March 27, 2025 VISD Board Meeting

001March 27th, it is 617, let's call it, and I call this meeting to order. Welcome everybody. Um, there we go. Um, great. Um, I guess I'd like to, uh, call for an approval of the agenda. Would anyone like to uh, chair? I'd like to um let the board know that we made a small amendment to the consent agenda. Initially, there was in the consent agenda, there was an approval of an overnight trip for fifth grade camp. I think back in 2019 or 20, the board approved a different policy where overnight trips to camp um do not require board approval. And so, just a mistake and we put in there, we pulled it out. I'll be approving it for sure. So move forward. So it's not any just more procedural things on that. Great. Would anyone

002like to approve the agenda as amended? I would like to um motion to the agenda as amended. A second. Thank you. All those in favor. Any opposed? I just want to make mention that uh Dr. Kashi is recovering from an illness. So his voice is uh understandably very low and quiet tonight. He is doing the best that he can and we are grateful that he is able to be here at all. Um I am going to read a little something um uh tonight uh for my land acknowledgement. Um I was fortunate enough to go uh with a friend and and district colleague um to hear a phenomenal speaker recently, a woman named Norma Wong, who is um a Zen practitioner, uh woman of um mixed indigenous uh Chinese and Native Hawaiian descent. Uh real um

003it's a real gift to be in her presence and listen to her wisdom. Um and she talks a lot about um the Hawaiian um notion of uh or principle of kana which is around um sort of uh mutual stewardship of land. And so I'm going to read something um from her website. While there are many variations of how the relationship would be described, different names, different aspects of the earth that would be described depending on the place of those humans, the central principles of the relationship as described in the written and chronicled were remarkably similar. Why wouldn't they be? Through though situated throughout the earth, humans were observing and learning from the earth and the universe. There were innumerable cautionary tales of what happened when the right relationship was ignored. Tales of famine, drought, disappearing

004fish. Nonetheless, humans belief and acceptance of relationship with the earth and the universe slowly evaded over the eons of time, giving way to constructs of ownership, property, hierarchy of culture and science, and hierarchy of values and rights. But not for all. For some humans are the descendants of humans who did not stop learning and practicing, did not forget and continue to think about the land and universe at the center in relationship to the past, the present and the future. We call these humans indigenous or the indigenous peoples as it was for the earliest humans. One of the principles governing the right relationship between humans and the earth is the principle of mutual stewardship. Simply put, the humans of a given place would in relationship to each other care for and support that place so that

005the place can care for and support the humans. Mutual relationship describes the relationship between the differentiated humans as much as it describes the relationship between all of the humans in a given place with that place. Different groups of humans in relationship to a place will have different needs and desires. Before those needs and desires are sorted, the first rule of mutual stewardship is humans follow the earth, not the other way around. What from the perspective of the place, the land, the waters and beings who are not humans are the needs, the desires, the carrying capacity, the fragility, the resilience, the sustainability and suitability of uses, the extent of care and caution of the place, the land and waters. Who gets to say the wisdom of a place comes from those who are in the longest

006relationship of care to that place, not the longest relationship of use. In many disputed places where the dispute arises from different worldviews on the relationship of humans to the land, the people who hold the wisdom are those who are indigenous andor who are aligned with a more indigenous worldview. The call in a dispute for the voices of the indigenous should be about the call for the source and keepers and practitioners of the caring relationship with the place, the land, the waters, and the nonhuman animal and plant beings of the place, the land, the waters. Relegated to stakeholder status or indigenous consultation, there is no mutual stewardship. Being in relationship means just that. The various peoples who recognize and embrace that their hopes and challenges are intertwined should be in relationship with the various aspects of

007stewardship. The identification and understanding of the intertwined hopes and challenges. The respectful and curiously held understanding of wisdoms that may not be innately held or previously recognized. The casting into future possibilities. The untangling of the current knots. The hard work and sweat equity of finding ways and implementing this variety of mutuality is simple but not easy. Long steeped in placebased wisdom, the practice of that wisdom, the fierce defense of that wisdom, the stepping into carries the heavy responsibility and risk of sharing wisdom with the people who will honor it and people who will not. There is forever woven responsibility for those people who do honor. Roles may differ, expertise may differ, wisdom may differ. It is the weaving that defines mutual stewardship. Uh and with that uh we have uh time for public comment. I

008don't have anybody signed up. Is there anybody here that would like to make public comment? I actually do. What is this uh regarding I'm a little bit late. I'm sorry. You're just um this is kind of regarding Buzz Barn. Great. Say your name's what? Susanna. Thanks, Susanna. Welcome. Sorry, I made it. You're doing too well. You're good. Yeah. Um just basically um I've been having issues. I've uh commented to uh media and uh Stephanie Spencer, but um just regarding communication with the bus barn, not great at all. at all. Um, back and forth. Uh, especially what's her name? Uh, uh, Briana. Bri. Yeah, I haven't had the pleasure to meeting her. I went today there, but apparently she was picking her son or child here at Shitakqua. But to address that, um, yeah. Um, I

009think they're confusing kids. And um, now another question. Well, not question, but now it's a question. Do the kids that go in McMurray have to be having a a an assigned like a paper or saying that they can take another bus? Cuz what I understood like it was never a thing. I know it's for Shiakwa, but not for McMurray or the high schoolers. But my son had it uh got a citation uh previously supposedly and now the second citation was because he uh was not allowed to hop on bus 3 when I specifically told him to meet me like in town and that was a citation because he was not allowed to get on the bus cuz he normally doesn't ride bus three he rides bus eight and Susan just question your son is yeah

010at McMurray at McMurray and I have three kids here at Shiakqua. Uh my son literally uh all week has been taking bus uh the Shiakwa bus because he's been catching up on his homework. Um so he rides the uh what is it the 350 from Shiakwa but the one that I'm having issues is the one from McMurray. They yeah citation wise then they're good to write citations but when they need to communicate with the parents like if the bus is not coming through or whatever they don't say anything and the last time I called they said oh well we let you know the schools know it's their job to you know uh you know to inform the parents so I don't know where that kind of leads and this is the reason kind of like

011I'm here um Superintendent McShane We will follow up with you. I should have said at the start uh and this is my fault and this is not just about tonight um around public comment. We as a rule I know Martha asked a clarified question but as a rule we are here to listen and not necessarily to engage in dialogue. It isn't because we don't take your concerns seriously or that we're not listening. We appreciate you bringing them to us. Um generally public comment is an opportunity for us to hear from the community. appropriate folks will follow up but we are not um able because of the nature of the um open public meeting act which to engage in uh in dialogue at this time but we take your the only reason why I'm bringing it

012bringing it up here is because I feel like I haven't been heard and this is not the first the second the third time so this is um if you can you know speak to Stephanie um yeah she knows kind of where I'm coming from and like I've kind of had enough honestly and sorry for the contact. Great. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate coming. Yes. Anybody else for public comment at this time? Yeah. Uh I just like to provide myself and give spoken testimony about Bash Act um which I know is on the agenda if that's fine. Um I'm the co-president. I co-founded the club this year with my friend. Um, we wanted to have some sort of political organizing in the Bashan High School community and so we founded the club to bring students together.

