001I would like to call the meeting to order acknowledgement school district on the ancestral lands of the squali island who have lived on and continue to live on their flag history. Okay, the regular meeting is recessed at 5:31 p.m. into executive session to discuss personnel performance evaluation qualification for employment for RCW42.1 the executive session last 30 Ambassador to Israel. The regular meeting reconvened at 6:01 p.m. State Department. No business by say I although including me consent agenda that's been provided to the board. Are there any questions about it? That item We're also investig also will not add numbers from Washington safety protocols after we move on to Kevin will recognize I know that's all your hair. Well, congratulations to the Tumblr High School dance team. Uh before I I have a video and I think
002they probably have seen it, so I'm going to just transition over here. Um started at Seattle County officials are more than 3,000 people to access and vision services over the next days. That includes preventative services like cancer. It was insane. The energy was so hyped. Leave it all out there. Have no regrets. Next one of unapologetic. That's what we're going to be. I'm just really proud of all the girls on this team. All right. So, congratulations. Yeah. Threetime um state champ like this year. I know it's like weird to say that in um a lot of our sports, but they won three state titles this year. Um and so I have a resolution to read and then we can do a little uh celebration of those. Maybe they'll photo up. Um response read this. Whereas
003the board of directors of Tom Water of School District number 33 would like to recognize the accomplishments of the 2025 Tom Water High School dance team. Whereas on March 28, 2026, the Twater High School Tabirds dance team scene competed against 39 teams in Yakama, Washington. Whereas the team placed first in dance with a score of 270.7, first in hiphop with a score of 269.7, and first in palm with a score of 277.7. Their scores in hiphop and pong were the highest of the day in 1A, 2A, and 3A combined. Whereas this is their 36th, 37th, and 38th first place it wins at the state level, which is the most st state championship titles by 11 of any dance team in the state of Washington. Whereas this team led by eight seniors, has an amazing amount
004of heart. They are committed, hardworking, and goal oriented and unified. Whereas the head coach has developed this winning program since 1996 and prioritized team unity, her hard work and commitment to dance is evident by the success of the program. Whereas the fan support is phenomenal. Their enthusiasm and encouragement are invaluable and appreciated by the team and coaches. Now therefore, it be resolved that the school board of directors of the water school district congratulate the Tom High School dance team for their three more first place state titles and further resolve that a copy of this resolution will be sent to Tom High School on this day. So, congratulations to this team. So, maybe we can have you come up. I can do a little photo with the board if that's okay. I think Lori, you probably
005like that. Yes. Yes. Come on up. You guys want to get out? people started in 197 So, thank you. Congratulations. We do We'll take us a tiny break if that's okay. Um we Yeah, we have some cupcakes. They're not super huge, you know. We It's like we know like we do want to do a little celebration and give you a reason to eat a cupcake. So, um we maybe my staff the staff can help pass out some cupcakes. They got them. Maybe it's to everybody else that like Megan, you want to help with some cupcake passing out? You can eat a cupcake. We'll see if the board wants a cupcake, too. Like, you can do a little a driveby. They're small. They're like just a bite or two. I think they're called a bite or
006two. Thank you for being here again. Congratulations to you. They have seen amazing work. Is this is this hold national title in your future? And you all talk to is that concern. So learn some lessons from that. Nice. Awesome. Well, thank you for being here. Thank you. We are running out of that 18 years later. will begin to go to college. So that means that there's a possibility for some schools in Were we waiting for Maybe try a lot of other impering In my opinion, kind of obscuring the reality of what's going on with the colleges and they're all saying we apprisising This doesn't colleges onational colleases for new international students. That's a across the country are facing an uncertain future. Essentially, it's just a perfect student reports. The question for April is regarding school.
007What unwritten rules or expectation state? How do these impact students differently based on their identities? Thank you. Uh good evening everyone. Uh I just want to say thank you for coming. In an anonymous survey, Blackville students shared their experiences with school culture, providing how notable examples uh to illustrate their perspectives. The survey also inquired about how school culture influenced their personal experiences and whether they observed differences in how various social groups were affected. When compiling responses, I noticed that there was no general or uh negative or positive trend. Every student had a vastly different experience with their school culture. This is because as the responses pointed out, a student's experience with their culture is closely tied to their social group and the people they associate with. For example, several respondents said that they have a
008healthy relationship with school culture because they're involved in sports and the performing arts. However, from these responses, many students pointed out that they felt that their sport/ art was overlooked when compared to more popular/successful. This b suggests that students school experiences depending on their recognition of their sport program receives is dependent on their positive or negative experience. Therefore, by providing a niche co-curricular activities the same support as larger ones, the participants overall school experience will improve significantly. Now shifting our focus over to culture in the classroom, a few major trends appear. Firstly, an overwhelming number of responses pointed out that they have many bad experiences related to vaping. Specifically, these responses state that they always feel anxious when going to the bathrooms due to the high likelihood of other students using the bathroom space for
009vaping. Additionally, a student reported that quote, "Vaping in bathrooms has gotten so bad where it is more likely that there's a vapor inside than end quote." Highlighting this is not only a one-time bad experience. Rather, it is now become a norm experienced by the entire student body. Furthermore, a concerning amount of responses wrote that they have personally felt unsafe in school due to bullying, gossiping, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. Even more responses said that they know or have seen someone get discriminated against mostly by other students because of their social noting that their support system after experiencing discrimination usually consists of their friends implying that there may be a deficiency in staff/admin support networks. However, this has not been stated outright in the near school. In general, school culture is perceived as positive when students are
010in extracurricular activities with many students highlighting kindness and inclusivity among friends. However, its impact varies widely as students who are less involved or outside dominant social groups often feel disconnected or experience issues such as judgment and low motivation. Overall, while the school culture may support some students, there are clear areas where work is needed. Thank you. I will now move on to public comment. Before we begin, I would like to remind the members of the public that you would wish to address the board during the public comment portion of this meeting, you would need to fill up the public comment form available at the district website by 9:00 a.m. today. If you miss this opportunity, you're welcome to sign up at the next regular board meeting or you can email your comments to the board
011of attend contact information on the district website and elsewhere unless you're going to be a doctor I don't think I am studying creative writing. Yes. How is this? Okay. Okay. You can start over. Okay. Um, so I'm a parent of two kids in this district and I'm here to urge against the proposed staff expression policy 5254. It's being presented as if it just clarifies rules and discipline, but instead this policy would be an expansion of rules and broadening of power that would cause more problems than it attempts to resolve. Ensuring safe and appropriate speech by staff is very important to me as a parent, but so is ensuring the staff's ability to fully function in their roles as educators and caretakers of the next generation of our community. This policy would seriously stifle the staff's
012free speech, make them afraid to speak up about problems or criticisms of higherups for fear of retaliation or losing their job. The current state policies in place that already regulate teacher speech behavior and performance are specific handle case like are evidence-based. This new policy enables more subjective arguments and conflict over what actually constitutes negative imp excuse me impact on job performance or preventing the district from operating efficiently and effectively which is too vague and up to interpretation. Unclear rules and silenced descent makes everyone less safe. Of the state's almost 300 school districts, only a couple dozen have passed this policy. And at least one has already reversed it last year in Peninsula School District after finding it to have unintended consequences of infringing staff's free speech and causing massive community push back. This is not
013the board of a private company. This is a public school district guiding the minds of the next generation and serving the community. So, it's even more important here than almost anywhere else for the staff to have clear rules and be able to have authentic, open communication to avoid cover-ups and unresolved conflicts. I'm sure the history teachers would be glad to show you the many examples throughout history of why censorship like this policy does not benefit a community and leads to bigger problems in the long run. Water should be leading by example with honest communication, transparency, civil professionalism, encouraging critical thinking and debate and ensuring accountability of all staff. The board should be working to support teachers and staff, but instead you have forced them to repeatedly come here during what should have been their time
014off to defend their own rights and to their ability to safely do their jobs. So, I want to say thank you to them for all the hard work that they do for our kids and community. Policy 5254 would ultimately make our schools less effective and less safe. So, please do not pass this policy. Thank you. Hello again. Uh my name is Carrie H. I have a kiddo who attends Michael T actually. Um I'm gonna address two issues today. The first is the lack of leadership that's been demonstrated by this board and how it's handled the school resource officer issue. And second, how the board's engagement on this issue demonstrates a lack of accountability and transparency. None of this has served our district or our students. To catch everyone up, in the fall, when the district's
015contract with the city for SRO was being considered, directors Taylor and Ke asked the district to talk with Thirstston County Sheriff's Office about whether they would compete for the contract, which they did. The sheriff's office declined and it stayed with the city. Then in February, the Twater Police Department announced it needed to reduce the number of SRO's in the district from 2 to one because of a lack of patrol officers on staff. In response, without talking to the city at the last minute and with basically a day's notice, the board converted a work session in March to a regular session so you could take action on what the agenda called a breach of contract by the city. City representatives appeared and the city administrator spoke disagreeing that they were in breach and stated that the
016district had sent them anou to review, which they were doing. Um, Sheriff Sanders also attended on very short notice. um was asked questions and he did tell tell the board that while he wanted to partner with the city, he did not want a hostile takeover of our SRO program. the city has been trying to work with you and told the board at the time that they planned an April 14th uh hopefully joint meeting um which no one from the district attended and um only at least one board member that I saw um attended who was direct um but certainly not the ones who've been so urgently raising this issue for resolution you weren't there uh the city's been trying to work with you and you haven't gone to the you haven't worked with them now
017you're proposing a work group I understand representatives from the city, but you haven't talked to them about that yet either. So, to what end? What What are you doing? Uh I try to explain this to my uh other parents, and I'm literally like, I don't understand what's going on. It doesn't make sense. Um it doesn't serve our students. Nothing has been happening here except for degrading the public's trust in your leadership. uh directors and Warner, you ran last year on a platform of not letting politics affect your decision-making and being accountable to students and families and that's not what's happening here. Holding a meeting with no notice doesn't allow stu uh uh families to come and provide their feedback. Uh I support the board partnering with the city quick coming to a reasonable and quick
018resolution which serves the students and stop the pointless grandstanding. I also generally just oppose short notice meetings like that. It doesn't allow people to provide the feedback that we have the right to provide. Thank you. We'll go now to reports to the board. Mr. Hinkles up first, the director of elementary education science curriculum update. Okay. Not volume. Good evening members of the board. Thank you for allowing me to speak to you tonight regarding the element science adoption process. You saw me board meeting ago regarding ELA and this time I'm here to talk to you about science. In accordance with the Twater School District Board policy 2020 and procedure 2020P regarding the selection and adoption of instructional materials, our elementary review committee completed recently a comprehensive review of elementary science instructional materials for grades kindergarten through
019fifth grade. The review process that we used was the same instructional materials review process that you saw for ELA. In fact, this package is inside your board packet that you have. It's specific to science. This time, we have an elementary science review team that was tasked with evaluating the effectiveness, usability, and financial sustainability of our district's elementary science instructional materials. More specifically, Carolina biological BBS science kits is what we previously have been using. While the Carolina materials were determined to be of strong instructional quality, the review team did identify several concerns regarding ongoing implementation and the sustainability really much including the following. Low overall usage across our elementary classrooms, scheduling limitations due to shared kit rotation and timebased distribution. The kits came from our ESD and they are shared between multiple school districts. So kids
020would arrive in classrooms, stay for about I think it was about 8 weeks, 10 weeks, eight weeks, six to eight, and then they would have to leave. So teachers would have a limited period of time to be able to teach themselves before they then had to go back up and taken out to other locations. Logistical and organizational barriers that also impacted teacher implementation and realistically financial concerns related to the continued viability of maintaining and replenishing those same kits. To better understand those challenges, our review team then surveyed elementary teaching staff regarding science instructional practices and the barriers that we mentioned. We reviewed usage data implementation trends districtwide. We researched science instructional materials used in neighboring school districts and we evaluated alternative elementary science curriculum options aligned to current standards in our district instructional priorities. Our
021pilot implementation was this year. And so based on that review, our elementary science team recommended the use of mystery science as a pilot for this school year across all of our elementary schools in all grades K through five. Mystery Science was selected for the pilot implementation year this year due to the alignment to the NextGen science standards, flexibility for classroom implementation, digital and physical resource integration, and really the biggest one was the reduced logistical barriers compared to in rotating shared kits. All of our teachers have a full set of kits in their classrooms that stay in their classroom all year. so they have access to those kits and can teach them at any point in time that they want to during the school year. During the pilot implementation, staff were surveyed on two separate occasions
