001John is just getting the link. So he's on his way. Is the background noise gone? Good. Thanks. The meeting will come to order. Welcome to the October 6th 2021 school board meeting of the South Kitsap School District. This is a remote meeting for Governor Inslee's Proclamation 20-28. The meeting is open to the public through an online Zoom webinar. Public comment is available for those wishing to address the board. Pre-registration was required by 3 p.m. today. For those wishing to make public comment in writing, they do so by emailing comments to publiccomment at skschools.org. All comments will be shared with the board. First item is the Pledge of Allegiance. Ms. LaCrosse Lambert, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please? Sure. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the
002Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Item 2.01. Are there any additions or corrections to the proposed agenda? I have one that would be adding 10.007 discussion of the upcoming WASDA conferences. Is there any objection to adding that item to the agenda? Hearing none, 10.007 is added for a discussion of WASDA conferences. Also, at 10.008, Superintendent has requested an executive session to discuss personnel issues. Is there any objection to adding 10.008 executive session? Hearing none, 10.008 is added to the agenda. Are there any further additions or corrections to the agenda? Yes, I would like to see item 8.07 removed from the agenda until further information is available. 8.07? That's correct. It's been requested to remove 8.07 authorization to call for BID's swimming pool modernization
003project. Is there any discussion? I was under the impression that it would take a majority of the board to vote to remove something from the consent agenda. Yes, it would. Well, removing it from the consent agenda simply means it's going to be considered separately. I believe Director Daley's was to delete it from the agenda. I see. Is that correct, Director Daley? That's correct. The motion is to delete 8.07 from the agenda. Is there any further discussion? The question is on deleting 8.07 authorization to call for BID's for the swimming pool. All in favor of deleting that item, say aye and raise your physical hand. Aye. Let's do that one more time. All in favor of deleting 8.07, raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Those opposed, raise your hand. Nay. Tie vote. The motion fails.
004The item is still on the agenda. Are there any other additions or corrections to the agenda? OK. Any objection to adopting the agenda as amended? No objection. The agenda as amended is adopted. Next agenda item, 5.05, no, 3.01, recognition celebrations. Superintendent Winter. Thank you. We have an opportunity to celebrate some NIB awards tonight, and we're excited to do that. One of the highlights of each board meeting. So I will pass it over to Amy Miller to share our NIB award winners for this evening. Amy. Thank you, Superintendent Winter. And we have a great group of nominees to kick off this season of NIBs. The first one is nominated by Dave Goodwin at South Kitsap High School. And this is Mandy Wood. And these are Dave's words that I'm reading. To say that Mandy goes above
005and beyond is an understatement. She coordinates testing in normal times, which is a big job, and she did a great job in that role. However, this year, the state testing requirements are much more complex in regard to frequency and time windows. Mandy's leading the way on making it happen with her planning and creative schedule ideas. In addition, Mandy's been coordinating the one to one Chromebook distribution in coordination with the district and her communication and problem solving efforts have been phenomenal. Mandy is a valued member of SKHS and is instrumental in our smooth operation. Her can-do attitude and willingness to roll up her sleeves and get to work are very much appreciated. Thank you, Mandy. And the next one goes out to the entire Food and Nutrition Services team. They were nominated by Shannon Kelly, who
006works in the office there. When COVID hit and the world stopped and hunkered down in their homes, the Food and Nutrition Services staff stepped up. They jumped many hurdles and revamping the way they prepared and served meals to not only South Kitsap students, but all the children in our community. No matter the weather, they were there for the community, the face of the district, serving with a smile. The team worked continuously with little downtime and no complaints. If anybody deserves this recognition, the Food and Nutrition Services team does. Thank you so much. That's a good one. The next one goes to Melanie Monagle on transportation, and she was nominated by Trish Makehomer. Melanie's been unbelievable when it comes to stepping up and going above and beyond. Like most departments, transportation is short staff, but Melanie
007is filling so many voids. It's amazing she has the energy to show up every day with a smile on her face. Not only has she hit the ground running in her new position within the fleet department, she's still training and mentoring our new hires in the transportation office. There's absolutely no way we could do it without her. Her knowledge and professionalism knows no bounds. She's very detailed and thorough in doing her job or training her replacement. I've been amazed, impressed, and astounded by her dedication and spirit. Melanie exemplifies the SK way. That's awesome. Way to go, Melanie. The next one goes out to Christina Pip Err. She was nominated by Mary Jo Porter. Christina, or Pip, has been a very flexible member of the Sunny Slope support team. On the verge of needing an additional
008classroom this fall, she set up an entire space and prepared for the inevitable of starting a new class until a teacher could be hired. Fortunately, at the last minute, the class did not get outing. In the meantime, we had a teacher that was unable to come to school and set up her classroom due to COVID protocols. Pip graciously set up that classroom as well and ended up spending the first couple of days with the class. She's an ultimate team player. Thank you for your hard work and flexibility. The next one is also nominated by Mary Jo Porter at Sunny Slope. This is Amanda Weybright. Amanda has been a very flexible member of our Sunny Slope support team. She's graciously agreed to open and prepare for a new set of students upon the unexpected retirement of
009one of our teachers. She tirelessly created an inviting classroom environment for the new class. She collaborated, prepared, and then taught this new group of students as if they were her own. As we look toward hiring a new teacher, Amanda will continue her efforts to ensure a smooth transition and continue her relationship by working with many of the students in the class. Thank you for your hard work and flexibility. The next one goes out to the whole transportation services team. They were nominated by Tawny Wharton, who was new to that department. She works in the office there. These are Tawny's words. I'm a new member of the transportation team and everyone has been so nice and beyond helpful. Numerous people take time to check in with me frequently and I've been made to feel very welcome
010and appreciated. Despite having an abundance of questions, everyone's been very patient, kind, helpful, understanding, and affirming. As I'm new and also see swamped and also see how swamped everyone has been, their collective warmth and friendliness, encouragement and willingness to teach, help one another has been both appreciated and impressive. It's a great, very supportive, hardworking team. The next one was nominated by Ashley Cashman, principal at East Port Orchard, and this is Risha Lane. BPO's mission is to ensure all obstacles to quality education are removed for students and their families. There's no greater driving force to ensuring this happens than our instructional specialist, Risha Lane. Risha's been at EPO for 20 years and continues to be an essential component of what keeps our building thriving. Risha goes above and beyond in her job duties. She came in
011throughout the summer to ensure we were ready for the first day of school. When we have unfilled positions, she jumps in wherever she's needed. If staff have questions, she will find the answer. Risha's worked tirelessly to build relationships with students and families and make them feel welcomed in our building. South Kitsap School District and our community are lucky to have Risha and her dedication to nurturing growth, inspiring achievement and building community. Very true, Risha's a gem. The next one was nominated by Joy Crowther's at South Kitsap High School, and this is Hannah Oliver. Hannah is a valuable member of the family and consumer sciences team. She's always quick to give a helping hand. She's helped every student, sorry, she's helped every subject team she works with considerably, and she has a way of streamlining course
012content. She finds interesting, modern and relevant activities for students to do in her class. Hannah knows many students, despite only being at South Kitsap High School for two years. She builds relationships and connects with everyone she meets. That's great. Way to go, Hannah. And the final one, this is Pat Burke in the facilities department, and he was nominated by Ellen Kissaday. This is Ellen's words from Eastport Orchard. I came out of my portable at the right time. Patrick was looking at uneven pavement, and I asked how possible it would be to paint fresh arrows in the back parking lot to facilitate parent pickup. He asked me to show him. We walked to the back parking lot, talked about what EPO needed, and the very next day the arrows were painted. This has helped our school
013greatly at the end of day pickup procedures. I'm so grateful that Patrick saw the urgent need and made it happen in the final busy days of summer. So that concludes the NIBs. What a great group. And thank you to all for all you do to show the SK way. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next item highlights from the superintendent, item 3.02, Superintendent Winter. Thank you. So, again, I just wanted to highlight those NIBs, and those are just a small sampling of a lot of really hardworking people in our district. And we are day 21 of the school year, and it has been a challenge and it continues to be a challenge. But I was inspired by a teacher at Burley last night who was here at the district office who just said, it's really
014been a great year. There's a lot of people doing some really good work. So it's always nice to hear those messages. But I don't want to take away from the fact that people are working hard. And it is a challenge and there's a lot to deal with with this school year. And again, we can't thank people enough for how hard they're working and how flexible and resilient they're going to have to be. So I want to give some COVID updates. We have quarantined two classes so far, and that's because of an outbreak. And kids at public health has defined an outbreak as 10 percent of a class. And so we're working with the public health district to identify when we might need to close classes down. So a few weeks ago, we quarantined a fourth
015grade class at Hidden Creek. And then last week, a fifth grade class at EPO. And we've never done that before. And so we had to figure out how we were going to do that. And I think we're getting better with each one of those. Hopefully, we don't have to do it too often. We also had a situation on a bus that contact tracing is a challenge at times. And that's one of the main things that we've been doing. And so we implemented a new program called a test to stay program with a bus of students at EPO. And our goal is to keep students and staff in school. And we've got a shortage of subs. We don't want students missing school. And so this test to stay program, instead of sending students home because they
016had been at close contact, they were asymptomatic. We tested them with parent permission for three days and we're able to keep those students in school. So that was a success. And we'll continue to work on that program as needed. We're also working on a testing site in the coming weeks so that when a student does have symptoms or has been sent home, we have something we can offer them. It's been difficult at times for parents to find a test so they can get their student back in school. So we're going to set up a testing site or multiple testing sites for staff and students to be tested. So, again, with the goal of getting getting our our students back in school and our staff back in school as quickly as we can. We have a
017covid dashboard on the district website and just wanted to to mention that the number of quarantined students is going down. We're at 119. And while that's still a lot, it was up. I think it was one eighty seven at one point a week ago. So that number is being reduced. And I think that's through the hard work of the covid team and a number of people who are working to keep our students in school. Our health services department is overworked, overtaxed, but doing a great job. And I just want to send out a shout out to them because they are working so hard dealing with parent phone calls and students who are sick. And we also have people that are manning the waiting rooms. And so there's just a lot of people who are doing
018some great things to to help keep our schools up and running kids at public health numbers. Today, I look it was one eighty seven point nine on September 13th. It was three seventeen point eight. And so we're down quite a bit in our county. One of the concerns when school started, we all had was that our numbers would go up. And so we're happy to see those numbers going down. But we need to stay diligent on our protocols and our practices to make sure that happens. Enrollment. So enrollment as we start the school year and again, we started this is day 21. And when we get to October, we start to have a more realistic count. And so as of Monday, our count had count for enrollment, eight thousand seven hundred eighteen students. That does
019not include Connections Academy, but that is the number of students right now in our district. We know that number will fluctuate. A lot of times in October, that number goes up. But we'll just have to wait and see. This is not a normal year, so we may not see normal enrollment increase in the month of October. And then also want to talk about our high school. Last Friday night, we celebrated homecoming and one of the things we're trying to do is create as many normal experiences for our students. And again, that's hard to do because it's not a normal year. But we did have a successful event at the high school. Huge shout out to the high school administration and staff for putting on a homecoming event to celebrate. Home camp is kind of a
020carnival type event that was held outdoors following all sorts of safety protocols. And they had to work through some challenges to make that happen. But it was a successful evening. Two other things, one, we're starting Friday is our first instructional materials committee meeting. And that's our normal process for approving curriculum to be recommended to the board for final approval. But Lisa Fundanay, our executive director of teaching and learning, has put together a video that will be available on the website. And she'll talk about this at the meeting on Friday. But it explains the process for how we adopt curriculum in our district, and it specifically addresses the timeline and the plan for how we're going to involve parents in the community in the adoption of our health curriculum. So we know that's an important issue.
021We know we want to make sure that we are transparent and open. So she's put together, it's about a five to six minute video explaining process and what that will look like. So we hope everyone gets a chance to see that. And then lastly, next Monday, October 11th is Indigenous Peoples Day, and it was a non-student day, so we won't have students in school on Monday. They deserve a day off. And I know our teachers and staff will work hard to do some collaboration that they could use too. So that's what I have for highlights from the superintendent for tonight. Okay. Thank you very much. Next item. I have some questions. Oh, yes. Question. Dr. Daley. Mr. Winner, when do we recognize retirements? It's usually at the end of the year when people are retiring.