013Right now we have somewhere between 16 and 22 at our most coming to each club meeting. Um, and we've had today was our 14th meeting I'm pretty sure. Um, and we've every week we talk about the news and go down things. We've been planning lot all sorts of different um actions. Uh we went we attended a protest a while ago um as sort of like a it was it was like five people but it was like you know our first action. Um we're planning a field trip right now to Olympia and also a fundraiser for a few um charities in the region. And generally our goal is to um connect with local politicians, educate um our our school and our community around us about um local politics and politics in general and to get ourselves

014organized and in action. Um, all right. So, uh, at this time we're going to move on to the consent agenda. Um, can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda as written? Motion to approve. Thank you. Seconded. Thank you. All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Consent agenda passes as written. Uh, great. Moving on to the superintendent report. Um, wish we had a mic, but um, be fine. Everyone just lean in. Congratulations, Jackie. Your club has been approved. Bring back the good news. Um, two quick updates. I shared some information earlier with the board through email, uh, but we'll make it public now and send something out tomorrow, uh, in our good news Friday message to families. Um, Due to the diligence of Tory Gateman and our two program managers for the food services

015department, Eene Burke and um Sarah Huner, we are now past the 30% threshold required for free breakfast and lunch at Shaka. The really kind of frosting on this lovely baked cake to keep the food metaphors going are that we will not have to do this process for two more years. So that'll be extended forward. Um so that's really good news for for our kids. The second part probably good news at least just for our point of sale folks um is that students here at Chicago won't need PIN numbers. So, um, that's a significant lift, uh, off of the shoulders of our food service staff who, if you can imagine, you know, I mean, kids do a great job, believe it or not, with their with their PIN numbers. Absolutely. U, but it's probably, um, a

016nice a nice perk. I met with Washington State Fair's planning team yesterday for about an hour and a half where they were reviewing myself and Amy Dreer from Fair's action. I probably had their groups. There's I think two or three different fairy groups around town. Amy Dreer and Justin Irish Hirs. Huh? Hirsh. Hirs. Yeah. Justin Hirs. Um join myself and um members of the Washington State Fair team to give us an overview of the um the three vote plan. the three vote plan will start in June on June 30th. I was um mildly interested, not concerned, but interested um that if they, you know, the governor said that he was going to restore free ferry service and it was going to happen in June. I was like, well, what if it happens at June 5th,

017you know, where we had this, you know, weird shift in times, I think our community, parents and families would be, you know, would would adapt just fine. But it's not till June 30th. No, that means what we is that that service will then continue into the fall. Um they're asking us questions um essentially that would they prefer a more you know more more boats sailing um but there might be a month at month intervals in a season where they might have to go down to a two boat because of some circumstance or would they rather a two boat schedule for entire season and no changes. So kind of there's compromise between reliability and um and then the number of votes. So those were the kinds of conversations and contemplations but what they called um the

018district um oh they had a fancy name for it but they're prioritizing um school start you know and bell schedules and hazmat uh service. So those are two priority uh were two kind of priority groups for the Washington. If they go to the three vote, we could hear that they were going to re rejigger the three vote schedule. So it would be the three vote schedule that we had after they took action on the triangle route some time ago. The three vote route was only in service for about a little less than a year. I could probably be wrong on that. So, what that means for us is that they'll continue with the two vote for this year. We can anticipate a three vote for next year. Um, and we're going to be meeting again,

019I think next month, the same group. So, they'll share a recording of PowerPoint. When we do that, I'll provide it to the board. I really didn't speak that much at that meeting. The uh other update um I think is just kudos um kind of sorry Susanna this is uh about for students our bus our transportation program they every year they get audited um by the Washington state patrol they have two or three kind of surprise audits during the year and then one formal uh inspection and so um Alyssa Gerard the site coordinator for first student shared earlier of the good news that they passed their inspection by 100%. Um, so they'll get a a report to me and I'll share that also with the board. I didn't add in the board docs because I didn't

020want to add another document agenda. I'll share it with you. Um, where you'll be able to see kind of the nature of that report. There were just a couple things that they needed to fix, which was um there was a clasp on a fire extinguisher that needed to be closed. Um and then there was a um a dash light that needed to be fixed. So good news for first student transportation and since I've been here that's been the record has always been 100% passive for them. So and upcoming events something's happening next week. No, nothing's happening next week for students. Students are going to take the week off except for those probably some competitions. Um but then we'll have we'll come back. Um and the message to to staff um you know for tomorrow has

021been that you we've done a really great job in this kind of six week interim time between mid winter break and and spring break. So that's where kind of power pack a lot of learning and when we come back in April is when we start to ask students to show what they know assessments that happen kind of in April and May. So that'll be our kind of the that happenings. But April 10th, we'll have our board meeting. April 27th, April 24th, we'll have our second board meeting. April um that's typically cast out. Thank you very much. Our lone but highly capable student representative for us sports things. So, we had the Oh, sorry. We had the Ride the Cyclone Theater was I couldn't go. I got sick, but it sounded amazing. And sold out shows.

022I think I heard three times like And then the spring band concert happened. I didn't get to hear much on that, but I think it went pretty well. I had a few also really good. I went to all the things. Good. Um and then so our group is working on um our one of our goals we set was to um expand boys middle school and elementary school and so me and Oscar and our team went actually today to talk to the elementary school and some some classrooms didn't know we were coming so it was a little surprise for them but my classroom did and I got a bunch of feedback already so I'm super excited to kind of look over give them a survey so I'm excited to look over the survey and hear back

023and I've already got some specifics and then Cora is meeting with them the week after meeting with Murray the week after spring break. So I think she'll be able to share some of that stuff on the next boarding meeting. But we're making good progress and spring break next week and everyone's really excited. You can feel it. But um that's all for you. We wish Oscar the best tonight and Cor as well. Sorry, excuse me. I thought it would go longer, so that's why I um Yeah. Uh our monthly budget report. Cassie, what was yours? Let's start with January. Okay. Um so January was our fifth month of operation this school year. Um and um just kind of looking over, we've got our general revenues and expenditures there. And then we kind of scroll down and

024look a little bit more um at our little bulleted items. Um I want to point out that January is the first base uh sorry, excuse me, the first month that our revenue is based on our actual AAFT rather than budgeted. So you can see that switch there. Um our fund balance is higher um compared to this month in the prior year. um revenues are slightly lower and expenditures are slightly higher compared to January of last year. Um our expenditures are 69% less than our normalized projection of 42% but they are higher than last year by 1.84% or approximately $500,000. Um when we're looking at capital projects, our revenues are lower than the prior year based on tax collection. Um we have our transfer of tech expenditures and salaries that are in process that will be

025posted in March. Um there are no expenditures to report. Our debt services fund is performing as expected. In ASB our revenue is lower and expenditures are higher than the same month last year. Um GoFan reconciliation is complete and credit card revenue and reconciliation is in process. And for transportation vehicle fund our fund is performing as expected. Um and then if we kind of go through, we see our enrollment and our budget status report. Um really nothing groundbreaking there. Um performing as expected. And then if you go to the first um section of our controllers report, there's a couple of reconciliation items that we have in the month of January. Um two of them are in our general fund. Peter loves the budget status report just as much as I do. Okay, there we go. Yeah.

