001[Music] it does it does it feels like it's nice not to have it on for the next four hours what wait a second what did you sign up for um okay [Music] becky's warm okay i called this meeting to order at 6 02 pm um i'd like to acknowledge that the tomater school district sits on the ancestral lands of the nisqually squawkson island and chehalis people i thank these caretakers of the land who we who have lived on and continue to live on in the land since time in memorial please rise as i lead us in the fight i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all so for those of you watching
002now uh tonight or in the future uh you'll notice that we have our masks off one this will probably help people who are watching see who's speaking but we as of today uh the governor announced that if you are vaccinated that you can um be indoors and um not wear a mask so we are exercising that we asked our audience if they are comfortable with that and they were and if you are still welcome to wear a mask if that makes you comfortable um and then the other thing i have to do is if anyone would like to make public comment the time to sign up is now go forth and sign up you just sign your name if you'd like to make if you are watching online and like to make public comment you
003email the trustee becky powell at b-e-c-k-y dot p-o-w-e-l-l at tomwater.k12.wa.u.s with your name and the topic that you want to speak to and then we will call on you and you can do that public comment over zoom so the next thing on our agenda is to officially uh swear in our newest board member lori sale all right this is one of the fun jobs i get to do i also enjoy this and i haven't gotten to in a while so um lori why don't you come around front we'll move that chair in so um [Music] and what we'll do is go ahead and have you raise your right hand and repeat after me i laurie sale do you solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution and the
004constitution and the laws of the state of washington washington and that i will faithfully and impartially perform of the office of school board director position 1 position 1 tum water school district number 33. so now we usually offer an opportunity for pictures and family would anyone like to take pictures with our newest board member and all of us so we can actually have a group picture yeah you can have a group do you guys want to pull your masks down real quick so you get a family picture are you comfortable with that there you go what a great moment [Music] um all right hopefully you can hear now if you're on zoom please tell me if you can hear all right very good so the hard part about zoom on here is that it's using
005the microphone on this computer which is certainly not as good as sound as what you'd get if you're able to stream on youtube so if you're wanting to watch if you can if you can stream on this if you've got the ability to multitask that one and stream on the youtube app you'll have really good sound video for the meeting and when you get ready to speak um then you would then you would be able to get on there oh i see catherine you don't have an option to unmute oh you don't what will happen is you'll be able to unmute thanks for the question you'll be able to unmute we'll promote you up to panelists when it's time for you to speak and then you'll have the option to unmute so all right perfect
006maybe you should go once oh sure this is so good doesn't look anything like that [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] all right superintendent johnson have there been any changes or additions to the agenda since it was published no there have not all right now move on to meeting minutes has everyone had a chance to review the minutes yes yes i'll entertain a motion casey to approve the minutes i would like to make a motion to approve the minutes from april 15th all those in favor please say aye motion passes so now we'll go on to special recognition uh did you want to start do you want me to start i feel like a coach okay there you go yes [Laughter] all right ella let's do this come on down [Music] so unofficially uh we're here to
007recognize you for your service last two years of serving on the board i say unofficially because my fondest memory my strongest memory is your passion of speech about the sex ed bill that was wow it was uh march of 2020 it was right before we it was like our last face-to-face meeting it was with no masks um it got a lot of likes on facebook it got a lot of a lot of folks talking it got some debate going um but i just really respect the courage that you had to say that thank you you're welcome officially ella jimenez thank you for a faithful representation of tomorrow high school after student representative to the tomwater school district board of directors your participation has been enjoyed and appreciated we wish you the best in your future
008endeavors given this 13th day of may 2021 by the tillwater school district board of directors thank you again for your service thank you so much [Music] i it was i was on it was during the summer that i contacted ella about whether she would want to post that video aaron had pulled it together and i wasn't sure if you wanted that sort of exposure and you were very brave to take that on and i knew it would be important for our community to hear the voice of a student and how they felt about that so i appreciate your courage for that and for answering my facebook message to you about it so thank you rebecca it is now your turn so rebecca you have been with us for the last year and i think uh
009what i appreciate uh you both have um brought the voices of the students in different ways and your constant reminders to sean and i about what questions is was very much appreciated uh you were never a bother and um the reminder how seriously you took this how seriously you took this position has brought it to the next level i believe um and i'm hoping that both you and ella can write down a message to our next student reps because i think you are both really good examples um of what it means to be a student right just to be a voice and to be a strong advocate and also to be a part of these discussions and i and i hope that you have felt a part of that and if there is any advice
010on how we can even make you feel more a part of these conversations i would love um that feedback from both of you um because it's something that we all really care about is the student voice um it's something that is missing um from a lot of the school systems um and i don't want to be part of that i don't i don't want to want her to be a part of that assumption is that we don't care what students think so thank you for that so i will read what you have it won't sound familiar at all uh thank you for your faithful representation of black hills high school as their student representative to the tumwater school district board of directors your participation has been enjoyed and appreciated we wish you the best in
011your future endeavors and if either of you need a letter recommendation or anything like that sean or i any of us would be glad to write one for you all right so thank you all right now we're on to the consent agenda has everyone had a chance to review the consent agenda yes yes darby would you like to make a motion i move that we approve the consent agenda i will second all right all those in favor say aye aye motion passes and now we're on to student reports ella would you like to go first sure um so our question was like what are the biggest hopes and expectations for the upcoming school year and the rest of this school year and the biggest response that i got was no question just to graduate and
012pass all the classes i feel like that's kind of obvious um but a few different responses i got were like you know a bunch of kids wanted to start strong at college which is a big fear of a lot of kids right now um kids wanted to start five days a week next year is a big hope and no masks with normal periods is another big hope of kids um one person wanted another strong start week they felt that that would be really beneficial to everyone just because a lot of people are behind and so i thought that that was an interesting idea a lot of people just said less assignments more free time [Music] i got a really nice long message about how they feel like mental health needs to be focused on a
013lot more and i i agree mental health always needs to be a bigger thought in people's minds um and then just a couple other things a real graduation real homecoming real prom just so the year kind of seems a little more normal so yeah thank you thank you rebecca so i'm going to split this up into three separate questions just because i got a lot of responses that i'd like to share um so biggest hope and expectation for the end of this year specifically almost unanimously grades passing classes graduating that whole jazz um but a couple of the other little details we're emphasizing yes we're focusing on our biggest hope is passing and getting good grades but along with that um not having to deal with any transitions between now and the end of the
014school year so that we can focus on those grades and getting caught up and it on our finals um and then a couple of students also suggested we've had a really rough year let's just do something fun something fun for the end of the year to celebrate all that we've accomplished this year and how much we've gone through and then biggest hope or expectation as we come back to school next year um biggest response i got was some some sort of sense of normalcy so that looked like doing fun things like sports and field trips and clubs but also having six class periods every day and i think a lot of people are a little tired of the three it had its uses but i think we're getting a little tired of it and then
015also things like seeing our friends and having that socialization aspect of school and um less time on the computer because that's giving us a lot of migraines and other physical issues at this point just having all that screen time and then the second biggest response i got was um hoping for safety just i think there's a large group of kids who are feeling like yeah by september i'll be ready to go back but there's still a small part maybe maybe they have other physical issues going on or they're just not comfortable with going the thought of going back and so they'd really like for either like everyone to be vaccinated by the time we go back or for there to be an option for them to stay remote and it did seem i know i've
016seen a couple promotions about tva but i don't know if that's just because i've been following information for this position um so it seemed like some of the kids who responded were under the impression that tva is maybe not happening next year or that no one can join um so maybe like getting the word out might be a good idea a little bit more um and then another big response as always was um hoping for more mental and emotional support especially because i know a lot of students who either were dealing with social anxiety before covid or were not quite dealing with it yet now are dealing with it as we return um so that we could use some support for that um and on that note on mental health i did get struggling to
017figure out how to put this um i got one response that i actually forwarded on to um someone who could help that student and um i think just that whole going seeing that response and then going through that i came to the realization that as far as i'm aware of at least black hills doesn't really have a person who's like designated to support us mentally um if there is someone then i'm not aware of it so probably most of the school isn't aware of it and that needs to be like promoted to us um because like i wasn't even sure like do i forward this to the principal to our counselors like who do i go to so i'm guessing that students who are dealing with mental health issues don't know where to get help
018how to how to take that first step to getting um and then another thing for biggest hope as we come back to school next year was i know i hear this a lot i don't know if you have but um hoping for more curriculum that feels really applicable to our lives and to our futures um so things like i have trouble imagining when i'm when am i ever gonna need to be able to graph a parabola but if we could maybe if not if not alter the curriculum then alter how the curriculum is presented so that we understand why we're learning it what it'll be useful for and then are more motivated to learn i don't know how that could be done but i've heard it several times and then the third question i asked
019was just like other what do you want the school board to know um and as usual i've said this multiple times in the past um kids are not very happy with naviats um it's i'll recap the basics of it though i know i've said it a couple times in the past it's not really thorough enough for us to feel like it's a good use of our time um it feels like it's really skimming the surface and we're not actually learning anything um so then it's coming across as like busy work just another thing on our kind of thing and then i talked about things earlier and did not realize it that's all i have thank you um so uh yeah i heard about the naviance thing too at home um i think is it fair
020someone correct me it is kind of busy work at this point for our seniors i have a whole report on that my superintendent's okay so yeah i'll be kind of showing you the what we're doing kind of and why this year and then and maybe can speak to that because the it's much deeper than what we're having students do right now but they've adjusted the expectations down to make sure that what we weren't putting because of the conditions this year yeah and the situation not putting as much of a load on so maybe for some then it feels like they're just walking through but we have to meet the minimum requirements of the high school and beyond plan and that's the that's the kicker here we're trying to meet the conditions of the law using
021a tool that we established to use before this pandemic during a pandemic and so and that was this was the kickoff here so it it is complicated but we'll definitely get into that uh and uh the i hear about the who to contact with mental health health needs um that is important i it would be interesting who in the school feels uh the sense of ownership over over that because everyone has you know so so many hats that they're wearing um and just someone see themselves with that hat on um any other comments on on the reports i would say have a lot of notes because there's there's good there's so much good information here as usual what you bring us is is helpful is we're working on planning for next year and figuring out
022how will we use fun federal funds that we have to support students in recovery this is the information that helps us target needs now i did have we're just kind of i guess some comments so the general consensus is when somebody's having a mental health issue or they're having issues they don't know who to contact inside the school so that's kind of concerning to me and i know we're going to address it but i just want to highlight that i guess thank you rebecca i would just i would just just offer my thanks and gratitude for hearing all those comments it's important to hear them thank you for being so candid and responsible yeah at this stage the count just for i mean giving an immediate quick answer to that the short answer generally a
023counselor would be the place to start and and that is your guidance counselor is a place to start and while they're a guidance counselor not necessarily a mental health counselor they can be a connection there but there's a lot more to it and clearly more we can do to make sure students have a direction it's always a goal for every student to have a relationship with a caring at least one caring adult in the building and i know that kaino may not she she would go to um miss kelly you know she is she needed because that's who she has a connection with um and we and that doesn't need to be her role but she knows that that jenny would help her and so that i think you know um making sure our students
024have that person in the building is important to me as a board member it doesn't have to be their role so i guess i misspoke earlier about what their role is their role is to care about kids and they all do it's just making sure that the kids don't feel like they're burdening that adult when they see they need help and i know every adult if a student came to them asking for help they would do whatever they could and we just want to make sure that everyone knows that because i know every adult in that building would do whatever they could for a kid so how do we communicate that to kids as someone who has a hard time asking for help i get the uphill battle so thank you um all right now