022However, as we've seen, if people retire mid-year, we try to put those in our staff recognition. Well, I noted Mr. Sparks leaving after 27 years at Marcus Whitman was on the sheets today. I was just curious. Yep. We will celebrate him at the next board meeting. Okay. You mentioned headcount. What is our current FTE? Current hold on one second. Um, eight five nine nine point zero two, 8,599.02 is our FTE. And is that above or below what you had hoped for? We're just a bit below right now. Okay. Um, so we brought back a lot of kids. Uh, how are we catching the kids up? Well, we're catching the kids up every single day by hard work in the classroom and teachers working hard. So, uh, certainly our summer Academy helped. And I think the
023work that our teachers have done to prepare, uh, for this school year, we've got our first, uh, our first test or assessment window that we'll share some information tonight and our teaching and learning report. We also have smarter balance coming up in October. So, um, we'll, we'll find out kind of where we are. And that's important to get some baseline numbers. Okay. But about, uh, the upcoming, uh, October 19th, where are we on, uh, COVID staffing issues, uh, how are things looking, uh, for those that are not vaccinated are, are we prepared to move, uh, students online or, or what are we looking at? We are, we have 10 out of 1,397 staff members. We're down to 10 who we haven't verified any status on yet. So that number, uh, Sarah Connor and the team
024in HR have done an amazing job of, of communicating. We've been a little bit, uh, admittedly, we've been a little bit of a pest as far as emails and phone calls wanting to get that information in, but we've got, uh, 10 more people and we're evaluating right now. I think we're in good shape, but we're, uh, we're evaluating what those positions are and what that will mean for us. Okay. And I'm assuming that all board members need to show their proof of vaccination also. Is that correct? Hi, the law says that if a board member is receiving, uh, any kind of compensation and that's, that is a nominal choice by our board members, then they would have, it would be considered an employee and would have to show vaccination status otherwise. No. Okay. And last
025question, uh, I think it was yesterday, uh, OSPI superintendent, uh, Mr. Reichdahl was interviewed and, uh, the question came up our, if the governor follows California and possibly Oregon of having, uh, requiring all students to be vaccinated, to go to school, uh, superintendent or, uh, Mr. Reichdahl's answer was yes, he would support that. So are we prepared, uh, with options? Should that happen? I honestly haven't given it any thought because it hasn't been anything that's crossed my desk or radar. I didn't see the interview yesterday. Um, so we haven't had any discussions about that. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other questions? Item 4.01, start of school professional development review and curriculum implementation. So this is, this is our, uh, so in our, our board agenda calendar, we'll focus on our results. So this is,
026um, 4.01 is the presentation that was started at the September 15th board meeting. So that focuses on results too, which is, um, so this presentation started school professional development and curriculum implementation. And then 4.02, which I believe will be encompassed in this, uh, presentation is results 2.1.1 ELA, uh, information, uh, as outlined on our board calendar. So I will turn it over to assistant superintendent Edwards and executive director Fundanae for this presentation. All right. Good evening, uh, board of directors and student representatives. Happy Wednesday. Um, as Mr. Winter stated, uh, yes, we will continue and complete the review of our professional development, our professional learning, uh, from August as we were preparing to start the school year and then, um, dig into English language arts and what we are doing in that large area, uh,
027as part of our results focus in August, uh, laid out the sort of month by month teaching and learning update to the school board. Um, and now I have amended that. Uh, it's the same general, uh, steps forward and then amended that to have the results focused there in blue font for each month. So you can see, for example, in October tonight, we're going to be talking about English language arts and then the second meeting in October, uh, we'll be discussing math and you can see it in the second meeting in November sciences, social studies, second meeting in December and so on and so forth. So that has been, um, updated, uh, from the information you were given in August. And so, you know, what's coming up. So I'm just going to not spend a
028whole lot of time on the next couple of slides, just because these are slides that I already talked to in September. But just as a reminder, before we were cut a little bit short, uh, last month, you know, the August, uh, 21 professional development priorities were to get to alignment across our school sites, elementary, middle and high school. And so we dug into AVID. Um, obviously we have very important adoptions in English language arts and math. We'll be talking very in a lot more detail tonight about English language arts. Um, and then social emotional learning that is on the next slide that I, um, just, uh, shared a little bit of information about last month. Again, uh, the equity, uh, diversity and inclusion training, um, occurred before school, uh, and there's makeup sessions going on
029right now, uh, for those folks who were not able to attend on August 31st, and that's been, um, very well received. And then just, uh, in the, the review of what I already talked about last month, um, middle school has had very successful implementation training for, uh, character strong, and now they are a month into character strong lessons in their Wednesday advisories. So today was another lesson, um, in advisory and, uh, having very good reports out on that progress thus far. And now I'm going to turn it over to Lisa, because this is about where we got truncated last time, Lisa. Good evening, board of directors. It's nice to see everyone. I don't remember to be honest, cause I know Tim was interrupting me and I wasn't hearing him very well. I think we spoke
030just a little bit about wisdom, but I'm going to pretend we haven't just to make sure we give that, uh, the due diligence that deserves. So we were able this August to provide some additional support around Witten wisdom for our middle school staff. Their initial implementation was in the midst of COVID. And so, as we know, it's just a completely different learning model. We're very eager and excited for them to have as close to a normal year as possible by having kids all day long to truly teach the curriculum, the way it was intended. So just a reminder that we are now K-8 Witten wisdom, and we have some staff with us tonight that are going to speak to how Witten wisdom addresses the needs of our diverse learners in just a little bit. With
031us tonight, we have Dana Richardson, our amazing instructional specialist to talk about the Eureka math training that happened for all elementary staff. This included all special education staff, lab and title staff, our learning support specialists and classroom teachers. And then Brendan Durham is with us to speak about our math professional development through the teacher development group. This is a multi-year project to support, uh, math content knowledge and instructional strategies. And we actually just started our first cycle at Cedar Heights, um, this week. So we're very excited about that work. So Dana, I'll turn it over to you. Hi, thanks. Uh, I'm Dana Richardson and thanks for having me. I'm just going to talk a bit about, uh, Eureka math. As Lisa said, and Tim, this is a, um, uh, our first year of implementation. So
032in August, all of our K5 classroom teachers, special ed, lab, title one, and learning support specialists attended two days of training on the new Eureka math curriculum. The first day was an overview of the curriculum called launch Eureka math. The second day focused on developing procedural fluency. I want to tell you a little bit about Eureka, um, and, and hopefully gives you a sense of why we chose it. Uh, why our math adoption committee selected it. Eureka it's a balanced curriculum and that it provides, it includes evidence-based practices that support students, conceptual understanding of math, as well as the procedures and the traditional algorithms they need to be successful. So, uh, for example, if you think about long division in Eureka, students are taught to understand dividing large numbers conceptually with visual models, and that
033helps them recognize the why of using the steps in the traditional long division process. You might remember the steps divide, multiply, subtract, bring down, um, without the underlying conceptual understanding, a lot of students forget the steps or they do them in the wrong way and they just, they can't proceed. So when conceptual understanding is paired with instruction on the math procedures, students are more likely to remember how to solve the problems and they can reason their way through, even if they don't remember the steps. Um, so the first day of training was the launch, launch training supported the staff's understanding of the lesson components, how to use the materials to differentiate instruction, learning the visual models that support that conceptual understanding and also the problem solving approach along with the content vocabulary so that all
034of our educators will be using the same language and routines across the school setting and the day. Uh, the second day of training was focused on procedural fluency. So when we think of math fluency, we often think of fact memorization, but there's a lot more to it than that. So fluency means being able to efficiently execute math calculations and solve problems without being burdened by having to remember how to do something or having to count up, which is really inefficient or count back. So when students are fluent with math procedures, they're able to achieve at higher levels. Uh, Eureka builds regular engaging and effective fluency activities into its lessons, always with the aim of making it fun and allowing students to celebrate their successes and set goals. Um, fluency activities include things like coral counting,
035sometimes by units, three, six, nine games and sprints, which sprints look like a traditional time test, but they incorporate structures where students apply the learning from current lessons. So an example would be if, uh, students are learning to multiply fractions, the sprints would involve problem sets where students multiply a series of fractions within a minute. Um, students always get two attempts with the sprint fluency routine. So the emphasis is always on improving their own performance. Um, in addition to the August PD directly from great minds last month, I provided a half day training for all the title one lab learning support specialist and special ed resource room teachers, along with several paraprofessionals. Um, so this is where we're getting at. How are we going to close the gaps? Um, we, we focused on math interventions
036aligned to Eureka, Eureka, sorry. Um, I showed them how to use the tools provided by, uh, Eureka to identify unfinished learning and skill gaps, as well as provide specially designed lessons meant to accelerate learning and allow the students to access grade level content within core instruction. Um, so the two tools that we really went into were Eureka equip, which provides pre-module assessments to identify what foundational knowledge is missing. And then Eureka navigator, uh, which is really great for our special ed teachers because they can use navigator to find lessons that support IEP goals or other missing foundational knowledge. Um, so between the two full days of PD from Eureka and the additional half day with Eureka equip and navigator, our instructional staff at the elementary well-prepared to provide aligned instruction and math, and that will
037meet the needs of all students. Thank you, Dana. All right. Next up, we've got Brendan Durham. Thank you, Lisa. And thank you, directors. Uh, it was really good to hear some of the work that they're doing at the elementary level, just knowing how it supports some of our work that's happening at the high school level. So when I, when I hear the concepts of fluency and digging a little bit deeper into understanding how some of those things are working, um, that's, that really complements the work that we're doing at the high school level. And so, uh, as Lisa stated earlier, the work with the teacher development group really started pre COVID and got interrupted. And so we, we actually started down this process and, and had some really good conversations, um, before, uh, before we
038had to do everything remotely. Uh, but we did spend a lot of time, uh, previously working through and doing some, uh, some work where we would go into a, a studio teacher's classroom and we'd be able to see lessons happening and be able to, um, not just critique what the teacher was doing, but it was really more focused around what the students were doing. And so it's a very, uh, student centered process that we're going through and looking at the types of, of conversations that the students are having and the, the different student voice, um, that's occurring. So, uh, when we look at, at what the teacher development group was, was bringing, we're really looking at trying to improve that, that quality core instruction. So starting with making sure that our, our, our tier one
039instruction is, is really good, and then moving into some, some other aspects of, of the, uh, the student's habits of mind, which has to do with our, our common core standards. And then again, like, like Dana said, was to increase some of the fluency that we've been working with and digging really deeper into, you know, why does it work the way it does? And so making sure that the students understand not just this is what you do, but this is why we do it and when to use different tools at different times. Um, the other thing that we've really been working on with the teacher development group, uh, more recently is getting into, uh, lesson planning preparation, being really, uh, very intentional about the instructional choices that we're making as we're getting ready to, to
040deliver lessons and really probing a little bit deeper with our, our questioning for students. And it's been really nice to see some of the development, uh, at the high school of, you know, we know we've got it made when the students are starting to ask each other the questions that we would normally be asking. And so that's been a really good development from this. And so really trying to focus in on, on the students' math identity and developing their, um, their own self-efficacy and, and feeling like they, that this is something that they can do. And so one of the other pieces that we really worked on, uh, in, in August was looking at how we make adjustments for this school year. And so looking at, uh, really deeply at, um, what are more than
041just, what are our, our core standards that we really want to accomplish, but then as, uh, as there are holes, how do we address those holes in, in understanding within the context of what we're doing and how do we, how do we, again, how do we accelerate the learning in the context of where we're at? Thanks Brendan. Dana and Brendan, we appreciate your leadership and support. Thanks for being with us tonight. So our next steps are to continue this work throughout the school year and providing as much job embedded professional learning through professional learning communities that we can. That's our very precious Wednesday morning time when we're looking at essential standards and how to support kids, our teacher development group will continue with all, uh, with all three middle schools, as well as the high
042school throughout the year with three lesson study cycles, uh, and we will be continuing our implementation support for Eureka. So any questions about professional learning that occurred in August? I've got a couple when people are done. I just have one because we have new math curriculum. All middle schools are aligned. I know that high school would be because it's one school. Is that that's correct? So Rebecca, the new curriculum that we're speaking to Eureka math is K five. Our middle schools are aligned on their curriculum. They actually are up for adoption next school year. Uh, the high school just recently, um, implemented illust, uh, illustrative math and it's all high school for algebra, geometry and algebra two. And we also use it for the geometry course in eighth grade, which is a high school level
043course. So yes, we are, we are much closer to alignment. I appreciate that. Thank you. Director Daley, you had a question. I also have a question. Uh, director Daley, go ahead. Yeah. Um, I guess I'm somewhat confused here. I guess what I need to know is what's different than previously. I would assume that all of the things which were discussed have been done before. So what's different about what we're doing now and how is this going to help students that we weren't doing before? Director Daley, if I'm understanding your question, are you specifically referencing what's different about the Eureka math or all levels? All levels. It sounded like this was, this, this was all new territory. And I think we've been teaching math for a number of years. So there must be something that's different
044or new. That is your focus. Yeah. That's a really good question. So one of the significant gaps that we had in our most recent adoption, uh, was alignment specifically at grades four and five. So there was a great deal of math in that older version that was not aligned with the common core standards. So students were not being exposed to essential standards for their grade level. So one of the reasons that we recommended Eureka math was the strong alignment, two grade level standards, but also the deeper, uh, development of conceptual understanding and fluency. Some math programs have strengths in one, in one of those components, but not all of those components. And the Eureka program stood out as one, um, as Dana shared, that was very strong around conceptual development, fluency, and problem solving. The,
045um, middle school and high school work is not around, um, new curriculum. The teacher development group is around instructional practice. Uh, we have looked at our math data together as a board. And I think we all recognize the need to focus on math achievement. And we are working very hard to improve what happens during core instruction every day to support student growth in the area of math. And we know some of those important elements include that student advocacy that Brendan referenced that our middle school and high school students need to be a part of owning their learning and engaging at high levels with teachers that are engaging them in tasks that are, that have multiple entry points that kids that are struggling in mathematics can still access and using questioning to support their development. Okay.