022throughout the school year to gather feedback regarding the effectiveness and usability of mystery science. Families were surveyed after having two separate review opportunities of the materials. Key findings included high overall staff satisfaction with the program across grade levels and positive family feedback regarding student engagement and learning. We have increased consistency and science instruction across classrooms. Improved teacher access and flexibility due to that classroom based storage of their kits. And as of April 13th of this year, there have been 3,169 mystery science lessons taught in our district this year. A significant advantage identified in our pilot was that the mystery kits do remain housed with the individual classrooms which do allow those teachers to utilize the materials anytime that they want that best fits their instructional schedules rather than adhering to that fixed rotation schedule that
023they had to do. It sounds really ridiculous, but there are things like there were lessons on shadows. Let's just give an example. And sometimes the kids would show up at the time of the year when there was no sun. So, it's really hard to teach a lesson on shadows when there's nothing providing shadows. Pretty much most of our Yes. most of the year. Yeah. Or we would get time we would get kits that had to do with growing when it wasn't growing season. There's things like that. So, you can see some of the some of the issues. While the pilot feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, we do recognize the importance of continuing to improve and ongoing ongoing enhancement of instructional materials. So, deepen implementation and deepen our student learning. We continue to develop and add
024engineering practice lessons to extend and deepen science instruction when teachers wish to provide additional challenges and application opportunities even with the mystery science. We would add engineering practice lessons that are available to teachers that they can use as they wish. We are also creating intentional crosscurricular connections between the mystery science units and our newly adopted magnetic literacy. So, we've built a crosscurricular scope and sequence so that they can see all of their ELA units and next to those down the side is all of the mystery science units and where they best fit within the magnetic literacy. So, if you're teaching um decomp decomposition in fifth grade as one of the magnetic literacy units, there's also the science unit for decomposition. So, we've got that tied so the teachers know, oh, that lands here. So I
025can teach that at that point in time as well. And then we also have, you know, integrated instruction reinforced here at all of our contents. So with that, I want to take a minute to introduce one of our teachers. In fact, I just remembered, thanks to Melissa, that she happens to be the TSC teacher of the month, Christy Shock, and she's going to come and talk to you briefly about her experience with mystery science as her classrooms. I'm going to have you talk to her for just a minute, and then after Christina are done, I'll also introduce you to somebody else. We do have videos. Let me know if you're ready. That's my classroom during our performance task in science for energy trans is my classroom working like that for two days. So anyway, I
026um in Christ I teach fourth grade at Little Rock Elementary and I had was able to be on the district science team that you just mentioned. Um, I would like to say I really enjoyed teaching science and I did enjoy teaching with the Carolina science kit. Um, so I was very excited to see and pilot the mystery science kit just to have a comparison. Always fun to try out different curriculums and see their strengths. Um, as short mentioned, the district science team looks at um the curriculum from many different angles. this I just wanted to share a little bit with the board about what it looked like in my classroom specifically and um that the kids really enjoyed the mystery science curriculum. I was really impressed with how engaged the students are and I mean
027all students all levels everybody was engaged and um enjoyed the sciences that I've taught so far. Not only does the mystery science curriculum really engage the students in all things science, but I also found that it really was beneficial for other aspects of the elementary school like being individual thinkers also working well with partners as well as those small groups. So they had the opportunity to really develop into those portrait of graduate kind of things that um our strategic plan is emphasizing. So I really did see a lot of analyzing of data um and also connecting ideas and experiences with their imagination, having an open mind. It hits all five ever graduate areas. Um, integrity with self and others, um, values, the contributions of others, listening actively, providing thoughtful responses, and then of course that
028resilient risk taker, which I really think this performance task demonstrated, um, the best. So, this was actually um, a performance task after they done all the lessons. Then they were asked They could chain reaction machine based on energy transfers. They had to have a certain amount of collisions and things like that, height, energy, and they had to incorporate the knowledge they already learned and then were able to bring things from home with their partner and make some chain reactions. Um, this was two days. I thought it would take a day. They were so engaged. They stayed engaged. I had to pack them up and they would have kept going. I literally had families sending me videos of their chain reaction. from home. So I probably six students of 27 do this at home and sending
029me videos. So, here are a couple videos of a couple of their tools. They're short. They're fast. That went fast. We'll do one more time. took forever trying to get that marble at the end. You know that was probably 50 times that you tried to set that up. So anyway, I'm really excited to the mystery science. Thank you so much. Do you have any questions for us about mystery science? I should also say the one thing I didn't say and I I figure you might ask, so I'll just put this out in the universe. The cost of mystery science when you look at it financially is is just barely over half of the cost of what we spent for Carolina. Yeah. Half of what we spent. So the nice thing about that is it does
030give us it does the finance guys like Yes. You can thank me for that later, Mr. Ric. Um, the nice thing about that is it does give us a little bit of flexibility. So, when we want to build some of these engineering practices, we can buy a few supplies and things like that because we've got a little more flexibility, but then I won't get to that. But there is that. Do you have any Go ahead. I'm sorry. You can come on either way. So, come on up here if you want to, but people can hear you on this because there aren't people. Um, I choose to rotate science and social studies because it's hard to get everything in every day. So, um I'll do science every day for five weeks, six weeks, and then I
031move to social studies. So, you know, at the end of the last hour of the day is usually my block for um science and social studies. So, that's the kind of that's the way we my partner and I run it because it feels a little more joined together. I found that the kids there's more cohesion when we're learning. If I could just stick with every day. So, we'll do it every day for five weeks, but please recommend I switch to social studies and do a social studies unit in that time. Any other questions for us for elementary before we hand off to school? I just want to like I was excited not not really questions as usual to see you just a great presentation that left me with very few questions but um also just
032want to say it was exciting to hear about both the alignment between the ELA and the science curriculum that just that's really awesome to hear about. I think that's so important. But also just the alignment to the portrait of a graduate and the strategic plan. It's just very exciting to hear how all those things coming together. It feels very um it it just makes sense. It just makes sense for education for Thank you. I appreciate that. Anybody else? Yeah. I under the areas for continued growth consideration that's about but they weren't so low but you said they were lower it was supports for diverse learners. So what what do you think about doing to So what I love about what I really love about the um mystery science which it has is it's one of
033the things that's really great about it is that you can get the whole entire thing is in Spanish which is amazing. All of the materials can be available in Spanish. And because it's hands-on, it's accessible to all of our kids. There's the the hands-on piece is great. And I think one of the things that Christy and I had a conversation about is we have students who are identified as highly capable and we have students who need some additional supports. But I think what's really great is she's had students who are identified as highly capable who who struggle with some of these things. and some of our students who may be identified as kids that need supports are actually excelling and are bringing in our highly capable identified students and helping to communicate with them and
034they're the people who are helping our highly highly capable identified students to really be able to communicate their thinking in better ways. So, as far as like the supports and and being able to differentiate for our kids, they're doing that on their own and those hands-on experiences and working together. It's really cool. So, Go ahead. You want to say something else? Come up here. Just like you said that I think there's a level of um kids that usually get things really easily. So their threshold for frustration and working through that productive struggle can be a real challenge for them. and some of and that's where those other students are really able to help them persevere through some of that because many of those kids that are used to having so easily for them in their
035reading and writing when it comes to hands-on stuff it's hard for them to find a paper I know it sounds funny but um I'm having students who usually are not necessarily the typical readers helping them fold and make sure the paper's right and um helping them through that frustration because they easily want to step down to I really see the benefit. Okay. So, before I before I hand this off, I'm going to just really quickly introduce Daniel Longmire. She's going to be talking to you about sixth through 8th grade science and what they're doing there because this is a this is a K through eight science uh science review. So, Danielle Longmire is one of our CTE tosses and she is going to talk to you about science for grades six through eight. She's been
036spending a lot of time working on this. So, I want to make sure that she has an opportunity to speak to you as well. She's been doing a lot of hard work. So, here is Danielle. Good evening. Thank you for this introduction. Thank you for welcoming me here this evening to discuss the middle school science adoption process. Um the middle school science review committee completed the comprehensive review of middle school science instructional materials in accordance with our school board policy 2020 regarding selection of documented materials. The review process started last year in the year 202425. Uh it began at the district level with the administrative and classroom level. regarding the current curriculum resource material amplify. It is part of our regular material review cycle as well as our corresponding amplify contracting that comes up in
03720 June of 2026. Um a review was conducted of neighboring districts instructional materials and a review on ed reports indicated that only three instructional materials resources met expectations. amplified with our current instructional material resource issues in science and open sad financial considerations eliminated issues and science as financially feasible resource for comp school district as a minimum cost $247,000 we eliminated that the review team consisted of all sixth seventh and eighth grade science teachers they convene to review open sighted materials and determine if a pilot was warranted the following concerns were addressed during during that review time. Teacher commitment, the time needed for each of the teachers to learn a new a new curriculum and the support that went behind that. Transition challenges effective adoption requires significant time and support needs to professional development resources and
038ongoing support and the curriculum adaptability. Was the curriculum going to be accessible to all students? The pilot implementation a full day of reviewing the materials and the respective grade bands it was determined to to pilot open sed for the 202526 school year. The review team recommended the open site sed pilot for the following reasons. Increased engagement in hands-on learning, increased critical thinking and incorporations of the three dimensions of um nextgen science standards within decreased reliance on Chromebooks, structured routines for scientific thinking and writing and the curriculum structure is student inquiry based with structured lessons from open. The pilot was open to all sixth through sixth, seventh, and eighth grade teachers and the units were chosen based on how they fit into the current instructional resource schedule and scope and sequence. We had two sixth grade
039teachers pilot the thermal energy unit. Three seventh grade teachers piloted the matter cycling and photosynthesis unit and two eighth grade teachers piloted the earth in space unit. A pilot findings and feedback. The instructional materials were available for family and staff viewing at both middle school open conference times in February. An opportunity to complete an online C survey either at that time or later with a link were provided. In addition, the materials and survey were provided directly to select families by request. All teachers were surveyed again at the close of the pilot. The key findings in the teachers that piloted the materials include a reduced technology and increased manual work. to reduce the the Chromebook time which they felt increased instructional time and engagement. Student engagement and curiosity. The models helped solidify understanding and a greater
040drive towards leveraging student curiosity. Additionally, students liked group discussions and table talks. Lesson complexity and time management. The lessons were inconsistent lengths. The times was an issue with planning and setup and organization for some activities took a considerable amount of time teacher time outside of um their normal planning time. Curriculum structure and support. The curriculum lacked clear support on how to line up lessons. It required teachers to fill in many blanks and make connections when students could not, making it difficult for absent students or those who miss the discussion. Materials and activities. Activities in lab were sometimes redundant or they were over complicated and had complex instructions. Assessment and student understanding. The open-ended questions lack quick checks for understanding and models did not consistently translate to desired learning outcomes. Accessibility and modification difficult to modify
041for special education students. directions, questions, and non concise language were complex, and there was insufficient opportunity for accommodations. As of the as a result of the pilot, all teachers accepting one recommended remaining with the current instructional materials resource amplified. I'm here to tell you briefly about his experience with open sed. This is Tony Harris, seventh grade teacher. Thank you. Daniel's an absolute rock star, by the way. said everything I needed to say. So, it's good to see you all again and Drupal, especially you. Um, good to see you. And, uh, anyway, I my name is Tony Harris. I teach science at Tom Middle School in a robotics class as well. And I was involved in open sciad pilot. I was really excited to pilot it. Open sed way back when we first adopted amplify was
042one of the choices we would have gone with uh, as far as piloting goes had they been finished at that time, but they weren't completed yet. So, I was excited to get my hands on it to look it over. Um, open sad is thoughtfully designed. It's aligned to the standards really well. It's rooted in a strong instructional philosophy. Um, and I love that it allowed us to just kind of experience a slightly different way of approaching those standards. But after careful reflection, after doing it in the classroom, our middle school teams, as Daniel mentioned, definitely decided to remain science. The primary reason is readiness and sustainability. Um, opening sed while promising isn't as polished. I think it's because it's one of those like free resource programs or something. It just it it's not quite there.
