapists and nurses uh that self identify as people of color and or are multilingual that is a goal that we want to match um our student population um we also would like to to increase the percentage or number of schools that annually host a mental health fair or event to distribute resources uh we also want to increase the number of me multilingual Mental Health Community Resources volunteers or organizations willing to present participate in fairs and attend special events and participate in classrooms we'd like to increase the percentage of students who feel connected at school as reported using oural survey or our Panorama survey

049and increase the percentage of students that have at least one individual at school that they feel connected to as measured by Panorama and add a question to that Panorama survey about students feeling prepared to support one another uh so that is part of that systemic um kind of plugging those holes to make sure students know how to get help for their friends if their friends need it so we need to develop a baseline so that we can track those increases so that is goal two um really quickly Dr Butler I'm just curious in terms of the draft outcomes under that goal do you find um the tactics vary quite a bit K through 12 or uh I know that just size of buildings would impact them right student populations in a building would impact that

050I would imagine but perhaps it's not as variable as I think you know I don't know that it is actually I think students um connecting with students I think I think you have to use strategies perhaps however having a supportive adult in every building just being able to relate to students no I don't know that the tactics really do vary that much from K12 so I think that's a good question but I don't know that they vary that much okay thank you yep goal three um our discussion of goal started with a recognition early on that if we were to do as p7 mandates to protect against unsafe conditions behaviors and actions by adults or students that everybody in the system would first need to understand what our policies and procedures were regarding those um

051practices and that they would need to be enforced um the second part of that uh Second goal always makes me smile I don't remember what exactly we had what phrase but it was was um to your point it was education ease it was some kind of an acronym or something and it was one of the students that called it out and says what do we really trying to say here and so that second part of that um consistently equitably and with Integrity fairness and Justice we have uh we have students to thank for that particular part of the goal so I wanted to make sure that I called that out um when you look at our um strategies there we have five um the first strategy uh recognizes that educational spaces as we know are

052quite Dynamic um we have um new uh staff members that are coming on every year we have staff members that are leaving every year and every year we also have um a host of new policies procedures and practices that we put in place either as we as a system um as a school district recognize that things need to be different or as the state when they and their guidance recognizes that things need to be different and so um part of that Dynamic process is we need to create systems that update employees um um with training on the policies and procedures we need to make sure that we're doing it annually you'll see that running through goal three um secondly not just training but also communicating our policies and procedures um this does a couple of

053things one it makes sure that it informs people of what they are and secondly it's a mechanism of accountability right if people know what it is that we're holding ourselves accountable to then they can help hold us accountable to it as well um number three of course any type of a strategy or goal that you have isn't going to last very long if you don't have some kind of a mechanism with which to assess your um process and so we have certainly built that in in a number of ways that you'll see um throughout goal three the uh go four subcommittee actually started down this particular path and um they um wisely looked to us and we were excited to actually take this on this has been a uh a personal passion of mind to

054identify and Implement alternatives to discipline that reduce harm and preserve student dignity and Community Connection we have um as you'll learn next week um as I'm sure you've seen already um disproportionality in our data both in terms of interdiscipline data um both in terms of our um students of color as well as special education and we've been working very hard for the last two years on that and we're happy to make that part of goal three as well and then finally a number of folks both on uh goal three subcommittee as well as goal four um recommended that we continue in some fashion um the committee work and so um we're happy to report that 11 of the 25 um that's 11 not including the folks that you see here at the table um have

055agreed to sign on and so we're excited to be continuing that as well the draft outcomes uh you'll find there as well um we have uh a host of ways to use the website to make sure that we are communicating effectively um to all of our families um and so we're going to be working on on building out that architecture and particularly the accessibility um for all of our families creating a statistical Baseline um for how students feel the district is meeting its obligations um specifically as it relates to um how they're feeling about safety Integrity fairness and Justice are are we doing what we're say we're doing and most importantly are students having an experience that represents that and of course um the Panorama data which you've heard a lot of already um tonight

056is helping us examine that and create that Baseline but not just create a baseline we're also looking to increase the the way that students feel the district is meeting its obligation to create uh communicate and consistently enforce its policies um and finally annual percentage of reduction in disproportionality of discipline has been something that we've been um passionately working on for a couple of years now any questions for the last goal okay I'm going to move on to goal four so I had the pleasure of facilitating the subcommittee focused on comprehensive safety security and supervision and I apologize because I need to turn because my computer's over there and so um this really was focused on both preventative um actions that we can take but also what is the response if something was to happen so

057there were initially four prioritized strategies the first being clearly Define a campus and student safety approach that is responsive to both Community need and state law so I think most of you are aware that um State legislation around our campus safety models changed over time and we needed to bring our work into better comp clients as well as one of the through lines and one of the values of the subcommittee is that we are able to provide forward to the superintendent and the board some approved approaches but that school communities have some level of influence over the Final Approach that's selected so that there are some guarantees to our families our students and staff but there's also some school-based Choice the second was to identify and Implement alternatives to discipline and uh Mr Wellington spoke