025it so again i really love all this stuff it is so helpful to share these with our principals and so however you were able to you know however you guys get those comments um if you could just share how you guys would do it someone else may have a different idea but if you could share your thoughts on you know i think you guys maybe do a google form or something and then maybe how you guys share the information that you learned here back with those you know do you use the same mechanism to share it back you know like yeah yeah they the board heard about naviance uh you know yeah i told them just so they know that you let us you know just so they can feel like okay it's not just
026going to this google sheet black hole but just say yep here's what i reported out so however you guys do that would be great so we can pass it along and we've done you've done a wonderful job this year and with the future people coming in i think anything you can pass forward to help them get started i know you won't be here necessarily but if there's anything you have to share with them any information you can give us to send forward to the next advisors would be fantastic all right recognition yes so um move forward here into a few things that are oops yes it's uh okay just a quick public comment follow-up we had three people who offered public comment at our last board meeting i've had the chance to follow up with
027each of them a little bit of connection there with a couple and we'll have have some continuing conversations so appreciate always the feedback we get there i have a couple of numbers and it will work right tonight because i made sure that today so 204.8 is the first number and uh if anyone is aware what that one is probably cases that is yeah yeah that's the transmission rate cases per 100 000 in thurston county and that's uh the two weeks it ended may 4th so that data always lags a little bit and i've shown you this graph they're out so we can just keep in touch you can see back at our april 15th meeting we were at 112 cases so we've had this spike and then you see we've flattened off at the top
028right now a bit if you look at the state of washington trend washington has peaked and is starting to drop thurston county has come up to this peak and is bouncing around but hasn't really started that drop that follows the state trend so as a result of that we got a letter from dr abdemalik the other day saying hey we're in this kind of limbo right now we've crossed the 200 threshold we're going to watch that for a couple of weeks and see is that going to continue to be above that number is that going to drop in the meantime be prepared to shift if necessary um i'm super hopeful that our trend will follow the states and that will start to to drop back down in the next couple of weeks and and that
029we won't have to make any adjustments but that remains uncertain at this time just keeping you up to date on the latest on that so talking about in our schools though we've had students in person for four days a week for the last week and a half almost two weeks now and that leads to another number zero no case is reported unfortunately no but zero transmission in school so we've had not had a case yet where we could link it to transmission in the school we've had cases where we can link it to social connection with other students mostly at social events outside of school but we haven't found anywhere we said okay this transmission occurred in the school setting so that's really good news um and however since last monday i've given you a
030hint um we have had 22 confirmed student and staff cases that's substantially higher so than what we've seen so what we're what we're seeing is as the community transmission rate has gone up and we can expect this we would see more students who are identified as as positive and so that's what represents i think 21 students and one staff member none of those found all contact tracing finds those to have been transmitted outside the school setting um so that's good news so we believe our mitigation measures continue to work because we have students sitting inside the six foot bubble from each other though it does mean we have to quarantine all those students who are considered close contacts anyone who was within 15 within six feet for more than 15 minutes so we're seeing a
031very large increase in the number of students the last couple minute weeks that we have to quarantine uh and i know that's hard for families so um and we most of them have been super understanding and recognize that that's what we have to do some of those close contacts are close contacts from sitting in class next to each other but some of them are close contacts from social outside of school just i mean our students mix with each other that's what we're that's what we see and so that's some of what's occurring in our school setting right now so i want to shift to a little bit different topic and this is where we're going to start to get getting to recognition so 93 926 and if you get this one boy i'm impressed uh
032meals delivered meals delivered would be a good one yeah but in this case this has to do with school messenger calls made from our school messenger system from the communications office since this pandemic began is the number of call-outs that has had to do so this has been a communication challenge like no other i i think you just acknowledge that and so it really when we start talking about who really should be recognized at this time one of the people that stood out to us is lori wiedenmeier who has been had the most impossible job for communication throughout this pandemic and just to give you an idea [Music] this is a day in the life last night we got the letter or yesterday at the end of the day we got the letter from dr
033abdemalik saying hey the transmission rate's above 200 cases per 100 000 over two weeks be prepared if it stays above it to if we there may be a recommendation to shift instructional models and that's a communication challenge in itself because nobody wants to shift backward we've moved forward we don't want to go back and so that communication challenge so lori started working on let's let's get a communication out to the community that shares that letter we received then this morning oregon and washington we got the news that oregon and washington had approved the coven 19 vaccine for kids 12 and older great news that needs to be communicated so as we're preparing one communication we got another so lori made sure to include that in our communication appearance today there are some clinics coming up
034let's get the news out to people so they know uh that they're 12 to 15 year olds can be vaccinated a couple hours later ospi released that we're returning to school buildings next year five days a week every school district in the state needs to have five day a week option great news that answers one of the questions that students were asking right and so good news and they said we need to try to distance three feet maybe uh six feet in common areas to the greatest extent possible but there's some flux there saying don't keep that from getting kids in school so lots of guidance there we said do we include that in this message it was already on its way nope too much laurie laurie's he said we'll get that one out in
035the next communication a few hours later governor inslee says we're going to lift coven 19 restrictions by june 30th and right now mass rules are used for vaccinated people by the way in the in the guidance this morning on returning to buildings next year it says masks will be required for all students and staff in our schools then this came in the afternoon so when you think about communication challenges right now in 24 hours that's the communications that have come around this and some things that just make it super difficult so as we send information about the letter from dr alba malik we hear from people who say but wait a minute they just said this afternoon as you said this that things are changing which i completely understand there is the pace of information
036right now is tremendous and and i will say as hard as it's been i know there's no way we can please everyone with our communications on this but lori has done such a tremendous job of being transparent with people of being honest making letting them know here's what we know here's what we don't know keeping people informed of where we are in the decisions we're making and this is just some of the duties that come from that office is those messages to parent staff and students surveys to gather input the videos we set up at the beginning of the year that fortunately we have aaron here to help us produce too to make sure we had really good things to help people understand what school would look like newsletters photography at events preparing these grad
037features if you've been watching facebook our graduates we started doing that last spring and it was such a positive for people at a time when it was shut down to see these features on our students um there's just so much work and it in and lori is always there and anything we need she's got it and she's so thoughtful about the messaging out to everyone and i just i feel like we need to say thank you to her for that tremendous work she's done this song get to take her picture no such is the power of the communications i would like to comment i when i was told that this was gonna happen i asked please no because i feel like number one this is my job and number two is it takes a team
038of us for this to happen and so this isn't me i'm just the deliverer and um i i like to say i have the best job because i get to communicate the decisions but i don't have to make have them do all of that so i think thank you to our board to our leadership team to our buildings i mean it's just it's everybody so um thanks but i'm usually the one coordinating the recognition so this is really humbling yeah well i i do i do know that the the videos that shawn has been putting out and you know just the different ways in which we're communicating now it's not just posting on our website has been appreciated by the community and i know that takes a lot more work than just sending out an
039email which takes enough takes a lot of work but thinking about the various ways in which people are getting information now and you are managing all of that i really appreciate and i know our community appreciates the different ways that you're reaching out so thank you that's what i have thank you uh okay now it's time for public comment do we have anyone signed up for public comments one person okay can you hear us you should be able to unmute now can you hear me yes welcome great you have um five minutes to speak and we'll i'll talk slowly so becky can get her timer ready okay are you ready all right keisha we're ready when you are okay thank you superintendent dotson president beard and board members for allowing me to speak today my
040name is kisha rungan and i have a sophomore at black hills high school and a 2019 graduate you all have received a number of emails from me over the past year expressing my deep concern about our children not being in person for school during this pandemic thank you to those that responded as i'm sure you get hundreds of emails today my topic is where there is a will there is a way on may 12th the thurston county public health officer sent a letter to local superintendents warning about the high transmission rate of copid in thurston county surpassing 200 cases per 100 014 days as dr dotson just showed us in her letter she indicated she would be monitoring case counts over the next 14 days to determine if this is a sustained or temporary increase
041in cases and if a recommendation for middle and high school students to follow the k-12 school guidance of cohorting and or increasing the distance from three to six feet is necessary i assume this would mean returning to hybrid for the last three weeks of school again today at two pm we received communication from tumwater school district again this was all just said reiterating the letter received by the thurston county public health officer also at 2 pm the governor held a press conference indicating all counties would be moved to phase 3 on may 18th and this day would fully reopen by june 30th or sooner if 70 of those 16 and older become vaccinated my hope is that tom water school district was simply unaware of this announcement by the governor when they sent their email
042out however by listening to the meeting maybe that is not the case however in the event that there is still a consideration to move middle and high school students backed a hybrid for the last three weeks of school i would encourage you to think about where there is a will there is a way our children have suffered greatly over the last year during this pandemic as we all are aware when i looked at the tsd coveted dashboard this afternoon there were 16 confirmed student cases in one confirmed staff case and then we also heard today from dr dodson that there has been zero linked cases to school transmission that to me would lead me to believe we've been the school has been successful in keeping kobit from transmitting within the school system we also now
043have the pfizer vaccine available to anyone over the age of 12. as our weather begins to improve what might be the options to keep our kids in person can we take classes outside can we use playgrounds tennis courts parking lots with tents to meet the requirements is there other alternatives we could use i am sure there are local businesses who would be willing to help you may have recently heard about the story in pierce county who came up with a solution to keep their kids playing basketball while pierce county is in phase two and extroverts from the story schools were scrambling to find a safe place for kids to play and with help from coaches athletic directors and the community they found one they transformed an open air barn at the washington state fairgrounds into
044three full-length basketball courts that will serve service 17 schools this involved looker asphalt jim meyerhoff suzanne vick tim thompson all athletic directors vardalson transport columbia empire volleyball and was originated by basketball coach amy looker this is an example of a community that came together that i know here in tumwater we would be more than willing to do where there is a will there is a way let's keep our kids in school they deserve it thank you for all that you do thank you keisha so um i i think not that she could have known what your presentation is for me sean but i think you outlined how difficult communication is and i do know that we will work our hardest to work with public health to make sure we keep everyone safe and do what
045we can yeah and for the record you know our message went out to parents just about an hour or two i think before it was i mean it was already on its way out as the governor made the announcement so we were past the point of no return at that but there is then new information yeah and then dr optimality gets to respond to that as well so yeah all right now we are on to first reading of policy 3114. okay so uh shifting gears first read on policy three one one four what's that is that what you just said okay good that's all right let me make sure you introduce that right there not trying to take your job on that um yes so uh president baird and board members what you see here
046when i brought at our last meeting the graduation policy i shared with you that it references a policy on home-based instruction that we would go ahead and do an update to that as well so often when you look at one policy and it interacts with another it makes sense to also go to that and that's why we're reviewing this policy right now so what we've done uh policy 3114 had last been updated i believe in 2013 if i look back at the end of that yes um and the changes to it aren't uh substantial in terms of process but it just updates a few things some of the language you'll see in there that's just recommendations from wazda to streamline language it doesn't really change the intent what you do see uh is an update