046Uh, last question, uh, how, well, I have another question when we get to the next briefing, but how successful was the Eureka math training? How do we know that, uh, it was meaningful for the teachers and therefore the students? Yeah, I think that's a two-part question. We always do evaluation feedback forms so that we can learn from our professional development and see what was effective and what was not obviously learning on zoom is not our preferred method of professional learning and their facilitators did an outstanding job of creating engaging tasks for our teams. Um, in addition to the feedback forms that they receive, we also debriefed training and it was several of our stakeholder groups, administrators, instructional specialists, um, and other subgroups to learn from strategies and trainers that were highly effective. So we could
047have some of those same trainers return, but the second part, and I think the part that's more important to us is about the impact on student achievement and that can only happen as we continue to watch unit assessments and our star benchmarking and our SBA scores because we're only 21 days in right now, right? So teachers are, um, in the thick of module one, many of them have given their first mid module assessment and are getting excited about what students are capable of doing after just 21 days, but it does take three to five years to effectively implement a curriculum at an expert level. And so we're just very eager to see fluency and conceptual understanding, uh, continue to develop in our students this school year. Thank you. Uh, this is LaCrosse Lambert. Did you
048have a question? Hi. Yeah. We're not hearing you very well. At least I'm not. Uh, Jesse, you said she's been having some audio troubles. Try turning off the camera, maybe. Yeah. If you're tur yeah, no, we still can't hear. Can anyone else hear? Okay. Yeah, we can't, we can't hear you. Jesse, I'm happy to answer your question at another time. If you just want to share that information with me. Any other questions about professional development? Are you moving on to the next set of slides? That is the plan. Yes. Director Bailey. Okay. Thank you. All right. So Amy, if I can have you scroll down. So we are excited to be talking about instruction at board meetings and student outcomes. So we thank you for this opportunity to have some time with you. So we
049would like to share with you our baseline data. This is our fall 2021 data from our star assessments that we were just giving over the last month. We have this for every grade level, but remember last time we talked about focusing on some grade bands for us to be able to look at across the system. So we've got our third grade, our fifth grade and eighth grade results. We shared this slide with you, I believe in August, but we've added the fourth row, which includes the 2021-22 data. So this is this year's data, the bottom row of each section. We have hidden the math data for now, right? Cause that's our focus at our next meeting. We're going to focus on reading and ELA, but the goal here is to grow the green. Green are
050students that are proficient. So if you look at the third grade, the top row of this box, you can see that for the 21-22 school year, 27% of our third graders are level one, 24% level two, 24% level three, and 24% level four. So it's a pretty even distribution of level one, two, three, and four. But you can also compare it to the previous year and see that there are 7% more students not proficient this year in third grade than, than last year. Can you give me a thumbs up if you guys can see the numbers? Okay. And at that part makes sense. Okay, great. So if you look at fifth grade from 2018, 19, all the way down to 21, 22, you'll see that this year's benchmark data is very similar for level one
051this year compared to last year, 20% of the students are level one, 25% are level two, which is an increase of 6% since last year, the number of level three proficient students stayed the same at 36, but the level four percentage went down to 19% and then eighth grade, again, we have 2018, 19 in the top row and then the 20, 21 and 22 in the bottom row. This is interesting. 14% of the students were level one, which is a pretty significant difference compared to third and fifth grade. Our level two students are 28%, 46% level three and 13% level four. So we look at this data very closely at the district and building level, and then teachers are able to look at it at the classroom level now that they have their fall benchmark
052data and can dig a little deeper into what skills those students are struggling with that we need to fill and close those gaps, but we thought it would be helpful for you to be able to see how the data has changed. I know it's been weighing on all of us, the impact of last year on student learning, and this is our baseline data that we're going to continue to show you each time we come to share benchmark data throughout the year, and our goal is to reduce the number of red and yellow and increase the number of green. Any questions about this slide? I have a question. Go ahead, Director Daley. So first of all, this is good stuff and long overdue. So if I was a parent looking at this, it doesn't matter how
053we got there, but if I were looking in third grade and fifth grade, my questions would be, what is the plan to catch the kids up for starters and then move forward? How long will it take? And how, as I, as a parent, can I be involved in my student so I can help? Yeah, those are three, those are three great questions. So if I miss one, please let me know, Director Daley. So the first piece is finding out if your child is a red or yellow, right? There were a lot of students who really thrived in this pandemic and were very independent learners and could succeed. And the perfect opportunity for that is at our fall conferences in just a couple of weeks. So teachers typically will share with parents at conferences how students
054performed on these assessments and what supports we're providing to help them. So we were able to increase the number of support staff to have learning support specialists at the elementary level who are not confined to only reading support. So we have both reading and math support happening with more students and at least an additional one group per grade level. And in some of our larger schools, more than that, we also have a math curriculum that is going to better support the conceptual understanding and fluency of students. The fluency components are significantly stronger than what we have had in the past. We're narrowing our focus on the most important math. So instead of teaching 16 units, we teach more concentrated around the essential learning for that grade level. I do not believe that every child is
055going to fill in every gap that they did not have from COVID within a school year. But what we are trying to do is make sure we're focusing on the gaps that benefit them the most during this school year. So we know that kids are going to be using number sense. We know they're going to be applying problem solving. If a kiddo had a gap in probability, they're going to survive third grade if they don't get probability until fourth grade. They're going to be OK. So it's about having really high quality professional educators working on the most important standards, communicating with support staff to fill in those gaps. They're also providing support within the classroom and then during conferences in the fall and spring, communicating with parents about how they can support at home. And
056we're very fortunate that so many of our new curricula have online resources for students to have additional practice at home. Did I get to all three parts, Director Daley? Yeah. And so the last part is so what is your plan as far as, in other words, it's fine that progress may or may or may not be happening. But how are you monitoring this situation so that we adjust interventions quickly? In other words, knowing this, making changes and then waiting till March, in my opinion, is not a really good plan. Knowing this, making changes and then making changes again in November or December or January, to me would be a much better plan. Is that what you're looking at doing? And let me clarify, Director Daley, that the parent conferences are formally scheduled for October and
057March. So our typical intervention schedule is to look at six to eight week interventions and see how the intervention is working for students. And if they're not making progress when we progress monitor and there's a lot of different assessments we use to do that, it can be the unit assessments, the star assessments that we can use more frequently in reading. There's there's alternate assessments. There are there's I Excel at the secondary level for math that really gets at a student's independent level and then they get to practice at home. So obviously, we would never want to wait until March. We want to be monitoring every six to eight weeks and seeing which students are making the gains we need them to make and continue down that path and students who are not making those gains
058to try something different, but also to catch kids who maybe were doing OK the first month or two. But we're now starting to see they have gaps that need filled. We want to make sure those students also have access to those interventions. So since we have all these ESSER funds, you're prepared to move resources as necessary to help students succeed and excel. Is that correct? Well, we were more proactive than that. We actually hired people to do that beginning day one. The learning support specialists and the math coaches, we intentionally hired those positions over the summer so we didn't have to add more staff. After all, the great ones were already hired up. Those staff have already been hired by South Kitsap to provide this level of support. But if we don't see any results,
059we're going to add more or move people around so that we get better results. Is that correct? Well, I want to be careful when we say add more, because it might not be a person, right? It might be what curricula tools we're using or how frequently a student is getting support. It may be people, right? But it could be more than just people in how we're looking at intervention. The district has been extremely supportive of ensuring ESSER funds are supporting student achievement and closing gaps. Thank you. Any other questions about this slide? Yeah, I think the the increase in the red this last year in third grade, I think that confirms our suspicions that the whole covid restrictions were going to be hardest on the younger kids. And I think that that shows here. Director
060Berg, that's a really good connection. I obviously have already looked at all of the grade levels, and that is a consistent trend that we see more red K-2 because just developmentally learning on a screen is not how our youngest kids learn best, but they also have an incredible learning curve and they have exponential growth that can happen within a year. And we have a very dedicated group of K-2 teachers who I know are going to make a significant difference in these children's lives academically this year. All right, Rebecca, do you have a question? Yeah, I just wanted to say, so you're going to be showing us consistently the same chart and then the numbers will be for the next report, correct? So that those of us over here can understand it very simply. Is that
061correct? That's correct. And then we'll share with you our district improvement plan tonight. But we're hoping that we'll also be showing you that we've met our goals, each benchmark, by having more students in the green. And we'll make that very clear in our data that we share with you. I appreciate that. Thank you. And thank you very much for being here. All right. So I'm going to pass this to Assistant Superintendent Edwards. All right. So the next slide kind of gets to, I think, another piece of your question, Director Daley, is that a part of what we are not paying more money for, but maybe paying more explicit attention to is the availability of some of our data. And using that data in a proactive way within our system. And so we have been doing
062a decent amount of work over the last, oh, I don't know, six, eight weeks to get our data dashboard up and running. And then equally important, making sure that people know about it and how to start to use it. And so admittedly, we're in the infancy stages of this. But the next three slides that I'm going to show you are Lisa just talked you through the big picture. And the big picture is really important, but equally important is digging in and peeling the onion of the big picture and looking at how are our subgroups, our student subgroups doing right. We know that these percentages are humans. There's names behind every student in these totals. And so when we look at the grade three, grade five and grade eight subgroup comparison on these three slides, you're
063going to see the racial ethnic breakdown of kind of where those gaps are currently. Right. This is our baseline data. And so we're going to look at the big picture. And we're also going to drill down and look at how are we impacting student groups and how are we growing different student groups? So these these bars are skinnier and a little bit harder to read. But I want to hopefully walk you through being able to get a gist of this slide. So that first on the top, that very first thinnest line is showing what Lisa just showed you. Right. All of our third graders in the fall benchmark, 27 percent were in the red, right. Level one, et cetera. So those are all of our students. So then you can see the subgroup comparison. So
064in comparison to all third graders, our American Indian Native American students, you can see there the red bar. Right. It's a very small N. In other words, it's a very small number of students in that category, but very important still nonetheless. And so we're going to be looking at all of these categories as we go through to see, are we creating more equitable outcomes? Right. So we're looking at the big picture and we're also looking at equitable outcomes across our system. The large font totals that you can see there are the students at proficient level in the fall benchmark for reading. So our American Indian students, 43 percent, our Asian student population, 64 percent, et cetera. So those are the students percentage wise in the fall reading benchmark that were at proficiency when the window
065just closed very recently this October. Any questions on how to interpret this graph before we go to the fifth grade? I'm having trouble reading the one with the 25 percent. That is our Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander subgroup. OK. And then the same question I asked earlier. So when we whenever whenever you you look at these, then we're looking at allocating resources to help groups that are struggling. Is that correct? And also drilling down into this data. Right. So we can we can see that, for example, the subgroup that you just asked about, Director Daley, the Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. Right. Twenty five percent in the fall reading benchmark at proficiency in third grade. We can also then drill into that subgroup. What are the areas in which that subgroup of students
066really struggled in third grade? Right. Reading is is big. And so we can also peel that onion to say, what are some of those skills that that subgroup struggled on the most? So we can then drill in some of our intervention instruction and our differentiation within the classrooms to then greater meet those needs. Right. Rather than just kind of shooting to the middle. Thank you. OK. Amy, if you could go to the fifth grade, please. And I don't assume that you're going to remember all those percentages of proficiency. But while the some of the the percentage of proficient are a little bit less dramatic, still noticeable and persistent gaps between different groups and the overall. Am I correct in assuming that some of these percentages have gone down at this grade? In other words, some
067of the some of them have of folks that are struggling has risen as I did as the grade goes up. Or am I just reading it wrong? This is just our first time of actually looking at the subgroup comparison for the fall benchmark. So we don't have this data for last year down to this this granular level. But I think, you know, you're safe in the assumption that across all of these groups, as you saw in the, you know, the writ large data for the fifth grade, for example. You know, the level one scores are a little bit larger in number. And again, due to a lot of different circumstances last year. Right. So that's a lot of where we're, you know, we are intentionally looking at that learning recovery from last year, but then
068also specifically peeling the onion, looking at the strand data. Where do we need to target the instruction? And then we're also looking in a macro area of if we have high achievement at first, second and third, and it starts to slow down at, say, fourth, fifth and sixth. We're taking a look to see what is happening of why that's occurring. Yeah. And that's the that's the I think it's going to be viewed in a little bit later slide. But, you know, that, OK, that's right. Thank you. That diamond that we talked about, right. We have we should have equal concern about push and academic push for those students who are doing fine and sometimes, you know, need that push as much as the students who are a little bit off grade level in this skill
069and need that extra support. So it's defining support on both sides of the spectrum, right? Not just for struggling, but also struggling to want more and need more. Correct. OK, thank you, Amy. If you could go ahead and go to eighth grade. So it's interesting as you look at the at the different grade groups, right? Third grade, fifth grade, eighth grade. In some ways, there are a couple of dramatic differences as you look across the those three grade samples. Some of the the the level one gaps compared to overall are less pronounced in eighth grade, as you would probably estimate based on the fact that the the level one for all of eighth grade was less dramatic than grade five and grade three. But again, while the proportion isn't as dramatic, the same gaps exist.