026So, we um have in our our general fund 230, there's a reconciliation item of $66.17 and our warrants outstanding um there was a county error of $4,38510. Um so those um we'll see a little bit of change as we move into February. But if we scroll down to ASB um there was a cancelled warrant in our um ASB warrant that was not processed by the county. So there is just a little bit of offage of $4164. Those are kind of the big groundbreaking items for January and then we can move into February. Can I just ask is the question if you don't have the answer right away that's fine. You mentioned something about ASB uh revenues being low and expenditures being a little high like a a small amount or is there something going on?

027So the credit card revenue is a big part of that. Um with GoFan it's all going into ASB. So it's more about moving it kind of out of their general fund and into kind of each um like group or club where that revenue goes. Um, so that's done through January just because that's how far we could get with our bank statements. The credit cards are all mixed in with our general fund. And so we have to go through and um do a big match between US Bank, the credit card charges, and kind of what's um needs to go into ASB. So it's a lot longer process and it requires a lot more investigative work. So it's just taking quite a bit longer. Once we can establish a good standard operating procedure, that will move to

028a monthly reconciliation. So it will happen. So I would this time next year, we'll see that those revenues and expenditures start to even out a lot because we'll be matching them as they're coming in rather than having to wait a big month. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Um, thank you. This is fantastic. Um okay on the third page in here points to enrollment data and I had also in the opening we approved the consent agenda but I had gone through that enrollment data there and I just noted a number of points but the crux of it is in this in the monthly enrollment chart there um this significant drop between 2022 2023 and 2023 agreed 2024, but also looking at what's happening now. And I'm wondering um if y'all talked about that given how much of

029our funding is dependent on enrollment. Um and I don't know, Slate, is it possible to see the monthly enrollment chart? I'm looking at it. No, but Oh, Peter, sorry. Sorry. I I was thinking back to the I know it. You were on the right document here. This was page three on that document. The one you were on before I think just a little bit up smidge up. We can see part of the chart but yes. Thank you. Yes. Thanks. And I I know and we've talked about it before all you know how challenging it is to address those different factors but given that it's such a foundational part of the budget. I just am wondering if y'all have been talking about this or looking at it and well we do get the enrollment report every

030month once that count is done. Um I don't think that we're seeing anything that would warrant like an extra discussion. Um if that has happened I haven't been involved or I'm not aware of it. I think January can be a little bit tricky and Amy can correct me if I'm off here. Um sometimes we see a little bit of movement after winter break um with students and then we also are seeing a change in the semester. So I think especially at the high school level um there impacted running start. So that can account for some of it. Um but we do look at it closely and that's you know why we're projecting for a lower number of enrollment next year just because we know that with um the way that enrollment is going down and

031not up. Um I don't know if that fully answers your question but if if you want something more detailed um certainly send it to me and I can dig into it a little bit. Okay. Um, so February was our sixth operating month of the fiscal year. Um, seeing here where we kind of have our little um, forget what we call these, our little indicators of where we are with revenues and expenditures. Um, with general fund, our fund balance is still more in general fund than this time last year. Um revenues are slightly higher, but our expenditures are significantly higher than this time last year. Um with expenditures, we're at 50.22% which is 1.22% more than the normalized projection, which is 49%. And we're 2.7% higher this February than last February. And so that's approximately $760,000.

032And then when we're looking um at capital projects fund, our revenues are lower this time um than last year based on tax collection and again we'll see that transfer of our tech expenditures um once it posts with the county in March. Debt services fund is performing as expected. Um ASB is um really the same with revenue being a little bit lower and expenditures higher. Again, we've got that GoFundM reconciliation happening, but we're still working on the rest of that general fund credit card um and ASC transfer process and with our transportation vehicle fund. Um the fund is performing as expected. And now, Peter, if you want to scroll, scroll scroll. Um still a little bit of reconciliation work to be done. Um we still have that $66.66 hanging out. I'm working to figure out where

033that is. And then um most of that 4,000 um reconciled on the warrants outstanding, but we're still looking for $1662.92. Um so hopefully um as we kind of go through our general ledger that we get from the county, we can pinpoint if it's more of a timing issue with um you know, a check that needed to be cancelled or a transaction that just didn't make it in from the prior month. So, um, with AP, we're kind of really working through some of those timing issues and then we're tweaking them as we kind of see, um, when they're causing problems. And then in ASB, we um, have one reconciliation item, which is $79527. And that is February financials. Yeah. Um, you were talking about the 2% higher from last February. Um, and 760,000 feels like a

034lot to me. Yes. Um, and so I guess what I'm wondering is what is the ripple out effect from here to the end of the year? Yeah. So, I'm definitely keeping a very close eye on our cash flow and we're really watching expenditures. Um, it is definitely something that's a little bit alarming. Um I think from year to year we're still don't really have all of that data to figure out kind of what a normalized month of accounts payable expenditures look like. So that's something that we're watching really closely. Um I'm running all of our cash flow numbers before we kind of do our midmon and end of month um payouts with our warrants just to make sure that we're not going to um run into any problems. Um Kelly Murphy has done an amazing

035job of really catching us up on a lot of stuff since she came on board in December. So I think we're really at a point now we're that there were some accounts that we were really behind on that are now being caught up and um a lot of that includes transportation costs which are pretty significant. So, I'm hoping that as we work our way through the rest of the fiscal year that we'll really see that start to stabilize. Um we're also hoping to do a little bit of analytical work just to see kind of what's a really um more normal amount for us to see for transportation and utilities in particular because we have some other things that we pay out that are at certain points of the year where we know it's going to

036be a little bit higher. But we also know that our lower aortionment ones are coming up. So we're really trying to be extra diligent as we work through all of those warrants going out, but really watching our purchases as our workflow as well. Can I ask you an expression a couple minutes ago? I think it was normalized month of expenditures. So that's when we kind of do the dividing of what is the month look like across the 12 months. So if we're like the normalized expenditure, we're saying that we would rather see that we were at 49% of expenditures rather than 50.22% because we're expending a little bit faster than if we were kind of doing it across the board a little more in the so we've accelerated a little bit. Um I think that

037we'll probably do a general fund um spending deadline of the end of April. So that messaging I am planning to send out tomorrow. Um but that will help us um once to just get all those expenditures in and done that will help us to with our um fund projection for the end of the year and make sure nothing unexpected happens. So hopefully kind of once all of that spending takes place we'll see it start to even out so that we're falling in line with that normalized projection rather than being do we have historical data on what that looked like last year at the same time? like are there expenses that just come up that would come up every year that would make it not Yeah. Um it's a little hard for me to speak to

038that just because it wasn't here at this time last year. Um we don't have that. Yeah, we could dig into it. So I would say no. I think the things that are coming up were um as we kind of were transitioning with our AP position, there were a lot of different processes that were being done that there wasn't really notes left behind for a new person to kind of just pick up and do them. So sometimes we're discovering those a little bit late in the game and so it's just taking a little bit longer for us to work through them which means that those invoice amounts get a little bit higher before we can pay them off. Last question. Um in conversations about the upcoming year and budget and looking um at that and looking