043Um, the learning curve was really steep. I I'm an experienced teacher. I think I'm decent out of it at it. And it was still extremely challenging for me to pick it up and go with it. Um, and I just felt honestly I felt like a failure sometimes teaching the lessons like I wasn't quite getting the class. really frustrating for me because I like to excel at what I do and it's not just like the whole time. Whereas amplify it's already a strong resource. It's got most the positives that open sed does and it's got extra support for the absent students. It's got more differentiation and the nice thing about it is has really engaging usually really engaging phenomena and um simulations and even more importantly it's become an even better resource over the years because
044as we've met during act time we've polished it. We've made it even better. We've included things that needed to be in there. We've taken things out that are redundant. Um a lot of us have actually aligned it to mastery based learning both in the instruction and in the assessments. Um, and so because of that, we're able to focus our energy on where it should be, which is really on the kids and making sure they're engaged and learning. Um, our decision wasn't about resisting change. In fact, I love to mix it up. I love changing things. Uh, I mean, I'm not even doing the same clubs after school anymore. It seems like every two years I have to do a different type of club. Um, it was a it was about picking the tool, the resource
045that best supports students um, and teachers. And so we believe SAM of Amplify allows us to deliver that highest quality science instruction with confidence and then consistency and purpose. And one thing that wasn't mentioned is in middle school we also uh use a curriculum resource called project lead the way representing today um which is about a quarter long piece of the year and that uh we would also say keep it because it's it's great. In fact in seventh grade ours is medical detectives which Um, students are taking bottle signs, they're diagnosing patients. Uh, in one case, they're trying to figure out where their patient might have a tumor in their brain. They have to get approval from me to get a CAT scan and um once they think they figure it out, they do a
046dissection. It's a sheep brain, but they just know it's a real brain at first, and sure enough, they find the tumor, you know, usually where they thought it was going to be. And so, that kind of like engaging science is pretty incredible. They might not remember the facts that I teach them, but they don't remember being a science scientist or so we have definitely both Amplify and PLTW are really good at giving students an opportunity to role play as scientists and uh I feel the most important part of Next Ocean science standards is what science and museum practices. As I mentioned, they're not going to necessarily remember the facts, but that doesn't matter. They can Google that. What I want them to remember is how to be a scientist. And so that's what these two
047curriculum resources are really good at. Um I think that's it. I hope that helps. I just have a quick question. You kind of mentioned how the um open sad um was not really adaptable or working for kids with special education or IEP needs. And I'm wondering if you can kind of give me an example of like why is Amplify better for that group of kids than Yeah. Um well I'm not super familiar with open sedicial training for open sighted maybe there's some resources in there. They just weren't easy for us to find um in doing it. Whereas Amplify yes it is Chromebook based much of the time not all the time. Um but if we're reading the article let's say rather than giving the paper copy of the Amplify. There's a little, you know, you
048can do it on there and there's a little icon to have a red things for kids. Um, yeah, just all kinds of stuff built in where it just makes it easier to help kids of all kinds of and Spanish one is really helpful for me. Last year I had a student who immigrated from Mexico and she didn't speak any English, but I was okay because she was language Spanish and it was all resourced. So that was really cool. Excuse me. Um so those resources are easily found in amplify whereas maybe they exist in just a policies and one. Thank you. Um, okay. So, the first one, policy 21108, is um, in my opinion, a pretty easy first read because they just took out the language around CO. Um, everything else stays the same. Um, and
049Tai kept asking questions about each policy. So, the CI that I put um which package it's in um was it a former water school district policy? Um the dates it went from a March 20 2024 to a December 2025 update and then was it a is this a model policy in um Okay. Do you want me to do all three? Let's do all three. Okay. And then um 2040 is a drone policy we have and we're not quite sure um who wrote it or where it came from. I'm sure it was all great intentions. Um and so that little summary says that um we can just take any guidance we have around drones and put it into 4500. So that's why it says there was no package. Um yes, it was a formal a former
050policy and there's no Alaska model policy for 2020. And then 4500 is a a drone. It's it's also called UAS or model aircraft. Um and it just talks about how um drones can be used. Um but they have to have they have to go through the approval process and we have to be sure that the person flying the drone um has the right certification um and knows how to be safe. Um have proof of insurance. follow state and federal regulations, especially because we're so close to an airport. Um, and then, um, I found several school districts that when they adopt, um, 20 or 4500, they also adopt additional procedures that are not a part of the WASDA model package, mostly the approval process. Um, there's also a part at the very end of the of
051their procedures where it says that um, there's an exemption for emergency responder operations like firefighters that multiply a drone and find something. Um so my recommendation is that we um discontinue 2040 and that we uh take any classroom teacher or student use of drone um and and put it into the procedure for 4500 um and then we'll be up to date on that policy. more questions for director of financial services. All right, good evening. So this this first report is our financial status. That was that. Okay. So, for uh March, um with all of our our different funds, here's our general fund. Um and again, we're still in our negative cash situation in general fund. Um we're going to be reviewing that more in our budget update. Um thank you so 26332 for any fund
052balance for March. We're starting to get in um our ready funds. You can see up at the top there um almost a million dollars in our levy fund. So that will be ramping up and that will help next month we'll start seeing that fund balance projects at 13.6 just normal projects going on at the sites. Enjoying getting Alec on board projects and spending our two weeks from now. It's been getting all of us well well versed in capital projects. Uh budget status 3.2 our ending fund balance there you know um collected some levy some levy payments there and ASB is still strong at a million and we're going to actually talk a little bit about that in our budget update as well and transportation vehicle fund where We did pay for those buses and we've
053just actually received a bunch of new buses a bunch that's a bunch of money. So our fund balance will start decreasing there and there's a plan that are there any questions for me on our financial Yeah. All right. Thank you. All right. Last up on the course is Ben for budget session number two. Go ahead. Good evening board members. I should have said, but she's the half of the presentation. So, okay. So, it's my pleasure to present um the materials for work number two. Just a couple of quick reviews that you know we provide a lot of data and information in these presentations mostly because it's our way of providing public transparency and disclosure but it's not our intent to speak in detail about every one of these slides. So, you'll see us move pretty
054quickly through some of these unless you have questions. Um, but probably about a third of these are ones we really want to dig into to really update you on our status school district, which we're pleased to say we have some targets even. Uh, we'll cover four things. First of all, we'll quickly recap the process and timeline. Then we'll talk a little bit about how we're doing this year, and then we'll talk a little bit about projections for next year, including what we learn from our legislature. Uh, And finally, we have um some preliminary information for you about that. This is the budget timeline that you've seen before, and I'm not going to go through it line by line. It's for your reference. The one thing I will call out is you'll see there that we're
055we're on that April 23rd line, which means we had our budget advisory meeting number one, and you never know when we have any sleep. Is anybody going to show up? Actually, we had a lot of people show up and it was a very robust meeting. So, um that group has turned out to be um an active and engaged group. Um, and we expect to keep it going. This is also for your information. Um, I find this very helpful and I thought you might as well, which is that this hyperlinks every budget presentation that so if you were wondering, oh, I saw a slide and it was whatever, you can literally go right here, click on that link, and it will take you. Okay. So, as to the affformentioned good news, um it's modest good news,
056but it is good news. Um we've been showing you this chart for a couple years now. Um this is the monthly cash balance. I think one of the things prevailing you to burn on the board um longer maybe for our new members um you sort of caught on to this concept that once you establish a trajectory uh within a school year of cash balances it's very rare to cross over the prior year because in terms you if you're crossing a previous year it means you're either really rapidly increasing your spending or you're pretty rapidly reding And so if you'll recall in budget work session number one, we were sitting there I think we were showing you January that time and at no point had that red line broken through and been higher than the I
057guess that's the gold the gold line which represents the cash balance from last year. And if you remember we were actually sort of speculating in that meeting about would that happen this year? When will it happen? And we've had some within the office about what happened. I won by um so you know I don't want to be too abusive about a negative $765,000 cash balance. We certainly have it um we're in a position to be celebrating that. But this is a very important initial benchmark of progress. If you don't meet this, you can't meet any of the future budgets. So it was crucial that we meet those this year and it was our aspiration that we did so before April and both of those things are now true. So this is probably one of the
058most important slides of the presentation here so that if you understand this you understand that we we met an important milestone. Any questions about this? formed after Germany was defeated in World War II. I don't have a question, but I did just want to acknowledge we did have this conversation about that line crossing at our our last meeting. Um, and I think at our last board meeting, just about everybody got some applause. Um, except for Ben. Exactly. That's right. And I just want to say I I hear you when you We are not in a position to celebrate yet. So I want to be cautious here. But I think we are in a position to celebrate the food. So I would really like to give you some cupcake. Thank you. Thank you. Um yeah, it
059is one of those deals where it's like yeah, we're still negative. But um a lot of districts number one is to explain to everybody what this means. understand the significance of it and this is one of the real methods that actually applause the little things please. Okay. So, this is one of the reasons that we are able to cross over those lines. Um, and it's taken a little while. It's taken a couple months to catch up, but um this just shows each month what we're saving in salary um in salary cost. So, um it's about an average of $358,000 a year a month um that we're saving and adding back into um going towards that positive cash cash balance. So that was due to all the reductions in meeting last year and that hard work
060that everyone went through and that is forever being able to see that that progress being made. Okay. So we took a look at this last year um our just our top spending. I'm not going to go through every single vendor, but we really wanted to show you that we're looking at every um every expense, every vendor that we're dealing with. Um, and there's there's a couple things to take away from this particular slide. Um, one that we're are going to continue to have increases. Um, there's just things we won't have control over and that we can't we have to be required to pay higher costs and then also some of those reductions in in the yellow of just that that work being done at the department of the schools to reduce those costs. So, um