070And so that's that is a system awareness for us. And that is something that we are going to intentionally work at eliminating. I believe it's difficult to generalize when you have only four or nine students in a given group. That's absolutely true, Dr. Berg. I'd also offer an and that some of these gaps are are not local to the Port Orchard area, right? These are these are nationwide gaps, even if our N number of students is very small. So I think it is a collective task for all of us, for sure. Like you said, originally, we're still talking about individual students and we need to address them as individuals and look at their individual needs. One hundred percent. May I please ask, are all students identified? And because is it an option to identify? Do
071we assume the identification? Yeah, all students are identified via enrollment paperwork. So, yes, every student has an identification that would match one of these subgroups. Yeah, great question. All right. So that's that's the what. And so now Lisa is going to share on the ELA side, the English Language Arts side. So now what? Right. What are we what are we doing about that? That's the baseline data. And here is our plan forward. Thanks, Tom. So you can see at the top of our district improvement plan in our SK Maroon font is our literacy goal. And so our goal is to reduce, have a reduction of 10 percent of students not meeting standard in reading as measured on both the Smarter Balanced Assessment and our STAR benchmark assessments. So we want to have more frequent checks
072like Director Daley had asked about earlier rather than waiting for SBA scores at the end of the year. Obviously, we would love to have more than a 10 percent reduction, but we also want to have achievable goals right in our smart goals. So there's two significant district action priority areas we're focusing on and some action steps and indicators of success. So the first from our priority plan is to implement curriculum with integrity and fidelity. And our action steps are to ensure our foundation's K-2 Phonics program is taught with integrity as our structured literacy curriculum. And Dana Richardson is going to tell you a little bit about structured literacy in a moment. And our second action step is to ensure Witten Wisdom K-8 is taught with integrity. And the evidence we're going to use is walk
073through data where we are identifying if, in fact, we are teaching these programs in all of our classrooms and if we are teaching the essential components of each of these programs. So there are many elements to a curriculum that make it effective, and that's what that integrity is all about. There is an art and science to teaching, but these programs have very structured lessons that help support student understanding of language and comprehension. The second district action priority is to implement evidence based instructional strategies to support all students and close the achievement gap. We have three action steps related to that priority. The first is to really continue our professional learning for PLCs. And so we are looking for creative ways at providing professional development in this remote world. And so Patrick, our IT instructional specialist,
074Dana Richardson, and I will be working on modular professional development on PLC strategies of identifying essential standards, writing and evaluating common formative assessments and providing additional time and support for those interventions to close gaps. And then our evidence of that will be the professional development modules. The second action step is to provide materials aligned to core instruction for primary dyslexia support. And Dana Richardson is going to talk with us a little bit about that new law in just a moment. And then third, to provide professional development for instructional specialists to support our English language arts teachers in implementing wisdom. We want our instructional specialist to continue to support our tier one core instruction, and that will be through professional development training logs. So I'm going to open it up to questions, but I just want
075to let you know that we're going to have Dana speak to foundations and then we have Elizabeth Gaskell here to talk about wit and wisdom at the elementary and Ryan Deardorff to speak to wit and wisdom at the middle school. Any questions about the district improvement plan? Director Daley, go ahead. I guess I would ask, given our goal to be a top five, the goal, at least the one that I'm looking at here is reduction of 10 percent students not meeting standard in reading. Why would we not have other goals in all of the other areas so that not only are we worried about or focusing on not meeting standard, but we're also looking for improvement in standard and above standard in other areas. In other words, all the other colors versus focusing on. I
076understand moving folks up, but what about those that are already up? If we're looking to excel, then why do we not have measurable goals so that we are not only looking at one end of the spectrum, but the other? I appreciate the question. So our our classroom teachers, when they write their teacher student growth goals, it is for all students, right? Not just the students who are level one. It's for all students to be able to meet the standard or the goal that they have set. We all strive to get all kids to exceed. From a district standpoint, we are looking at how we're aligning our resources and our support, and we are trying to really focus on how to support all kids in growing. And our measure is to look at more students meeting
077standard. If our green, our kiddos who are already proficient slide and they're no longer growing and continuing to grow at that next grade level standard, then they would become not proficient, which would have a negative impact on our results. So by reducing the number of students not proficient, we are saying that all students that are already proficient are continuing to be proficient at their next grade level set of standards. OK. All right. So we're going to have just some brief descriptions to help kind of paint the picture for you of what our K-2 foundations looks like in the dyslexia law around structured literacy and then K-5 Witten wisdom and middle school Witten wisdom. So first up is Dana Richardson. Hi again. So I'm going to start with just briefly talking about what is dyslexia. The
078state has a definition that is part of the Senate Bill 6162, which is commonly referred to as the dyslexia law. Dyslexia is an often inherited neurological difference that impairs processing of the phonological, which is the sound aspect of language. Specifically, it's the ability to perceive and manipulate the individual sounds in words, which can lead to problems with vocabulary, reading comprehension and written expression. Dyslexia is characterized by challenges with reading and spelling, particularly with the development of the connections between letters and sounds. It's not related to overall intelligence, and it's not caused by lack of motivation, interest or ineffective classroom instruction. So I'm going to go through the big ideas of the dyslexia law and then talk to each of those ideas with the actions of South Kid South. So the biggest idea in the dyslexia
079law is that all K-2 students must be screened for early indicators of dyslexia according to the state timeline. And it's a simple benchmark fall, winter, spring timeline. And the early indicators that they are referring to are those weaknesses in phonological awareness, phonemic awareness and letter sound knowledge. So it's tied to what is attributed to the development of dyslexia or the potential for a student having dyslexia. And then there's also there's one new measure, and it's called a rapid automatic naming assessment. And it really is just measuring the processing speed. How quickly can a student look at a symbol, a recognized object and name it. And that is also an indicator of a processing difficulty. So our actions are actually already structures that have been in place with, of course, a few adjustments. So we do
080screen every year three times a year with STAR Early Literacy and STAR Reading. Early Literacy is used with kindergarten and first, mostly and second. We do those three times a year. But in addition, each fall our elementary intervention specialists administer some additional assessments and early literacy skills. This year, the measures were taken specifically in phonological awareness, phonemic awareness and letter sound knowledge that we can track and identify who has those weaknesses. And then, of course, the kindergartners in January will be given the rapid automatic naming assessment. It's only done once. It's not something we intervene on. It's just something that tells us if there could be a problem. So the second big idea in the dyslexia law is that students who display indications of dyslexia must be supported through multi-tiered systems of support. And honestly,
081what I want to emphasize here is that it's really just having a label now because these are actions that we have taken in the past. But now we have a label and we have some clearer direction on what to do with specifically dyslexia, but also a lot of different reading difficulties. So our action is that we have lab plans, a learning assistance program that the state allows us to set up. Each school has a lab plan that describes where and how students will be supported through multi-tiered systems of support. And then, of course, we always have a lab spreadsheet where we track that data and monitor the data and then adjust interventions as needed, as Lisa said, about every six weeks. The only significant change here, again, is the nature of the data. In the
082past, we've done things like letter sounds, alphabet naming. So now we have a focus on phonemic awareness and phonological awareness in that data. And one of the nice things about the lab, the law, and the ESSER funds is that we have been given the opportunity to serve more of these students in the way that the law is describing. So the third big idea in the law is that the interventions must be evidence-based, multi-sensory structured literacy provided by an educator trained in instructional methods specifically targeting those weaknesses. So we, our lab team across all 10 elementaries have been actually engaged in ongoing job-embedded training for the last three years, two and a half, to prepare for this. We knew this was coming. And one of the disadvantages over the last year and a half to two
083is that all the interventions had to be done remotely. And so that is not ideal. That is not the way that these multi-sensory interventions were designed. So it's been a good learning opportunity, but we are really excited and anxious to be back in person with these kids so we can do the actual work. Multi-sensory instruction just involves multiple senses as their learning concepts. So it sounds kind of fancy, but really it's just, it ensures that the learning that they're doing has multiple pathways to long-term memory. So you will see kids having more opportunities to work with manipulatives and maybe engage in drawing their letters in sand, kinds of things that seem really simple, but they really do support the learning that kids with dyslexia need. Structured literacy is the systematic and sequential instruction of foundational
084skills, including phonological, phonemic awareness, phonics, morphology, spelling, and fluency. And this is a shift because instructional philosophy has widely practiced over the last few decades, has involved a more holistic approach where students are taught these sort of foundational skills at the point of need as observed by the teacher. And so now that we have the advantage of brain research and psychology kind of fueling and deepening our understanding of what these kids need, curriculums are being produced now that incorporate that understanding so that teachers have the tools and the know-how to really do this well. So we have foundations that Lisa mentioned. That is our K-2 foundational skills curriculum. It was adopted alongside Witten Wisdom as the piece that develops and employs that structured literacy multi-sensory instruction. And the really wonderful thing about it is that
085they have a selection of readers, they're decodable readers that are tied to the core knowledge content in Witten Wisdom so that the two curriculums can work in tandem for those little K-2 as they're learning how to decode and read and oral reading. So the last thing I will say is that whenever possible, a school district must begin by providing student supports in the general ed classroom. And then if a student requires more intensive support, the school district may provide interventions in the classroom or move to learning assistance program. And then as over time as every six to eight weeks, if we are not seeing progress, then it is up to the team and the school to increase the intensity of the intervention. And then at a certain point, if a student is just not making
086adequate progress, then we need to refer the student for possibly an evaluation for special ed because dyslexia is a disability under the IDEA. So I hope that I answered that. There's so much to it that it's hard to cover in a few minutes. Thank you, Dana. Any questions for Dana around structured literacy foundations and dyslexia? Thank you so much. I've got a couple. Go ahead, Director Daley. So if you've been doing this for a number of years, then you have data available to show how successful we've been. Is that correct? So as I said, we unfortunately have only been able to practice this remotely over Zoom. And so the data that we had, well, the data that we've had all of last year was a little bit, well, as Lisa shared with you, not the
087greatest. It's really hard to evaluate the effectiveness of a multi-sensory curriculum if it's being administered over Zoom and the students don't have the physical, the manipulatives that they need. I will say that we had ran a pilot at Olalla Elementary and they were able to, as much as possible, still over Zoom, implement a lot of the interventions. And we're seeing a lot of success and growth in their students. And so we're hoping we're, that's why I said, we're really excited this year to hit the ground running. And we really want to see in the data what's going to happen. We're eager to see what happens. Yeah, we're running about 45 minutes beyond our agenda. We need to move along on this topic. So second question, how far do you follow students along? In other words,
088dyslexia normally doesn't just disappear. So do you follow students through their whole K through 12? Dyslexia is a learning disability. So if they are evaluated for special ed, then they get an IEP. So ideally, we are able to mitigate. And kids who have dyslexia can actually learn to read and be very successful and don't need an IEP. And then those with more severe forms of the disability will need an IEP. What I was asking, I said, how far do you track the kids? In other words, if they're in a program and you test them in, you know, early grades, then how far do you follow the student? Because if they have a reading or learning disability, even though they're not in special education, that should be seen for a number of years. Yeah, that's the
089whole purpose and structure of a multi-tiered system of support. We're constantly going to track our students and make sure that they're getting what they need. So you'll have that data available to show progress as students move forward. You bet. Thank you. All right. So I'd like to honor the board's agenda time and transition us to Elizabeth Gaskell, who is a teacher at Manchester, who's going to briefly share with us how Witten Wisdom supports our students' understanding in ELA. And then right after her, Ryan Deerdorf from Cedar Heights. Okay, I'll try to be quick. Thank you for having me here today. I feel like there are six areas that Witten Wisdom really does well that help move our students forward and give them success and skills to be successful as they move through different grade levels.
090What I love about this program is that it continues to build upon the foundational levels that are there with each school year. So when I think of my six, I think of them being that there's integration and engagement because social studies and science are embedded within the curriculum along with grammar and conventions. We are writing about our reading, which dovetails together. There's purpose in everything we do and the students can see that. The topics are interesting, which keeps them engaged and also helps us to give that deeper level of learning. We all start out with the same level, which is great for our children that don't come with as many advantages as others. We all come at the same playing field. We build our knowledge together from the bottom up from starting with very simple
091stories and then diving deeper and deeper and richer and richer with vocabulary. There are plenty of opportunities for collaboration. Witten Wisdom does a wonderful job of having AVID strategies, which is the direction that our district is going. So it's nice that those things are dovetailed together. There is plenty of academic vocabulary and text specific questioning that is already embedded within the curriculum. I'll talk more about that as I go through. There's also similar terminology from grade level to grade level. So as children move through elementary school and into middle school, they're going to be hearing the same terminology, the same acronyms, and they're just going to be building upon those. There's also systematic writing that goes along with that terminology. You're going to notice when I show you some example pictures that you can see
092how the structures continue to get a little deeper and a little richer as we start to go through. And then the last thing is that it really facilitates some rich discussions. And I'll talk about what that looks like with Socratic Seminars and with how children are sharing their learning. So if I dive into collaboration a little bit more, and that's on the next slide, WittenWisdom does a fantastic job of teaching children what they call routines. What that is is that they have the opportunity to go about collaborating together in similar ways throughout the learning. You're going to notice that they are brainstorming together around a question along the table. These are all taken right before we shut down in March for COVID. So that was this particular group. What they're doing is they're writing their
093ideas down and then they either go up and present them, like the middle picture, or they might go around the walls and then the students can walk around and look and see what their ideas are. And then we come back together and share our noticings or things that stood out that they didn't notice with their groups. It's amazing how much young kids. So this is a group of third graders. I've been blessed to teach third and second grade with this curriculum. So it's been so nice to see how it builds because I've been able to teach both. But we do these types of collaborations as adults. We have meetings and it's amazing to watch seven, eight-year-olds, even some six-year-olds be able to do these exact same things. Building confidence, that ability to share, to collaborate,
094have discourse is all built right within the curriculum. On the next slide, you guys will see that the academic vocabulary that is built into this curriculum is so tangible for children that they're not just learning the words and moving on, but they're being asked to use these words in conversation, in dialogue and discussion, as well as in their writing. This is an eight-year-old didactic wall, which I didn't even know what that was. When you go to the aquarium, you'll see the little plaques that tell you a little bit about the animals. That's a didactic wall. Our children began to learn about animals, oceans, how oceans work, how we get our oxygen from our oceans. And this eight-year-old used swallene, prey, food chain, plankton, survival purpose, phytoplankton, all within the didactic wall and making it all
095flow together. That deeper understanding of not just a typical food chain that we learn in primary grades, but that understanding that it starts from your very small phytoplankton that actually give us oxygen and then build all the way through. That building of background knowledge as well as vocabulary is very, very rigorous in this curriculum. Our students are performing at such a high level because of that. You'll notice that this is a third-grade fall writing sample. You're seeing two paragraphs structured around two different topics, all using the exact same kind of structure and that terminology piece that I'm going to talk to you about next. So when I talk about terminology and the writing growth on the next slide, you're going to notice, and it's kind of hard to see on here, but they use the
096same structure. So on the left side is a second-grade writing sample in the fall, and on the right side is a third-grade writing sample in the fall. Wind wisdom teaches the kids acronyms to help them remember the pieces, and they use tangible things like your hand to help you remember. In second grade, we learn TEAK, Topic Statement, Evidence, Evidence, Conclusion. That's how they're beginning to write their paragraphs. Of course, we learn transition words and all of those great things that we learn as good teachers. In third grade, they take that TEAK model and they deepen it because now we add three pieces of evidence and we add elaboration. So now we have a T, E, E, E, E, E, and C. Each of the evidences is a two-sentence prong. It has your evidence and then
097it deepens it by giving an example with elaboration. As kids continue to move up into different grade levels, they continue to keep that TEAK model and just dive deeper and deeper and richer as they go. So as you go through the curriculum, the children already have that knowledge and they're just building and deepening upon it. It's such a great structure to have and being able to go back and forth between second and third grade, I've been able to see how the children automatically click and go, oh, we know that, that's TEAK. And then they start to do their writing. So it's really easy to kind of push and dive a little deeper. Well, let's elaborate, tell me more, be more specific. Use your academic vocabulary. But they know these terms because they've seen them year
098after year. So our children are really producing amazing pieces of writing. They're able to discuss and use that academic vocabulary in a meaningful way and be positive with their learning. On the next slide, you're going to see richer discussions. So isn't this ideal? Eight children in a classroom. We had, excuse me, we had a half hour scheduled for this presentation and we've already gone over an hour. Is there any? I have about two or three minutes, is that okay? It's up to the board. Is there any objection to continuing with the presentation? This is what we're here for, not to complete an agenda, to listen about student achievement. No objection. Okay, proceed. Thank you. So this was during the AM and PM sessions in a second grade classroom last year. And we are doing something
099called Socratic Seminar. This is built as an extra assessment in Witten Wisdom. We obviously have our writing and our paper assessments. This is more of a verbal assessment where I'm checking their listening and speaking skills. They're given a big objective that we've been working towards throughout the whole module within Witten Wisdom. And then the children take their learning and they start to discuss and share. This is not a teacher-directed activity. This is totally student-centered. I am just there to help moderate and keep everybody on track. During these Socratic Seminars, children disagree and agree respectfully with one another. They speak and listen. There's no raising of hands. They speak just like you and I would speak where we wait until someone is done and then begin to speak afterwards. They speak with confidence. They are using
100evidence from the text to support their opinions and their thinking behind it. They are adding to one another by giving each other credit. I agree with so-and-so and I like how you said this. I also remember in the book, it said this. They're purposeful in using their academic vocabulary to help enrich that background knowledge that they have learned about to answer these higher level thinking questions. I would just like to add that what I have noticed with this curriculum, I've been with your school district since 2002 and I watched this go through several different curriculums. What I am enjoying watching with this one is that our children who normally struggle with their learning and sharing their learning with us, our children that are on IEPs or come from a lot of trauma are having success
101because we're all coming at the same playing field and we're all building our knowledge together. Nobody gets an advantage because of being able to go out and do other activities that others can't. We're all coming to the table with the same thing and they don't have to write it down. They can speak their learning too and show their learning and what they've been able to gather with their knowledge. They're able to participate in discussions and have that role in the classroom that I haven't always been able to see them have just naturally. So I can't say enough things that are wonderful about this program and what I'm seeing in the classroom. I'm seeing growth. I'm seeing engagement. I'm seeing excitement. There is no groans when we dive into this. They're excited to see what we're
102going to learn next and how we're going to deepen our learning. Thank you, Elizabeth, so much for your time. And Ryan Deerdorf is here from Cedar Heights and our middle school teachers can usually be a little more succinct because they have shorter instructional blocks. Thanks for being here, Ryan. Thank you so much. Can everyone hear me okay? Is that coming through? Thanks so much, Elizabeth. Wow, that was amazing to see. I am the privileged staff member who gets to inherit students who have gone through that amazing learning opportunities. And so it's a real privilege to be able to continue the work that our elementary teachers and paraeducators have helped students have access to. I think the thing that stands out the most to me about Witten Wisdom and Director Daley, your questions have really spoken
103to this and so they've been running through my mind. And that is to say, what are we doing for all levels of achievement with our middle school students? Our level ones, the red students, the level twos, yellow, light green three, dark green four. We want to see those level four numbers go up too. And what I think Elizabeth was speaking to just before was this idea of creating a common, a shared vocabulary that allows complexity to begin to happen. And that's the word that I would focus on and that is complexity. We want to increase the complexity of what our students are reading, what they're writing, and what they're engaging each other around. And so I think about a metaphor that would work really well is if you think about, if you were to read
104a text about baseball, where baseball is the central idea, you might have a text that is extremely complex, but someone who knows a lot about baseball would be able to understand that text. Whereas somebody who maybe has a high reading level, they don't have the ability to access the deeper nuances of that text. And so by building a shared vocabulary, a baseline of words that we know and are encouraged to use, all of our students can participate together. And so as we bring the complexity of language up for our low level students, that also engages our higher level students, our students who are already meeting our standard because they have more students to participate and discuss with, more ideas exchanged. And that is one of the things that I have found in my almost 20
105years of middle school instruction to be so incredibly powerful with Witten Wisdom. And I think an excellent fit with who our demographics are in this district. Thank you, Ryan. I just want to say thank you very, very, very much to all the staff who presented tonight. I think you can understand that these implementations are on a different level of intentionality. The depth of knowledge and already the real time experience of having all the kids and working through certainly Witten Wisdom, but also the dyslexia work that we're doing across the district is going to be immediately impactful. And so thank you so much. With the directors of the board permission, I'm going to table the last couple of slides until our next meeting. And thank you so much. Mr. Edwards? Yes. I just want to end
106with at least two questions. On the next slides that you're talking about, I'm concerned about the words of evaluate and monitor. We all know how to evaluate. We all know how to monitor. What I really want to know is what are we measuring when we're monitoring and evaluating and how are we fixing it? So those would be the things. And the same thing with Witten Wisdom. While I've heard good things and bad things, I think the point that we need to understand is how well is Witten Wisdom working and are we seeing tangible results? Thank you. Absolutely. I've got that marked down and I'll be sure to address that next time we meet. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate the dialogue and the back and forth, everyone, very much. Thank you very much.