047to instructional hours where it says what a parent's job is if they're homeschooling that we used to have an outlying number of hours of instruction the number of instructional hours has changed in those areas now the state instructional hours so um you see what we're doing and what wazda recommends is just say that it's the minimum hours of instruction and of course with that that way it continues if to be accurate if those numbers change so most of what you see here are not significant substantive changes they're just shifts in formatting and language to make it a little easier and um easier to read and follow so i at the same time we're going through the procedure and making updates to it because in as you get into the procedure there's a few things that
048just may that have changed in how things are done and we make sure that the procedure aligns with uh with current practice so um any questions about what you read there so this this was just like where they're this is just cleanup of life this is really a language cleanup there's not a lot other than you see the removal of instruct the number of instructional hours because that's no longer aligned with the number of instructional hours that's expected at each grade level and so instead we're placing in their language saying that they meet the minimum instructional hours so um our policy doesn't perfectly follow wazda's recommended policy in this so you'll see we actually add some additional language wasdes is pretty short uh some of what we've added in our language and has been in
049place is really just um some of the language related to some of the rcws around home-based instruction so we have that all outlined in one place in the policy i actually liked what we had better than the washington language in a number of areas so i looked at their recommendations made adjustments based upon that but kept some of the additional language we had uh when i went back and cross-referenced all the legal all the rcws related to that made sure they're still current so all of this has been verified as current what happens then another nice thing about updating the policy we update the date that it was last reviewed so that we can when someone looks at it they don't have to say boy is that still current or is that still up to
050date uh so this will now when the board approves it having a date of 2021 and we know we're not looking at an eight-year-old policy that hasn't been reviewed in eight years so if anyone's looking through this and um has comments or questions get them to sean and the next uh and all those changes will come to us to review the all right equity planning committee update yeah so my name is on this one but it won't be me doing most of the speaking so i actually um i'm just going to introduce yes so we're uh i think we have we should have catherine sailors with us and potentially um okay yes we have catherine and sailors with us um catherine and uh and tara baker and uh and natalie hensold and emma kate shockey
051and um and i want to make sure megan brown that is our group that have been helping plan and kind of working with me through the how do we operate this equity advisory committee and plan it and make each move to support forward progress and so [Music] i know you hear from me and and certainly scott and darby have shared on it and we wanted the chance to give katherine uh to share parent perspective on the work of the equity advisory committee thus far and where we're going so catherine thanks for joining us thanks for offering to do this catherine sorry what was that i said thanks for offering to do this i kind of said can't doesn't catherine want to make a presentation so thank you yeah you know all of you guys have
052heard from me a lot of times but i'm glad that i'm here to speak about work that's being done instead of asking for work to be done so um i i've been working with the equity committee or on the equity committee and we have a pretty good group of um people sometimes it fluctuates but we have teachers and parents and some students and other staff that attend um and the group is wanting to work on i forget sean all the topics but we have started we started to come up and like break down what really needs to be done in some water and those areas had to do with accountability for equity um and we've been focused focusing on racial equity um training for the the teachers is what we've been trained focusing on right
053now to try to get that done but accountability curriculum training and i believe we had two other groups that i don't remember around staff representation um having a staff that represents the diversity of our community and professional development first yeah the training part accountability okay yeah and and then we did have from what i know our first ever mandatory equity training in water school district on april 21st where the teachers attended along with other staff and then there will be time for people who did not attend to be able to have that training and the training was for teachers and staff to be able to address um racial comments or microaggressions in the school district they used a tool called speak up that's through learning for justice and it's just a few easy steps to
054help teachers um engage when those conversations or comments are happening and is there anything you want i don't that's what i got from what we were doing with the training but um yeah from my perspective we've we've done a really great job with all the stuff back and forth with covet and everything that teachers have had to handle and the board and the superintendent um we were able to get a training in which is vital because we have kids experiencing racism in our schools and i feel that the teachers are now getting support and we are starting to have conversation just shift the culture in some water and i'm a parent of a bi-racial student that is that has had many challenges in the district so he's also starting to feel better hearing that there's
055training happening and feeling better about attending school so um yeah and i was looking at the 3207 policy that you guys have and we are starting to fill in a lot of the details that that says through doing work with the equity committee so yeah that's all i really have if not a lyrid oh no megan um so megan and i talked and she's not able to be here she's another parent that has attended that has a biracial student in elementary school and um the biggest topic that we've been talking about is just accountability and then and how we're going to be accountable which is a lot of times through data that has been being worked on but that's going to take some time to show and then conversations with students and possibly having i
056it was brought up to have a student council on the student council have an equity position for the student council so yeah okay that's all i have thank you guys thanks catherine does anyone have any questions for catherine i'd just say it has been so helpful having this group to kind of keep bouncing ideas just as we get together and i'm trying to figure out where do we go next i think they bring so much great perspective too and and they're they they um um even for our next meeting catherine the uh could you share just a briefly about the other equity group that you're participating in the uh i i have it on paper the equity it's the two yeah thank you so erin jones is um somebody that's local in lacey i've worked
057for boys and girls clubs in thurston county i don't work there now but i did work with them for eight years and through there i came connected with erin jones when i was starting to have concerns in tamworth reached out to her and she um she does so much equity work um and she's just a big leader she worked in um federal way school district as an administrator and now all she's doing is equity work she trained did an equity training at princeton last month and she showed up to our equity meeting and she has her and some other educators have a group called equity institute and i've been attending those meetings um at least once a week but sometimes five times a week and anybody can go to them and we're looking at sharing
058that with the equity committee and some water and hopefully get some more people attending those meetings is our goal and we will continue to meet as time water over the summer and i mean i've learned a lot attending these equity meetings because these people have done this work for so long and there's so many students that are able to have amazing conversations um and it's a really comfortable environment for everybody to come learn so that's the that's what i've got from the equity institute but they've even they just got done meeting with ospi state board members and recreating the equity policies for washington state and that was all the youth work it was all youth-led meetings so basically based upon that feedback we're really looking at how can we get used that as a kind
059of an extension for people to really get involved perhaps learn there and bring that learning back to our group so that's a great idea and i think natalie might have wanted to talk and i'm not sure if tara did i i don't see her in the waiting room so didn't work out so but thank you okay that's fine i just don't want to take up any more time but i i know that i've spoke with several teachers and our districts at a wide range some people understand equity work a lot and some people don't really know and and some people are scared and it's just creating this environment for our teachers and our students where we're able to make mistakes and grow and also everybody learn things that they may not know there there's a
060lot of things if you're not friends with somebody or you haven't experienced things yourself or i grew up in tomorrow school district and now my son going through tumblr school district me as a white person had a completely different experience than what he's having and it's not to water alone um we all have work to do and so i'm super excited i'm i'm happy that we're doing the work and we're and i'm glad we're continuing over the summer and not gonna we're gonna be able to be ready for next school year and have some more trainings uh so kathryn thank you for your work i uh remember walking around the lake with you and this was your passion was to have the training have give staff the tools to interrupt these conversations um and i
061think and i participated in the east holy and peter g training um and becky got us the speak up at school pamphlet thing because i think we all have we all need help and how and how to address these conversations so thank you for your advocacy for this and your continued participation and for keeping us moving forward um and i think um one thing that i've appreciated about you is that you're willing to step up and and help out you're not you're not just pointing fingers you're not just coming and making public comment you are sticking that you're coming in and doing a lot of the work and so i appreciate that thank you well i appreciate having a district that's willing to do the work because there's several that are not so as much
062as it was frustrating when i first started i'm really glad to start seeing that we are moving forward with it so i i appreciate that because it's really important that our district is safe for all students all right thank you okay so now we're on action items second reading for policy 2410 yes uh i know i spent a lot of time on this the last time to take you through all the pieces of it there are no changes from the first read and so uh it is the remember this is one where you would you approve both the policy and the procedure that both contain critical information about our students graduation and uh what it takes to do so so in take any questions you have otherwise i recommend it for approval i'd like to
063make a motion to pass policing procedure 24 10. all right well second all right any any questions for sean before we vote all those in favor say aye all right all right motion passes now policy 2409. uh likewise no changes from the first read this is the policy regarding uh how we offer credit for students either completing a subsequent course or passing a test and achieving credit rather than retaking the course any questions for sean lori do you want this to be your first motion it's a short one sure um i motioned that the policy procedure passes second oh second all those in favor of approving policy please signify by saying aye aye all right motion passes all right resolution 07 20 21 delegating authority to w-i-a-a yes and and i normally um sean batson
064would sometimes present these but he's not with us tonight so i'm just marathon and doing them all for you this resolution is one we have to do annually essentially to be part of wiaa which every school district in the state essentially that competes in interscholastic athletics is we have to delegate authority to them to set the rules for participation in high school athletics and agree to follow those rules uh so this is a resolution that re uh renews our commitment to that and allows us to move forward as part of the wiaa consortium would you like to make a motion i move that we adopt a resolution 072021 delegating authority to w-i-a-a all those in favor say aye motion passes all right the big enchilada academic and student well-being recovery plan okay i'm going back
065to powerpoint for this one all right because this one has a lot to it so uh and i'll try to simplify it and streamline it as much as possible so um the first thing i want to share is that this is the first step of a multi-step process it's important to recognize that because when when the federal law passed essentially giving us these dollars to engage in learning recovery work one of the requirements set by the state was and that we and and by the federal government is that we develop a learning recovery plan and that the state process for making sure that that goes through the right steps was to have board approval to initiate that that said in order to start using the funding that many districts will use for pieces some some
066pieces of the planning and preparation work as well you have to have the plan adopted so there's this chicken or the egg piece to that so essentially what we have here is we are going forward and asking you to approve a plan and post it to our website while also telling you we aren't done with the planning yet so um i've seen this kind of laid out as the plan the plan and the plan and so this is the first plan and this is our our first best thinking about how we approach this complex recovery work what we heard from our student advisors tonight is already some things that we say we need to consider and hopefully you'll see we started to consider those things in it but we're in the data collection phase and
067there's more work to do on that so what you'll see in this plan is our work based upon what we know so far and um what steps we will take or what we're planning to take and just very generally outlined and i'll give you a little more information about that and you'll see then going into next year as we collect student data we'll refine this plan as we hear from our community we'll refine this plan as we review equity data we'll refine the plan so in general what it says in a lot of pages is a few things one is one of the first things is we were expected to have a tool for equity analysis as we start this process and we've identified two the first one is we needed initial data to say
068who's benefiting from our instruction who's not right now who who do we need to be focusing on initially and we have there is a tool out there we've been using and that's the washington school improvement framework the washington school improvement framework is is one that basically looks at every school in the state and measures based upon a series of factors some of those factors are your are student proficiency in the la and mathematics their growth in those areas so there's a couple of measures related to assessment graduation rates progress of your english english language learners on what on a test called the alpha 21 regular attendance ninth graders on track and dual credit participation now you as you look at that immediately we'd say gosh where are the sel factors and other things that that
069it's it really is looking at a particular set of measures but it was a place we could initially look and say do we see some areas right away we need to give attention to and so we've used that as a first kind of screening in addition as to to look at equity in addition as we go into next year we're really reinvesting in our professional learning community work as a district to say how do we get our staff really we're collaborating together to look at student data identify what it's telling us about our kids make a plan to act on that data act and then reflect on what they've what they've learned so um as part of that we've been really con working with uh corwin on what with we'll be doing some training around