058about that and we mve that over to goal three the third uh strategy was an accountability structure for the implementation of procedures training operational standards and then the fourth was to ensure that we have timely effective Communications related to um emergencies and crisis and then I just want to note that um this subcommittee we spent a lot of time I would say the majority of our time really talking about what can C what should our campus safety approaches look like and what are the values that uh what we put forward to the superintendent and the board extend um and amplify the commitments that are already in parameter 7 so I just want to read through these briefly because um it was a very student- centered conversation not everybody on the subcommittee agreed there there were

059actually um a lot of different ideas about how to approach this but these are the things that we definitely agreed upon and I say we I was the facilitator the subcommittee agreed upon um that any adopted approach needed to Foster relationship with the entire Community with students with staff and with families that any approach needed to preserve the Dignity of our students um first and foremost that it would Foster inclusion and belonging employ restorative practices uphold the values of fairness and Equity address the physical and emotional well-being of our students support and preserve the physical safety of students and staff during emergency situations and then finally comply with common standards and expectations for all campus safety support So if you recall last year we talked around we had some variability um and lack of training

060which I'm going to talk about at the end that we've begun to address address and so these are some of our draft outcomes to develop a data system that allows us to track incidents um specific to student arrest and other required compliance um data sets that we need to report to Opi to reduce the percentage of disproportionality and Safety and Security related incidents if we found that there was disproportionality to increase the percentage of secondary students that download the student Square app so that gets back to one of the comments that um Dr Foster mentioned that students said when there's an emergency we actually want to be communicated directly with we don't want to have to go through our parents in order to know that something is happening we don't want to arrive at school

061and find out that something is happening we actually should be communicated with directly so so we now have a solution for that um that we would create a baseline of family staff and student perceptions around school safety and we would track improvements over time and then I can barely see the bottom on um 100% compliance with the use of easy alerts so oh thank you Rick um that is the coordinating mechanism for emergency response and I'll talk a little bit about that in a moment and that we would make sure that our school leaders and our staff are trained on the way that we approach emergencies communication Etc quick TR your question what percentage of our students do have student Square I knew you were going to ask that and I didn't grab the number

062okay get I will get it for youy like it is not it is not high and so I I can talk more about it but tomorrow um my team is meeting with the student advisory committee to talk about what is a marketing strategy that would encourage our students to download the app app so right so we can we've tried to encourage it through the emergency um with the winter weather emergency communication this last week but we really need young people to actually take an active role in promoting the app so that we can um get more students engaged a prize [Laughter] yes are there any other questions for part two okay sorry so um in your packet you have a PDF of a one-year work plan that is actually a subset of a multi-year work

063plan that is about three times the size so for the audience this is 24 pages for one year at small small print and so um what you'll see is that it's colorcoded so red means there's no been no action on that activity green means it's been completed yellow means that we've made some progress and if it's significant progress that's articulated in the far right hand column so you can kind of see um we're at a midpoint right now in the year so you can see that we have um a good represent representative um sort of color coding of the activities that have taken place so we're just going to walk through some of the highlights and spotlights we're not going to go line by line but if there's a specific question that you have around

064a particular activity we're happy to address that as well gone too far so I just I just wanted to take some time time to talk about some of the progress that we've done within the subcommittee of Student Center diversity Equity inclusion um Northshore has establish a standard for inclusive playgrounds I've already stated that there's two inclusive playgrounds and there's a plan for 10 others by the end of the bond cycle this think this is very important especially with our students especially our special needs students to be able to access the playgrounds alongside their peers and for the students that gave a lot of input within the subcommittee to think about their peers in regards to this I think that was it was it was very great it was great to hear from them as they're

065advocating for their peers even though some of them have not been on the playground in about 10 years so for them to think about experiences that they had when they were in elementary and they probably had some one of their peers that had special needs who wasn't able to access the playground I'm glad that even 10 years later they were able to think of that um any newly remodeled schools will have a gender neutral restroom in place some schools have been very accommodating when it comes to gender neutral restrooms having single stall or areas where students can feel comfortable changing or using the restroom is very important no there's different conversations but the most important that are going on but the most important thing is our gender neutral restrooms will be op OPI compliant and

066there's been conversations of whether we want to have have tiled from top to bottom from the floor to the roof which is more expensive because you need a separate ventilation system for every stall and then it's a sa it can be a safety concern because if a student's there and we don't know if they're in there it's hard to access them so that's been some of the reasons why sometimes we might go with the single single entry stall or um other options so I just wanted to make sure everyone was aware of that because I know everyone loves to have the privacy but when you have the 100% privacy there's of also a safety concern involved um we want to continue to schedule family inform nights aimed at encouraging School engagement for our multilingual Learners