107Are there any further questions? Okay. Thank you. Is there any objection to taking a five-minute break and then addressing public comment before OE1? So we take a five-minute break and then we do a public comment and then get back to 5.01. Is there any objection to that? Okay. Hearing no objection, we'll take a five-minute break and then proceed to public comment. One public comment. Public comment is an opportunity to direct comments to the board. Any specific questions raised in the public comment will be addressed to the chair or president who will typically refer the question to the superintendent for response at a later time. Those who are pre-registered to speak will now be called upon and they'll be called on in the following order. Dan Smallwood, John Cameron, Shawna Elliott, Kelly Berkelson, Tanya Abshire, Curtis
108Yates, and Dave Kimball. So do we have them promoted to speaking status? Okay. Mr. Smallwood, I believe you're first. Is he here? Trying to unmute. Okay. Go ahead. You have three minutes. Got a couple things I'd like to address the board or ask questions thereof. This shouldn't be the first thing I can address, but there's an issue here on September 15th. We have a large group of citizens at the meeting. They wanted to speak. And somebody came in, a really nice person. I don't think he was very excited to be there, but he was holding a talk right. Instantly, the first thing said to him was, you need to wear a mask, a tone that was set. And he got pretty defensive about it. He decided he was going to talk to you. He didn't
109follow the rules. He didn't know the rules. He was just trying to do what's right. Now, we could have done a couple things there. We could have just adjourned the meeting for a couple minutes. Everybody understand what's going on and resume the meeting. You guys could have shut down and then resume the meeting, but nothing happened. Instead, you guys shut down the meeting. You ran out of the room like you were scared of him. I'm not sure why you were scared of him yet. The toddler in his arms. But that was the impression. The kids acted scared. Anyway, so nobody got to speak, and you guys did not follow the Open Meetings Act. Then there was supposed to be an in-person meeting this week. People were asking me about it. And I said, yeah, there's
110a meeting. It looks like it's in person. I give them the information. It was in person. Somebody said to me, I get it's Zoom only. What happened? Then I get it. It kind of got pulled. And then it was Zoom only. And then there was a meeting for yesterday. If you guys had a meeting yesterday, I evidently discussed whether it would be Zoom only or not. Sounds like you guys were trying to get straight on the procedure. So now we're on Zoom only. I don't think that makes any sense to me. Why are we on Zoom only? You're hearing me talk right now, but you don't see a group of people in your room that probably would have been there. Now, could you guys, if somebody doesn't want to be at the meeting because they're
111worried about vaccination status or whatever it is, you could still have a hybrid meeting. You had Zoom people before. I see no reason we couldn't have some people in the room and some people on Zoom. So I think that's something that you guys should probably address and think about because it just seems odd that the timing is you started getting meetings with a bunch of people showing up that now we're only doing Zoom. So that was the first thing I wanted to address. I'm not going to go out. I don't know. It seems that we're hiding out. That's the impression it's given. Next thing, on this board meeting yet, you have the press resigned, effective 928 from what I understand. There is no meeting of it. There is no mention of it in the paper
112that I saw, but I don't really read the paper all that clearly because Gitsap Sun is kind of not the greatest paper in the world. But anyway, there was no public announcement of it. And there shouldn't be any. I don't understand why we waited on that. OK, your time has expired. Thank you very much. Thank you, John. OK, next is John Cameron. Mr. Cameron. Director Burke, give a little patience here while I get people promoted to panelists. We need to remove the mute and remove the last one and then promote the others. OK. Just a moment, please. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Go ahead, Mr. Cameron. Hey, thank you. My name is John Cameron. I'm the father of two kids at South Gitsap School District, a seventh grader and a freshman. They've
113spent their entire educational career at South Gitsap. And my wife and I pay property tax. So I'm a taxpayer and a voter. And I wanted to thank you guys for all your hard work. I have sat through the whole meeting. So thank you for all your hard work. Love and dedication to the kids. I'm going to be talking about critical race theory, which now has been so politicized that the FBI has been weaponized to silence guys like me. But I want to let you know I'm not a domestic terrorist. I'm just a dad. And to go on, we know and I'm with informed parents of South Gitsap School District that the pandemic has created unprecedented challenges for everybody, including and especially the school district. But we're here because we believe those unprecedented challenges combined with
114budget and politics have caused South Gitsap School District to lose site focus and priority of what their primary duty should be. And that's education, the ABCs of learning and academic excellence. There's an ongoing push politically and financially to teach what to think, CRT, not how to think. The ABCs. We believe our educational system has forgotten to truly look at the content of one's individual character as so profoundly taught to us by MLK. And now instead of academic excellence, and I saw some of this at the meeting, South Gitsap School District is allocating or will be allocating resources towards diversity, inclusion and equity, DIE, which is, as you guys know, really soft language for critical race theory. And there's even talk of testing standards being lowered for critical race theory. And I've been told by board
115members, CRT is not being taught in South Gitsap School District. But with all due respect, talk is cheap. And the definitions thereof are kind of fluid and all-encompassing. South Gitsap School District, as we know, took that equity training on the 31st. And as per state bill, Senate Bill 5044, even the governor said that that bill was passed to dismantle institutional racism in public schools. We are here to protect our children from the terrible actions we're seeing across the country. CRT is cultural Marxism that divides our population into two classes, the oppressed, good people, and the oppressor, bad people. And the only difference between those two is the color of their skin. And that is the very definition of racism. In Atlanta, schools were fostering inclusion, diversity and equity by segregating their classes into all-black and
116all-white students. And I was a little bit concerned with breakdowns by race that could have also included income or familial status or number of parents. Thank you. Your time has expired. Can I have one, just please, please, I urge the board to revisit the resolution on CRT that you drafted, John, and come up with an acceptable draft that prevents racism and CRT from even possibly being taught to our children. The next speaker will be Shawna Elliott. Shawna, are you unmuted? Yep, I'm unmuted. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Okay, I'm here to express to the superintendent and the board my concerns on how they're handling the COVID mandates and policies from the governor. It's clear to me the district is no longer making decisions based on what is safe for our children, teachers and
117the community, but is actually putting our children, teachers and the community at risk by following these orders and rules that need to be met to keep COVID funding. I am all for keeping COVID funding for our schools as I believe there was a silver lining to COVID. It would be our schools finally get the funding we so desperately deserve and need. But seeing what is happening to our children because of these mandates is disturbing. I could not sit back and watch this happen no longer be silent. For example, the PCR tests we are widely relying on for testing for COVID, which was once the gold standard is now dropped by the CDC by the beginning of next year due to false positive results. Children's death rates from COVID is 99.95%, which means this is incredibly
118rare for children to die from COVID. To rely on a vaccine that has proven not to stop the transmission of this virus. To cover our children's and teachers faces with masks that do not stop and spread the virus instead of harboring toxic mold, fungi and bacteria. Masks are not being worn properly by children which is actually causing them to touch their face more and cause them to be sick more often. Stopping vital oxygen and increasing harmful carbon dioxide. Masks are also being used as a reward. In our schools and I don't think that they should be masks should not be used as a break, should not be a reward for students. They're not developing proper social skills, language skills and not seeing facial expressions. Forcing teachers to social distance children in classrooms that is physically
119impossible than having children sit three to a seat on the school bus does not make sense. It is a false sense of security and dangerous at that. If this is the current course of action we are taking to end COVID, I can assure you it will never go away. I believe at this point in time we should be able to gather enough science proven information and data to make decisions and guidelines to follow the better suit for our children, staff and parents. I believe there is a way we can keep COVID funding and make better common sense rules that will help our children and staff have a better, safer learning environment. What is happening now in our schools is simply not acceptable. We should all feel obligated to step up and do whatever is needed
120to be done for our children community to have a safer learning environment. The governor does not always have our best interest in his or our community. So we need to stick together to try to resolve these COVID mandates before the issue gets worse. Thank you very much. Next is Kelly Bertelsen. Kelly Bertelsen. Sorry, there we go. Okay, go ahead. Hello, I'm Kelly Bertelsen and I'm a parent in Alala. I am also with Informed Parents of Washington. I appreciate you taking public comment and urge you to allow the public the choice to take the COVID-19 vaccine or refuse the COVID-19 vaccine. The COVID vaccines are experimental. The only approved COVID vaccine is the Pfizer Biotech vaccine which has been manufactured and is not available here in the US. This vaccine is a paper approval rather than
121an available option. None of the existing COVID vaccines are FDA licensed nor have they received full FDA approval. Rather, their approval is under a special provision as allowed for the emergency use authorization. This means that there's not enough data which includes duration of testing for the FDA to render a final approval. For more, and more importantly, no entity may coerce individuals by threatening their employment, education, or otherwise to take an EUA vaccine. Federal law requires full and informed voluntary consent. The right to avoid involuntary human experimentation is fundamental and was established in the NeuroBank code in 1947. The fundamental right was ratified in 1964 with the declaration of Helsinki and has been codified in the US federal regulations. The US has bound itself to these provisions and these principles apply to all entities including the
122school district. The latest FAERS data that has been published is there has been 15,937 deaths since December 2020 reported from COVID vaccines. In contrast, 9,147 deaths have been reported for all other vaccines since 1990. Let me restate that that's 10 months there's been more people killed with the COVID vaccines than all other vaccines combined over 31 years. Any attempt to force anyone to take a COVID-19 vaccine is a violation of federal law. The law is clear that experimental treatment cannot be mandated. Public schools and their boards are not shielded from liability with experimental agents. The 2005 PREP Act enacted by Congress, it shields pharmaceutical companies from liability. However, employers, public schools, any other entity or person who mandates experimental vaccines on any human being is not protected from liability or they're not protected from liability
123or resulting in any harm. The vaccine manufacturers may be shielded from liability. Your institution is not protected and neither are you. You are under notice that if you illegally or irresponsibly mandate this EUA vaccine there would be no choice but to take legal action because there would be personal liability. Thank you, your time has expired. Thank you very much. Next is Tanya Absher. I don't see Tanya Absher in the attendee list. Okay, let's move on to Curtis Yates. Can you hear me? Yes. I just wanted to take a few minutes to kind of voice some displeasure that I have. My name is Curtis. I attended South Kitsap Schools. I have three kids currently in South Kitsap Schools. Two in the high school, one in elementary. My two sons were each sent home due to possible
124close contact in the past three weeks. My objection to it is that, number one, my high schooler, it took six days for me to be notified that he was a close contact. Now, I'm not afraid of my son's health or his well-being. He's going to be fine. He's healthy. But I mean, six days, if you guys are so concerned with it, that's completely unacceptable. My elementary school son, he was a possible close contact. Now, if you can't prove it, why make him miss school? You guys need to polish this policy up. My second concern is the fact that if my kids were vaccinated, they would not have had to quarantine. The kids that were vaccinated, in the case of my high schooler, did not have to quarantine. Now, in my opinion, that creates sort of
125a we are better than them sort of outlook on things. The vaccinated kids can contract COVID. They can spread COVID. If you're going to have this as a policy, it should be a blanket policy. And if they're close contacts, they should all be required to follow the same protocols. I just feel like, especially now, with all this focus on equality and things like that, this is not equality. This is basically segregating the kids. So just a little bit of input there. And I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Thank you. And finally, Dave Kimball. Unmuted. Yeah, I think we can hear you now. Okay. First, when are there going to be two comment periods again? It seems like there's plenty of folks that want to speak. Why does the district keep retreating to these online meetings
126only? I mean, yeah, there was the Zoom bomb and then the mask thing last meeting, but it's just like scurrying right back behind the screen for some reason. I just don't get it. Other districts are managing these realities of Zoom far differently. And I think there's some really good peers out there to model on this. So that's something I didn't talk to Tim about. One thing that is really troubling and hasn't gotten much discussion is why does the district rearrange priorities that were not the voters expected priorities when they passed the levies? And Jennifer Farmer on the record before said none of the projects have to be followed and any order is promised. And a few of the directors also said the same thing. I just think that's disingenuous at the least. And finally, we
127know what I sent to Mr. Winter is already a part of the record, Tim. So, John, just keep that as the record and thanks, Tim, for your prompt responses. That's it. Okay. Thank you. Normally, we don't respond at the board meeting, but many of Mr. Kibble's questions were sent to the superintendent and he did draft responses. I'm asking the board, would it be appropriate to include the superintendent's responses to those questions with the board recap? Absolutely not. Okay. Any other comment? What else would you suggest? Well, the policy says that if questions are raised during public comment, they're referred to the superintendent who then responds at another time. Or actually, it says at a subsequent meeting. The question is whether we want the questions left unanswered. Well, no. Director Sebring, what would you suggest instead?