061the biggest things now that we're dealing with increased costs are of course insurance between a 10 to 15% increase. Um our energy costs, uh fuel, those those things are just going to continue to go up because of our um right now. Um Red Rover, that is our um that's our subsystem and that's part of the SD. And so that their costs are increasing and so that will those um increases will come back to the district in some um some form next year. Um but then again we are continuing to decrease costs. um we went through every single contract that we had with ESD and actually um combined we had some um processes that we started here in the in the district and were able to cut through those um those fees down by 30% with
062the ESD along with other MOT costs um to you know our supply needs just watching our our spending really carefully we were able to increase as well so made a lot of progress in that and we'll continue to to watch that every every month forward So jumping into um enrollment, this is actually our April slide. Um so updated April and you can see um you know we we have seen a um a flattening of our enrollment and it did decrease a little bit this this month. Um we saw a decrease of about 17 FTE. Um I took a look at um that decrease was and you can actually see each month we start to see that decrease or each year we start to see that decrease in April. This year it looked like there was
063a number of families that just moved out of out of state um out of area. Um and we did have about seven or eight students go to Insight online school which um I wondered if they have like some kind of promotion right now. It was interesting just on that list there's a whole bunch of insight schools and usually don't see that on a regular basis. So find interesting. So um What do these numbers tell us to budget? Moving into, you know, what we're going to start processing for revenues with our budgeted numbers. Um, I wanted to share just this breakdown. So, the blue, those are the the April numbers that we just just looked at the the previous slide and then the green are the projected um preliminary enrollment orders that we're going to start
064using for um for our revenues that we just the F203 was just opened last night. So, we're going to be able to start processing um and getting those revenues generated through the state. Um basically um you know, I wanted to point out here is that we're going to with our K12 um enrollment, we're going to to um budget a decrease of 38 FTE in K12. Um it's a little hard because I on the theove above K12 there's a total of um of money market um 560 which is numbers that enrollment that they give me that they plan for and I don't have any so I'm just reporting that but that's the um the total that they are projecting um and again we're going to project the increase of 38 the overall budget So, I broke
065it out by school here and I won't go through every every school, but I just wanted you to see um how how budget is looking through current April FTE um versus June of of last year. Um and just, you know, our schools are um fluctuating. So, this is each one of our elementaryaries. Um I think T is probably seen the biggest drop. Um, you know, we are projecting with hinders. We just don't know with hinders what's what's going to happen. We we had a 10% decrease last year. So, we're anticipating the same. Hopefully, that might be the case. We're getting them. They are they are enrolling. So, that's Yes. Can I back the last um the K12 poll enrollment 45.649 49. So that's the number you're budgeting for. What did you say about your budgeting
066for next year? I'm sorry. Yes, that should say 2627. I think but green it's it's the Okay. Yeah. So So as of April 25 26 we are at 628. Correct. So we're projecting the increase in enrollment for a budget for next year or am I reading that wrong? No. And that's So, so K12 we are we are budgeting a decrease of 38 but that that total has the market in it. So they're actually producing or are anticipating an increase inflates that what what does that do to our budget? I don't know. So an increase in the budget for new market doesn't help us like an increase in the budget for K12 financially. Correct. That is I guess I'm just asking what's going to make us not be here again next year about having less kids
067than we thought we were going to have. You know what I'm saying? So I'm trying to figure out. So, we're balancing the budget off of our our revenues with the decrease of 38 and um and and staying on on track with our our plan um with a decrease of 38. Does that make sense? Yeah. What was the decrease in K for the for this year versus last year? Um that was that was 40 right around 40 for this year where we are the budget. Sorry but I recall a conversation at the beginning of the year where there was 70 less kindergarteners than we were expecting. Where's that on this this number? because I heard 40 less, but I thought at the beginning we were at 70, right? 90 less in September than we were with
068our budget. When we started in September, we had 90 less kids than we're budgeting for. And it um it fluctuated and it it actually did increase. So, our average um came up and um we're looking at to budget now a decrease of 40 I was like when the light goes on like oh my god [laughter] No, I didn't mean I just meant I said the right thing. They're understanding. No more applause. No more applause. That's right. No more applause for her. Julie back. Oh my gosh. Okay. So, um any questions about this slide? our our fluctuation in elementary. So then moving on to secondary, same thing. Um you can see where we where we're at compared to um June of last year to where we're budgeting for this year. I noticed on the I don't
069really call it the Rob slide. Um we're expecting a decrease in um start kids for next year. Where is that number coming from? So of literacy. So, we just, you know, I I took a um a look at the over, you know, over the past years and it it looks like we traditionally sent about 30% of our our our juniors and seniors um to Running Start. So that was just a percentage of our high school students that are moving into learning. Um sorry, are there any questions about um elementary or secondary up and down by can see that you know Black Hills there's a a little bit of an increase there and that is due to just graduating or so we have a small senior classes graduating and our nth and tth grade cohorts are
070just a lot bigger and so graduating but there's a slight increase for black girls. German to create an alliance and that was undercover. So let's talk a little bit about revenue projections. This is one of these deals where we do this presentation and post it like a week before this meeting and then last night they said FO3 is available. So we haven't had enough time of the FO3. Um to do sort of formal revenue projection but you know basically we have um we have the major budget drivers from OPI so we can more or less infer uh what we're looking at in terms of new revenue we don't have any great information right now on federal funding and thankfully federal funding is a relatively modest part of our overall pot but we expect to hear
071something here in the next four weeks okay now I'm hoping that many of these are not surprises to you because they were mostly what we were expecting when we did our legislative update. Um but in terms of the final what the insiders called the GF drivers but um for the regular these are just legislative uh cost increases that they pass on to school districts to generate our funding. So health benefit rates are up 5.1%. Um certificated salary base is up 2.6% which is basically the IPD and same for our on salary allocation. Um the legislature makes a little distinction between the IPD they use for inflating our Medicap and the one that they use for inflating salary allocations. So the one for levy is a tenth higher 2.7%. And so one good sort of overall
072uh metric for gauging what revenue looks like for districts is just to look at the per people funding rate because what that's doing is it's incorporating assumptions about salary non salary health benefits and you see 2.86 makes sense because the cola is 2.6 but you got to factor in the fact that health benefits rates are up 5%. So it's weighing all of that and it's saying you can expect about 2.9% more. Um, let's talk about this a little bit because I think this is truly new information. So, you know, uh, like a lot of districts, we've been agonizing over the situation with transitional kindergarten. We are deeply committed as a district to this. Um, it was like very it was no question the most difficult decision we had made last year in terms of going
073from two classrooms to one. something that the legislature was signaling that they are no longer going to be supporting. Um this year we had made the decision we need to keep this program alive even if they're not going to fully support it. Um and they had not told us how many seats they were going to allocate to us um before we had to make that decision. Uh we actually got some modestly good news here. Um and so you see the little circle that I inserted in the the columns there. So, uh, seven rows down is the water school district. And then if you kind of keep your eye on that plane going all the way over the right, you'll see that I circled 16.6. So, basically what OPI did here is they um, I tried
074to confirm this with other districts. Um, anybody that had fewer than 20 slots looks like they operated on a floor. So, you see how 20 there were two districts below us, a university place in I just picked a sampling from Newington here. you know, they had like 34 39 flats last year, they went to 20. Uh, but when we had 16.6, we weren't reduced. So, it looked like 20 was sort of an operating floor for them, which is great. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we we gave the OSPI representative a real uh a real passionate speech when they were here. Um, who knows whether that impacted them. Let's just say it did. Um but it was uh we're very passionate about this program and um we're hopeful that it doesn't
075remain one class forever that um you know all the continued learning experts are telling us like this is making a really big difference for our kiddos that need that at age four and early. So uh this was some good news. We also have some information on the the at least the projections of the next two years of EPO. Um and you can see essentially that the difference between um what they show projecting for 26 27 and 2728 is just the fact that every year they're going to adjust that levy lid by IPD. And so that's should be worth somewhere between four and $600,000 a year for us um until we meet the max of what the authorized. Um, and I would like to spend a little bit of time here. So, last year, um, members
076that have been on the board for a while, this slide probably looks familiar to you. Uh, we took you through what we're calling our budget progress at that time. Um, where we were going through program by program, procedure by procedure, like are we in a best practice space? Are we doing way efficiently in a way that you should be doing. Um, does this look familiar? I hope it does because it was last April that we presented this to you. So, now we're here to talk about what we did. Um, we don't have the time to go through all of these. That's not my intent this evening, but our intent is twofold. Wanted to show you that we did follow up literally on every single and then I picked out four of them. And then if
077you have questions about those, happy to We made some pretty impactful uh changes in facility use. Um one of them was making a change to hiring a custodian to do one of their work days this Saturday so that you're not paying overtime for every activity that happens on a Saturday. We call that person an athletics custodian. It's a great hire. Actually, they ended up being one of our start custodians. They won the starting award. Harvey Smith was his name. He's been excellent. Um that has been just a really uh successful um change of approach. Uh we also um there was a schedule in the district that you know nobody really could really track where it came from but it was at least 10 years old that sort of had a list of activities and said
078how many overtime hours should be attached to like bringing up the stadium after the football game or whatever the particular event was 10 hours, four hours, six hours. but no real like explation of like what the assumptions were on why it's been hours and so we put the little work group together and revised that and that is a pretty one of the significant reasons why we've had a big drop in we just revamped um you know what it's going to be three hours of overtime to do this and we'll do it as best as we can in those three hours and and in fact the job has got done um partially because we have great students I mentioned that before we Um, also wanted to mention, uh, you know, there's some people probably watching or