067we have open houses on all of our campuses but I'm glad we have this family information night for our multilingual Learners because sometimes our multilingual Learners have expressed that sometimes they feel don't totally feel they feel left out by going to the open houses they don't have the individual attention and by having these this information night that I attended this year as well as many others that are here we would have the families come in feel comfortable alongside other individuals who might have various needs and be able to express without being judged how they feel or how can they can make learning a lot easier for their students in the district I am am happy you the next one the nutrition and fitness advisory committee is meeting monthly they're having six meetings scheduled this school

068year all also happy to announce that they have within the last year they have established one vegetarian option for all elementary schools and three to six veg vegan and vegetarian options for middle school and Elementary and Middle High School students so I'm glad to hear that there's been some progress there and they're open to hear more suggestions for students especally those students with other dietary concerns or looking for different things to add to the menus um that relate to their cultural background and I've spoken about this a little bit but we're going to continue this conversation because bullying is a priority in the NorthShore School District to prevent bullying is a priority of the NorthShore school district and we want to continue to have this conversation it's something that we touch on every year when

069we work on a wrs and responsibility handbook and we we like to listen to various members of elementary middle school and high school and just going out not just listening to staff listening to students some of the students that may have had bad experiences in elementary and they may may have overcome it when it came into middle school and high school but just listen to their stories and especially when they kind of tell us the stories that incorporate the areas on campus that we might not be aware of that can preent prevent bullying but we will continue putting additional language and editing this information and one thing that we may do we in the rights of responsibility handbook we do have disruptive conduct but we do not have disrespectful Behavior so that's one thing that

070we may look at adding as far as a rights of responsibility handbook based on our input and I'm also happy to say that you know due to the family engagement Resource Center we've had over 800 families accessing it it's a great resource when you think of families coming from a foreign country and entering United States not being familiar with our educational system it's you don't know where to turn to so when we have this Center here at the administration building families will know when they come here they have a supportive individual that can work with them one to one to make sure help them navigate and answer any questions they have regarding the American education system so I'm happy about that as well two highlights that I wanted to share regarding our tactic a um

071advocacy for and support for our LGBT community is a gender support plan we had um Ava Thomas um from the racial and educational justice department come and share with our school counselors the gender support plan for for for the students in our school district and we we had a plan that counselors have been working with students but we didn't have a plan that was put on paper and I think the importance is of this plan is it lets students know that we are definitely thinking about them even if they want to are not ready to share this information with us there's information regarding the transition plan where they can check off um restroom locker room use um student support questions of indiv idual that they want us to share this plan with them for and

072any other questions how we can refine this plan this plan can be updated there's counselors that have questions about this plan and they want to give more input but the good thing is we're having a conversation and it's going to lead to supporting more students in our school district and we just wanted to make sure that we're continuing to provide them with information regarding if they want this information shown in Synergy um um because we want to have the conversations we some students do not want to share this information with their parents and we're they able to check a box where they can have a conversation with a teacher or a counselor so that they know better ways to go about expressing their gender identity with their parents if that's that's what their wishes are

073so I'm glad we have that plan in place moving forward and we also have a resource toolkit in place for anti-discrimination resources so it's between the racial education justice department student services department and Safety and Security Department so that if a family isn't ready to or a student isn't ready to fill out this gender support plan they can access this information to know who are the individuals or what are supports in place that I can learn more about if I just decide to do some of this work on my own questions next I'll turn it over back to Dr Butler so um back to goal two we have also made some progress some of it very significant I actually mentioned some of it earlier probably because I was pleased with it um but um under

074our goals with no student going home at risk and balancing the priorities of mental and physical health I mentioned already that we have all but two schools that have mental health counselors um time for the counselors to meet and consult about students and student needs but one of the things I didn't mention was that care Solace is a um group that we coordinate with that supports students and families in our community and connects them to services so if we don't have services or they don't have counseling services we can connect them with counseling services through care Solace and that um has been significant for our students and um we have they have been seeing um predominantly for anxiety and um depression have been the top uh items that they have seen been seen for at

075this point in time but um we're really grateful that we have something that we can get our students some support for outside of the schools if we run out of um support for them within our schools also um students at all four comprehensive high schools are receiving some suicide prevention training at this point in time which is critical for this um day and age uh probably for all day and age but it's it's just one another piece that we need to have um NSD also hosted a night for parents for grief and loss in November and we are continuing Community Partnerships with the center for Human Services and empty hands therapy um so we will continue to outreach and make sure that we continue our Community Partnership one of my most exciting pieces is that