039at that goal of the inund balance at 27.5% etc. Um, in my estimation, I may wrong. If I'm if I'm taking the data that you've just provided, that could have a significant impact on that. Is that I I'm not saying that that's probable. I'm just it's possible that if we continue to practice, we would be pulling from that income. Right. You're saying if we don't kind of get our spending in line, it might have an impact on our end fund balance. So, I'd say yes. I think that right now we have enough kind of um checks and balances in place that we would be able to stop something if you know it's going to go through. Um so, I think again we're being really diligent. Um we're thinking through kind of what this looks like,

040especially knowing those lower portion months are coming up, which will also be helpful for us to kind of have that spending deadline um at the end of April. So, um I will keep you posted as we get into March. Um I think it's going to take a little bit for us to really understand what our AP um looks like from month to month. And Justin has kind of said it before, there just isn't really good data for us to use because it feels like it's all over the place where it's either really low or really high. And so we see these months where probably there was a lot of stuff that didn't get paid and then you see it kind of went into the next month and now we're kind of stabilizing a little bit

041but um I think there were a few things like I said we had a lot of transportation invoices that were outstanding and those were really big. So I think once we get on a cadence of paying most monthly I think we'll start to see that stabilize a lot and then I think we'll all feel a lot better. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Um, can I just give a quick audit update? Okay, sorry. Because I know everyone is just riveted by the audit. Um, we're definitely like really just in the thick of it. Um, there's been a huge influx of requests this week because Jim wants to make sure that they're keeping busy while we're out for spring break. So, I'm working really hard to get all his requests from this weekend by the end of day

042tomorrow. Um, I I think that they'll be closing up kind of the nutrition services portion shortly. They feel pretty satisfied with that. So, that's good. We've got that check mark going. They're working through our accountability audit. Um finishing up some of the work with financials, but they're going to um start doing some testing for special education compliance, which I think will hopefully go pretty quickly. Um so, we're definitely on track and the goal is to be done before the end of April. Um so, just wanted to let you all know that it's going well and we're moving along as expected. Done. Done. I would really love that. Yeah, I think so. Um he mentioned at the end of April in our um our entrance meeting, I think we're on track to do that. So just

043trying to be really responsive and get things in within a day or two so that way they can kind of go through it and then ask followup questions and that way we're not um just dragging it out to me. Yeah. Um great. Uh next up the uh planning update for 2526. Uh Dr. Miy Cassie again Amy. So um some of you may remember the board be presented with a full budget document most likely in May. So we're still tracking on that. Um it's our intent to every board meeting subsequent to that we will provide you with some information that you'll see in that board in that final document. So, two of the docs here are pretty straightforward docs. It's an organization chart that we keep um in this in this document just showing it's kind

044of an a nice artifact if you were to look over time. But then Peter, if you go to your taxes, it's probably important. So this document essentially uh if you were to go to King County and look at your own property, your own house, you could be able to pull up the chart that I pulled up, which was where I pulled this this information from. It's it's been in a similar format since I've been here um with the addition except of MCU when we saw state school levies go up. But essentially, you'll see um every entity on the island that collects money or off island as well through our property taxes. You'll see the total rate there per thousand. And if you look down, Peter, you'll see kind of again historical representation through these bar

045chart and and the table below what these rates actually total to in terms of our revenues for the for property taxes. Then the next document I'll let Cassie so this is um our projected revenue and expenditures for 2526. Um starting from the top and kind of working our way down. Um we have our estimated beginning fund balance for 2526. Um that will also be our ending fund balance for this year and that will roll over. Um the second line is our um current budget for this fiscal year. Um the third line um is taking into account um what our estimated revenue changes will be for 2526. Um keeping in mind the preliminary number um as we know the legislature is still in session um and that revenues for school districts is really fluid right now.

046We did see some preliminary numbers come out this week um but we're still waiting for those to be finalized but um that is information we can provide based on what we know today. So the total projected budget for next year will be um just under $31 million. And looking at our MOCS um that top line there in the second box shows you what our current MSOC budget is for this current fiscal year. Um we know that there's um a lot of things that are going to increase in costs as we move forward. Um so taking in consideration that we'll have higher costs for insurance, utilities, transportation, um contracts, other things that are infected, excuse me, affected by inflation. Um we see yeah infected um we'll see an increase of about $1.4 million um for ENSOC.

047And so that will bring our total MSOC budget for next year to just about $6.9 million. To those in the audience, MSOC stands for materials, supplies, operations cost. I I always forget that everybody doesn't always remember. Um or we can think of it kind of as non-staffing money, right? Um when we're looking at the third box, you can see um there on the top we've got the current salary and benefits budget for this this school year. Um the second box there has the step and name changes for our staffing for next year. Down accounts for the transfers that we'll do for staffing and cost between our um capital projects fund and general fund. And then um the box that's blank will kind of be filled in um with um word determination for um our bargaining

048that's upcoming. And then we'll get to a point where we'll that total salary and benefits once it's kind of filled in it will calculate out. Um and the big important piece here is that we um have our board policy 1622. So we have our estimate there so that we meet that policy with 27 and a half days of cash on hand. Um and then you can see there at the bottom we've got the amount that's available for financial resources for next year's budget. Let me just speak to this right now. Um, I know I've seen the numbers and I can't recall them right now in terms of um the dollars that we receive from federal dollars and given um given shifts from the Department of Education, given potential shifts and given the potential impact I

049I mean I know where things are today, but given that potential impact on our budget, is that factoring into the design for the coming year's budget? of kind of putting a little bit of a a cushion around that or something to that effect in terms of anticipating a potential shift or change where a revenue might be kind of in that 1.4 section of the MSTO. We have some um I I don't know I guess we can kind of call it capacity for kind of unknown unknown things that happen. Um but we specifically have like an amount set aside for what we receive in federal dollars. We just we don't have money to do that. Um the good news is right now kind of what we're hearing is um we're expecting to see all of those

050dollars still come in next year. I think the part that people are a little bit more worried about that mentioned is how is that going to come to us once we claim um those money for reimbursement. So I think our cash flow tool will be really important um in looking at that. So we just need to make sure that we're staying on top of what we're supposed to be doing um and being prepared to pivot if we need to, knowing that things could change at any time. But I think for right now, I'm just assuming that everything will go kind of as normal because we're not hearing that it won't. And I don't know if you want to ask that or that's what we're hearing too. I guess one thing this this should be very

051like basic and I should this but um I'm looking at the because I was scrolling down to the next page of this which I think I hadn't seen before um where it does the sort of the math of how we end up at 27.5. Is that standard practice that you would base the 27.5 on the previous fiscal year, not the one into which you are entering. So up above, if you're looking at a $30 million uh total projected budget, we would not be aiming for a fund balance of 27 and a half days of that. We'd be looking for 27 and a half of last year's days. Yes. So I I don't know like really the best way to answer it except that like this is the recommendation of Justin. So, we kind of um