079in the audience that are really passionate about this. It doesn't affect a board member, but boy does it affect an employee. Burglar alarm bird alarm calls in the middle of the night. This district used to have just tons of burg alarm calls. Um, and just kind of reflects the dispatching of police to its facilities, which a lot of times generating overtime. Um, We completely revamped that procedure so that um we're not getting those nuisance trips, you know, and we're not paying overtime for those nuisance trips like a trip alarm. Um and it's it's made a huge difference um in quality of life for some of our employees, but also it's reduced over time. Um and then maybe if I were to highlight the final thing is the cluster of changes we've made to athletics. We
080weren't really sure how it was going to go in terms of transportation. Um recall like you know in years past we were ramping up buses to transport kids back within town you know for certain activities. So we went to a model of um not transporting within county and then at the middle school level understanding that these kids can't drive so they need a drop. You got to drop them. Um, and we've done that. And then we also told the ads like communicate with us. If there's exceptions or things where we need to problem solve together, we can make something happen. And we've done that. And we've seen just a really significant um drop in the number of routes um and therefore the number of logistical mixups because you're not arranging so many buses for every
081single activity even if it's miles away. So we feel we feel like that has been um quite successful and uh we don't we don't feel like it's had impacted the kids. That was the thing that we didn't want to do is we didn't want to impact the kids and see their experience in our activities. Um we wanted to make it more efficient for adults and not impact and we feel like you have achieved that. I'm going to ask to take you through um the last Okay. So, um I have the privilege, one of my new roles is to work with the safety committee and um with our safety supervisor, Ross Wman. Um one of the projects we've taken on um with the help of Dan Wright is to um update our emergency radio system. So,
082we've you know had this system for a very long time. Um and um you know, we sort of dove into what what are what are other systems that are out there that could um give us better coverage and um and we we found a a company called Relay um which I believe are on the East Coast, but they sent um they sent out a bunch of test radios for us to use and um you know, we've dealt with things like unable to use reception in some of our areas of the Um these these systems have um they're connected to like three or four different cell towers. So they'll reach out to one tower if that's not working and they reach out to the the next. I mean it's just the they tested all over um
083the district and and they were um really successful in that. So um over at L Rock even at Little Rock the test. Yeah. Okay. I think there was one area like way off W Creek like up in the the the forest that it didn't work and that was it. That was the one place that they found that it did not. So, um but the good news is is that with that the the transmission if um if they're out of out of range, it actually holds on to what was said and when they do come back into range, then um it repeats what it's going to say. So, the system itself is just really um it's phenomenal and it's going to work really well for our um for our area here. So, we did um plan
084to purchase uh We're going to revamp transportation with all of these radios. So, the drivers will actually write up on their pedals. Um, and so it will be the driver's um radio and they're just small. They almost look like little um small um cell phones. Um so it's or they can wear them around the necks. And then we're going to put one in each building um for each office um for each OP to have so that um if an emergency they can um communicate directly with um superintendent um Ross or um our SRO. So it's just um I think it's going to be a really good good upgrade and it's actually cost the monthly fees are actually less than our old outdated windows. So yeah. Uh and then the other project was um in uh
085people transportation with our all of our different systems on the bus on the buses. So our GPS um ways for um parents to be able to track the bus routing systems. Um there are lots of different um different companies that provide different services, but we've been in all of them and working to upgrade. I haven't quite made the final decision yet, but that's going to be going by the end of the year. So, um, and also see a goal of about 50,000 so far of what we're we're hoping that that's going to work out those test scor. So, okay. So, another thing just just touching base about the ASB, one of the concerns is that by shifting the um the game management um uh and using ASB funds to um to cover game management, we're
086worried about our ASB funds and that's on balances. So, they're still right there at about, you know, over a million. I know we talked about that before. um the the cost themselves to ASV like right now for gamers I think it's just under 28,000 um so they're managing that they have the game staff and um and then and then those funds come right out of the SP they haven't come out of we haven't charged that for this year so um it's about half and half um so it it's just not going to drain our um our wanted to share that because I know that was They're also fundraising a lot. Okay. And so just now looking at compensation costs and an increase for next year. So the big the big thing we want you to
087understand is that you know we get 2.6% IPD from the state. Um it's not it doesn't fully fund all of our positions which we've talked about in the past but it's not just an increase of 2.6. it's actually a increase of 4.34. So there's the um additional stepping column. So when we're moving up the salary schedule um and then any other kind of um increase to our you know our health insurance or payroll taxes um that is a total of 44%. So that was just really I wanted to share those those kind of hidden costs that it's not just 2.6 it's So you're saying that we get 2.6 from the state, but in actuality plus the district 4.34. Okay. So So a net increase. Yes. Which is is pretty reasonable. I've dealt with that much
088higher than that. Our second column Right. And so currently this is where where we're at with our um projected staffing changes um shifts that we as we have gotten retirements um and resations um ones that we won't be filling due to our enrollment um projections moving forward. So you can see a decrease of 5.7 at elementary 6 at at middle school 1.3 at high school and then um and then we're actually going to have to add um I'm sorry additional we'll need to add additional 1.3 at high school and then a point um so it's a net difference of 4.2 as we move into um finishing our budget. questions. All right, that was our presentation. Thank you so much. Just I guess I just wanted to note that I don't think Rob formally took back
089his formal thing that happened. Thank you, Julie. I'm still thinking about it. That's fair. I get that. Okay, we will now move on to action policy 524 question. Kevin, would you introduce this? I I don't have much to add to 5254. You've seen this now a couple times. I think I reverted the the memo back to kind of the original sort of people short and sweet. You recall the last memo kind of had a breakdown on that director beard held together that kind of crosswalk policies. So, you've had a bunch of that information. You've had quite a few conversations with him. So, I think this is back open to to you to uh discuss and potentially take action tonight. President Trump. I'd like to talk about it, but like I have concerns about it. So
090I would like to speak in favor of it. Um so I want to clarify a few things. Um we've had um public speak on these policies a couple different times now. Um the board has received some emails about it as well. I think that there's been some allegations against Casey and um other previous board members about some kind of master plan to implement this policy. But um I'm just here today to tell everyone that I'm actually the one that uh asked for this policy to be moved forward in the process. Uh did it completely on my own without uh talking to any other board members. I just called up uh Casey, the board president, and asked him uh for our protocols if we could add this into a future meeting. Um which she agreed to
091do, which is the right of any board member. Um to me, I think there's a couple different things going on. Um I appreciate Melissa putting together the comparisons and the polls here. civility and kind of some of that information lasting that I was zoomed into but uh I do think they complement each other and they are not um you know they don't necessarily over overlap per se but um I think one of the things that I can do here in the community is let's make sure that our school environment whether it's classroom, wherever it might be in the school, stay professional, uh conversations be appropriate. And this is the first thing that kind of wraps the um wraps the speech together. Um you know, we could talk about how there's there's state laws or there's
092rules or there's different things like that. Um you can say that for almost any policy that we have. Um, as far as there might be a law for it, there might not be a lot for it. So, um, to me, this is just something I think that's important that I've heard from people in the district, um, parents, family, friends, um, you name it, where I want to just continue to not anybody's speech or anything like that speech at all whatsoever. Just a couple of things that I I wanted to express here. I think the civility policy is more about focusing on interpersonal behavior. Um whereas before focuses on when and when and in what capacity staff and again this is all staff. This is not This is not just about teachers. This is about all
093staff administration. Everybody and one capacity staff can speak official versus private speech. Uh use district resources, email, um buildings, classrooms and social media. Um they address different problems and work together not against each other. There's no conflict. I think this fills important gaps. The civil the civility policy does not cover social media blurring of rules. Uh does not address the legal distinction between capacity speech which represents the district and regulated and private speech. 4 also explicitly balances first amendment rights with the district in for an orally. In today's reality, constant social media polarized discourse and blurred lines between personal and professional rules um make make this policy more modern and necessary for where we're at today. This policy gives clear guidance protective speech on public issues is still subject to discipline if it harms the
094district's operations or the employees ability to do their job. Um I want to clarify something too. I think um one of the public speakers at one point in a previous meeting said something about this policy allows the school board to dictate how it's used or how staff should be penalized. That's not the job of of the school board. That's not within our purview at all whatsoever. We can implement a policy, but we don't regulate it. We don't we don't discipline teachers or staff or counselors or administrators. that's not our job. Um, so the the idea of a school board, whether it be this one or any future school board, using this to somehow wield power um over staff or anything like that, it's um kind of a ridiculous thing. It is a standard law policy
095um with no changes to it. Yes, it's discretionary, but we have lots of discretionary policies. We have one So, I don't know that there's a difference there. Um, to my understanding, there's more than a couple dozen school districts that have accepted this policy. Um, my understanding there's almost districts. Um, and then as well as districts of every kind. I see rural districts. I see urban districts. I see small, very small districts without even high school. I see districts that are massive, some of the biggest in the state. I see more more liberal areas, more conservative areas. There doesn't seem to be a distinction of what kind of districts are using this policy or implementing this policy. So, um, as far as some master plan um, or some will of the board to use this in
096an inappropriate way that this simply doesn't exist. Um I if there are concerns with this policy were too fast and someone were to use it inappropriately or discipline or fire staff members I hope they would go through the proper mechanisms to that process or whatever it may be shape or form on Yeah, I would like to talk about I don't think is about attack formal complaints. I have no idea. She made a request made this is just the policy. Absolutely. Provides clarity, director, all the this policy. Yes, my understanding more. I think every single school district around us has this in place all around. Yeah, I'm I'm going to encourage uh no vote on that. Um I think we have heard building educators about their concern about the chilling effect on the free speech rights.