076for the piece with no student going home at risk we really wanted to have a flowchart for students who were at Mental Health crisis and um thanks to Katie bnad who works with Rick so I'm sure the two of them talked about this we have a flowchart for mental health emergencies and this is accessible and we are now working on making sure that everyone in our system is trained to use it so this is under our student services link to forms and it is a suicide prevention flowchart and it has um links in there that talk about um whether where your student if a student is in crisis what do you do you can click here and it gives you the steps that you need to do if you're a staff member and they've come

077to you if you are an admin then they've come to you and eventually we need to train our students as to where do you go next um so that we can make sure that we don't have students who are in need they we have had some of those reported into our um Anonymous um system and and that's a good place as well but it just depends on how quickly you read that uh report and then since it is anonymous it's hard to sometimes track down um where that Anonymous report can can get to but this is an this is something that I we wanted to have in my subgroup the entire time and it is it has pages and Pages behind each of these links but it's really uh a wonderful tool I think that

078we have needed for a while so those are my major highlights at this time yes Dr B if you could um the two secondary schools that do not have a mental health counselor do they have a partial or do they have some other resource that they can I'm going to turn it over to my friend here yes and and unfortunately we had a situation where before the winter break um the two mental health therapists one was through North Youth and Family Services and which after 65 years are no longer in business and one of them decided just to focus on a private practice but we did interview three individuals today and working to get them somewhere we trying to be careful not to take another support from another campus even though we do have emergency

079plan in case they do see need to see a mental health therapists we do have care solce as Miss Dr Butler stated but we do plan to have those positions filled see he knew all right thank you so for goal three um every year uh Rick and Katie meet with um community members staff members administrators and students and actually take a look at the rights and responsibilities handbook take a look at Washington state law OSI guidance and make any adjustments that need to be made that happens every year every year they then um come out and do an administrative training um this year as a result of the work that the subcommittee did um we actually instead of just making it an hourong training it was actually a three-hour training that also included um what

080became part two of the work work that some of you saw last January um January 29th about um interrupting the um the discipline um issues that we have with students of color and with um our special education students so it was a three-hour rights and responsibilities um training um specifically with that disproportionate discipline we're actually going to have part three on January 29th again so we're going to continue to keep that front and center um one of the things that the subcommittee had recommended was that um all administrators be trained um uh with regards to um restorative practices and we actually had a unique opportunity as a result of the most recent contract to be able to train every staff member in the entire District so um every staff member has had an initial uh

081one-hour training and in restorative practices it pretty unique opportunity um it's just the beginning it's just an hour but um uh Rick and I were having this conversation before um the meeting here this evening and a number of staffs have already reached out to ask what's next and so we're working with the trainer and figuring out how do we bring somebody back out um and continue that work both with individual staffs but then how do we do that continue to do that across the district um and uh finally uh Panorama training with counselors um and administrators happened in um August we then had uh one year's worth of data we had given it twice um what we found was that our school leadership teams or sdts were looking for that information as well because they

082wanted to then incorporate that into the goals that they that they have for their schools for culture and climate as well as use it as an analysis to see how we're doing um and so um they've been given access to that and the um student services team has gone out and done some training with them as well um in terms of how to utilize that and then um just as a spotlight I I really do think that that restorative training workshop and you actually can click on there and you can see um the entire um presentation and training that was given you can see um the focus um that was used um I think it really is a a highlight of the work that came directly from the subcommittee and work that's going to continue

083for I'm glad there's restorative um practices training are we tracking the success of this training somehow I know this is tied to discipline and obviously if there's like a drop in disproportionate discipline then we can almost count that as success but there's a lot of things going on here so specific to restorative practice training how are we tracking the success of that well we're just beginning that process and so right now we're tracking who do we actually have that's sitting at the table and receiving that training but um certainly our primary objective is that disproportional um data in terms of um how are we um identifying students how are we um enforcing our rules and most importantly are we identifying other ways in which we're providing um alternative I guess I would call it forms

084of learning rather than disciplinary consequences right so U My Hope Is that we see an increase of those and not just see a decrease in um the dis proportional um discipline but rather a decrease overall right um an increase in the practices a decrease and uh in the way we're consequenc students I would hope would be a form of um an assessment shall we say I have a question that goes along with that um and I don't know if you're able to measure this but I'm sort of wondering about something you said around like different ways of accommodating different styles of learning and things of that nature that are of in um disciplined not to the point where it's going to be recorded anywhere but rather that the way teachers are viewing kids behavior that

085is a behavior that the child has in the classroom setting that is maybe a typical to what the teacher is used to seeing and and um you know I'm thinking kind of of posters in classrooms that are around like listening behaviors and you know um sort of repercussions to not following those very strict standards of what what does a listening Behavior look like how do you listen um is there some way that and I don't even know if this is possible is there some way we could sort of track changes along those lines like what are expectations for kids and how are teachers interacting with students when they're doing things that are different than traditionally are expected of kids when they're learning or you know what they look like when they're learning MH I don't