128We would answer the questions at the next meeting because these questions were directed to the superintendent. He sent us his answers, but that's not part of the agenda for tonight. Yeah, that's why I propose that the superintendent's responses simply be included with the board recap. Meaning in writing? Yeah, so that they're not left unanswered in the minds of the public. I've seen the board recap. That's an email, correct? Is it the video also? I believe it's a brief narrative of what happened at the meeting. Superintendent Winter, do you have any comment on this? I don't have any problem if they're included in, whether it's in the minutes or whether it's included in the recap. So that would be a way that anyone could get the answer, not just the person that asked the question, correct?
129Right. So all the people who spoke this evening next week, we're going to answer those questions at the public board meeting. If we have laser focus on student achievement, answering them in the board recap seems appropriate. Maybe this is better for a more extended discussion in our workshop on Friday. But some questions asked to the board are rhetorical questions and don't require specific answers. Whereas some do expect specific answers. And I believe we have been remiss in publicly answering the questions. Occurring to our policy. I would suggest, Director Berg, that you look at our policy about public comment at board meetings and then make sure that what you're suggesting follows our policy. And before we make any decision about this, I think we should have a discussion of that at the next board meeting. Because
130according to our policy, we do not respond or answer questions from the public at our school board meetings. Because it's a school board meeting open to the public, not in response to public questions. Right. I'm looking at the... So is the idea to put this on the agenda for next meeting to discuss this? Well, that's what we're discussing. What the policy says is, any specific questions raised in the public comment will be addressed to the chair slash president who will typically refer the questions to the superintendent for a detailed response to the individual at a later time. The superintendent will then also report the response to the board at a subsequent public meeting. That's what our policy reads. So if it's written in the board recap, more than one person can read the response, which
131I think is more beneficial. Well, I will make the motion that the superintendent's responses to the questions raised in public comment will be posted with the board recap. Is there any discussion on that motion? Does that include the rhetorical ones that you're talking about? In other words, I think if you're going to do that, then any of these folks that said, we recommend that you look at this policy or we recommend that you do this, that we give them an answer that says, yes, we'll look at it or no, we won't look at it or whatever we're going to do, but not leave it open so that both they and we do not know how the item was resolved. Okay. Many of the questions are directed to the board and I don't know that we
132need to give carte blanche to the superintendent to speak for the board in responding. I think the superintendent would respond to questions that were referred specifically to him, which is what the policy reads. And at this point, those are only the questions that Mr. Kimball raised. All the other questions were directed to the board, not to the superintendent. So once again, are we voting on the motion and then we're going to discuss that we are looking at discussing this policy at the next meeting or are we just voting on this one thing? I believe we're voting on the one thing and that would be, let's limit it to Mr. Kimball's questions since those are the only ones directed to the superintendent. The only ones referred to the superintendent. So the question is the superintendent's responses
133to Mr. Kimball's questions will be posted on the board recap. That is the question. Just one more thing. That's changing our policy with respect to public comment at board meetings. That's all I have to say about that. Well, the policy says referred to the superintendent for a detailed response to the individual at a later time. Right. And that later time would be posting it on the board recap. We refer that to the superintendent and then he can determine the later time that he would like to respond. Just a reminder, the board recap is intended to be a brief summary of what happened to the board meeting. The minutes reflect more detailed information. Board recap is not an official recap of the meeting. It's meant just to provide information or what is the official document of
134what happened at the meeting. But I think that the point is that we had six or seven people share tonight, appreciated the comments they made and the respectful nature in which they shared their comments. I took notes. I think it's important that we let people know that we've heard what they've said. There were a lot of rhetorical questions. There weren't a lot of specific. And we can answer anything that's specific. But I think it's important when the public comes to share comments, they're helpful to us to know what's going on. I think it's important that they know that we've heard their comments and that we've taken note of those so we can then do what we need to do to move forward. And so I'm trying to, I took notes on the topics. I didn't
135take notes on the specific questions. Okay, so the pending question is limited to the response to Mr. Kimball's questions. Is there any further discussion? Director Sebring, did you read that email? So do you know of what information is there? Yes, I did. And my point is we are stepping out of what we have in our policy about comments in a school board meeting. And we are now taking comments from a school board meeting and letting it drive our agenda, our responses with the school board rather than referring it to the superintendent where it should be. And the superintendent has answered those questions. Is there any further discussion? I agree with the superintendent. And what he's saying is that it's time to acknowledge what the public is saying. They've been very respectful. And if nothing else,
136then an answer of thank you for your comment, we are going to look at it or we're not going to look at it. In other words, notifying them that we're going to take some type of specific action. I don't see anything wrong with that. I see that as building community trust. I see that as respectful of their time and their comments. And I think that that is exactly why we're here is to listen to their comments and concerns. Those of you that heard the 100 plus people who testified through Zoom with the Kitsap County Health Department, they listened. It was all over the paper and they changed their thinking. And that's the way that it should be. It didn't drive their meeting. It drove their thought process of what the community wants. And that's what
137we need to do. Okay, so this sounds like something we should discuss in the future about our responses to public comment during school board meetings. Can we get back to the agenda for tonight? Because we are way off the agenda. As soon as we resolve the immediate question, is there any further discussion on the immediate question? Okay, the question is that the superintendent's responses to Mr. Kibble's questions will be posted on the board recap. All in favor, raise your hand. Those opposed, raise your hand. Tie vote, the motion has failed. The response will not be posted. Next item on the agenda, focus on operational performance. Hold it, I have a point of order here. Yes. Earlier, whenever you phrased the question earlier, when I asked for something to be removed and I was speaking in
138the negative, because it passed or because it was two to two, because I focused it in the negative, you said it failed. Now, you said you focused the question in the positive, so it should pass because the vote is tied. Why did the first one fail in the negative and the second one fail when it was phrased in the positive? The first on the agenda item, the motion was to remove something from the agenda. That motion failed. Therefore, it was not removed from the agenda. This motion was to take a specific action to post something. That motion failed. Why? Because you phrased it positively. Two to two, it passes because it was phrased in the positive. The motion was to post it. The motion was not to post. If the motion was not to post
139it, then it would fail. This was phrased as the motion was to post. If it's two to two, then it passes because it's phrased in the positive. Your point is not well taken. The next agenda item is 5.01, operational expectation number one. Superintendent. Thank you. I want to go back to the presentation by Tom and Lisa earlier. That was a results monitoring report. Normally, on a monitoring report, we would have some conversation about the information that was presented, but I just want to be clear with our board calendar. The first results to is academic achievement, and the first part of that is achievement, individually and appropriately challenging levels of complexity in the following disciplines. There's eight disciplines listed. We looked at ELA tonight, and then the second part will be technology. We won't be really
140monitoring results until May. We'll go through all of those throughout the year, then at the end, when that is done, we'll monitor. I wanted to share that. I also wanted to just bring forward again the learner profile that we have created in the last six months. South Kitsap learners are problem solvers, community contributors, confident learners, effective communicators, critical thinkers, collaborators, leaders, and innovators. I've been accused of being a glass half full guy, but I will admit I am a glass full guy tonight because after listening to Ryan and Elizabeth and Brendan and Dana and Tom and Lisa share their expertise, share their knowledge, the confidence that they have and the poise that they have and the passion for kids. That's really a great representation of what's happening in our schools, so thank you to all
141of you. And I know it was longer than the agenda, but that is our purpose. Our purpose is to talk about student achievement, and I appreciate your patience and I appreciate the dialogue, and we will continue to bring forward more about what's happening in our classrooms, and that really is the important thing. So moving on, Global Operational Expectation Monitoring Report for OE1. So this presented the indicators and the interpretation to board meetings ago, and in those indicators, I had listed some things that we were going to use as evidence to show that the district is meeting the board's expectation and value when it comes to global operations. There were some things that were suggested by individual board members to be included, but really trying to follow the monitoring process because they weren't approved by the
142entire board. I left those off and we can make adjustments in the future if we want to, but I want to draw your attention to just a couple of things. Under, there's a piece in there that talks about decision or organizational condition that will not allow anything unlawful and ethical and safe, disrespectful, improved, inequitable, and so on. We had a transportation inspection report from OSPI dated August 20th, 2021, which is included in this monitoring report. The annual inspection of the state patrol was completed with exceptional results for the second year in a row, and that says a lot about our transportation department and the work that they are doing to get our students safely to and from school, as well as to all sorts of other activities that are part of the school district. So
143I wanted to bring that forward. Another one, under special education reports, we attached documents related to the Washington Integrated Systems of Monitoring Review that was conducted in 2021, and we have reported on this previously at a board meeting. May of 2021, we shared in that board meeting that OSPI was very impressed with our review. They found zero required actions and a list of strengths that were plentiful for our district, and this is not a common thing for districts, especially during normal times, but during a pandemic, it is even more unique. And so again, it's an example of top five from our OSS department, all the hard work that is going in, and again, extremely challenging environment, but we are thriving, not just surviving. So appreciate the work they've done there. And then on the last
144page of the monitoring report, one of the questions was we want to make sure that all of our hiring processes are lawful and ethical, and that we have made sure we have vetted everyone completely. And so what I've included with the help of our HR team are two different documents that are the thorough application process where it's really background checks and reference checks and the ability for us to really gauge whether this is somebody that we want as part of our district or not. So those are three highlights that I just wanted to call to your attention, and I believe that we as a district are in compliance with OE1 global operational expectations. Are there any questions? Director Daley. Yeah, so Superintendent Winter, how long did it take you to assemble and complete this? Uh,
145I don't know from start to finish, including the interpretation indicators and the gathering of evidence, I would say two to three hours, probably. Okay. So as I look through the items that you have, I had recommended a number of other items, and this is why we have one of the problems on discussion is if all we're going to do is voice our opinion and we're not going to discuss things to either add or subtract when somebody suggests them, then my only option is to non-concur because I think that this is incomplete, and I heard your comment, and there is no other option if all we're going to do is go around a table and say this is my opinion and we don't make a decision. So everybody having an opinion when we need to make
146adjustments doesn't work. Finally, this highlights, or actually my second item is the timeline doesn't work for me. Doing this once a year and checking these things just once a year and then doing this now and having an evaluation in June doesn't allow for any recourse throughout the year. In other words, if something goes south, then the answer can always be pointed back to, well, you approved it back in October, so I'm fine. I don't think that's the intent that we're looking for. And finally, this highlights the need for a board clerk. The report is for the board. It's not the superintendent to write the report. It's not his job to write his own job description and his own report. It's his job to provide the evidence of his compliance. The evidence is then compiled with
147prior comments and board comments into a cohesive document. So having the superintendent do all of his own work to give us a report that's going to go through and may or may not be what we need just doesn't make sense to me. So I will not concur because I'm not sure this is what we want and I'm not sure that this looks like we want. I realize that this is our first time or second time on some of these and we need the ability to change them versus once and done. Thank you. Any further questions? So we're discussing this. Under coherent governance, we have the policy. It is difficult to prove you didn't do something wrong. So we are attempting this because this is very necessary. You're not allowed to do anything unlawful or unsafe,
148unethical, disrespectful. So it is the job, I believe, and according to our governing model, it is the job of the superintendent to interpret. We accept it or reject it to provide evidence. We approve that and then it's presented. And then based on the reports, we make a compliance or out of compliance decision. And I understand about the board clerk and I do think we need to take a vote on whether we want that or not. I thought we were going to try to do that in one of the professional development work studies to pursue that just so that we can go through that. But that's for another time. I believe this is good for what we are working toward, better monitoring of the superintendent. So if we have a process for vetting, then because it's
149how do we prove he didn't do anything unethical, unlawful, unsafe, disrespectful, and so on. I think we're doing the best that we can with this one, unlike there's data and things for the other. But the reports, I think, tell us what we need to know. What would you like to add? And I understand what you're saying. Here's my opinion. And then there is a procedure for that. I make a motion to vote on additional reports. You're saying, you asked the question, how long did it take to compile this? And it wasn't extensive. So what would you like to propose? So I do agree that we need to make more decisions and not just make a comment and move on. So making decisions like that. So I am satisfied with this. I am voting for this
150and for compliance. But I am interested in understanding what we need to add and vote on that and make a decision on that. Thank you. Did we not previously approve the interpretation and the indicators for OE1? We did on September 1st. Yes, we did. Okay, so then those are not open to discussion. Correct. What we're discussing is whether or not those indicators indicate whether or not the superintendent is compliant. Correct. So we're not discussing whether or not the indicators are appropriate. The discussion is whether or not the indicators indicate that he is in compliance. Correct. What the indicators are or are not is a different discussion that we already had. Correct. So the question before the board now is, is the superintendent compliant? Any discussion on that question? Compliant, compliant with the exception of specific
151policy subparts or non-compliant. So we want to make sure that we have all of those. Okay, the motion is that the board accepts the report as fully compliant. That is the question. Yeah, right. Now, if somebody wants to note exceptions, then they can amend that. I need to say that all I'm seeing on my screen is OE1. I'm not seeing anything else. That's because we had it from 9-1 board meeting. I printed it out, so I had it in front of me. So on this current board meeting, we have all the reports that have been provided for the evidence that we have. Okay. Okay, thank you. So are you ready for the question? Yes. Okay, question is the board accepts the monitoring report for OE1 as fully compliant. All in favor, raise your hand. Thank
152you. Those opposed, raise your hand. The ayes have it. The motion is adopted. The report is accepted as being fully compliant. Next agenda item is the superintendent's... Excuse me for a moment. So do we have, okay, additional comments based on board action because for superintendent evaluation, we're supposed to be compiling comments or I guess commendations for this. So how do we do that with this report? If someone wants to draft a comment, we can vote on it. Does anyone want to do that? I was told that we... Robbie will take our comments. Do we have any comments? I just wanted to make sure because I know that's part of the process. And then, okay, I guess we'll wait for that. Or I'll wait for that. Thank you, Rebecca. That's exactly... This is the time if
153anyone wants a comment, we can make that now and Robbie will record that and that will be part of the superintendent's summative evaluation. I would like Director Daley's comments put on there if we can do that in a way that's appropriate. That should be there because he voted not to accept that. So if he has his comments why that shouldn't be accepted, that should go into the record so that when we do or when the next board does the summative evaluation of the superintendent, that information will be there. So since Director Daley voted no, he should give his reasons why. And he did. Well, the problem was that Director Daley's comments and objection was directed to the adequacy of the indicators. Which is what we decided at a previous meeting. That's correct. You're correct. So
154his comments were not germane to whether or not the report is in compliance. If the evidence in the report, yes. Thank you. I don't think you heard all of my comments but that's okay. The answer here that you just made, Mr. Berg was list your comments and then we'll decide whether we're going to put them in the report. And the answer is I'm not going to give you my comments if we're going to vote on them because that's not the intent. If you want my comments then I will send written comments and they can be included in the report. But we're not here to vote because I disagree. And your interpretation is on the indicators. There's a lot of stuff that's not there. And there's a lot of stuff that should have been discussed in
155those indicators that is not there. So that's your interpretation. So you put your interpretation in and if you want my written comments then I will send them in. But they're not here to discuss and for you to referee and decide whether my comments are apropos or not. I believe we need to refer this to our workshop on Friday. The question of how do we draft the comments? And that's what we need to discuss. In other words, should the comments be individual comments? Should we rely on Robbie to compile the comments and speak for the board? Or should the board draft the comments and approve the comments as a whole? My preference would be for the latter. And I think we probably need to discuss this on Friday at our workshop. We cannot discuss this on