097I've received more outreach on this particular policy than I've received on anything since I've been here um on this schoolboard, albeit not a very long time, but um here's a sample of what I heard. Educators are worried about abuse um a limiting of their free speech. Um they're concerned it will be used against them. Um, it's creating fear and suspicion. They don't understand what problem we're trying to solve here, but they are aware of a former school board member complaining and asking the um superintendent to intervene with a member of our staff who's um uh has high profile with the union. Um, one person described this as uh taking this action would be driving a deeper wedge between the school board and the staff. One of our analysis on this policy particularly called out that
098they standards and abuse. I find the standards here vague. our educators and our staff signed to the standards here. They are very concerned about the chilling effect on their free speech and I think bringing this forward is just kind of further driving that wedge and causing that harm. Other school districts, other places might be able to muddle through a vague policy if they have trust uh between educators and staff and their board and their administration. um we might be able to muddle through a vague policy and that situation um but that lack of trust, the fact that we have it right now should concern us more than any policy. We should be more concerned about that lack of trust than any particular policy that we're talking about. So, you know, I would I want us
099to take some time to have more conversation with our educators and our staff about this policy before taking this step. I don't think we've really brought them along so that they feel that this is a policy that supports them. And so I'd like to encourage my fellow board members to vote against it and commit to building greater trust between our educators and our staff in school. I'd like to see us and talk about perhaps rewriting it because I think there is some vague things in there that are very difficult. I think what it's done is it's made some of the comments about the policy and some of the emails that we've gotten about the policy, they're they're not accurate. And so I think we need to take whatever vague language there is and clarify because
100I think it's going to be hard to have credibility with the people that were as if it affects everybody. So I think sort of presidential credibility there. I think we got to I I think the concept is great, but I think the language of it is poor in this particular case. So, I would like to see us uh take it off of a second reading and put it back on the first reading and talk about it some more. That's where I'm, like I said, in the last meeting. I'm really worried about um and I'm I'm worried about employers being responsible for public perception versus actual conduct. Um so that that's that's my that's my biggest concern. Um that's interesting solution, Rob. I I wonder if we might be able to look at the civility policy
101and if that doesn't address your needs tied and what what needs to be disability policy to address the needs. Uh I'm really concerned um about um the private citizen part of this. That's my that's my my biggest concern. And uh and I and I do and I do think this civil policy covers that. I also if we're going to take action, we'll vote now. I I point to further discussion about this. So Rob, I also or something like that. Figure out focus groups. talk about it some of the language um it is I think when you said perception that's the biggest problem I have with it too perception is a really hard thing to let me clarify on this Obviously Rob wants to be involved. Uh yeah, how about you know whatever that I would
102hope that uh that kind of how do you do that or what my thought would be to um Wendy and DJ and you know whatever but it's the first meeting in including all the folks but someone from staff um needs to be part of this not ourselves. Yeah. Uh and then also um I'm Julie said it and we're not sure about what problem this is trying to solve. That that group is not going to be very successful if we're not sure about what problem is um is trying to be solved. And so maybe that group can I don't know I don't know if someone can say it here. Uh, I don't want to put anyone on the spot or if that group should discuss what the problem is kind of what the problem is. Uh,
103I'm not sure. Does have anything published about why this would be a there's a 100 school districts that have I would be curious because I keep hearing that argument. I don't think that's a very good argument to say that to say that it's um a pol it sounds like it's something that we're trying to do that nobody else has done and that's not the case at all. So I would I would want to know what the purpose of it was in the first place. I think it's hard to come in my opinion. It's difficult for any work group to come up with a solution if we don't know what problem they're trying to solve for. And having a clear problem statement that the solution that this policy is seeking to address, I think would be
104very helpful to give guidance to a group. I think I think to point out the the laws that comes out with where this is introduced and at the beginning of this it's really a lot about first amendment that sort of introduced multiple policies at the time. Um and I think part of they they reference some cases in the Breton the Breton free space case I think is referenced in there. So there was there was aspects that were going on at the time when these policies were requested and developed um that may have again the context may have changed. We we I didn't do any really direct outreach to was around someone and I think that could be part of our process to see certainly more of a conversation. I don't believe any more of that
105mostly. It's hard. It was hard. It doesn't it's not crystal clear. I think even to that question of why really was this developed that I think I've shared most of what was shared in that in that update to you in memo kind of memo form. I did not write the number of what you could find online over the last few months was really taking it out of that and trying just putting it in an order to try to make sense of this. But again, I don't think that question of why was this specifically developed to say this is the issue that occurred that this policy help you address. I don't know. I can't answer that problem. more about feedback. specific particular problem. Well, so like the problem statement will be distraction. I don't know exactly
106what that means. But that's what I I'm not looking for, you know, uh like the prayer, you know, very much prayer thing. I'm not looking for an example like that. But the problem that we're trying, you know, you said reduce distractions like that's the starting of how you can come up with something that would work. I just I'm just trying to figure out what is it that we're trying to prevent? What are we trying? No, it might be helpful, you know, to come up with, you know, before we're going to infringe on someone's first amendment rights who's employed by the school district. I think we'd have a really clear sense of the kind of speech or the situations that would represent a significant disruption to district operation. Those kinds of things have to be defined
107and it would be helpful to have some actual scenarios or examples of the kinds of thing that we are trying to prevent. Yeah. I think one of the big the big things that probably is that I see in there is probably social media and being clear about the impact of social media is that it's grown and expanded since these policies. We really don't have social we don't have policies like regulating social media. So, this really is that probably is the number one thing that comes out of here because in in terms of First Amendment, I don't think they're really talking about testifying at the capital as being something that outside of doing something outrageous. I think social media is probably the number one driver of this. But again, I think that a smaller group could
108dive into that a little bit further and I think again help provide clarity as if you want to move down that driver. Um, I mean that that is one of the rationale for having a policy like this that is that that is the crux of this. A lot of social media like a lot of first amendment rights are covered in a variety of other things and even references um at the bottom of this policy around religious protected activity, political activity that's protected um social media as well as things that we don't really have guidance in. Would it be helpful? Give us a summary of the procedure because I think that would answer a lot of Yeah. And since and since the procedure is not those are not board approved. Um I think the smaller work
109group could kind of look at that in kind of conjunction with staff so that then that procedure is not going to come forward for board approval. So I think that's um one of the things I think the smaller group to look at around this cross-section and help explain I think that smaller group comes back and help explain to the rest of the board as they do this analysis um procedure that would be part of the implementation here. probably different. Yeah, I would like to make sure that our educators in our union are represented on this group. They have come they have come forward to us concerned about their speech as union representatives. participate representative. I just wanted you asked that we provide some guidance on to Kevin on the focus group and I'm just asking
110that the union be at the table uh with this group and um I would also like to be a part of this conversation. Can I just The reason the reason reason we have first reading and second reading is to give time for input. So, you know, most of the time, you know, we're not having input on drones, right? Um, but that's kind of the point is for staff or I guess a little person. Thank you, R. So, I mean, everyone has the opportunity whether they choose to or not. Everyone has the opportunity to provide input that we should be considering. So, I just I wanted to everyone has actually Yeah, that's that's I'm not I'm not making a motion. I'm just like the discipline policy. There's a lots of people they don't you know they
111don't come and talk to us about it before it comes in front of us because staff talks with all you know staff or Kevin and and um the principles and things you know they talk to the staff and get that input and that's what they bring to us. And to your point like since this was brought forward you know by a board member that that work hasn't been I just don't want it to sound like that's unusual. Well, no. Great. Also, No end time. We're just gonna see how this plays out. I don't want to give you Well, I'm saying we get to the end of the year here, lots of things are busy. So, I guess if you're going to allow us some time, like there's not a rush to bring this back like
112in the next month or two. fitted in that policy working to reduce more Rob All those in favor. I will just give you a very quick intro because I I did a quick memo on this that sort of summarized some of the work that was done by um this board in its in its retreat in March. And so um there was lots of conversations about our just building and growing an interest by this board in developing a positive relationship with the city. And so I just I captured some of that. Um at that time we talked about a smaller work group to to develop and maybe to work more frequently. I think maybe there's been a shift in that tone a bit. Is the purpose of that group I think at this point would be
113to to help kind of facilitate and organize a joint meeting um or a series of joint meetings in the future. So that's I think the purpose of a small work group at this point. There are five of them on the ballot. My understanding I just has the council agreed to the two questions. I I don't What we're looking No, they haven't agreed. I don't think that's been talked to them officially because I think what we're talking about now is just getting um representatives from each group to come together to help do more of a mutually kind of facilitated um what the joint meeting would be. So it's not in lie of the joint in le of a joint meeting which is sort of I think how it was perceived at one point even I think
114within this group. Yeah. Did you plan for a joint? Yeah. So it's the it's really more it's not a the two plus two is not in lie of a joint meeting. It is to it would mean kind of small like for a small duration just to develop the joint meeting and more to ex more just to stay a solid commitment by both groups to do this in a productive manner. I think should be together. and not to have. So, it would not be Yeah, I was just wondering if they if they have if council has agreed to the approach of to having a two plus two. I I've met with I met with the mayor and the city administrator and in concept they agreed and so we kind of talked about that that was the
115next a good step moving forward. So, they agreed with that. I don't the city council probably hasn't heard that at this time. Um so, I think they're committed to moving forward. That's really the end goal of a joint meeting happening in the near future. The only action that you if you would want and I guess it doesn't even like to be formal action, but this just like who would you like to represent the board at that meeting at that time? marijuana. First thing you wanted to do is formalize. Okay. When when we were talking about in there's probably been some conversations since when we were talking about it at the retreat, I was thinking that this two by two would I mean it's great to to make a joint meeting, but I thought maybe that
116this group also be able to move forward on some stuff. Um, you know, like some of the Gosh, I'm so sorry. I think that can happen if we go through the agenda. Get it down. more so that way I want to make sure that it doesn't advance. I'd like to I' I'd like to, you know, kind of ask that we move like to have the meeting more quickly. Um, I heard from council and the mayor that they are right now in the uh process of building their budget. There are ways that they'd like to partner with the school district, but if they're going to be partnering with the school district, they have to be part of their budget and their budget process. So my fear is if we take too long, we kind of miss
117the opportunity for partnerships that we might benefit from um just through our mutual budget processes. So um so I would just like to ask that we not miss an opportunity by waiting to and and not that I want to put more work on me with Ty, but uh that's what I was imagining like those conversations would be happening. Um, and granted that's kind of more work than they would bring a joint union, but uh that's that's what I was imagining this group would like they're a more nimble group and they can talk about shared facilities or you know Ty's been talking about shared facilities for over a year, but if this group would start working through that, we don't I don't know that we need a number of joint meeting once away to have that
118conversation. I trust that and Tai would be able to have that with Yeah, the initial the initial response um from the city I don't know maybe they don't fully I mean we don't fully understand how that would prevail or like a smaller group they weren't super interested because they had proposed I think in the the meeting that occurred a couple weeks ago they proposed you know um pairing up board like city council and board members to sort of help build the relationship and some of that conversation there's different ideas around how to move this forward in addition to sort of a joint meeting but I think that was in the end I kind of heard from most everyone around the joint meeting relative. I think it would be fantastic to back. That's That's what I'm
119talking about. I would like to say a couple things. So, I watched I watched an entire um meeting from the city council last week. I want to be careful how I say this, but uh I heard from almost everybody in that meeting that there was an unwillingness to meet um by the board members who weren't there. Um that is just simply not true at all whatsoever. Um I have been in constant contact with one city council member. I've met with that person's office. office myself over an hour. Um I have spoke constantly with the city about different things. I approached them about shared use facilities um well over a year ago which initiated more conversation from our superintendent and I think led to a meeting with Mel and um one of their staff members. So,