086know how we would necessarily track that I can tell you that um in the training that we just gave that was the teaching styles and uh learning styles was the very first component you probably saw that when you when you clicked through um so it is something that is a considerable Focus I need to think more in terms of how would we how would we identify the effectiveness of that of that type of experience yeah I I think that's it's a tricky thing um but definitely thinking about I'm thinking about kids particularly kids who are Wiggly who get a lot of negative feedback for their physical behaviors when they're learning um and sort of I don't know if like there's tracking of different kinds of statements that teachers are making to kids that could just

087be like little samples of language that teachers are using for kids around behavior in classrooms or things like that to see if there's a change after they have this restorative practices training if there's a change in how they're talking to kids and sort of what teacher expectations are around Behavior or learning styles in the classroom and I I can add briefly part of restorative practices training one thing we did point out with the teachers that all of us come from different backgrounds with different expectations or behavioral expectations but when students come in Northshore it's our goal to teach students what are the expectations behaviorally and academically socially in Northshore School District so really looking at really taking the information from students from various backgrounds and even things that we've learned behavior that we have as

088Educators and trying to make sure that we're just as one because when we send students out into the world Workforce Military College we want to make sure that they are able to express to different individuals that you know I did come from Northshore and I learned this from Northshore School District so having those consistent social and behavioral expectations moving forward so that's something that we only gave them an hour but um it's something that we're going to continue to work with with our Educators thank you so um for goal four these are some of the progress um markers or points the stud uh superintendent did accept the the recommendation of the subcommittee around the campus safety model so in the appendix I should have mentioned this before there's lots and lots of detail um including

089a visual so a graphic so you can see what that model was um and then a contract for the SRO was executed in August 2023 for Botha High School procedure 4311 was revised to align with the policy so bring us into compliance with um state law and that I believe that's going in front of cabinet next Monday um the Bothel police department has engaged King County Sheriff so if you recall last year um we share that one of the challenges that norshore has is we actually interface with multiple police um departments so we interface with four um King County Sheriff overseas Kenmore and Woodenville and then sish Sheriff's Office um uh supports North Creek and then we have Bothel uh police department supporting baffle and so one of our challenges is when in an emergency

090situation um and I would say Beyond an emergency situation we are communicating with multiple poli police departments um there's different levels of relationship and so one of the problems that we were trying to solve or that the subcommittee was trying to solve is how do we have more consistency and predictability in terms of interfacing with police departments that we do engage with so if you remember the um Excel spreadsheet or the data report that we got that we do interface with the police quite a bit that they uh we're increasing our consistency by having the Bothel Police Department manage um any SRO program that we would adopt here in Northshore with that said um the Bothel Police Department engaged with King County and while Sheriff's Office and while they're very interested our timeline that the

091subcommittee put forward is probably not feasible because it's very aggressive additionally um leadership has changed with the Snohomish sheriff's department so there is not a lack of interest but it is at the Timeline that we had laid out to implement potentially a new model for next year is not feasible at this time we also reviewed the Synergy fields and Mr Wellington can talk more about this so Synergy is our student information system and there is a field around law enforcement but the descriptor for that field is not clear enough to input um the data that we need to report to Opi which is really around student arrests and so we need to change uh that descriptor or or clarify it and then most likely have a forced response so that you can't move past that

092field without completing it so that the investigation has occurred we've determined that the functionality is there in our data systems but we actually need to do some adjustment in the fields quick quick clarifying question so in terms of the data reporting there's also um reporting that the board have seen summaries of from the from Botha police terms of their monthly reports is is that coming through on a more regular basis so that has always been coming through on a regular basis we get not me but director Simon gets a monthly report um from the Bothel Police Department that is descriptive in nature so it doesn't include student names but it describes um whatever the interaction may be whether it's unlocking a car to get keys or it is meeting with a young person um who's

093maybe showing some suicidal ideation whatever that may be um we actually get a full report from the both police Police Department um currently you're welcome so uh other areas under accountability and training um director Simon has been very busy the goal was to if you recall our campus supervisors had not taken the required training under the law part of it was because um OPI viewed those positions that position created in 2009 over a decade ago as a campus safety position we viewed it a little bit differently nevertheless um people have been trained so we only have uh two folks who have not been trained one person hasn't taken their position yet so they're not actually in the position and the other person is a 05 halftime and the other campus supervisor at that location has

094been trained so the goal that the subcommittee had was at least one campus supervisor at each school will have taken the 13 trainings and that has um we have exceeded that goal so huge kudos to our staff huge kudos to director Simon for accomplishing that um additionally as uh Mr Wellington mentioned the ongoing advisory committee to monitor this body of work will be launching so we have 11 people who have expressed interest and then in Communications we did launch an internal campaign to get the phone numbers of our staff so um it came to light last year when we had the Shelton view lockdown that a small percentage of our staff had provided their personal cell phones to the human resources department through our regular employee um information system why that's important is if you're