156Friday because we already have an agenda and a full day of what we're doing. This would be put on another meeting probably not even January but this is why this takes so long. But that's why we have a whole over a year of professional development because yes, this is a concern. I would like the comment that Director Daley did say that for the future as we read these that he would like more that he would have or maybe even examples of what he would like to add. I understand that we voted for the indicators but the comment that he made and in a way that we can benefit from it. Okay, we may have time. We may have time on Friday. Our last workshop we ended an hour early so there would have been time
157for us to add additional questions for our consultants. Okay. Can I just add a perspective here? Yes, please. This is not intended to be a check of the box and move on to the next thing. It's meant to be a growth opportunity. It's growth for me as a leader. It's growth for our district as a... Let's get the fuck out of here. That means that we need to... I want comments included so we can go back and reference those. Whether it's a year from now, a month from now, a week from now, doesn't matter to me but I don't want to go through all this effort if it's just a check of the box. I want to go through the effort so we can get better as a district. We have a lofty vision for
158our district and in order to get there, we have to get some feedback and we have to have an action plan to move forward. So I would just like to compile comments and we can reference those in the evaluation. We can reference those as we move forward. We can come back and talk about these when we need to. Those are my three cents, I'll say. Thank you. I agree and we probably need to do that ahead of time and then share them when we have the vote. Would you agree or are we going to work on this later? I think that we are way off topic and way off our agenda and we should get back to the agenda. This is not off topic. This is the topic. This is the topic. The topic is
159the comments to put on the report. And we agreed that the comments that were coming from Director Daley did not have to do with what we were voting on but it was on the indicators which we already accepted at a previous board meeting. You comment again because you weren't listening. I had other comments and you decided what you wanted to hear. If you want my comments, I'll send them in. But I had several comments. You didn't hear them. You weren't listening. So you decided what you wanted to hear. Who is you, Director Daley? I'm sorry. I don't understand. You, Director Sebring. You heard what you wanted to hear. So next time when I'm talking, listen to me. Let's not get personal. The question is, do we want, at this time, do we want to add
160a comment to the report? I want to add a comment. Okay. What comment do you want to add? I would like to add Director Daley's comment. Okay. And I will bring those and I will send those comments in. Okay. So how do we want to do that? Are you sending it to the board? No, I'll send it to the superintendent. Mike, my concern is that the board needs to speak as a whole. And if there are any comments going in the record that will reflect that our direction from the board to the superintendent, that needs to come from the entire board, not random comments from individual board members. Right. Random comments from individual board members do not give the superintendent clear direction. And we, so that, according to the book, I remember reading about we
161come together as the board and it's an agreed comment. That's why I was wondering, are we voting on the comments or are we just compiling the comments? And we do need feedback. We do have a lofty vision and we need feedback. My understanding of the training was that the board agrees on the comment. Okay. Are we going to do that now then? Can I bring us back to the agenda? What are we supposed to be voting on in the very first place? Can we redirect to that? It was what? It is a summary statement of the board. In other words, the comment that accompanies our statement that he was in compliance. Which agenda item are we working on now? Because I'm looking at my agenda and saying, what? We're on operational expectation one. Yes. Yes.
1625.01. Correct. So our vote was, what was the motion? The motion was that the board accepts, was it the board accepts the monetary report for OE1 as fully compliant. Okay. Can we vote on that? We already did. And we said? We said he was compliant. Then why are we continuing to discuss this right now instead of putting on a future agenda item? Because we have additional comments. The board action, the forum for board action also has a place for a statement from the board. I repeat, this sounds like something we can address later. We have over half of our agenda to go. And we're not sticking with the agenda. So can we move on with the agenda? We've had the vote. We finalize the vote. Can we move on to the next agenda item, please?
163I would like to state that this is the work that we do. It's monitoring the superintendent. And this is the form that we're filling out. If we're voting on not having a comment, we can do that. Okay. I will move that we have no comment. Is there any discussion on the motion that we have no comment? I would like Director Daley to reformulate the comments so we can put it on here for the feedback for future OE1 monitoring. Okay. So you would like Director Daley to draft a comment which we will consider at our next board meeting. A comment to attach to our acceptance of the report. I would like to do that now. Is that possible, Director Daley? The motion on the floor that Mr. Berg just proposed was he proposed no comment. So
164that's what needs to be voted on. Okay. I'm not voting for that. Okay. Are you ready for that question? The motion is that the report show no board comment. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed say no. No. Okay. The motion is failed. Therefore, we need to draft a comment or we need to assign someone to draft a comment to consider at a later meeting. If we keep putting things off, then we don't attend to what's on our board work calendar. So Director Daley, are you able to formulate a comment that we can put on this report? Probably best that we table the report then and take care of it next meeting. So now that's your, so that's what you're proposing. Okay. Okay. The motion is that the matter of the comment be
165postponed until the next meeting. Is there any discussion on that motion? All in favor of postponing the comment to accompany the report to the next meeting, say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed say no. No. Okay. The motion to postpone has failed. We now need to draft a comment to go on the report. The motion to have no comment failed. The motion to postpone drafting a comment to the next meeting failed. Therefore, our only alternative is to draft a comment now. Okay. Can I try to translate what Director Daley said? Okay. It is not beneficial to add or subtract. Let's see. Okay. I took notes. They're not complete sentences. To go around and have only opinions and not make a decision about additional information isn't beneficial. The timeline for once a year and the evaluation in
166June with no recourse isn't beneficial. The need for a board clerk seems to be apparent. So can we, is that a reasonable comment? It's information for next time. And then add at the very end, and then at the very end add that what is the utility and the value of the information provided? Did it answer all of your questions? Does it answer the question? How valuable is three or four hours of the superintendent's time given the information that he provided? Is it answering the questions? Do you have a firm feeling that it did that? What about ULPs? What about complaints filed? What about lawsuits? What about litigation? What about special education? IEP information, financial, OSPI, ESD 114, all kinds of other things that this is just a sampling that we included in here. Are we
167going to continue to add things? Or do we want a general policy of what he accomplished so that he doesn't spend hours coming up with what may amount to either information we don't want, information that doesn't help us answer the question, or is just plain trivia. That's what I'm trying to get at. So I believe the comment that I made previously does address all that. That's going deeper, and that's the conversation for the next operational expectation one approval of the evidence, the interpretation and evidence. So we have meeting minutes. This report does not answer all of my questions. I understand. Do you understand the comment versus you voted no, and we understand why. Do you understand the comment that I tried to rephrase, and is that acceptable? Because it's information for next year. We understand
168you voted no. For next year, maybe we need to change this policy, just like we're getting ready to change OE 10. Maybe if it doesn't answer everybody's questions and does what it's intended to do now that we've seen it, then the answer is change it. Okay, but just don't accept it because don't accept it because it's incomplete to answer the questions that you want to answer. We have gone so far off the agenda, and can you please? We are on the agenda. You're talking about the timeline, and we're doing the work. We're way beyond our time, yes. Can we table this to the next postpone? That's what I proposed, and it was turned down. Actually, it's just two directors talking to each other for the last 20 minutes. I'm trying to make a comment because
169we voted. I am saying, this is my two minutes worth, we are not accomplishing anything at this moment, and we've got over half our agenda. The work we are supposed to be doing here, waiting for us, and we're listening to two directors discuss things between them. President Pro Tem, would you please help redirect us to use our time well to the work of what we can do right now and postpone what we can discuss at another time? Because this is a little tiny bit of the huge amount of work we need to do that was cut in half from the last meeting that we had. Are you moving to postpone this discussion until the next meeting? I am totally moving to postpone this discussion until the next meeting and move on with the agenda. Mr.
170Wilson, do you have a comment? I have school tomorrow, and we have not gotten to my item on the agenda. I need to get that over with because I need to go to school tomorrow. I understand we have a lot of work that's happening, but there's other stuff that we need to get to to have the meeting be complete. Is there any further discussion on the motion to postpone? I think we should postpone the rest of the meeting. Postpone the rest of the meeting? Well, it's— Or postpone this agenda item? Well, it sounds like we need to do more than just that. Okay, the motion is to postpone this agenda item. So let's vote on that motion, please. Okay, is there any further discussion on the motion to postpone this agenda item? All in favor
171of postponing this agenda item to the next meeting, say aye and raise your hand. Aye. Those opposed, raise your hand. Thank you. The ayes have it. This agenda item is postponed to the next meeting. Next item is linkages, as I believe. Yes, board linkages. 7.01. Does anyone have any linkages to report? Hearing none, next item is 7.02, student representative report. Do we have any comment for— Do you want to go first, or do you want me to go first? Go ahead, Kay. Okay, so last week we had homecoming at the high school. Very exciting that we were able to do homecoming. I would just like to announce the homecoming court for 2021-2022. So freshmen, we have Prince Jack Reynolds and Princess Jessica Blackwell. Sophomores, we have Prince Myself and Princess Nicole Ladderback. Juniors, we have
172Princess Kennedy Simpson and Prince Preston Collins. And then we have a lot of seniors. We have Angelo Abarquez, Ethan Dickerson, Dylan Ruth, homecoming king Carson Collins, and then Sarah Hoyt, Ashton Martin, Nicole Inez, Rosie, Fiona Najera, and Regina Obniel as our homecoming queen. And that's the most important stuff I have to talk about. Okay, thank you. Ms. LaCrosse Lambert. Yeah, thank you, Kay. I just wanted to say that we now have official emails. So if you would like to contact Kay or I, it's our last name at skschools.org. And we've used those to kind of fuel our social media. So we encourage you to follow us on Instagram. It's SKSD. So it's South Kansas School District Student Rep. And then our Facebook as well, which is SKSD Student Representatives. So yeah, keep in touch with
173us that way. Okay, thank you very much. Next item, 8.01, Consent Agenda. Is there any objection to adopting the Consent Agenda by unanimous consent? I have several questions about the Consent Agenda. Go ahead, Director Daley. Okay. So let's start with the HR reports. Grab my notes here. Okay, I don't have the information that I've requested for HR reports. So I'll non-concur with those. Affidavit of vouchers for payroll. I haven't gotten the information that I needed there. So I will non-concur with those. 8.04, Donations. These are generous donations, especially the one from the Kaiser Foundation or the hospital. We should be very thankful for them. What I want to know is what is the process that ensures these donations are used as intended? If you look at the one for the Kaiser donation, it's to programs
174to relieve stress and a lot of issues with our staff. I think that's very good. But how will we know what the training was done to help the staff reduce their stress? In other words, how do we report back to the Kaiser Foundation or the hospital that their money was actually used as intended? How do we tell them what activities that it was used on? Same with the risers and the cross-country donations. How do these people know that their money was actually spent as intended or instead of just a quick thank you and the money is dumped into a big pot? I will get an answer for you on that. I wasn't prepared to answer those questions this evening. I didn't have them in advance so I can get those to you. Okay, 8.05, Highly
175Capable Grant. There's not enough information here to make a decision. What is the total amount of the grant and how is it spent? Who, in other words, what students and what grades get part of the grant and why? Without any total amount of the grant, are we talking a couple of dollars, couple thousand, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands? So that's a formula based on students enrolled in our Highly Capable Program. So we don't know the specific amount. But it is also a grant that we rely on to run our programs such as the SOAR program at Orchard Heights that involves transportation, professional development for teachers. We also provide support for those students who are qualified for Highly Capable services but have elected not to be part of the SOAR program. We have to
176consider this just like we consider special ed. They treat Highly Capable and special ed in the same way that we have an obligation to serve these students and so this grant allows us to do that. And I think once again, I think that's a fabulous thing and if, you know, I long for many years advocated that there's two sides to special education. There's what people typically think of it and there's also the excelling students need the same thing as far as an IEP if we were to call it that. And I'm glad to see that this grant is there. I just want to make sure that we have a process that every one of those students is served. Okay. Okay. 8.06. I got that answered. 8.07. Okay. Swimming pool. As I read through this, it
177says I'm the only one that goes through the warrants so I'm the only one that knows that the district was billed about $18,000 for stakeholder meetings. When did these meetings occur and who was invited? I don't remember. I think I'm a stakeholder in the pool. I don't remember any invitations and I don't know anybody else that was invited to any of these. So somewhere we spent somewhere around $18,000 or we were billed for stakeholder meetings. So I'd like to know when these meetings occurred. I will get those to you. Okay. The last two sentences concern me. It says here the project-based scope estimate is $7.9 million with sales tax. Okay. The project will also utilize bid alternatives that may add or decrease the scope to provide some flexibility depending on the bids received. Okay. My
178question is what is the project-based scope? Are we talking that you get a pool? Are we talking minimum items? Is this like the base model of buying a car only to be told that it doesn't include the options you want? There's not enough information here based on an $8 million project for us just to say, yeah, let's just go out and find out what we're bidding on. The next sentence talks about bid alternatives. What are bid alternatives that add or decrease the scope? Obviously decreasing the scope is as bad as adding to it. In other words, when you decrease the scope, are we losing something just so that we can fit the budget? Or if we're adding something, why are we adding something? Why are we not going out for exactly what we want? And
179that's what it implies is that we have options likely to push the price either out of reach or not get what we want. So I'm not going to approve bids for the swimming pool because there's not enough information. And since this project is way over budget to begin with, I'm not interested in finding that the lowest bidder forgot a whole bunch of things. It's implied, but it doesn't say. So I think that the taxpayer and the board needs to be identified of exactly what we're talking about. And that's why I asked for this to be taken out of the agenda because I think there's a lot that needs discussed. Okay, so I need some answers on some of that. The overnight cross-country, we're in the middle of a pandemic. When is the decision going to
180be made whether these students go or not? It won't be made until qualification for the state meet is the weekend prior to November 5th and 6th. There's a lot that could happen between now and then. This is in preparation so we don't bring something to the board at the last minute. And this is an annual cross-country state championship that is brought to the board at this time every year so that we're prepared for that meet. Sure, understand. And then it says this is funded by the SKHS building budget. What's the difference between the building budget and the ASB budget? I can get you specifics on that. The reason I'm asking is because one of the donations that's listed is for the cross-country team. So are we going to use their money and stockpile it? In
181other words, I like the donation. I think it's great. But are they intending for them to use it right now or at a later thing or what? There's just not enough information provided. And then the overnight DECA. Obviously, I understand the same thing. We have a conference here. We're getting prepared for that. So a final decision. So the high school has a student store. Is it run by the school or by DECA? I know that there's DECA students in there and it says DECA marketing. So does the student store fund DECA or does it fund the high school? And once again, that's not in there. So those are my questions on the... So I'm not going to go with that because there's way too many questions that are unanswered. Thank you. I want to address
182a couple of things. Starting with the 8.07, it doesn't say alternative. It says bid alternates. This is simply every bit of information that we have, we share with the board. It was in a presentation a few board meetings ago. This is simply asking for board approval so that we can go out and get bids so we can move forward on the project. Director Daley, I sent you the information you requested on the vouchers and payroll Monday morning. I just don't know if you had a chance to see that. And the human resources employment reports, we will have to create those reports for the depth that you want on HR. So we haven't had time to do that dealing with the other things that we're doing. And it would be really helpful just to have these
183questions ahead of time. I think that that's the point of the consent agenda is if you have questions, I'm willing to find the answers prior to Wednesday evening so that we have all the information we need so we can be thorough and be informed. Well, I understand that. And I agree with you. This week's been a little difficult for me for a number of reasons. But also, I think the public needs to be informed, giving me all of the answers and then running through the consent agenda with no questions doesn't help the number of people out there who have the same questions. So I understand what you're saying. But at the same point, these points need to be out to the public as well as answering my questions. Are you ready for the question on
184the adoption of the superintendents consent agenda? All in favor of adopting the superintendents consent agenda, raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Those opposed, raise your hand and say no. No. The ayes have it. The superintendents consent agenda is adopted. Next item is... George, I have a question. I'm sorry. Yes. Go ahead. I just have a lot of students at South that are going to wonder. So just to clarify, the consent agenda was adopted. That means that the cross country team and the DECA club will be able to participate in these events. Just to clarify. Correct. It was approved. Thank you. Okay. Next item is the board consent agenda. Minutes of the September 1st and September 15th meeting. I move the previous question on the board consent agenda. That is a motion to close debate.