070what's called the plc playbook around plc plus part of that model psc plc professional learning community which is really a complex term for teacher meaningful intentional teacher collaboration it's a model for intentional teacher collaboration one of the things that we will be really working with people on is an equity analysis protocol an equity audit uh and that equity audit yeah yeah corwin is the publisher of this and i say so they have they've established through some of this work an equity audit protocol um that staff will be trained in and what it really does is it's a series it's it's nothing it's no miracle it's a series of questions and explorations that help people say who's benefiting from our instruction and who's not benefiting from our instruction and those questions help you dive into that
071and start to identify that and say what do we are we are some students benefiting more than others from what we're doing right now and you do that as you go through uh through the year so this is like your second tier after that framework yeah we need to figure out the equity exactly okay so we initially we've got some initial identification but really um we need to engage our teachers and our staff in this ongoing process of reflection on our data to say what's it telling us about who's benefiting who's not so the school improvement framework gives us some rough data but as we take as teachers look at the assessment say data they have this spring as we take as we bring students back in the fall and they take fall assessments we
072can engage in this protocol to really audit what's working what's not we can look at data from panorama student climate surveys and say who's benefiting who's not and make sure that we're acting in a way that seeks to improve equity through the through that process and so if you're interested in more information about that i'm happy to i know student learning that sean would be happy to get you information about that equity audit protocol but we've identified that because that's the work we were preparing to engage in with our staff next year anyway and this process said you need to have an equity tool for that we felt like let's marry that with the work that we're diving into next year and really make sure that it that it aligns so it doesn't feel like
073something that's off to the side that it's part of our process so um do you provide the slides to us i i certainly don't like you know yeah discussing with our notes absolutely absolutely so this what you'll see in that document and is is it's got a lot of check boxes and so what i've done is tried to boil that down so we identified some universal supports things that we intend to do for all of our students and there's a whole list of things that you can basically be checking there um and what we tried to do our first best thinking is here's some of the things that we see taking place we have summer programs planned this summer summer school at the high school and summer enrichment programs at elementary and middle school we
074know that building relationships with our students as they return is going to be super important that's always important but even more important when they're coming back from so from from this social isolation and and what we heard earlier when a student is struggling going who do i go to well that comes down to relationships right who do i have a significant relationship with common assessments among our staff using common assessments is a good way for them to identify who are the kids who are struggling who are the kids who need the most help we know that extracurricular activities and making sure students have meaningful ways to participate beyond the classroom are critical inclusionary practices how do we make sure our students all of our students are included in the general education classroom to the maximum
075extent possible we're doing work on that right now with our principals in conjunction with the esb having conversations about how do we increase our inclusion of students in special programs we've committed to working on strengthening our multi-tiered systems of support next year that's going to be so important that as we i use as we collect data we identify where the level of support students need and that we have the structures to provide it professional learning for our staff will be necessary for all of this social emotional learning and mental health supports is an area where we're looking to prioritize semester funds we know kids are going to need support in that area and trying to figure out the best ways we're in discussions right now about what are what are the best ways to tackle
076that challenge and make sure that there are the supports there when students need them it is challenging for us we can't it would use more than our esser funds to provide a mental health counselor in each of our schools we just aren't equipped for that and and because we're not an agency that can bill for mental health to insurance companies and other things the cost is so enormous and we can reclaim nothing on it that it just doesn't work out for us to do that so we've been talking about how do we help families navigate the mental health system that's one of the big challenges if when a student is struggling if i'm if i have private insurance what carriers do i go to if i don't have private insurance what carriers do i go
077to who has who has availability how does telehealth work how do you begin that process if a student is struggling what is family reconciliation services and how can that help a family what there's so many structures and services out there but most people don't know how to navigate it so looking at strategies to help them with that is one thing we're considering and and what is providing the support to help families get connected with the services they need and then of course we need student voice and perception in that we know how much we learn from our student advisors when you guys share with us what you're what you're seeing and hearing from your from classmates and so uh seeking options to gather that and and we see panorama as one tool for that that
078we've certainly gained recently so um then one of the questions they ask is what academic diagnostic assessments are you going to use to figure out which students are struggling and which are students are not as much we have what we've really sought to identify in the first blush here is assessments that we have and use currently and how do they how could they provide the data across the district because we don't then have to go out and create something new and and bring that in and i we have um the dibbles which is used at kindergarten through second grade and when i became an elementary principal i kept hearing what dibbles what's what's the dibbles the dibbles is called the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills it's a mouthful essentially it's an assessment that
079early on tests students decoding skills and then as they become more fluent readers it starts to test their fluency as well but it's a it's a really good assessment to help us identify kids who need support at the early elementary level we use iready it grades k through eight which is a computer adaptive assessment so if students take that on the computer as they answer questions right or wrong it adjusts the level of complexity of the questions to help the student identify the student's present performance level and that helps us identify students that may need additional assistance in sixth through twelfth grade our intention is to use the smarter balanced interim assessments as a as a tool to help us and then what we also know is we're there are some things that don't test
080well on one of these other tests and you have to get to the classroom level and recognize where we have a department for building common assessments and using teacher-made assessments or classroom assessments to identify students that have needs on the well-being side we just really start brought on that panorama school climate survey is something that can really help us start to identify that is uh that will take the place of the tussle that we've used essentially in some regards is that because of this this survey can actually get to that same level of screening and and it's a a validated tool so so i have a question about that in the beginning of this lengthy checklist asks what are you predominantly using right now for assessing monitoring targeting sports for student well-being and the panorama
081thing was checked but it hasn't been used yet right no and in fact that's one of the hard parts of this process as they've come out with it they've said they said one of the sticking points is you're going to have you're going to be checking boxes on things you haven't done yet because that's the nature of this they had this quick process of approval but they said when you see that you need to look at it as what are you planning to do but of the list i mean it's even says teacher recommendation isn't that i mean if you were to think about what do we do right now is that honestly how it tends to matriculate up as a teacher tends to recognize an issue maybe makes a referral it's a mix of
082that and we've used the tussle which was our previous tool for use in that which isn't anything you'll find on any of these lists to to to use because it was something created here in tumwater and so yeah that that's uh it's a good point it could we could i suppose it could have listed that um i know sean batstone i was in part of it participated in some sessions with esd on how do you put this together and that was one of the things they identified as i said there's going to be places where you're going to be saying this is what we use and you haven't used it yet um because this is something we've never done before and we could i guess they could have said what have we used in the
083past and is that i have to come to that when were you looking in that oh it is items yeah help me with that so i can look back so part four part four number five it starts by saying select the academic ones that you're predominantly using and then the next part is select the the well-being diagnostic diagnostic assessments so when they say predominantly used in each grade we're taking that as what are the ones we intend to use predominantly in each grade as opposed to what have we in the past and that came from the guidance that we received in developing the plan okay so so while they're if we were saying what have we used in the past yeah we might have perhaps put created it somewhat differently so a teacher recommendation may
084be i could certainly see as another valid point that we could add into there and as we said even since we created this initial list we you'll see i'll share with you another one that we said boy we need to add another box there that we would probably check as well so i agree teacher recommendation could be is probably something we would end up we will end up using in some cases so i'll make note that that could be what about what kids kids is a diagnostic assessment given at the kindergarten level at the beginning of the year what we what i asked about that and what i understand and this is something that um they're really when they said what are the ones that we're really going to be using for making most of
085our decisions why kids is not one that has been used for is or that we have people i think really using for as much decision making during the year as some of these others so we didn't list that um that that could i think there's a lot of value in while kids and it can be used for making really meaningful decisions about students what we have to decide is how which um assessments are we going to put our energy into really helping people use for this and and and the recommendation i had from student learning was not to prioritize that one at this time okay so other questions on that topic this is again this is our first best thinking and it may be this summer as we have discussions we may find out that
086people say you know what we need to dig in to walk kids more and we could be in the fall coming back and saying we did decide what kids is them more is is more critical than what was what we thought when we checked the boxes this spring so as we talk about student and family voice you'll see two boxes checked i'm adding a third on there that afterwards i said again as we went through we we've uh we knew we would work with advisory groups like our equity advisory committee we may be able to we can use them as a voice in in identifying how we uh how we support students equitably we know we use students or student parent family surveys that will be a part of our work what we also then
087recognized after we created this and put it in your board packet we had a discussion the other day and we've actually changed the schedule so that the first three days of school in our calendar are half days so we can have a strong start k8 so that our teachers can do what they did last year and that's built a connection with families those are conferences with families right at the beginning of the year so that intentional structure right off is a valuable way for us to get student and family voice and so that really needs to be checked in that as well so that's not checked on your copy but will be will be added to um our to our strategies for student and family voice so you talked about k-8 and we heard rebecca
088talk about a desire for a strong start at high school have they talked about that at the high school level my understanding was the initial discussion was that they wouldn't need to have that at the high school that it wouldn't be as beneficial there but at strong start being a little bit different what i think rebecca was talking about i think rebecca was talking about the week that they had that we essentially in the there were a couple weeks that they reset basically and said we're not adding new assignments we're giving students the opportunity to really catch up and and get back up to speed in classes so that was that came out of people feeling like the pace of things early in the year was too much and could and wasn't allowing students to
089keep up and so there was kind of a pause week where they said let's just focus on helping kids get caught back up in their classes uh and all the teachers were asked not to move so that's a different strong start discussion that occurred just as we were making the transition uh as we did one in the fall and then one in the winter if i i believe right at the high schools is that accurate i only remember one you remember one okay what do you think what do you think the students meant by the strong start in your survey rebecca that was actually yeah that was me and uh yeah i think they meant that like that week um they were talking about needing to like catch up and stuff so okay okay i
090know there was discussion about whether that would be k-12 strong start conferences or k-8 at the secondary level it looks a little bit different where a teacher has 120-140 students perhaps on their load as opposed to an elementary teacher at the middle school i believe they did that with homeroom teachers last year we didn't have that those strong start days at the high school last year and the decision and calendar um was to make that a k-8 open uh process but this sounds what ella's describing uh is in old college days was dead week like no new assignments in that last week before finals week and that that type of thing is that is that does it normally happen in high school this wasn't this wasn't at the end of the term this was well
091i'm just saying it sounds like dead week i mean right yeah does anyone else remember that loved it basically before finals you can just you know there's not going to be anything new you can use it to catch up you guys will experience that um and so i'm just wondering if it's a thought in terms of the planning for high school if if the students felt a benefit from it that that there would be a week in which kids could get caught back up certainly and so as as what you're seeing here as we go through this they we have been putting this together in a fairly compact time frame there is much discussion ahead about what we can do to support students and it includes all of those types of ideas and so getting