095in a lockdown you're not on your computer you're not answering your um desk phone you actually need your cell phone with you so you can monitor progress so that was a oh gosh this is in fact a problem and so we've started an internal campaign to get people to get give us their cell phones additionally we have um standardized emergency messaging for safe inside lockdown that has all been reviewed by our Safety and Security part department Communications and now the next step is to take it to NASA to have our school leaders look at it to make sure they're an agreement with what it says and then we're going to have it human translated and uploaded into parent Square so with our former communication tool Blackboard that wasn't possible you actually couldn't upload um pre-translated

096content into the tool which is why parent square is such a game Cher for our district because we can now do that work so that's about 95% done we just need principles to look at the standard um emergency messages we are meeting as I mentioned with the student Advisory Board tomorrow to talk about what that campaign would look like for students Square so we don't currently collect student phone numbers but by downloading the app they actually will be able to get emergency communication through the app so it's already part of our parents Square contract we're not paying anything additional for it and it directly addresses the requests that our students had of us and then finally one of the um requests was to better communicate all of the work that is really happening on our

097campuses is to improve the safety infrastructure so that's from cameras to um single entry points to uh fencing all of the things oh all of the Locking mechanisms and those Communications are coming out they're coming out as web stories are going onto the um Safety and Security web page but we need a better coordinating mechanism so one of the things that we're going to look at is adding a capital project um sort of curate connection a little bit differently just like we added the board section actually add a capital section to connections so that we can keep the community better informed in a proactive way about all of the safety improvements that have happened and continue to happen and then um this is what I really want to highlight as our Spotlight is so easy

098alert is our backend coordinating mechanism and this is what it looks like oops I'm sorry I'm trying to do too many things at this is what it looks like um on the left hand side so for example on my phone I get it I get an easy alert I could be at a basketball game I could I could be anywhere and I get an alert and um it pops up and I'm actually able to see the school that's affected I open it up and everybody that's associated with that incident is on the back end coordinating a response and why this is critically important is because for example yesterday um we had a number of schools that were affected by um lots and frozen pipes and lots of lots of stuff and lots of things were

099happening at once but all the right people were made aware so that we could be really really responsive to our school communities this has historically not been used by everyone consistently and again because of director Simon's leadership we are now um in a position with where we are using this much more consistently and it allows us to respond much more effectively so we're using it both for emergency communications but also um facilities issues like we saw yesterday and so next steps um implementation of the student wellness and safety advisory committee to monitor ongoing progress and then oops and then um continue work to move forward those activities that are outlined in the one-year work plan okay um a lot of information thank you very much I'll just start with that but this is the board's

100opportunity to ask any questions um we'll just kick it off that way um thank you first of all very comprehensive a lot of work has gone into this many many hours so really appreciate it and just echoing what um president uh cast has said um there's there there are a few Community highlights um that I wanted to mention um for consideration um and it's it's mainly around uh Safety and Security um and it it actually encompasses a lot of what was discussed around restorative justice um there's a perception that um the community needs to oper operate under equal and accurate information and I did see here that there's a plan to have a web page explaining the different campus safety approaches um just something to consider is also including you know facts around the reason

101why Northshore is going with these approaches will help bring the community along the second part is having an opportunity and I think that the task force is a possibly a jump off point for this um for uh a well-informed discussion on the understanding of the facts um just so everyone is operating off the same set of information um and this is not my own opinion this is just you know what I'm hearing from uh people in the community um and then of course uh transparency along what's happening with uh the task force is a priority um and then also circling back to the good work that the the task force has done last year and um the interactions as well so not just the good work but also um any of the challenges that the

102group faced right um and perhaps applying some restorative justice practices there for anything that might have um been extraordinarily challenging right with the um environment within the task force and the and the interactions um and then one that has been brought up is Alternatives also to the srr program when we're talking about discipline and finding alternative ways um certainly there are alternatives when it comes to prevention but from the reactive side of things what are some of our Alternatives there um sanss the Urgent you know like we need a medic in you know that's obvious we don't need to find an alternative for that but just as far as discipline um alternative discipline methods and just to clarify sro's cannot be involved in discipline I just want to make I want to underscore that um

103for sort of more the viewing public is that the law is very very clear um campus safety personnel including SRO cannot be involved in discipline that is the role of the school administrator solely and I would like to just take a minute to clarify that the task force itself completed its work with the submission of the recommendations um but but so we have this work plan that's moving forward and we continue to monitor that but that's the work of the the team in front of you as well as all the Departments Associated however as was indicated we will have an Advisory Group that's going to be monitoring the work as it goes forward but that's not a task force in itself that's just a a group of individuals who are going to be working with