185It is undebatable. All in favor of closing debate on the board consent agenda, raise your hand and say aye. Those opposed. I'm opposed. We're not going to start... The ayes have it. People from talking. The ayes have it. Like it. The ayes have it and debate is closed on the board consent agenda. Hocus pocus. The question... The ayes have it. Director Daly, you will please be quiet. No, you're not going to... Director Daly. Director Daly. Debate has been closed on the board consent agenda. And you give people an opportunity... The debate is closed. If you do not silence yourself, I will mute you. If you want to take the opportunity to infringe on second rights amendment, knock yourself out, Slick. All in favor of muting Director Daly, raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Those
186opposed, raise your hand. You cannot mute second right amendments, Mr... The ayes have it. Director Daly will be muted. The question is on the adoption of the board consent agenda. All those in favor of the board consent agenda, raise your hand. Those opposed to the board consent agenda, raise your hand. The ayes have it. The board consent agenda is adopted. Next item on the agenda is the annual work calendar. Director Daly, you are unmuted. 10.01. The question is on the approval of the 2021-2022 annual work plan calendar. Is there any discussion? I will vote no on that calendar. I would like to... Okay. Okay. This is discussion for 10.01. I think we need to talk about some of the items that we don't have time to keep going on this agenda. Is that possible? Exactly.
187What is your question? I know that there's something we absolutely have to do, which is 10.03. Can we postpone to the next meeting the other agenda items? Yeah. We can one at a time postpone them. Okay. Due to time. It's getting very late. So the question is postponing 10.01 to the next meeting. Yes, please. Is there any discussion? All in favor of postponing 10.01 to the next meeting, raise your hand. Aye. Aye. You didn't let anybody talk. Yes, I did. Well, then you have to give me a minute to ask instead of rushing right on. Okay. Do you have any discussion on the motion for postponing 10.01? Yeah, I don't think you should postpone it there. Okay. Any other comment on the motion to postpone 10.01? You ready for the question? All in favor of
188postponing 10.01, raise your hand. Aye. Those opposed, raise your hand. The ayes have it. 10.01 is postponed. I'd like to move to postpone 10.02. Okay. The motion is to postpone 10.02 to the next meeting. Is there any discussion? I'm not sure why we're postponing all this business. I've listened to everybody tell me how important the board's business is. Okay. You all had the opportunity after our canceled meeting to run another meeting and you chose not to. I didn't select the agenda. You all did. So you have a lot of people sitting out there. They're looking for these agenda items. And if it takes a little longer, it takes a little longer. That's what we're here for. Any other comment on the motion to postpone 10.02? Those in favor of postponing 10.02, raise your hand. Aye.
189Those opposed, raise your hand. The ayes have it. The ayes have it. 10.02 is postponed to the next meeting. 10.03, 10.03, resignation of the board director. Director Gattenby has resigned from the board. And the letter of resignation is included in the board agenda. 10.04. Wait a minute. We're just announcing that. That's all that that needs. No. Yeah. We can't refuse to accept his resignation. So no action is necessary. Can I make a comment? Yes. That we don't until something is received and acknowledged, we wouldn't do a press release. Is that correct? When you received and acknowledged. Right. And so then we would. The board formally needs to accept his resignation. No, you're lying. This is a bunch of bullshit. Director Sebring, please restrain your comments. The policy says that the resignation needs to be acknowledged.
190We do not have the authority to accept or reject the resignation. Then I'd like to state that I acknowledge Director Gattonby's resignation. Thank you. I go back to Director Diehl's question. We made a choice not to publicize this until it was brought forward to the board, thinking the board needed to acknowledge this before it went to the media. So we will then proceed with that. And I appreciate that very much. In effect, it was announced when the agenda was published on Monday. Okay. Next item is we have a vacancy in the position of board president. And I'm looking for my notes on how to do that. I would like to postpone that until the next meeting, if that's possible. Our policy says where there's a vacancy, it's to be filled immediately. We also have a
191vice president that's filling the position. If we don't do it tonight, the vice president will continue to function as the acting president. I would appreciate that. Are you moving to postpone 10.05? I move to postpone 10.05. The question is on postponing 10.05 to the next meeting? Just a minute, we're talking about 10.04, not 10.04. Oh, I'm sorry, 10.04. I'm sorry, thank you. 10.04, filling the vacancy of board president. Yes. I have a question about that. Am I allowed to ask a question? Yes. Cool. Go ahead. So does that mean that you will serve as board president for the rest of his term or we will just postpone the timeline? Because I looked at the timeline and it says that that his position would be filled December 15th, which is awfully close to the switch in
192directors. So are we looking to postpone the vote and the new director after the elections? Right now, all we're doing is discussing whether or not to replace him as board president. That's different from his position as a director. Okay, my bad, sorry. So the question is postponing electing a replacement as the board president. Okay, 10.04. Yes, I moved to postpone 10.04, please. Okay, any other discussion on postponing 10.04? Okay, the question is on postponing 10.04 to the next meeting. All in favor, raise your hand. Those opposed, raise your hand. The ayes have it, 10.04 is postponed to the next meeting. 10.05 timeline to fill school board director vacancy. The motion is to approve the proposed timeline vacancy as shown in the agenda. Is there any discussion? I would like to approve the timeline as presented.
193I think it's very reasonable. I like that the new board will appoint the next board member to fill the position because they'll be working with that person. Any further discussion? We're all in favor of approving the proposed timeline to fill the board member vacancy. Raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, raise your hand and say no. The ayes have it. The motion is adopted. The proposed timeline has been approved. Next item, 10.06 planning for coherent governance training. I don't understand what this item is for. Is there anything that we need to discuss before our workshop on Friday? Has everyone received the documents ahead of time? We should have received an email with the proposed documents. Has everyone received those? I've received those. Director Daley, have you? Yes. Okay. I have. And that's
194all. Thank you. The other question was the candidates for board position have been invited. The question is whether or not they will be allowed to participate in the discussion. Will they or will they be silent observers? I like being able to ask questions for clarification. Unless they're board members, why would they participate? Because half of them will be board members. And the other half won't. Correct. So the question is, shall the board candidates be allowed to participate in the discussion at our Friday workshop? Is there any discussion on that proposal? Why would you even propose that? Because Aspen Group asked about it. There's no reason to propose it. If the election was done and they were board member selects, I understand, since you have four people that are not even elected, why would we have
195input when we don't have input from others for this meeting? Meaning like public comment? And if you find that imbalanced? Yeah. Among other things. Is there any further discussion? The question is on permitting the board candidates to participate in the discussion on Friday. All in favor, raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, raise your hand and say no. No. Okay. Tie vote. The motion has failed. The school board candidates will not be active participants in the discussion. 10.07. The WASDA conference is coming up. Can we address that at our next board meeting? I move to postpone this to the next meeting. Is there any objection to postponing that to the next board meeting? That is postponed to the next board meeting. The WASDA discussion. That concludes the business portion of the meeting.
196Is there any other business to come before the board tonight? Yes. Besides the debrief? I would- We had a executive session on the agenda. Shall that be postponed or- Is it possible? Superintendent Winter, you said you could cover it in an email? I will communicate what I can in an email and the other is an individual conversation with board members. Okay. Is there any objection to canceling the executive session for this evening? I would prefer the executive session go as proposed in the agenda. Okay. The question is on canceling the executive session as originally proposed in the agenda. Is there any discussion on canceling the executive session? I don't think we need a precedent of talking to individual board members on an executive session and then putting the other information out. It's either an executive
197session or it's not. One of the things that I'm concerned about as I started to look at the content of the executive session and what's allowable, I think it's really great. I don't want to cross that line. That's the reason I've suggested we not do it. It's not, I don't think it really clearly fits executive session requirements. That was my mistake. I didn't look at it clearly enough. Is there any further discussion on the motion to cancel the executive session? All in favor of canceling the executive session, raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Those opposed, raise your hand and say no. The ayes have it, the executive session is canceled. Is there anything further to come before the board before we go to our debrief? Okay. That concludes the business portion of our meeting.
198We'll now have debrief, which will be conducted by director Deal. How do we do tonight? I would like to figure out how we, okay, the timeline needs to be realistic. And when we postpone things to a new meeting, I think that's, you know, troublesome. And I do believe the work is more important than the timeline, but the timeline for agenda planning needs to be realistic. So I don't know what the answer is to that, but I just want to acknowledge that. And I'm sure we all acknowledge that. So that's what I had. What would anybody else like to say? Am I writing notes for this or are we just debriefing? There is a form for it. And we're supposed to fill out the form. The form that we used to have. In the GPs, there's
199a form for debriefing until we adopt something else. Okay. I would suggest that when we have a presentation, the presenters be given strict time constraints. What we had scheduled for a half hour winter, probably about an hour and 15 minutes. I would agree with you there, John. And a lot of it wasn't data and it was just more bells and whistles, which is important that our different people get to tell us what they're doing well. But we need to focus on ends and the presentations need to focus on our ends, not necessarily on what they're doing really well. So I agree. It got a little bit long. I did hear skills that were being developed, which are our results. So the time, sure. So I agree. I do agree with you, but I would like
200to add that I add that. It was useful information. The problem was that we had too much of it. And it wasn't focused on the ends, which we're going to get there. As we start teaching everyone that works in the district and all our stakeholders, the ends that we're focusing on. So results, yes. Yeah, the results. All right, thank you. Sorry, yes. I would like to work on getting either having someone in charge. I can be in charge of the list we need for feedback from Aspen because we're developing. We're trying to learn. We're trying to improve. And I definitely want to stress that we have big goals, lofty goals that superintendent needs real feedback, good, positive and negative, what we can work on. So I want to get that feedback from Aspen and we
201need to figure out how we can do that. And this is slow going because we can't accomplish everything or even half of everything in one meeting. So this is planned out for we have over a year still. And I think that's very, very valuable. I found it valuable to have all our BSRs, our GPs, OEs, all identified in all of the things on the agenda because that helps us to focus on that. And I'm glad that we did that. I was concerned that our consent agenda, which should take five minutes once again, was overwhelmed by questions from one of our members. And there are all questions that could have been answered prior to the meeting. And we addressed that at the last training and it's still going on. And I think it's a waste of
202our time. Yeah, many boards have a policy that the consent agenda is undebatable. That is something we might want to consider. Well, all the questions could have been answered prior to the meeting. And in my, I feel that the reason the questions were being answered was trying to inform people listening to the meeting as to questions that one director had rather than actually questions the director had. And it spent, it took a long time. Any further comments on the board debrief? Who has next agenda planning? Robbie, do you know who that will be? Will be Liz. Okay, thank you. And that date, it's Friday morning. And I'd like to conclude our debrief. Is that, I move to conclude our board debrief. Okay, I don't believe a motion is needed unless there's someone else who has
203something to say about the board debrief. Okay, thank you. That concludes our business for this evening. Is there anything else that needs to come before the board? Hearing none, this meeting is adjourned.