092that feedback getting the staff who are involved um like i could say to you boy i think it'd be great to have high school conferences in those first days too other people who are teaching those levels will need to be at the table i use the same terminology that you did and it was not meant in the same way so that's that's all i was i was mixing it up i don't i i guess i asked ella to clarify so it didn't come across that i think that there should be student conferences the first three days of high school oh right like i don't i'm not advocating for that i just really i heard the same words and i just wanted to clarify so i'm not saying that at all fair and that's that's what
093i'm well i guess what i'm what i'm saying is i actually agree with you that there's so many ideas like that we can actually take on and so many options for how we take this forward we couldn't do the level of deep dive in the time we had before this meeting to be to have a fully formed plan for fall so what you're getting is this kind of first blush and then the discussion even we're having here these are the types of discussions that are happening at the district and school level right now to say what does this look like how can we move forward so um so there are lots of ideas and as people dig deeper into this you'll find we'll probably we'd shift the check boxes and there'll be additional things that
094we might add or we might say boy our first look at this we might not end up using this assessment as much the way we thought we would initially so so i think it's it's a work in progress so so i say that saying this may not be perfect the first draft and so that's it it'll grow um so as we talk about equity analysis the first blush at that washington school improvement framework as we looked at it and we looked across the schools and said what groups of students are we consistently seeing identified as in general performing below our whole student group in general so who's benefiting and who's not three groups stood out right off the bat our hispanic latino students are low-income students and our students with disabilities right off the bat
095those three groups now we may find as we dig deeper in the data there are other groups of students we need to be paying attention to but it asks us right off what what groups do you know and washington school improvement framework called those three groups out right away so we've identified them in this and then as we get additional diagnostic data we'll probably find we we may find that it will confirm that and those are the groups we need to be targeting or it may add groups or it may shift that as we run more it's not surprising to me for among particularly our low-income students and our students with disabilities as i've looked at our data on race over time it tends to sometimes shift um but this was pretty clear and so
096it it's important that we pay attention to that so that was going to be my comment that these these gaps have been here long before coming yesterday this is a an opportunity to focus in an area that had been identified already as showing some some challenges absolutely it's good it's good that there's funding and attention that will be able to be utilized to try and try and work on that and i'll be really interested to see what the strategies are that come as the plan continues to develop yeah and you'll see in that first blush it asks us what strategies are you using with that group and what you'll see we identified in there are generally the same strategies we identified with the others and that doesn't mean we're not doing anything extra or beyond
097for that group but what we recognize is that the same some of the same areas of focus that work for all of our students will be important for this group it's the intensity of focus that will be important that we step up that intensity of focus in those areas and that we're deliberate about saying how do we really focus how do we make sure that these student groups haven't benefited that we're looking at them and saying in these areas of work how can we enhance that for that group of students and so there's a lot of work to do there to identify are there other strategies we should be taking is are there are there things that that are outside of these categories that would be critical and that's uh that that's work that we'll
098be engaging in throughout the summer and into the fall and through next year oops and so that's in general all those check boxes and lists kind of boil down to the the key factors and so i i appreciate as you're giving feedback on this it's super helpful because what you're identifying and that's what we know is that this is a process that's just starting and we have a lot more questions and answers in some areas but this is initially saying here's some work we here's some work a starting place for our work and we'll build from there as we learn more so that's what we've asked for your approval of so we can post it and we'll post that to our website by june 1st we'll let ospi know what's been board approved and is
099there and then continue to take the feedback you've given tonight our student our students have given tonight and collect and start collecting wider feedback so we can refine from this point on any questions for sean before we approve this mine is just a statement just knowing the tight window that the ospi put districts under our department of education i think this was three weeks ago but the first week there was no resources no templates no guidance no whatever it was just this has to be done turned in by june 1. so early is two weeks so it's uh it's a commendable effort to bring all that data together and all those supports together for phase one thank you yeah i know student learning's been working at that well while also going oh hey we'll also
100make a transition instructional model at the same time during that that's been the other thing in that time frame that's been taking up a little bit of bandwidth all right scott would you like to make a motion to approve this it'd be an honor yeah i move that we accept the academic and student well-being recovery plan as presented is there a second a second all those in favor say aye all right plan approved all right more work to come yes definitely whoa you guys are going to be tired of hearing from me so that takes us into our superintendence report doesn't it yes all right well let's uh let's go right to that then so um a couple of things that i want to start with first of all just an update on that four
101day per week transition and as you know when we met in april we were saying i i had my slides and i say well we're hoping to start may 3rd we hope we'll be able to bring all grades back but we don't know yet we have we started may 3rd brought back all grades we're watching that community transmission we've already talked about that so i don't think i need to go much deeper there other than to say um you know i think we certainly hope and and are uh we'll we'll have we'll be prepared with a plan if we have to go backward but we're hopeful and trying in every way possible that that to keep things uh on track as as we heard from our student reps tonight too they don't really want to
102see another transition in june i think we're not the only ones that have to backtrack and make adjustments to plans i think all of our public health departments are now having to do that after yeah the press it may shift things and that's that's what i think you know we need to wait and see what occurs and so i'm hopeful that we're going to be able to continue forward with four days a week through the end of the year i mean we we made this shift really um pressing for that and and i i heard what keisha shared one of the things uh i appreciated public comment because i've asked our secondary principals what creative ideas do we have how if the if we were told we have to go to cohorting or six foot
103distancing how might we be able to pull that off without dropping our students backward because and asking them to think creatively on that and so i know we've bounced some ideas around um there's it it's it's hard when you're looking at space limitations but you know we'll turn every stone if we have to do that to find a way not to have to go backwards so that'll be what we'll be discussing in our planning i mean i just want to say that it would be i think detrimental to tell kids they have to go back home i do not think it would be good for their mental health and i feel very strong about that i just want to put that out there it's tense out in the field i mean you know there's there's
104way there's ways to do that because i think it would it would be difficult well if we go two weeks forward we're really talking about june 1st yeah our seniors will be a week and a half from graduation right yes our other students are we're talking three weeks yeah it's it's a i mean so you know we'll keep looking for options and hope that from the health department on up that i mean we find a way yeah and the best way would be if the transmission rate goes down and that's what i'm really hopeful for because and i think you know there's some reason to believe that that can happen in the next couple weeks well there's the transmission rates but it's also department of health needs some time to make adjustments to their recommendations
105to the guidance yeah to the guidance because it doesn't that all that stuff that stuff changed a few months ago itself and so it doesn't mean it can't change again yeah based on what just happened today that's what i keep you know we want to believe that this stuff in it you know never changes but it does so you know what we're what we're you know hanging our hat on right now could completely change next week if the department of health you know changes stuff i point to him so he works there um but or you know department of health and then the public health departments take their lead from there so i um i just want to encourage people that we are we are you know working within you know yes we are listening
106to the guidance of public health that doesn't mean that they don't change their mind so so yeah lots happened today the last 24 hours has been very eventful so i'll be really interested to see how that develops over the coming week so let's talk about false start we already kind of started that but where our intent is full-time in person tva will continue to be an option so if that helps that our tva is ready to go forward what we won't have is our neighborhood schools won't have teachers split between remote and in person they're going to be doing in-person instruction for people who are watching maybe they don't know what tva is oh tumwater virtual academy that's our online school people don't know certainly so tumwater virtual academy is will continue to be an
107option for our students um and and they're they're advertising right now um working on registrations i've seen it if i'm on facebook i'll get advertisements for tba pop up on occasion so uh so there's they're actually letting families know about that option i know lori's put out information that our our in-person option is our neighborhood schools and and tomorrow virtual academy is our remote option uh sounds like i mean some students maybe haven't fully gotten that yet so we'll keep getting the word out through a variety of avenues to make sure people know the guidance that we received so we did get department of health fall guidance today as well in the morning and and what as we said their guidance came out and then a lot of new information came out in the afternoon
108we see immediate changes at cdc and this is the dynamic they're they're in the same boat as we are at all those levels like they'll make a plan based upon the guidance they have and then that guidance changes and so everyone's in scramble on that so the guidance i heard was really create two plans one plan is preparing for physical distancing three feet as much as possible in the classroom six feet as much as possible in other areas the second plan is if we don't have to do physical distancing so he said kind of right now you need to kind of you need to prepare for either of those possibilities and we don't know which one it'll be for sure yet in the fall that depends on the change in transmission in the community they
109said vaccinate vaccination cannot be required by local school districts and the legislature hasn't taken action to make that required so some people have asked will will people be required to vaccinate no not for fall not unless the legislature came into a special session and changed a law essentially as far as i understand the doh guidance says mass will be required for students and staff in schools in the fall you saw the guidance that came out this morning that was this morning this afternoon we saw cdc and governor inslee so at this point the press conference i read the notes from the press conference today i wasn't able to watch it and they said they had schools as one of the places where they said there may be an exception so it may they may still
110be required in the fall in schools we don't know yet i think that remains to be seen and i i wouldn't speculate on that until later at this time stage what we would say what we'll tell people is prepare for mass to be necessary because we don't know how long it will be before our students particularly our 2 through 11s have the opportunity to be vaccinated so we'll wait and see more information to come on that but right now the doh guidance is planned for masks so some budget good news what yeah i don't know when the last time we got to come to a board meeting and say we have good good budget news for you so um we have did receive some stabilization funds from the state uh actually transportation stabilization as you
111may know we lost about a million dollars last year in transportation funding about a million dollars this year in transportation funding the state is going to is backfilling half of that so we'll get about a million dollars back on the 2 million that we've lost in transportation funding over the course of this pandemic so but that's helpful that really makes a big difference in stabilizing our budget in enrollment the legislature is backfilling what will the impact on us will be about two million dollars to help what and remember we i came to you earlier in the year and jim came to you earlier in the year and said our fund balance is critically low and we're continuing to serve students and we're our hope and expectation is that we're going to get some support at
112the from the state on this they came through and that will help stabilize our fund balance and put us in a situation where we don't have to make really hard decisions going into next year about staffing or about other programs that we may have been stuck with had we not had support so that's a big deal that's really good news yeah it really is and then in addition to that we have federal learning recovery funds that allows us to use those federal funds for what they're intended for learning recovery and we're excited about that so uh in the process of starting that discussion or working through that discussion on how do we use those funds to most effectively impact positive change for our kids so i want to talk to you a couple minutes about
113high school and beyond plan so just just just reminding you and refreshing in case you haven't heard it in a while the high school and beyond plan it's a state graduation requirement it's designed to really make sure our students have a chance to explore their skills and interests and to think about career potential career options that would match with those skills and interests there's some required elements of that plan identifying career goals going through a risk skill and interest assessment to help identify career goals that's required identifying your education goals having a four-year plan for school to meet graduation requirements that aligns with career goals and then a current resume or what they call it or activity log is what they've got those are the requirements of the high school and beyond plan that was
114not waived by the state board of education when they gave us the opportunity to waive other things and so we are in a situation where we have to make sure our students complete that high school and beyond plan of these required elements so naviance that came up earlier this kind of frustration and feeling that naviance isn't fully serving students needs right now um what and what sean wanted me to pass along here so first of all we purchased that program in 2018-19 to assist students through this high school and beyond planning process because when you look at every student needing to do it and it's really a 6 through 12 it's in grades 6 through 12 they're supposed to be the sequence of activities that help them do so training all of our staff with