052follow his expertise in this area and use that number. Um I think that if we felt uncomfortable with it, we would push back, but he wouldn't recommend that to us if he didn't think it was. That's a great question. Um is there anything else, Amy, that you wanted to add or we're good at? I don't doubt that. I don't doubt that for a minute. Um great. I think then uh we can probably let the two of you go, especially Cassie if you have a vote to catch up. Uh and Mr. Stanton, welcome. This is your section. You can run it. Thank you. Okay. So, this is my sort of annual report to the board about what's going on in the technology department. And of course, this is just sort of um a little slice of

053what we're up to and it follows sort of the way I've structured it is um based on a strategic plan and some of the goals set in that. And so that being said here if you wouldn't mind uh going to another slide down. Um so Stephanie Spencer like has always been helpful in framing where the departments sort of come in and how we matter in terms of of serving the district and students. And so I like her emphasis on empowering infrastructure which is sort of why I drew a little red box around it. So I consider the tech department to be part of that empowering infrastructure trying to support um the teachers and the students here. And so the next slide would show you just a little snapshot of what what it's looked like this

054year to date. So uh we've already responded to more than 3,000 support requests and that's you know some days you can see in the beginning of the school year it was super busy. uh it wasn't so busy over winter break or sorry does this break and things like that but this is like this is what we do every day when you respond to people's requests at the same time we've got sort of bigger objectives going on in the background but if if you were a student here or if you were a teacher here you would sort of know us by how fast we got to you when you had a problem so that's an example of that I just added one um so uh these are sort of our priorities We have three of them.

055The first is uh to support the schools in their improvement plan. And for uh for me and my department, what that means is trying to be really aware of uh what's needed at the building level. And I often get that information through the ELT, which is the executive leadership team. So, I'm meeting with my peers, uh, district, uh, department, uh, leadership and building leadership and trying to make sure that the information they're giving me is going to be met by some kind of solution. And so, that's broadly speaking, that's what that sort of first uh, priority is about is listening hard and trying to respond to what's kind of bubbling up from the schools. Um the second is to uh of these initiatives is to keep supporting the special education department uh in their UDL

056initiatives. And each year that uh I think it's a little more focused and we you know we're trying to do a good job of listening to Katherine Coleman and following her lead. I think she's got the most expertise in that. Um and sort of happens in two ways. one is she brings us an initiative that needs a technology or needs a funding stream or she's responding to needs at the classroom level. So she's hearing from we have actually at the elementary level some pretty innovative teachers down in 207 and 208 and they're bringing things to Katherine and then Katherine is sort of greenlighting them and having us find the the technology that's going to meet that solution. So that's the second area and then the third area is infrastructure and maintenance and for that for

057us that has been really trying to feel uh good about where we are from a security stance. So we have uh over the last several years spent uh quite a bit of time trying to tighten up our security and uh understand uh just what our threats are and what we can do about them. And as part of that, we have sort of a continuing staff training uh event going on where we uh mock fish, send up mock fishing emails to the staff and collect their responses responses and in a nonpunitive and non-specific way, we make recommendations. We sort of feed back to them and say, "Hey, here's what happened the last time we did this. Here are some videos specifically about this." So, for example, a couple weeks ago, we sent out um some information

058uh or a fishing letter that was sort of uh more widely clicked than usual. And so, uh so um our messaging is, you know, first of all, be aware, but second of all, hey, we're in tax season. You can expect that you're going to get some kind of attempt to scam me, whether inside the district or outside of the district. So that's an example of where we're trying to sort of specifically raise awareness around something that's going to be very topical uh over the next month or so. Um and so we can continue on past that now. Thank you, Peter. And I'm going to get here's we can continue past that slide too. Sorry. So um these are sort of a little more about a little detail about how each of those three things happen.

059And um I don't know if it would be useful for me just to sort of read down the list. So what I'll say is um we tried to establish a couple years ago a baseline about what did sort of what was practice at the time which is you know 24 months ago. How did I interact with folks at the building level? How was I listening to them? How how often was I seeing them? And then sort of building on that year over year trying to refine that. So sometimes that meant more meetings. sometimes uh we found you know actually we're kind of at the right cadence but this is kind of where those um priorities had sort of specific vital signs and I know that you have seen this across you know every department we

060probably came with some similar presentation this is how it played out for us and so what I would say um is um that we've learned a few things I I would say I feel like I am hearing from the buildings at an appropriate level. Like I feel like I hear what the administration is saying to me and um I think that I'm kind of right. I think our department's about right. I when I look at the uh technology needs and services for families, I think that's just okay. And I think one of our problems is that uh we are asking the questions probably in the wrong place. So what we have right now is a survey in Skyward. So, every year when parents uh sign up their kids uh for the coming school year, there's

061a little popup and it's a need survey. It's not very glamorous and it's really easy to dismiss and and and it's a little hard to get data back out of it. So, I think the right approach is to move those kind of questionnaire things into parent square. So, there you can just answer them right on your phone. We'll have like instant information about it. And in fact, you could say and any time of the year, not just in the front of the year, hey, I I I want to respond to this. I got a I got a problem. I need someone to know about it. So, I think that's where we're going. So, here's a place where we need to improve. And that'll certainly be part of what we do next year. And then the

062sort of last part, which actually sort of speaks to that communication piece, is, you know, I had I had said, gosh, you know, we were using four services when we started out. Wouldn't it be great if we had six services? Well, like now we got 14. So it's like that's actually like going way better than I thought, you know. So Parent Square is like really really getting picked up and we still have work to do, but I feel like we're we have better tools than we've ever had to communicate people when they want to when they want to hear from us. Um then let's carry on from there if you don't mind. So here's an example of what that survey produced this year. So this is a combination of both that initial survey that was

063done through Skyward but also and more importantly this is what the school leadership and media should have told us. She she has been really important and the school offices have been super important at helping students get hooked up with technology if they don't have it. So on the left these are students who had no internet at home and needed internet from us. And so we we have hotspots and we provide them uh for the families that need them and that kind of rotates. Some families end up getting internet at some point. Some folks move away but it's always kind of hovering uh sort of around 10 kind of family. And then you can see this is the devices that we provide per school. And you may know that at McMurray and Shitaka that's a cart-based

064model. So, every classroom has what we call a cow, a cart on wheels there. No, Chromebooks on wheels. Um um and it and an interesting artifact of that is if you look at those numbers, there are more Chromebooks than there are kids. And that just has to do with the fact that um that um if we put a cart of 30 units in every room, we end up with more Chromebooks than we have students. Um, and it's just it's the it's the best way to make sure every room has what they need. And in fact, you know, a few rooms wish they had more than 30 and so we bring in, you know, 34 if we have a class that's kind of bursting. Um, same thing at Murray. I think I I'm a little unsure

065what our enrollment is this month. It's hover around 400, I think, if I'm right. Lower. Okay. Well, I don't want to be the bearer of bad news. So we'll just say that that Murray is another place where it's overs subscribed. So it's it's we've done that because the building leadership has requested that um Chromebooks not go back and forth with students. We tried that. It was It was not a win at the middle school level. And when I talked to him stories, right? Yeah. So like they hear like a frisbee thing going on for a while. But um and we've seen that our peer districts, that's really kind of where people are starting to land is like at the elementary level and the middle level, we provide them in the classroom. They're assigned. They were