120uh definitely some frustration. Um from the second this uh proposed joint meeting was scheduled, um I had said that I would be out of state on a work trip. Um I communicated that with um our board president, our entire board in a public meeting. I also told it to Kevin and I told it to the city manager and I told it to a council member. So the idea of all the people that weren't there um having zero willingness to talk to them or communicate with them or be there is simply not true um and disingenuous. So um I look forward to working with them. Um I have wanted that since the old leadership at the same leadership. It doesn't matter to me. I just want to meet with them, chat with them. Uh Unfortunately, the
121the the meeting that they had didn't align with my personal schedule, my work schedule, and um I couldn't make it happen. Um uh but I just want to clarify that there is a willingness from the board to meet with the city um and to work through things. I think there are some things that would make the district, the city better um if we can do that and put that together. Um I'm all for it. Um but back action plenty of times. So, um I'm only speaking for myself. I can't speak for anybody else. Yeah. So, I just want to make sure that that is 100% clear. Um yeah, thank you. Well, as the newest member of the board, I've been learning a lot over the last, you know, it's been a whole four months and
122I learned a lot about protocols and forums and majorities and all of those kinds of things. And one of the things I brought up at the at the our retreat that Melissa referenced was um I felt like we had gotten off to a rough start as a board and that I was not prepared to combine our rough start with another board until we could kind of get some things figured out. And um I also said that I wasn't going to be at that meeting and that I was also out of state and in spite of that I got a I got a Zoom invite to the meeting that if I would have answered I would have violated state law by joining this meeting because then we would have had a quorum and which if you
123don't know a qu forum is three out of three out of the five of us are having a conversation has anything to do with school district business. It's a public meeting posted. We have tell people we're going to have this public meeting. So I was I would have violated state law by even zooming in and being part of this meeting. So I couldn't do it. And um I'm I'm very interested in collaborating with the city. I think I think that's a valuable thing for us to do, but I don't think it's a valuable thing for us to do. um it's not collaboration. And you know, at that meeting, a couple of the comments were um they could tell where our priorities were by not being at the meeting. That was that was one of the
124comments that one of the one of their council members made, inferring that my priorities are not collaboration, and that's why I wasn't happy. That's um in the least that's anti- collabor collaboration and uh in the at the most it's reckless and those kind of comments kind of comments like um we're somehow bullying you by not being at this meeting. So I want to make it clear that I intend to cooperate with them but we have over 000 students in the Tamar school district. We have over 900 employees. Correct me if I'm wrong. We have we're answered we we answer to 50,000 citizens I think or so in in the Tumblr school district. The city of Tumblr has less than half of that amount of employees, less of half of that amount of citizens and their
125structure of government is completely different than ours. So I want to speed up a meeting because they have budget issues. So, I want to be clear about that. I want to I want to have a meeting, but it's time to have a meeting because it has to be public. It has to be it has to be agenda. All those things have to happen. And it sounds to me like we have some interpersonal things to work out between us and them before I want to have a public meeting that talks about, you know, collaboration. So, um, the comments I read that Julie and Melissa stated were accurate when they they said where we were like, I appreciate how you guys represented where you probably was valuable to me. So, I'm rambling now, but I'm interested in
126collaboration at the right time and it's not the right time yet. I'm just not available. I was out of stage clearly in before I deal. So to me that commitment is a higher priority than people. I support other board members that higher priority working their job for their family incredibly hard. People don't understand people. It's embarrassing. This is this is not a staff incredible amount of time work hours and hours and hours and hours just for our specific exactly what their role is and what they're supposed to do. That never happens. Reason we have communicating board meeting out invite the day before none of our people. Yes. people obviously knew but for the large part the other 99% we didn't know this meeting was going so yes I want families to be able to give
127their feedback short notice meetings that get blasted out that is not good at all absolutely agree with them I heard a comment public comment I don't understand what's going on be honest I don't understand what's going on I don't understand the city council and mayor that knows immediately second that two board members Then they board member days later who automatically is not there. comments and they don't want that because offensive comments unable to commenting people for having threatening comments like threatened us. I don't know who say that. Maybe they should follow their own policies. But I do want to make it perfectly attended. Um, I just want to clarify what I feel like I heard from members of the city council and the mayor about their concerns. Um, I heard concerns that they had requested
128a meeting beginning in January and that they did not feel like we were getting a timely response to actually get a meeting scheduled. um concern that they believed that um on this at this meeting that um at least two members of the board would be there along with um representatives from district staff who could speak to some things that they had questions about. I wanted to discuss but at the last minute um direct staff were directed not to attend. Um, I had concern that, um, we put an item on one of our agendas at the last minute, accusing them of brief contracts. Um, that forced them to come to our meeting um, during this period of time to have a discussion with us about that. um and that they felt like we were having conversations
129about the SRO partnership without part of the other part of the partnership in the room. Um, so I just want to, you know, clarify, I think, some of the concerns that I think I heard from them, um, about, you know, what I think led to, um, and is leading to the need for us to do some, uh, repair work uh, on our relationship with the mayor and the council. I'm not sure that this conversation right now is is helping us move forward to a more collaborative relationship with the council. Um, I really want to make sure that we set our sights on the fact that the same people who elected us elected them and I think they have an anticipation that we engage with them in a professional um manner and and engage in conversations
130because at the end of the day, this is about the district and the well-being of of the kids and the families uh that we're serving. And um and this is their mayor and their council as well. So, oh I um so uh there were there were some hurt feelings that were said on the 14th. I heard a lot of hurt feelings tonight, but what I what else I heard tonight is that everyone's interested in working with the city on something. So I think that's the positive. And I and am I wrong? I'm looking at everyone. I don't think I've ever Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I I'm I'm just saying it out loud in case there's any doubt from anyone. I heard that everyone's interested in working with the city and I and um but there
131and and I also heard there's just a lot of hurricanes on both sides and uh we can we can work with that. working this out because our kids are dependent on our studio and depending on them to help to support them as well. I can address some of those concerns. January meeting was coming away. not to tell anyone or discuss it. Maybe there was some conversation, but it wasn't meeting agendas. I know about late February. I want to address the concern you elect people and talking to that a little bit more about 45% in the city of I think we should probably need to knock that out today. All right. I will move on to the ice and let people up. I'm a little confused by this song here, but I thought we just discussion
132to come back and finish governance. I don't know why we're approving this now and it's not complete already. I would like to finish our work session. So I had the same question um when I saw um the consent to generate called Kevin um well and he said we adopt we we made changes to it and since we're not having our next questions he thought we would uh we would adopt the changes that we've already made and then we would do it again after the other changes. I guess that makes sense. I don't know what I have to make anyction. session. really the changes have been made up. I just the way the protocols that we already decided upon would not but we were were I thought we were operating under but we we agreed on
133certain protocols but those protocols wouldn't be in effect. We're talking about approving. We're talking about approving this after we're done. Okay. We're not done yet. But we we did finish like half of them of our protocols and we agreed on them and so they won't go into effect until I I guess I I don't see why we can't you know at least approve the protocols that we've already agreed to. Well, I would also think that as we as we were approving proto protocols when we got to some we went back and changed some of the other ones. I don't want to I don't want to approve a protocol that we're going to change later based on the information we have at the next time we get together. Are we revisiting any decisions we already made?
134Well, we didn't make any decision. Yeah. I I'm just very confused about there was some agreement to move forward. We didn't know millions of dollars. Is there a motion? Thank you. Superintendent report. All right. I will try to keep this a little bit brief. So, um I'll just start with a couple. We've been doing some strategic spotlights. This one is from Peter G and Mrs. Wilson's class and our creative curious innovators these students plan wrote published their very first book. Um and so I thought uh when this shared that some of the work that happens around bringing their educational practices to real life um and so um they're just not completing assignment they're creating something that's meaningful they take ownership. Um they share their voice with others. So again, I think uh these are the
135kinds of examples of of things happening in our classroom that we need to be celebrating. They're really aligned to our strategic plan. Here's another one. Um this was shared um this picture shared with permission by her mom was in our our staff celebration and I hope it's okay to share tonight. Um this is one of our custodians and our Arbing team, which is a registered behavior technician um who every day invites the student to lend a helping hand um in the school. really created a meaningful opportunity for connection every day um this really strong sense of belonging and um again the students made incredible progress and I think it's because of outreach like this um that that has that that that happens and so this is what inclusion we start to say what does inclusion
136look like in our schools this is what we want it to look like and this is how it comes to life in our schools on a daily basis so um so we have folks doing some incredible work out there and we always have a lot of work to do because as as many students and families that I can share this we have others because we're disconnected and and we're not doing this for them. And so I think there's this push pull that we continue to have. Um but there it's like a reminder that we can do great things with our kids and great things can happen. Um and again takes a ton of work and a ton of commitment by the staff and I just really appreciate that. I do want to recognize um Wednesday
137was administrative professionals day. Um not only here in Tunwater but nationwide. It's an important um just day to recognize the outstanding individuals who are essential to our success here in this in in this room um and also districtwide. Um across our school district, our administrative professionals are professional that care deeply about our schools and kids and staff. Um they are deeply committed to serving this community. They often work behind the scenes, right? They're the ones that get this meeting room set up um who get you cupcakes or dinner. Um and so they do meaningful things across um schools every single day. I do just want to send I think just publicly in this meeting today um our uh our executive assistants to the board and to me Becky Parsons. So Becky Becky is an acceptable
138organizer, responsive, steady leader, um really critical to the effective governance of this group and certainly of myself. And so really to Becky and all our incredible administrative professionals across the district, thank you for your dedication, your expertise and the vital role we play for our district. Casey mentioned about volunteers and this is the perfect week to do it. National Volunteer Week um established in 1974. This is a time to recognize and celebrate the impact of volunteers across the country. Here in Tom Water, we are incredibly grateful for the impact of volunteers across this district. Um their time, their heart, their dedication that we've come into our schools, their commitment helps us build stronger, a more connected community. Um we want to thank all of them to make them last schools. This is the 40th anniversary
139of the month of the military child. Um it is an important recognition honoring the strength, resilience and sacrifice of our military connected um students. This year's theme is military children and youth strengthening in every story highlights their everyday courage of these students and their unique journeys um as they navigate as part of the military family. Each of their stories reflects their adapt adaptability, perseverance, and quiet strength. The qualities that enrich our schools and they strengthen our community. From transitions between schools to times spent apart from loved ones or military children demonstrate resilience beyond their years. We're especially proud to recognize them within our own water community. Just this last weekend, we hosted uh a military child celebration um held at Peter G. We had the um band um I say not not the band you're
140thinking of the rock band. The rock band from uh JBLM came and performed. It felt like this um this beautiful concert. They were super super talented. Um the whole crowd I think that was their intendance. I I think really moved by that and their um I don't know the joy that they just brought. It was sunny day and our kids were dancing and smiling and having a good time. ate some little food with them. We played in the gym and we talk about these stories. I got to connect with the family. I was really grateful for this opportunity to be in Tumbed to Tumb Water. Um we've been here for a while and then she tells me that oh we know that we're going to be packing up and moving and moving to Washington DC
141in December of next year with a middle schooler with another elementary age child. Um and you can almost they often sort of the sadness that comes um from like when do we do that? How do we do that? Oh, my kids don't even know yet that that we're moving. Um so that is what this month is about is around us even just taking a moment to recognize that a whole bunch of our students go through that process on a regular basis and all the connections and love and joy and disconnected that you feel will be separated separated and done and then we have to recreate that in another place and just the challenges that come with that. So, we're super grateful and I know um some of you are part of that that group, too.