115the knowledge to be career counselors and provide all of this in every classroom across our school district we recognize wasn't fully practical so figuring out a way to have a tool that really helps guide students through this process is a is was really important so they identified naviance as a tool that could do that there's no perfect tool for this um we looked at a number of other tools that that are alternatives to it naviance was the one they chose as best meeting the needs of our students after reveal that a naviance team at our middle and high schools was then created to support implementation and they built a scope and sequence at each grade level to say okay what lessons would we have our students go through that was all done in 1920 2019
11620 before the pandemic hit and the pla they had a plan for how will that be rolled out next year the time that that would happen teachers providing the support for students and then we made this shift and when we went to remote instruction and we came into this year um if you remember back at the start of the year everyone was learning how to do remote instruction there was this recognition that like you you could put people say people were in survival mode a bit students and staff in survival mode so everyone was learning how do we make sure we get the core instruction done in that area and so naviance was really placed as a here we had you have some time beforehand we started high school at 8 20 rather than 7
11740. and the state said you need to have remote activities for students for that time they're not in well naviance was identified as one of those this gives students time for a couple of things including an audience so the hard part about that is because they weren't online with someone guiding them through it it didn't give them that level of support that we'd hoped for in our home rooms that we would have had in a normal atmosphere so that was a wrinkle that created a challenge in kicking naviance off so some of the things they have done we're offering elective credit this year quarter credit per semester over four years so a student can earn up to two credits for completing the high school and beyond plan activities and they didn't want it to be
118something where a student would be penalized but so a student who completes all the activities in the pacing guide can get an a for that and it can actually help gpa if they complete just the essential activities it doesn't help or hurt your gpa but you get a pass and you get credit for that um inability if you're not able to complete them it's it's they just don't there's no credit it's not it's not something that counts against you it's uh but it's an opportunity for students to earn some credit they put together a marketing and communication plan on that to support people on understanding the high school and beyond plan and naviance and that started with a letter to all our families providing information about setting up accounts skyward email blasts throughout the year
119on the components of naviance i know i've gotten some of those and i can tell you um i i think in some cases people may have just made critical choices about what they paid attention to because this was because we were in survival mode we were in this new set of instruction and people in some cases just said i can't attend to that right now and i think that's been the challenge so what do we do about that um student learning has created a help desk uh to help provide support for students families and staff and completing those activities and we've been i guess they've been getting quite a few calls from people who are calling in and taking advantage of that help to participate to get those high school and beyond client activities done
120we tried to narrow the focus to what are just the essential lessons the things that help us get through the that meet the requirements of the high school and beyond plan um so there's an updated list and so they're also then communicating back to the schools every four weeks from student learning to the buildings here's the activities that have been completed the people who need additional who aren't done yet at 12th grade they're actually doing that every two weeks that information back to the building so that to get the buildings to go out help students make sure that this gets done so that's kind of an overview of what they've been doing to try to address this and we know that next year hopefully with a being back in school and a different structure and
121a higher level of support because we'll be back in the school environment we can really kick this off in a way that students come to see naviance as a valuable support as opposed to something that feels like this extra thing that is off to the side and it's not any of my core classes but i've got to get it done um that's i understand that's how students have seen it i know that's i mean my kids have seen it that way as freshmen they're going what do i eat right and and i i i recognize that's been the dynamic this year it's hardest for our seniors right now and that's what we're trying to make sure they get done and get it completed and for our kids in the younger classes we can catch that
122up we can help them get through this in the future with a higher level of support in school um that's for our seniors right now is making sure that they cross the finish line and get that done so it's not a barrier to graduation yeah definitely i mean i can definitely speak to that my senior has felt that as well because it's been first of all i wasn't really aware of it and then as well as my freshman son as well they didn't really know until i got the email and said hey you need to pay attention to this and i think a lot of parents probably had that kind of reaction as well just didn't know until they got an email and then had to tell their children yes this is something you need
123to do because i was really unaware of coming into the district that this was even part of the high school and beyond plan so maybe a little bit more attention to advertising um the plan to families they know this is something that's actually required and and i'm now just fun now i'm sorry i'm new so i'm just finding out that this has actually started in sixth grade i did not know that and um maybe other parents don't know that as well yeah it's really we're just i mean this year was the kickoff to really starting that 6 12 continuum and that law changed it used to be really a high school thing 9th through 12th really or 8th through 12th and now they've kind of pushed it clear back and saying let's start earlier and
124build it up through yes i just do i can't emphasize enough how concerned i am about the seniors and how they feel that this has really been put upon them and how they feel that it's just really an extra load many seniors are also working really hard to and have been working hard to secure scholarships um that's something that takes a lot of their extra time when they're writing um doing word essays 300 to 500 sometimes a thousand word essays so they're doing all these things to look towards for their future that are positive as in gaining financial support for school which is extremely important you know many companies can afford it and they need these scholarships and grants whatever they're doing i should have that grant because that's also very important because i have
125free help um that naviance has sadly taken on that um it's taken on a real burdensome role for seniors and i think our young women here spoke publicly about that and i would just like to offer my support in that because as a parent i'm a senior it's been very difficult to get behind the naviance just because it's been so much in addition to dealing with the pandemic and i understand that um this was something that should have been rolled out in the home room and if the kids would have been in school obviously it would look a lot different so i will say i'm a bit disappointed that this particular part of the high school of the young plan wasn't waived um but i actually understand that we need one um it's just sad
126this this particular part of the plan of namions didn't really in my opinion serve its true need because we were in the middle of a pandemic i think there was a loud cheer from from at least these these two students but also at my household when the senior presentations were a requirement that we waived because that's something that we did ella's like oh yes um which i personally love um but i i like that this is starting in sixth grade because it's not supposed to all come and culminate in the 12th grade right it's supposed to be worked on and it's supposed to help you plan for your high school career and it's just you know by the time you get to the 12th grade it is kind of the end because most of the
127work will have already been done and so it's it's this in between growing pains and trying to figure out how to check the box because that's really what it is it's checking the box so our seniors can graduate but then also looking forward to the the power it can have to expose students to something beyond you know our teachers come from a variety of experiences but mostly went to college and became teachers um and while we have cte um teachers who maybe came through industry have a different experience but the power in this tool is that it would expose someone who is not interested in going to college into other areas and helps them find their strengths and helps expose them to other things that could that you know other careers that could be of
128interest to them and so i'm excited about the power i i i i hear it too from my daughter i almost i don't even know if she's gotten it done yet um but um it's it's i've never liked the idea that you have to do something just to check the box and it's not meaningful and that is the hard thing that i have going on in my head um and so but i do know that that's not how we look at this long term for our students i don't think yeah there's no intention for this to be a checking of a box our plan i mean the investment in naviance was really to not just do the bare bones right because could we do do this in a bare bones fashion it's to really do
129it well um i can tell you when i was a junior english teacher i used to have we had to do our students do a research project i chose to have them do a career research project it amazed me how many kids in their junior year had never thought about what they were going to do after they graduated and i'll tell you what i had them do was a lot of what's in this high school and beyond plan i said you need to go out and research a career find you know look they do an interest inventory identify something and said they'd say well what if i don't decide to do that well that's a decision that is learning that is but i would have them actually go out and interview someone in that career
130figure out what education it takes to get there look at a course sequence to get through it it amazed me how often i mean how many had never had any of that experience before right and and and the fact that we've got this now to really say let's build this up so that by the time kids get to high school they're starting to think about that they don't have to have a direction but that they're considering it and thinking about what kind of education do they want to get when they leave high school or what kind what direction do they want to go so that their plans are informed right i think it's a great great idea so great next year and it's been a rough start to it this year we know yes so
131can i ask a question uh did you say they could get two credits to a credits for completing all you know over four years yeah over four years yes it's the ones the seniors this year are they able to still get that fully or we can't really because i mean they could get for i think this year if they see if we started in the fall they could get a half a credit per house over the year over this year they can't retroactively go back of course and and get those credits for previous years so this is another thing that as it builds up our freshmen this year could theoretically earn two credits in that area so so i'll only put on my grumpy old man get off my lawn for this half as much
132but that's still pr that's pretty much free credits and we have waived the the community service hours and we have waived the senior presentations and i know this may be new and it may not be the smoothest thing but i think we can still power through it i think it has some value especially if there's free credit so tied to it but it's an easy egg i if it's two understood should be pretty simple that's a gpa booster so um so yeah next i look forward to next year and embracing this further but yeah people are gonna have to get through this year it's it's it's uh just kind of another piece of a complex year for our four kids so so with that i want to just end by saying once again framingham welcome
133lori we're excited to have you join the board it's nice to have five on the board here and to see you all that is refreshing i haven't seen you ever without your math this video absolutely on a all right that's what i have tonight thank you sean that was great all right thank you uh now we'll move on to we have legislative update w-i-a-a update and then board retreat discussion okay so i thought because um and we spoke sean and i had mentioned this probably the last time that we need to have the legislative update as a regular board report because the session is finished now so we can take a little bit of a reprieve from it um so i thought i was thinking about what do i want to kind of say and
134summarize and um so what i decided to do was kind of go back to the beginning um i guess of the about a year ago or you know whenever it was that we kind of started to get going on all of this and think through all of the advocacy that had gone on within our district and uh what that led to in the end so um i mean so you just do real quick so i use one note i'm an avid one note nerd um so i have all of these notes from the board and i have a little tab for tsd legislative so it's actually pretty sick it didn't take very long for me to go through and tally some things up so um sean and i participated in over the course of the
135year 10 legislative morning calls with our 22nd i participated as a new as a new legislative rep in five wasda legislative rep 101 monthly meetings back in the fall participated in the legislative listening tour that some of the committees had before they were officially getting going but wanted to kind of just hear about what was going on um we uh sean and i had the the first meeting with uh representative zabarro and arkha from the 20th so that was um he said that was kind of a first and a really exciting piece of advocacy to at least break through for 10 minutes and talk to them didn't quite get with senator braun yet but it will it will happen in the upcoming year um participated in the was the legislative conference with a couple of
136you as well and then the big one was um and kind of back to the the was the impact the big one was reviewing and getting all organized for that general assembly so that was uh that was an interesting process i will admit that i was a little nervous at first because it seemed so incredibly complicated and i wasn't sure if i fully understood exactly what it was that we were doing with the whole here we have legislative positions and we have permanent positions and you go through and you look at all of them and there's tons of them prioritize get together with the rest of the board get the input and then get in there with this list and then actually participate in the assembly to go through and you know give our our
137votes and our input um which then led to the wasda advocacy platform for the year so then once the session actually started what i found was um i mean i paid attention to wasda but you know for the most part the thing that really drove me the most was our legislative priorities that we had come up with you know as a board and focusing in and they were very pandemic specific you know this time around focusing on the idea of the the need for funding and then also the student support so not only um making sure that we've hopefully could find some sort of infrastructure for supporting students when they're in remote learning but then um the mental health piece was a pretty big deal so i actually listened into a lot of hearings tracked