066always there. They were always working. Uh they're always charged. And then at the high school level, uh students are have, you know, they're more responsible and they can get their Chromebooks back and forth. And um probably if I had to think about where most of our repairs are happening, they probably are at high school, right? Because they're getting beat up as they come back and forth. So we spend a fair amount of time trying to bring Chromebooks back from the dead, replacing screens, uh replacing keyboards, and uh there's cut up a lot of work around that. And then this last column is students who beyond having a Chromebook in the classroom for uh sorry in the classroom for at Memorial and elementary level also needed one at home. So they didn't have enough devices at

067home to get homework done. And so uh those families went to the office in the school and said or went to India and said I need something at home. And so those are the units that provided for them. And of course the high schools not on this because everyone got one. So we can we can carry on past that slide. So this uh this is just another sort of uh screenshot uh about parent square that tool which is I guess it's 11 out of 14 services are being used. So the features are being picked up and used and you can see that the most activity is actually between teachers and parents. So those 16,461 direct messages, that's like conversations between parents and classroom teachers. So like in my mind, this is a huge win. This

068is like really starting to take off. Um and then the sort of next biggest number is posts six uh 1,630. So that is the school district or the school sort of doing a blast to everybody or to some segment of the school. So that's like, hey everybody, we got, you know, good news to tell you. So, I'm really sort of uh feeling quite encouraged um about this and um what we plan to do is revamp our uh website this year, which um is kind of old, long in the tooth and isn't have a lot to do with the way we communicate right now. Um and so, uh Parent Square and that website, it would be much more closely integrated next year. And the content that's coming through Parent Square will also be sort of simultaneously

069posted on the website in a much more seamless way and statistics that we gather will be more unified. So we will have a even better idea about how we're reaching folks. So we can carry on from there. Thank you. And um and I just want to sort of just highlight this this year over year for the past couple years that um the app is starting to get more popular. that took a little bit of time to convince people that they needed yet another app on their phone. Um, but it's it's it's kind of a it's kind of climbing and I've seen a few a little bit uh shift in um people not wanting SMS messages like they're sort of like tired of getting texts I think at this point. And so the app seems to

070be like more popular and getting getting texted relentlessly is not as not as cool. So um so I hope this that this continues. We can carry on from here and then uh yeah keeps on going. So um this is just sort of a description of those once again these sort of vital signs and um I meet with Katherryn Coleman regularly and sort of take direction from her about where she wants uh to spend her energy uh around technology especially um uh in terms of getting it purchased and into the hands of kids. And um when we started this we had a single funding stream that we used to fund uh the special education department and now we have sort of really three. We have one for the technology itself. We have one for the for

071training teachers uh on the use of the technology and then we have a third which is like called innovation pilots. And innovation pilots is what I use when um one of the teachers goes I have this awesome idea Katherine's on board. please get this into my hands like today and we can use that innovation pilots fund to make that happen. And so I hope that um that we are doing an even better job than we've done in the past uh providing assistant tech. And so some of the stuff that we're doing here is we've got software like uh words for life and Google read and write. And these are tools that can be used across our platforms. And the idea really is Katherine's vision is that this isn't like the special software that only some

072kids get. It's like the software that any kid could use and feel comfortable with in our district to assist them in in their learning. And so it's I think that's the universal part of this like each student should feel comfortable uh and find these tools available if they want to use them. And then um if we can go to the next slide here um this this this I guess the last thing I should say um just to kind of give some flowers to uh to everybody um is that Stephanie Spencer and Katherine have been working uh with uh Laura Gray and a bunch of other folks to provide other kinds of assisted technology that we haven't had before. So, we have 80 new touch Chromebook units in grades K1. So, for students who are sort

073of still like uh not ready for a keyboard, we've got much more technology to provide for them. We've got translation pens that we check out to students. Um we've got uh one of the initiatives I had this year was to bring in uh I'm sort of forgetting the name of the the light. It's not for lit learning, but it's like uh it's uh sort of for MLL students to help support them in their sort of learning process. And it's you you've all used it, but it's not for Liz. Anyway, there's been a number of uh things that we've done around uh software accessibility that I'm feeling good about. So, finally, here we are at um security. And so all I really have to tell you is that this is like the ongoing thing that I

074guess will never end which is kind of which is a sad state of affairs but it is the state of affairs that we have. And so every year we uh take part in an audit um through uh CISA which is part of the homeland department of homeland security and that audit um is a self assessment that we practice year over year and then look and use that to kind of define what we're going to work on project wise each year. So like we get a score at the end of this assessment and go like oh that's the that's the place where we need to spend our energy this year. And um we have uh we're really lucky uh one of the folks in my department Laura G Lauren Gyos is uh went to school for

075uh information technology and security. So like in a small district that's kind of an amazing thing to have someone like that. And also uh since Lauren is no slouch, she went out and got us uh a federal grant to support us implementing this technology that she had been studying. And so Lauren and thing uh who is our applications developer have uh put in a next generation uh logging and monitoring system that really gives us a level of awareness that we didn't have before. And that's a project that happened this year. and um you know it's they're still trying to teach me how to use it but it's like it's pretty amazing um and we'll continue to do this. So that came out I guess the point is it came out of that self assessment. Self

076assessment said like you know you you've got these technologies but you don't have a single pane of glass that you can respond to these things and if you were trying to pro provide forensic evidence to the FBI said where did this thing start and how deep is it you don't have the tool that can data mine to do that. So that's what this school was was a place that we can go um to kind of get that forensic information. So next slide please. And u I guess all that is is a pretty picture of the national security cyber security review. But that's what I was just sort of talking about. I guess the thing to say here is beyond just the self assessment uh we participate in the K12 working group which is a national

077working group run by CISA. uh our staff trains at at CISA trainings uh throughout the year and we monitor 247 uh security channels uh dedicated to state and local government. So like every single day, the first thing I do when I wake up is I go and look at those. And every day when Jerry comes in, the first thing he goes and he he reads down the list of accounts created in our district and make sure that nothing there are no new administrators since last night, you know. So that's it's really on our minds. Um okay, next slide. See if I want to say anything about this. This is just sort of some more details about we added this year. We added in that next generation security monitoring tool and we did that with the

078support of the state the local cyber security grant. Um and I guess the last thing I say about that is well I don't know if there'll ever be any more of those but we we got in right before there weren't going to be anymore and I feel lucky about that. Um we've added additional data loss protection tools. So that means if um data is getting shared outside of our district that looks like it is sensitive, it will be stopped at our border and then I will pick up a phone and I will call the person and say, "Did you mean to do this? Is this really the thing you wanted to do?" And then if you know if yes, that was really it, then we'll let it go. But we're much more aware of of

079the sort of boundary lines between us and the and the internet. We've added additional email encryption tools for staff handling sensitive data. So if you were handling student uh health records or you were a special education teacher, a counselor, um all of your all of your sort of transmissions where information was specific and sensitive about that student, it would be doubly encrypted. It' be both encrypted on our network, but it would also be encrypted in the email itself. So you'd run an encryption tool on the email. so that there was really much less chance that it's going to end up uh in the wrong hand. And uh I think I won't say anything more about that. Um and then we're sort of in the process of working with the facilities department and Stephanie Acavito to