104with us to make sure we're progressing on the work plans as seen thank you for both of you for clarifying some of that um I think that we sent out an invite to people who were on the task force right so some of the dyamics may still need to be addressed agreed thank you um I I just have a a pondering um that again we're going to maybe have an opportunity to talk about in a week when we talk about the Strategic goal number three but in terms of you know I even wrote down you know clarifying language around disruptive behavior versus disrespectful behavior um it seems to be my experience has been the subjective nature of some of these terms have just been interpreted differently by different people which is we're humans and there's

105several thousand of us in this organization and so that happened so I'm wondering in terms and Mr Willington I think this this might be a question for you you know in terms of your work with um improving the district's approach to discipline and the unintended consequences we're seeing of current practices I you know how how do you approach that you know how how do you approach bringing so many people along to have a similar understanding of what is disruptive behavior and what's not I was looking at that this weekend and particularly around the phrase disruptive conduct right and we are um we're seeing a decrease in the number of um suspensions um both in um in-house as well as out of school suspensions but not in terms of our disproportionality and we're still seeing that

106that box continues to be checked and that was um um part of my reflection this weekend is do we failure to cooperate is the other one right those two are very subjective and we all think we know what they mean and we think we know what they mean when we see them right and so um is it possible that those two just need to go away um I don't know that was the conversation that I was having with myself as I was looking at data this weekend as well as uh looking at more research but it's it's a great question it's um a lot about what we call quote misbehavior right is very um societal based and I think one of the things that we've been working um with these trainings is to get us

107to um think about our own responsibility right not just in terms of our biases that we have um as people but also the way in which and I think you are alluding to this we see um actions and behaviors right and how um our own perceptions our own experiences our own life Journeys has created um a certain frame by which we look at how everybody else comes through the world and so um if we can begin as a system to more deeply analyze how we think about that I think that we can get underneath some of the these things in a much more effective way so maybe maybe they'll be different I don't know um I agree exactly with what you said and I think one of the things to think about as a school

108system that's supporting children as they go out into the world is sort of thinking about this whole idea of being the change we want to see right so how can we support kids and create communities that are then going to you know these students are going to grow into the adults that are creating the communities that are supporting people with a wide range of different ways of showing learning or showing attending or um doing things in general and I think there's there's you know sort of a change a foot in society anyway about you know looking at behavior and looking at expectations and and sort of measuring how people are performing things or doing things and then you know thinking about some of the at speres that take place in schools and how those don't

109necessarily support a wide range of um people and then to to your point about um the inequities with discipline there's a piece of me that is also wondering about unidentified disabilities and Behavior Uh in children specific children right like there's a lot of um impulsive behaviors that happen with with children who have unidentified disabilities and those kids are the kids that tend to get pigeon hold and to go down that you know the discipline or their behavior escalates because somebody's decided that they're being disruptive and they've checked that box and so then we're just continuing down the down the road um and that seems to be sort of a just a general pattern I see in schools I'm not saying that it's here necessarily but it is something that I see is children who have

110impulsive behaviors tend to start down the road and have a hard time getting out of that because of how responses expect very specific kinds of compliance which they are unable to do at that time you know see I I I predicted it I predicted you know and so and so maybe I guess the the thoughts we're rounding up here is that the the it's of course we we um are really blessed with really competent Educators and so approaches that come to this as as we all know is it's it's um some cultural competency it's some understanding of trauma and it's some understanding of you know NE diversity and and all different you know there's not a straight line sometimes kids are plateauing for a little bit with their development you know and so um that's

111what I guess we have a curiosity about is how how all those dimensions are brought to the conversation how is that yeah yeah yeah and I guess there's one thing that I sort of even just pops into my head about measuring sort of the changes in how teachers are viewing behavior is thinking about how often does a teacher keep a kid in from Recess for having disruptive behavior um and is that a measure could we have teachers track that um you know I have a wiggly child who has stayed in from Recess due to behaviors and um when in reality probably should have gone out to recess early because of those behaviors um but you know it's something to think about is like what are the consequences of behavior and are they consequences that are

112teaching the child a skill or they punishing that behavior that's kind of maybe out of that child's skill set at that time you know to control what they're doing it's a lot to sit on and think about I think all of this is a whole lot to to sit on and think about I I just I love where the the conversation has been going um starting with the the idea of well we have some some measures of or or uh approaches to discipline that are very subjective and how can we do away with that how can we do away with the subjectivity of it um our educators are human and you know they don't know everything but one of the things that occur to me is this is where if our our teachers had sufficient

113support um to do everything that we we're asking of them anyway but everything that they need to do then you know perhaps we can find a way for them to be able to get to know their students I mean that that's some I think of what it boils down to that you get to know your student you know them by name you know something about their behavior but if you if they have the time to to Really um observe their students to such that they could identify things like this and perhaps if we can have those you know very early childhood education screenings and observations so that we can identify issues that may be coming up early and have the chance to you know provide the kinds of not necessarily intervention but Services support um