138you know a lot of bills all the ones that i had communicated about throughout the the process um and then you know kind of in the end when and hearing from you know sean's update in terms of where we started in the fall with these really i mean they were very dire concerns i remember being really nervous um particularly when um you know jim britton brought up the the concern about the transportation funding that was kind of the first big one where it was like wow this is really it's actually kind of scary to not know what's going to happen and i still remember how frustrating it was to just kind of sit there waiting for january because there was no special session called you know that that was kind of a big a big
139learning in terms of this is this is challenging you know we're kind of left hanging out there to figure all of this out on our own because there is no legislative action that's able to get started you know at least until january but now looking at it it's like wow coming around full circle given our legislative priorities we were actually pretty ended up being pretty successful i don't know if our um efforts i sent two emails so one on the transportation funding formula at the beginning the other one kind of towards the end in terms of the enrollment stabilization and um i know shawn did a lot of work in that area too and you know who knows if all of that did have an impact it might have with our 22nd you know partners
140but um in the end i think you know again working on this as our own district is probably the most impactful um i was thinking again about the in the last legislative rep call with with wasa they were what was that a couple weeks ago they were already starting to gear up again for that position process and i think i even asked in the meeting are you all going to do like an end of session report or something like how are you already you know moving into next year and getting ready for that when we don't even have like the final policies and and and they just kind of said well we have to because of the timing and the other thing that i realized which kind of goes back to it initially being very
141overwhelmed by the whole thing was you know waz is an organization they're phenomenal they are somebody that we can go to and they can advocate for everybody but that's what they do they use those positions so then they can feel comfortable going to a hearing and speaking on behalf of school boards if they don't have if something comes up that they don't have a position on they won't do it they won't go and you know speak at the hearing and i thought well that's you know it's really not the end of the world because we always have the opportunity to do that as well if there's something that we really care about we're really passionate about we can you know we can go and speak to that for for some water anytime so um yeah
142i think that was that was pretty much it uh just you know a lot of really interesting learning for me and i i really did thoroughly enjoy it it was it was fascinating particularly in this given session to watch as things were so touch and go for a long time and i guess we'll be getting ready for that general assembly not too long in the future just started all over yeah that's going on any questions for daddy oh no i just think it was really amazing everything you just said i worked in the state legislature so i understandable overwhelming um and i think it's really great that you went and did all that so thank you thank you yeah i would like to comment that as well too it's been very nice having come back
143it saved me yeah i right when i came on the board we started that process before we had a darby and it really frustrated me so thank you darby and learning that um it's tremendous the information that you've brought to us and looking back on all the all the activities you did is pretty cool too so thank you thank you i will say um you and sean did have an impact i talked i'm friends with lobbyists you know with paid lobbyists and they they they all came like is it really as bad as we hear in term water about budget i said yeah it's bad they go that's all lord dylan talks about and so like representative dolan like knew exactly what our problems were and was advocating for the time you know for tomorrow
144specifically not just about all school districts but saying here's what's going on tomorrow we need to make sure it's right for them so thank you thank you for your work thank you and i'd say she has a unique perspective having worked as an administrator in a spokane school district she understands education funding and issues on a level that many of our legislators don't so when we talk to her about those i mean when i came into the district she talked about the fact that as we looked at the mccleary outcomes and things that she could tell that tom water seemed to fall on the wrong side of a lot of formulas and so when we were falling on the wrong side of this formula again she understood that which was fantastic and darby thank you
145you did such a good job of getting out to people all right good thing it's a two-year position all right casey taylor this will be quick and i will keep my snarkiness to a minimum yeah it's quite entertaining this is the w-i-a-a update which is a severe afterthought in the minds of ospr the thurston county health officer the department of health and the governor of this state none of which have any guidance at all whatsoever with their media frenzy in the last 24 hours around the wia at all so i am not going to present anything tonight as far as updates we are in season three we are progressing uh that is about it i know um i would expect significant changes with sports based on this information once wia is allowed to actually do
146something or get notified so a little bit disappointing that again it's it's not even they don't even consider any sports at all whatsoever um so we're working under guidelines that no longer exist or even valid but we still have to do them because nothing new exists um and it's very vague so that is my wia update for today and i think this will be my last one at least until we come back to school for sure or at least in august when we get an idea that's my intention so um i may bring something up into the final meeting about season three sports yeah and how we close it out and and some recognitions as well too so any questions i could ignore about wf there's there's no spectators there are spectators yes yes so
147if we just happen to just drop in drop it would there be space yeah so what i talked to tim are you talking about you specifically yes we have no and that's the separate entrance yes scott yes you could stop by yeah um yeah just maybe give 10 the heads up okay i think he's pretty good with it you know just flagging down when you're there for sure yeah but absolutely yeah spectators are uh spectators are allowed uh the sports right now are everything's masks basketball wrestling so that's that's basically it but everything else is still good we're still doing it okay no issues no transmissions wrestling covid testing is moving along okay i was gonna well i'll just throw it in here um it's um it's amazing so my my freshman had his first
148high school wrestling meet on tuesday he began with a win so that's always you know super exciting and it's just been i don't know i can't quite describe what it's been like to watch what these kids are willing to do in order to play their sports and so for a wrestler to wear a mask i never thought that was gonna happen i really didn't i thought that's so outside of the realm of reasonableness that there's no way that any logical adult would require that but not only did they require it but they required the rapid testing as well so he's the first one in our family to even have a covet test it was i mean it was 100 worth it you know to see him doing what he loves and so it's more of
149a just a nod to the kids for what they have put up with in order to do what they love and so i would love to see some changes that allow more spectators or you know them not to have to wear a mask or something it's a little strange watching basketball and masks yeah [Music] i would expect at least some kind of change or maybe some new guidelines who knows all right thank you casey um okay so board retreat discussion we talk about having a board retreat and usually our board retreats are spent orienting new board members um and since we had an orientation you know we had a little get to know you thing um we thought especially based on our oh a meeting or two ago just about um planning goal setting and
150that type of thing that we would have a board retreat focused on continuing that discussion um and was wondering what the appetite was to please remind me what we talked about sean because i've already forgotten um like a longer session perhaps on a weekend um and uh you know perhaps doing that or maybe doing a series of a couple you know a couple hours out you know outside of our regular meeting time to get together just to talk about what are what are what our goals are for the board what our goals are for the district and really like get on the same page on on that and have some we always have really good discussions but you know focused on goal setting is that is that what we talked about yeah so we usually
151have that sometime in july and i see we've got right now on calendar a school board meeting slash retreat scheduled for the eighth and so i don't know uh how much business we'll have for that i mean we may be able to really limit that to consent agenda and then just focus on because we have to run a meeting a month and have an actual business meeting and so july is pretty quiet time generally that that evening really could be primarily focused on board work question is would there be would we want to look at another time where we could have a more extended discussion and wanting to i think we'd said well we know that july is also a very busy time because i can say that the week after that i will be
152unavailable because my parents 50th anniversary were to we're all getting together as a family for that from my own perspective i would just lean towards july as well because i'll be taking my son to college early august so in california so august is kind of out for me i like the july 8th like date if it works for anyone else after the holiday and yeah hopefully too intrusive even those weekend plans that weekend yep yep and that meeting set for six if we wanted more extended time is there what would be the beginning time that you say that'd be the earliest i could get together if we decided would it be five is that uh i could i could do five okay okay so that if we could did a five to eight we could
153have a three hour window there certainly okay that would be here we have done that um we have done that here we've also done it like we did it at pellegrino's event center one time we did that as a is it just sometimes we've done that as an off-site occasionally uh so sometimes it's nice to have a little bit of a change of pace but if we uh if it's our if we just have to advertise it in advance if we're not going to have it here because it is always public meeting of course and so do we want to have it here or try to find a different venue different venue so let's think about a different venue we can work on that okay great if anyone has suggestions get them to sean all
154right this would be food and view food and view okay all right that's the criteria food in you is that what i heard yeah okay yeah all right now it's time for board member comments um so lori this is a time that people share you get two minutes to share and i'm not going to make you start yeah but it's a time that we all get to share either you know something reflection on the meeting or something else that's been going on that you want to communicate on so i usually ask for volunteers i can go first because uh my update is sort of sort of a follow-up or it's definitely related to some themes earlier that we heard today so i mentioned at the last board meeting that i had replied to um the
155person who sent us the letter from the doctors the group of doctors with you know concerns about children's mental health um i had replied and said how much i appreciated the fact that the medical community was acknowledging this as part of the crisis and um i just yeah i would was happy to hear from them um and so i had gotten a response back and um last tuesday i think it was um was invited to join with this mental health our children's mental health task force meeting that they had on zoom so i attended that and it was you know a lot of it was over my head because you know it was a lot of healthcare professionals but it was really interesting to hear what they were grappling with there was a lot of
156concern around resources a lot of concern that had come up you know within that letter in terms of you know we have pediatricians who are now seeing you know children coming in with these issues and they're not adequately prepared they talked about the just the lack of personnel that are available um interestingly enough one of the doctors who was on the letterhead was on the one of the initial panels and had mentioned that you know said a group of us got together and you know sent this letter and then we had an opportunity to go into some breakout rooms that were really small there was only two other people um with me and one of them and i uh i found it necessary to make sure that share the perspective that you know i it
157you hear people say that school that the school districts have the option to open up the schools and kind of reminded folks it's not quite that simple you know and that's really again goes back to why i was so appreciative to hear a different perspective is because we have been following the department of health guidance we've been beholden to the department of health guidance at the same time there is a well-known crisis happening and how those two are not melding together to lead to recommendations that are taking a broader view that's why i wanted to be involved in this and to find out you know what what can we know and learn from this group so the nice thing is is that they are very very willing to help and resource and work with the
158schools in any way that they can so that you know the concerns about the fall and you know when students are coming back how are we going to resource this what can we do it's all things that they're talking about and grappling with one of the doctors in my breakout room has a vaccine talk and you know she had asked about and said if anyone is interested in that and so that was going to be one of my follow-up items with you and potentially even with lori is to say is there a way to organize together to get that information put together so she can do that she's done it with a couple of other school districts she works down in the centralia area so we have um it's encouraging because we have we have
159support we have somewhere to turn to um you mentioned earlier sean about you know what is the first one in defense is it you know school counselor well you know not having the bandwidth there then it's a matter of resourcing and how do you know how to do that well again we have this we have this network that we can lean on so um that was kind of the big the big piece that i had heard or taken away from that um the other two things that i wanted to make sure to highlight was um the one of the things when they were saying what do we do you know how do we get action going forward brought up legislative action and what does that look like for us the prototypical school model and how
160there's not enough money for mental health counselors maybe you know maybe the mental health medical community can put together an advocacy platform and really work through with that um it's also just a really glaring equity issue one of the things i wrote down undocumented children are covered by medicaid but not for behavioral health and so just that statement alone i didn't i didn't realize that i hadn't really thought about it in terms of the resources you know again like in terms of private insurance or how do you even pay for this or get access to care so it all circles together on our district priorities and how we're we're needing to prioritize supporting our students as they recover from this so hopefully more to come thank you mr keller well i had my uh i