080uh put more security cameras in. And so we've been working with facilities uh and I guess once again responding to the folks at the building level to add some video intercoms at each of the schools. And so, uh, over the spring break, what we'll be doing is working with contractors to pull cables, and we'll be working facilities to mount the video intercoms. And, um, once all the parts come in, we'll, uh, add, uh, uh, automatic locks on the doors so that the stance at the other school that we're in, high school, will be quite similar. here at Shitaka. We're as you know if you come in in the day at Shiakqua doors are locked and and you buzz you buzz in and we have a picture of you and we know you know we are

081looking at you before we're letting you in the doors. That's what's going to be happening at McMurray in the high school. And um thank you. Yeah. And then this this is just a graphic from that fishing campaign. Um and it just sort of shows you what we see on the on the sort of uh reporting side of that when when all the sort of clicks are clicked or not clicked. And then uh as I sort of mentioned uh we then try to provide some tech tidbits that are tailored to the thing that just happened to help people think about not being the person that clicked it the next time, whoever you might be. So that's that is I think that's it. Bye. And I'm happy to take questions. Thank you. questions. I have a couple

082of questions. Um, uh, some of this may be not my shop and that's fine. At some point there's something called cumulative. Is that a thing that's going to replace Skyward and what is the current timeline on that? February 26. right before the semester change. Um I I think I think you mentioned this. You said something early on about some innovation happening in this building in room 207 and 208. Is that what you meant with like the translation pens and the Well, I was curious what that Yeah, specifically. I don't know if translation pens are being used in in that room, but so um so I'm trying to remember the teacher's name who's it's actually um she's in 209 now or Yeah. So I'm blanking on her name, but let's just say Genevieve Meer is all

083over it. like she is super you know she is dedicated to finding the modality that is going to work for these students and she's sort of you know really looking around specifically for what's going to work for her student and we have you know with Katherine's blessing tried to make it super easy for her to get you know for example the iPad app that's going to matter for a particular student so in general those classrooms are using our UDL tools which are Chromebooks. But when we have a specific instance where a good idea only happens on a single platform or is the most appropriate one for this particular student, that's kind of what I'm talking about. Yeah. Um and then I I was curious um I'm a currently a full-time student at uh Belleview College

084and everything that I do in my student interface happens through something called Canvas. And and one of the many things it does is that any work I turn in goes through something that I'm also blanking on in terms of like um plagiarism and use of AI. It's probably turnitin.com. It is turnitin. Thank you. Um I'm curious kind of if current and I know this is part of your wheelhouse and interest is in AI but is so you could certainly answer this too like what is the current um is it all teachers are kind of on their own for how they decide to um assess for original work whether that's work that might be plagiarized from another student or work that was generated by the computers. Yeah. um or kind of what that landscape looks like

085and what how you are future proofing if that's even possible right if that's even possible. So so we used to use turn it in um and at some point well probably about four years ago Google got into the same business as turn it in and so we purchased an addition of the Google suite which is which is our LMS. So Google Classroom is our canvas. Um and so that kind of plagiarism and originality checking is built into um classroom if a teacher decides to use it. In terms of how well it could do in spotting, you know, a generated uh document, I'm not sure. And I think it remains to be seen in our district. Um, I think this is you, you're going to be able to be better at this, but I know that

086we are going to be embracing AI in a much more explicit way in the coming school year. And probably it's going to be around how to use it effectively and responsibly and not so much around, you know. So it's that means I think for the teaching staff and now now I'm kind of out of my depth here that they are going to be trying to use AI in a way that isn't about sort of like just generating content, you know, they're going to be trying to use it in an exploratory way. And it's pretty interesting topic actually. I was I went uh checked out a university recently and it was a music class and part of the prompt was go ask you know uh I think they were using chat GT uh you know take

087this put those ideas in get a summary and then we're going to come back and we're going to do something with that in music class and it sort of it was a different approach than we had been using which was much more like whack-a-ole you know maybe it's more appropriate at the college level I mean it's kind of I'd be kind of interested to I mean like what are they doing at at you know at Belby? Well, just one of the things that some teachers have decided Turn It In is insufficient and they've been running things through at least a secondary, if not a tertiary Yeah. filter, to try and pick up, you know, work that was and we've been told explicitly don't use it. But yeah, it's a deep question because, you know, it

088is going to it is going to be Oracle, right? and we are so willing to let someone else do our thinking for us that if this is going to be a tool that doesn't make us dumber, we're going to have to um think about how to use it, you know, you know, just differently than taking its word for everything. We're going to have to, you know, there there's going to have to be some for sure. Do you are you at some point you've kind of nodded. Is there anything that you would say as a student in terms of your experience with either this the Google one or what your classmates are saying or and you could say yeah I'm not ready for that conversation. Well, I know with the Google classroom one it goes through

089both like if you plagiarize and AI checks using Grammarly is now classified as like that grammar like suggest people were flagged for that and stuff and people have been just I know my friend got flagged for her own writing. is just so academic sounding that she got fly. So, it's seems very thorough and um and I also would like encourage us to be more open-minded about using AI in the classroom because I like I personally I don't use it to cheat obviously but but I have used it to like um in like outside research just being confused about a topic and then it like quick summaries or like just completely outside of school used it to like send an email or something and those are like just in that is really helpful. I would encourage

090us to like incorporate it more in the classroom because there is a lot of benefits and I know kids are finding ways around it like around the like checking it. So just and like crazy ways I've heard kids using it and so it's like I don't know I feel like we could use it to be something really cool. I think you're right. I mean, I think it's going to be evolving. You know, I think that the way we use it next year is not going to be the way we think about it this year. And I think that's going to change year over year. Thanks for that question on the AI part, but um you were talking um about security and then you were talking about the video security and one of the things that's

091come up in conversations with different parent groups in terms of concerns about safety and mental health um and some of the hypothetical places on campuses where um where there might be concerns like bathrooms, things like that. And so and looking at technology, I know we have the bake sensors, but there's sensors out there that will sense the number of people in the space. So they, you know, sense occupancy. They also sense kind of shifts in noise levels. They have um you know, so they address the vaping aggression. There's a way to speak for emergency like just help or to elevate voices and all that. and number of school districts have utilized that and seen um and seen bullying go down significantly and seen hypothetical drug use go down and I'm wondering have have we looked

092into things like that and um what I liked about these I will say is that they front and center acknowledge the privacy concerns and so they what they have um created are things that don't violate those that sense of privacy. Yeah. So uh I guess I'd say um yes and no. And the so the technology we deploy um uh especially the newer versions of it can do things like that. So we can uh we can know when a crowd is formed. We can uh of course we can do the vape vape sensing where those things are located. Um I don't know specifically if we could react uh to crowd noise or something like that. And um but but you have things that send sorry send alerts like for example if um if occupancy is successive