114that they need that the teachers need um to deal with these things and perhaps perhaps we'd be going down a a little bit of a a different path um another thing I had kind of wonder about was thinking about how can we how can we monitor these things and find out why the um the disproportionate discipline is happening it if we can look at who's being disciplined obviously and we've got you know demographic data on that but also who's doing the discipline and what kinds of levels are happening at which schools um again our our teachers are human and they'll go through the training but you know they don't always perhaps know their students well enough to be able to identify when they perhaps need to back off and perhaps just talk to the student

115or give them a timeout or or whatever um but also perhaps be able to identify teachers staff who perhaps could use a little extra training um in order to to accommodate that skill building yes thank you and I think to ongoing support around those areas because I think you can have a training and trainings are great but ongoing support and monitoring in those areas is going to uh greatly change a lot of students trajectories because teachers who have ongoing training will U also build that skill set of asking for help when they feel like they're outside of where they're at instead of going to you know clamping down on kids which doesn't often work um they'll be able to ask for help and I think you know the more skills you have the more likely

116you are to ask for help so I think it's a it's a nice cycle that we could do have path in I think a lot of what you all discussed here is is going more to the preventative side before things happen which I I think is a wonderful like way to go about things um the emergency response is the you know that's the reactive side we have we need that side too um going back to what you said about knowing the students when we visited the one Elementary with where this the principal knew every single Student's name and story I was yeah Cy I was Thor really impressed and what stood out to me not just the fact that that principal and his assistant principal knew every single Student's name and story they also knew

117uh the family background and so they could come in early um when they the teacher starts to identify any challenges that are happening with the student um I think that just it just it takes care of so many things in this entire packet um when we have that Personal Touch it's almost like schools are supposed to be customer service um and that's one form of customer service that just it it's Humane it makes the student feel seen and I think a lot of mental health and Behavioral Health not all of it but a lot of it can simply be addressed by making sure that the students feel seen and heard so I have a procedural question so what's kind of next sounds like the there's a convenient of a task force that will help help

118um work on processing through the 24 page Abridged version of the checklist you know so so is that you know kind of the next step with this work so um yes so we're going to convene this advisory committee this uh uh student welding advisory committee just to continue to help us monitor our work as we go forward this is as was noted at the beginning this is the current year work plan of course this is our goal is to turn everything from uh to Green on this but this is a subset of a a multi-year uh work plan and so there's more to come and so just continuing to work through the recommendations from the task force over time um and then reporting back on a regular basis to the uh board how how things

119are going whether it's a formal um study session like this or just the updated um at the end of the year we could deliver you this document indicating uh progress made um so one or the other or both yeah I don't I don't know if we have a preference I I guess both okay so yeah yeah because this and and as you know last week we did have parameter 7 and I I intentionally said well the parameter that's a um and the expectations within that and there's additional things that go on related to that par but these recommendations touch on those things and there's somewhat um related but there we there were actually two different bodies of work so moving these recommendations forward and following up on this does have a direct impact of course

120on parameter 7 as well as other parameters that we uh look at in in terms of student outcomes um and supports so um anyway as we go forward looking at parameters point to the work um and Report out on that is an ongoing work but we can also give updates on um regularly you know say twice a year at least yeah um on the progress being made on these recommendations and the implementation of those recommendations sounds good any other thoughts from the board on that do we do we have possibly staff that have powerbi expertise that could possibly build a dashboard so the community can get a visual on this stuff and have it be accessible not just to us but the community at large yes we can investigate perhaps we can look into that

121um though of course um these documents are attached to um to our you know what is it called the uh board docs um this information is publicly available uh but in terms of having a website where you can look at a dashboard as it relates to all of this uh we don't currently have that um but that's that's the accessibility side of it right yeah for sure all these documents are publicly available it's just you know how can we have how is a Community member who's trying to put food on the table going to read through hundreds of pages of documents to understand what their students are going through yes yeah so just trying to figure out ways to um make it accessible to busy parents or busy Guardians thank you we definitely can look

122into to the dashboard as it relates to these various topics good point all right any other thoughts from the board I guess I'll just end again this is this is a lot and this um at the same time you know we we didn't have as many questions because it was so thorough so um the the work was really very much appreciated I had a lot of questions going in before I started reading the PowerPoint and ding ding you so thank you very much for for everyone's work I know not just people at this table yes so that's it I really appreciate the time um to go over this I want to com I can't speak more highly of of the the staff overall are Representatives here um who led the task force and those those

123committee work but as you know this is just the tip of the iceberg there's a lot of work that goes on within the Departments that are associated with these individuals all right then so thank you very much we'll adjourn for the evening thank you