161guess we'll call it my quarterly meeting with my two principals i met with dave myers and ken dowdy so dave of black hills high school and kim at peter g uh and i just want to reiterate i highlighted some things that you both said that they also said that they were reflecting their themselves and their staff so they as well do not want any more transitions of the school year they've had enough the teachers um are doing fantastic work and they just want to now focus on that end that light but not have another left or right turn that they have to make uh they too would love to have the fall be a five-day week that's something they really are looking forward to they are caught in this uh dichotomy uh thought of when
162we're going to the four day again it was another transition i really want to be happy that i have all my kids back but it's another transition so there's like this internal battle yeah um i want to be optimistic and i don't want to use the word but and i'm hesitant it's just another thing that i have to plan for um so that was really weighing on their minds and so i think that is what's really driving i don't want another transition i just want to now know that i have all my kids four days a week i have wednesday i can use wednesday to plan i can use wednesday too if i want to upload lessons on my google because i'm still doing that all those things can now go for the next four
163weeks or five weeks um definite focus on mental health next year not for students and teachers and i think teachers need to hear that that there are people and there are resources not only for their kids to inform parents but also i'm informing you staff these resources are for you it's for them to hear that uh now again this was three weeks ago they really want a real prom now again that was three weeks ago uh and they both and it was funny kim was saying this did she and i think she said graduation i can't remember she said prom or graduation but just things that are normal that are big events they both just really desire that um they both said we really need to do something that's fun end the school year on
164a high note on a fun note and specifically and i love dave's ideas so he's wanting to do the yard signs again but he's afraid that's going to now set a precedent where every single year graduates are going to want a yard sign and that was really a way of setting last year's graduation apart to making it special and wanting to do the same this year but it's like okay that's two years in a row and then it becomes an expectation so he's kind of he's on that fence do i or don't i the graduation process looking into doing a morning and an afternoon session which is yes that is a lot for us because we're there twice but you can get twice the number of family members into the ceremony and the kids stay
165for both because the kids really have said to him i don't want to do half i want to stay together so if there's only one and i can only get two parents i want all the kids together i want all my students classmates together oh cool so that was his take from the students uh he's looking at and i know i said this as a joke the last one we're gonna do like grease and have our you know the big fare on the football field right off the sunset increased lightning um but he said they they're gonna have a fair out on the soccer field they're gonna have food trucks and photos and a drone fly over to get this the senior picture and i said well it'd be really cool if you had a
166thumb drive and so you then coordinate the photos and the fly over and then each student gets a thumb drive in the mail because it's going to take some time to process so i thought that'd be a great idea for both schools i then tom water might have an idea already in mind i don't know uh dave is really looking forward to working with the new halftime principal and she has a really strong um a lot of experience in mtss multi-tiered systems and supports so having that on site but also having that in district he's really looking forward to that okay make sure i got my talking points i got three seconds the stress that the student recovery plan of course i think that was district-wide but i really want to commend um sean your
167leadership and our teaching and learning department and our building administrators because that was a lot to do on top of everything else that is happening to pull that together because of the dominoes that that is going to start knocking off in place that's going to benefit our community our kids and our teachers so thank you thank you thank you you'd like to go next i'll go ahead and go oh let's see um so yeah i think the uh kind of reiterate i think what scott was saying about the uh i think the stress of going from two days to four days was worth it for a lot of people they saw the great value of it for sure but any type of adjustment to that four days is gonna probably be more detriment than any
168good that seems to be obvious um i am extremely disappointed in the lack of communication between ospi first county health officer the governor and the department of health i would have hoped a governor that just appointed a new secretary of health less than six months ago would be more communication in direct contact with their guidelines match and align with each other as opposed to directly contradict the thurston county health officer while following guidelines again those guidelines are antiquated and don't follow the current recommendations that come out i feel as if they don't have the kids best interest at hands and their recommendations to put numbers and metrics out there without any other consideration as shortsighted uh prom and graduation this has been on social media has been a little crazy as to what is happening
169my guess is we may still have more developments on that in the next few days we don't know [Music] i don't want to say one way or the other but whatever the students want it would be my preference that'd be graduation if we can do a prom a real prom i understand we have problem events um but if there's actually a possible way to do a real problem that's great if people in the community want to go ahead and take that upon themselves they're more than welcome to do that as well too lastly i would like to thank our student reps they have been a huge uh source of information this year there is several times that we the information we never would have gotten anywhere else surveys talking to people visiting the schools i
170think i've been to every school this year except for little rock and east holy so the information you brought forward to us was was huge um special shout out to ella her last presentation today for her report was about as smooth as butter i know her first time she could tell she was a little nervous as she should be and that was fine but she certainly figured that out very quickly and it's one of your strong suicidals so congratulations and thank you rebecca wow miss joe mr taylor i'm impressed ella or rebecca either of you like to go next sure i will go um so i'm just really sad that this is my last meeting like it makes me really sad just thinking about and i always get emotional about that kind of stuff but
171it just makes me sad like thinking about the first time i ever came here sitting over there and like i don't know just i've been here for so long now it's my last time i'll be here it's kind of sad but i'll really miss you guys but i also just wanted to say like education for me is something that's like obviously for all of us it's a really big part of our lives but for me especially i feel like school is definitely like a second home for me and you know when someone would ask like on thanksgiving like what are you thankful for the first thing i would say is like the ability to have an education because that's just something that you know a lot of people take for granted especially you know in
172this you know day and age a lot of people don't understand that there are people still who can't get an education and i just wanted to thank you guys for putting in so much effort to make my education so great and make my education so like worth it um without you guys like i don't know education might not be the same it might not be as good it might not be so fulfilling for me so thank you guys so so so much i'm really thankful for you guys and all the work you've put in and just like especially being here and like witnessing it has truly made an effect and truly made a difference for me like to see that it's not just a couple people like talking a little bit about stuff it's like
173a lot of real real hard work and so i thank you guys so so much okay so starting off it's like business question um that letter that you talked about um i would be happy to draft some sort of letter to any future reps um might not happen before graduation realistically not necessarily no there's no due date so you probably won't recognize the email that it's coming from okay who would you like me to send that to you you can send it to sean or i either way or whatever thank you and then um mostly i really want to express gratitude um this time around um on two friends one i feel like prior to coming into this position this year this concept of the school board was just like oh this this group of
174people that need every now and then and discuss things and never really do anything about it and i've seen so much of the opposite through this i've learned so much about what what goes on behind the scenes and there's there's so much that students don't see that's happening i think we feel like there's always more that can be done we should be doing more but realistically that's not that's not possible um so it's been really nice to see that you're you're all doing a lot and there's so much going on behind the scenes and you care so much i've really learned learned that and i'm very grateful to be sharing that with my peers um so yeah and like specifically things that i've been reporting on throughout the year like naviance and mental health um
175at this meeting in particular i feel like that's really like coming into fruition that's i've been seeing over the past few months that you're doing a lot to work on that and really taking our comments to heart and i'm i'm so excited i'm gonna i was considering not sending out like a last notes thing because i figured there's probably not much to say from this meeting but yeah i'm super excited to send out notes they listened they heard us they're doing something gay so there's that and then more on a on like a personal new level um i think thank you so much for this opportunity i feel like i've learned so much like adulting skills from this um just like communication and politics and things like that i'm really grateful to have had this
176opportunity and i'm looking forward to applying what i've learned in the future and then also i'm i feel like one of the things that we lost this year for the seniors was an opportunity to leave a legacy which i think some people don't care about as much as others but that's really important to me i like leaving my fingerprints all over where i what i do and i feel like through through this position i feel like i've been able to leave a legacy so i want to thank you for preserving that part of the senior experience that gave me goosebumps thank you [Music] i first just um really want to express my gratitude from to the board for appointing me to this position um it means a lot to me um as you all know
177or maybe not know i'm a huge school advocate education advocate for children of all ages um so being on this board means a lot to me and being able to have a voice in what goes on in the tulmona school district so thank you to all of you for pointing me to the business show i'd also like to thank sean and the district staff and especially becky for answering all of my questions i've had a lot of questions and um they've been very gracious to answer them when i've had them so thank you both and please relay that to the office staff as well um lori we'd admire um and i just would like to take this opportunity just to say that i will work my hardest to do the very best i can um
178to represent um every facet of the tomorrow school district but with most important emphasis on the students and that's the main reason why i came and wanted to do this job and that's what i'm going to focus on is be a real advocate for the kids of our district i don't have a lot other than that because i just haven't had a chance to have meetings with any administrators quite yet but i'm looking forward to doing that and um i will just wrap it up by saying if anybody would like to reach out to me i am more than happy to answer any questions or talk to anybody um you can find my email on the tomorrow school district website and thank you um maybe if you're setting up time with administrators maybe you can
179let other people know if they want to maybe piggyback because that's not really something that people were able to do i don't know if were you guys able to meet with everyone managed to get everybody at the district just just in time okay got it all right okay i think shawn had said something or discussions about maybe doing like a whole office step for me so i can just come in and kind of take a broad swath and meet everybody at once for the district and then as far as the principles um i'm gonna we're gonna you said something about saying on email yeah to the principles and setting it yes yeah i think i started one maybe in my dress folder yeah yeah i was gonna open that with you it's probably in my
180draft so i'll make sure that i finish that up if we haven't yeah thank you yes all right um i'd like i'd like to thank rebecca and ellen again um even growing up in the district i feel like um i i still feel like i have to work on [Music] feeling included and so i'm i'm conscious about making sure people that come into this space feel included it's why i put together a binder for everyone it's why we reach out and meet with you guys at the beginning of the year because the only way that you share information that we need to know to get better is if you feel that you can trust us and so i'm glad that you got to that level with us and it's something i really want for the
181entire district that you don't have to be in this boardroom in order to share or advocate for your child or yourself so one of the reasons you know i want to i want you to you know provide feedback is you know can we do a better job doing that because it it will help the next student reps it could help another parent you know and how we think about how approachable we are i think i'm very approachable but my husband tells me i'm intimidating so you know um i think i think this place can be intimidating we never want it to be we all try to be friendly but it is very intimidating to have chairs there and us all sitting at a table so um it is it's uh it takes intentional effort for
182us to make sure that people when they call someone a staff person or one of us that we will listen and that we care about what it is that they have to say and then we're not going to you know dismiss them um and so it's a it's really it's really important i'm glad one of the reasons i'm glad you're sharing that back with the students is because i remember being a student thinking you know there is no adult that is going to care about what i think and nothing can be farther from the truth and and if we don't give an opportunity for kids to share and advocate for themselves now how are they going to be able to do as adults so how can we keep that process going and create that place
183here in tumwater so when they go out into the world they can advocate for what they believe is right so thank you for being the models for that um because it takes a lot of work you guys did a lot of work and probably a lot of coaxing people sharing their thoughts so thank you thank you thank you i love hearing the student voice um and there was a time that there was like only one and i think you know we might have alternated between schools and we'll we'll do better about making sure cascadia is here um but i there can never be too many students on our board and that's my uh that's my thought and so thank you for being good role models for the next group so all right so now we're
184going to uh take a break but after that break or actually we're going to recess to executive session to discuss personal performance evaluation or qualifications for employment for rcw 4230 110 1g uh so we will be reconvening the regular meeting in probably about 45 half an hour 45 minutes but we will not be discussing any uh any we will not be taking any action on any items we'll just be coming back to adjourn and so anyone who'd like to leave you won't be missing anything when we come back to it during the regular meeting so now we go to recess right thank you [Music] you