142So, thank you. Um I wanted to recognize, you know, this is like this is I think my first time bringing this recognition to this group. I made a mistake earlier when I wrote my report was like I I said, I think this might be the first W. And then it was like I was quickly like, "No, Kevin, you've had quite a few of these, including last, if you don't remember, last year we had an undefeated um all state champ wrestler who was uh the week at one point or another, but this week I I wanted in 2026 and it just it just kind of I want to make sure that we're recognizing our, you know, some of our athletes across our district. So, these are two folks. Um Sarah Stevens, right, is the first one
143from Tong Water in Fast Pitch. Um was last week named the WA um is it Gessa? Yeah, Gessa Credit Union credit union athlete of the week. Um they get they this is a statewide honor to recognize student athletes for their outstanding performance and positive contributions to their communities. They get a gift certificate um and a um an e gift card of the credit union. And then this is the second athlete in 2026. So the other one is back in mid January Black Hills basketball player Clint Morell um was recognized as athlete of the week. So, I just want to congratulate both of these. Um, and I'll try to bring them to you and to our community as I get those and um need to pay a little bit better attention because we've had a few
144of them and you haven't probably heard much about them. Um, a couple other things. This was another event that I went to last week um Friday. Uh, this really fun event held at Olympia High School. Held at Olympia High School only because of space. So, it is not it was not an Olympia High School event. It was our district jazz bands from both Black Hills, Tom Water and our middle school, Tom Water Middle School. All those jazz bands performed. It's a fundraiser for them. So, they have these beautiful cakes um that they both did simil auction for. They had dinner and snacks. And probably again, the highlight of this is 150 kids from across both of our high school, middle school learning to swing dance. was a swing dance coach walking him through um kind
145of steps and counting, no music, just like a you know a dance instructor instructing them and then they'd play some music and they would do that. Uh these kids were just partnering up and changing partners and it was a lot of fun and I mean I have not one of those things you kind of see it's like wow like kids can have fun in this way that you don't really see like I think if you think of a high school dance it's like this is everything that you would not think of. Um it was really cool so anyway a great event I think we every year. I remember getting an invite when I first started and said, "Hey, we have a great ticket for you like incoming superintendent and then I didn't really hear about
146it the last couple years and then I heard about it again." And so um I hope we could attend that in the future. And lastly, we mentioned his name. I just want you to see a picture. This is Alec Burkheimimer. He is our new director of capital projects um and facilities. officially began last week and so he has begun already working closely with Mel Murray and will be doing so over the next several months to just ensure a smooth transition as Mel prepares for his retirement um this summer after more than two decades of service to our district. So Alec brings an extensive experience in construction and capital project management including leadership in long-range facility planning and oversight of major public sector projects. His background includes recent work with the Washington Department of Veteran Affairs
147where he managed statewide capital eics and strategic planning. In addition, who has a professional experience, he has strong local ties and a clear commitment to public education in the community. Over the coming weeks, he'll be visiting schools, district sites to build relationships um with his understanding of our system. So, please join me in welcoming Alec to the Combo School District. I think he was trying to say anyway. So, you'll see Alec uh not too long in the distant future probably to this board. So, that's all I had to say tonight. Lots of good positive things going on in the community. Kevin member of the court date program. I asked Kevin, how do you do it? What happened? Get heavy. What do we do? That's completely important in particular about years ago. All right. So, we're
148going to move on to comments. Please keep I'll go first. Um, so I went to to the military event uh at Peter G on a Saturday and um so yes, the band was great and we all dancing and everything. Um but afterwards there was a student um who had been asking to play the piano and I just assumed it was the elementary school student. I just assumed they were going to get up there and start banging on the keyboard. Um He got up. He was fixing the microphone. He was adjusting everything. And he started singing one of the most beautiful I don't know gospel song something. It was amazing. And everyone stopped like like everyone is like the band but the but everyone stopped and stared and watched this boy sing this beautiful song and
149it was just thinking about it. So, um I just So, that was also a a fun It was It was amazing. Yeah. The the the service person like there was like his keyboard was probably tens of thousands of dollars. He's like freaking out. He's like dialing and it was like he was making it doing exactly the sound he wanted to make. It was It was It was Yeah, he was making all the He wanted it to sound a certain way and he's like And then the guy was like, "Oh, you want that?" made me a couple little things and it was doing exactly what he said. It was great. It was very cool. Um I volunteered at East OI. They had the Pacific Science Center come and I volunteered in uh in the library where
150they had different things and stuff and I purposely chose the kindergarten time uh and they were a lot of fun. Um and uh see uh Senator Patty Murray has a new um county staffer and I met with her and connected her with um Kevin. So hopefully um they can connect up my Friday. Awesome. Great. And then um my annual senior presentation report I would write down quotes um and because our kids are amazing and it's a reminder to all of us. We sit here and listen to a lot of reports, adopt a lot of curriculum when we have the money, do all this stuff. Um, and I just I just I share these quotes because we are doing a good job. We are doing a good job in these kids. Um, and these kids demonstrate
151their senior presentations. Um, and they dropped some knowledge that I I um hang them up on my on my bulletin board just to remind me. Um, and so one of the quotes was from me to you don't need validation to be a valid person. Um, uh, another student said, I don't need recognition to be happy. And this might sound sad, but it was freeing for this student. I'm more tolerant of not being accepted. Um, success does not come from a good score. is, you know, about test scores. And then we had a um student, I won't share all the details, um but uh they've been to a few high schools and they said um they said our high school was the best. And I asked why. And they said because the teachers actually care. I
152know they want to be here. They know the students. I love the counselors. And I actually have said I actually have love for my teachers and they had not experienced that in any other high school that they had been to. So I just it's just you know proofs that we are we we are working hard and the kids feel it. So, thanks to the staff and thanks for the stuff that we might have recent. Okay. Um, so I just, uh, I had a great opportunity last Friday to volunteer in the Rise classroom at Peter G. Um and just wanted to say how much I like oh my god really really appreciate our teachers um our pair of professionals who do such amazing I was just really amazed at the work that happens in that classroom
153with kids who really have a lot of challenges but who have so much potential um and um they're really bringing that potential out and each kid and just as we're talking about military families one of the kids I got to spend time with um his mom deployed um and so he was in extra need of hugs from everybody um and just really needs that connection and the the team there is just so amazing in working with him and all the kids. So um kudos to them. They also had a great time at the um at the swing concert. Um I awkwardly swayed by the side though. I think Kevin you and your wife did a better job than maybe I did with some of those dance moves. Um and I also just wanted to give
154a shout out to two uh students uh one from Black Hills and one from uh Tar High School. I had the honor to attend Pizza Clash's um annual gayla. Um and they and a student performed from Black Hills High School, a student performed from Homewater High School. And so I just wanted to give a shout out to Andy and um for their wonderful performance. So thank you and uh yeah, that's it. I'm looking forward to uh more opportunities. I'm hoping to spend some time at Michael um as well and just looking forward to more opportunities to be in the classroom. They were doing they were doing quite well. They were doing quite well. I was impressed, you know, like I I you know, like like all of us, it's a it's a it's a new
155thing. Then I wonder junior high swing dancing was part of PE and I was awesome. Yeah. Yeah. No video real to real. They have Yeah. to work here and I So yeah, um I just want to say thank you to the staff. I know we're in a peak time of the year. We have, you know, all four major bargaining units that are working on things. We've got things that you are um now finding results that we're seeing results of things that you've been working on for a while and they're going the direction that they should be going. And I completely trust you all. respond to the rest. I think we're in good hands. Thanks for being here, man. I know you're quiet down there. No, really. Thank you for being here, putting in the time.
156Dribble's been doing this. This is his second year. Next one's it. That's it. So, Um, want to congratulate the dance team. Fantastic job. So, great job. again. I also attended the military right there, right? They have a bear that they give out and that bear That was very cool that there were parents being deployed and so maybe there was a great event for sure. I didn't get to like rock band but I do want to do I asked around her right there. I know the families appreciated this for sure. So really I was just impressed by our email up real quick. The one highlight I had was situation problems. I didn't think that she got there. Not just the entire Very cool want to see the work that we're actually doing and see other members
157when it's right now everybody else wants Okay. But square dancing was worth it because then it was archery. So that was that was a tradeoff. We had gun racks, too. Well, yeah, there's a gun club. But the last thing I did want to mention, too, is that I got a chance to meet with Jacob Rodriguez. He's the president of the And then our great weather. And we walked around the school. got close to the draft here almost And then I want to end with Mr. Mr. High School when we visited everything. It was great. other kids. It was a rainy windy day. So great, hey, no vanilla excuses. We're all laughing. That's sad because it was dead in there. Nobody is laughing except for me going, "Oh my gosh, this was they didn't get it."
158So then what does he do? goes right over and puts on blame on the rain and of course six kids. Oh yeah, I know this song. Yeah, exactly. So it was just great to see a cool project experiment going on and then a teacher that is able to relate to these kids. So just a lot of cool stuff. Well, more than they live for. Um, since we're approaching on three hours or four almost four hours, I'll keep it short and sweet. Um, again, just want to reiterate that the um the dance team that's amazing. 37 38 36 37 38 titles. It's insane. Um, I don't know how it continue to be so dominant. Really neat. So proud of all the girls. I know how much work goes into it. I just see a little sliver
159of it when I go to my daughter's uh little dance stuff that she does with them. I think some of them were actually her coaches. Um so really cool um achievement for them and their team and their coaches and all that. really amazing. And then as always, all the presenters tonight do an amazing job. Always so much information. You guys remember when I first came on the board, we always talked about giving us all the data from drawings and and all the different finances and do all those things. And you guys give us so much information, so much so understand. So even for No applause. No applause for uh that's all I got. That's a good one to end on. So good luck. Right. Rob goes after with no further business coming before the board
160meeting at 8:55 p.m.