093it sends alerts. No it does. So I it could that's not the way to use it now. And so um and I think that um I would take my direction from you know leadership on that if that if you know if they felt like we have a problem at you know at school that we think we could solve with this technology then we would sort of look at that from that perspective. Um the cameras are very capable. We don't do everything that they can do for sure. I have one last question. Yeah. What do you need from us? I mean, I look at the grants which are phenomenal and what you're doing, which is phenomenal, and so I'm kind of left wondering, are there things that would be helpful for us? Um, I don't have

094a specific ask right now. I feel like we asked and the board and the community responded last year when you uh voted when the community voted to raise the levy. And that's going to give us the capacity to do some of the projects that might have only happened in a bond situation before. So for example, right now we are looking hard at uh replacing the display technology in the classrooms. It's pretty long in the tooth and that's one of the things that this levy money could go towards and um so that's I feel like we asked and we got the answer which was we're here to support you. So we feel pretty good right now. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Great. Uh yeah, let's move on to discussion section policies. some first reads on some

095policies and the resolution and then we'll there's some time for some national policy updates or discussion. We are seeing uh recommendations from WASDA to retire the more newly adopted policies around sexual harassment and discrimination reverting back to prior uh reating 3205 and 511. I'll say that the um there's really not a um significant variance between how we respond to um discrimination and sex based harassment. So I feel like these are more kind of syntax centered rather than practice or we will not see our our procedures change really in any way. And so this could change in the next administration as well. So it's, you know, when we think about when Cath mentioned the funding, the revenues being fluid, um, I see these in in a similar way. So does anybody have any questions around these

096recommendation? My questions are on on both 3205 and 5011. They both have language in one or more places that says something to be effective. The superintendent shall develop and implement procedures sort of relating to these. Are those procedures uh squarely already in place? Do they also need updating sort of what is the Yeah, Peter Peter and I have those procedures and we'll share them with Adam and team once. Great. And most of the procedures, the model procedures are just more language based rather than procedure, you know, change the procedure. Um, resolution 820. So this happens every few years where we submit to OSPI a permission to for them to grant us um to count our days to wave the 180day instruction day requirement basic around the faculty have conferences. So we'll count those as days

097of instruction. So they'll basically count towards our meeting our annual requirement. that fashion is kind of not related, but does fashion high school have um conferences? Because I haven't been there conferences and I keep seeing conference stuff, but I haven't heard anything. So, um the high school has not had conferences since I've been here. They've never had conferences, but since I've been here, they haven't. Um and what Mr. Ericson is doing is piloting a ninth grade um basically teacher I mean student le conference model something similar that happens at the middle school which we just saw last week and so we want to build that continuity until we're starting the nth grade so we'll see that we'll see if it becomes something that might be relevant for Just a clarification. I think you said this.

098So the countless conference days towards um teaching days is what has been standard. So this is another shift. Right. Right. What is shifting is that we're including days for the high school and it's capacity. It doesn't mean that you know that these are kind of foregone conclusions. I would say yes probably at the elementary district. This has been part of our past practice, but um we're building capacity at the high school. And let me also just say it looks like the legal landscape doc is in with 3205. Should it be here? Probably. There's a look like it's related. This is just the law. Oh, right. Sorry. Yeah. We wanted to put um provide the board the essentially the direction from Waza to retire those policies and reinstate the for. So, um probably Juniper and I

099will recap uh on some of this. So, we we have a regular cadence of receiving information from the office of the superintendent for public instruction in particular Chris Raal who provides us updates specifically kind of speaking to River. are, you know, surfacing the federal grant programs. Um what we're hearing, you know, about those programs that it's a um if it's related to the IDA in terms of students who need to be served, who have special needs, those funds are not expected to go away. Um same thing with our any of our food programs. Um so free and reduced lunch is a federal program. Um so those those funds um in our district represent about 4.33% of our our revenues. Um and so um there is um you know Chris Rael showed a what he called

100a heat map around districts in our state and how many what's the percentage of funding that are provided you know through federal dollars to those districts and so we are on the lower end the average is 6 and a half% um statewide average but there are some districts like ours that are lower because we have a smaller percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch, therefore would receive a smaller amount of our federal funding, our funding through federal dollars. If you were to just head um kind of eastish and if you were to be in Tuckila, you know, where number of students who receive free lunch is significantly higher, probably more than double their the amount of revenues that they receive would probably be a higher percentage. So they they would be um

101if something were to change in these in those two categories they they would have more risk. I think also um you know what the board did um when you approved um a 27 and a half day you kind of stabilization fund um you would not want to have to rely upon that but that could you potentially buffer um because we know that it's about 7 and a half% I think um So that could potentially buffer some fluctuations revenues from the Fed. Um we're seeing some um movement um as we get into April around the amendments um that have been proposed by certain districts regarding transgender athletes and their participation in athletics. So we've made our position very clear. Thank you June for that letter that's been circulated pretty widely. um WIA um representatives. I was

102out on Friday, so I didn't get to with my superintendent meeting um but Mick Hoffman um who was the head of WIA presented at that meeting and and shared information that they are affirming that those two amendments are are, you know, no one can say um for sure because they haven't been, you know, put through the the rigor of a court system. Um but they and they're confident in affirming that those amendments are more likely than not in violation of our state laws. Again, it doesn't prevent um because of the amendment process that WIA has, it doesn't prevent people from submitting amendments. Um and he shared I'll share that with y'all. I didn't do that. um basically a four slides on how you know they're governed in terms of where the districts are, what we

103belong to. So then you can kind of see you kind of how the voting system operates around those amendments. Um but we are are pretty clear about our position and Pierce County and and King County superintendent are all very clearly against those amendments and we'll continue to voice that opposition. the public schools, right? The public schools. Yeah. other things that you may want to share or if anybody else has questions happy to uh this is just the second uh monthly webinar that I've attended now um that state superintendent rectal um uh conducts and makes available to um governance and leadership uh members and it's really um I find I am um both very cleareyed um about the realities of what we're facing and also very cleareyed about who we are in Washington, not just in

104this like squishy values way, but also just about the law and and um I think we're incredibly well positioned um particularly Bob Ferguson has gone up against the Trump administration in the past and is well positioned and they had the long view of what the project 2025 I've um out sort of outlined going in. Um uh all of the resources that they make available at these on these webinars are pretty much instantly publicly available. Um you know, I've heard a little bit of, you know, worry like, oh, do I need to worry about this sign in my classroom affirming, you know, all all children of all the constellation of genders are welcome here? like that is not a thing we want anyone in this district to be worried about. We want to support all children.

105We want to support all learners and all families uh to the best of our capacity and we will continue to do so. Um and I feel like we have the full backing of of the state superintendent of public instruction behind us. I feel very well aligned um with with him and his uh leadership and feel very grateful for his leadership and the team that he has assembled around him is also very impressive and very responsive. There are there we get this really helpful um I feel like I'm a little nerd about it. We get this daily digest of like education news from both around the state and around the country. And as to the best of my ability, I I read I read honestly what's interesting to me. And um there are absolutely districts in

106this state who have decided that they are not going to support trans athletes, which is not tremendously surprising. Um but the shortsightedness um uh the lack of humanity in this position is um appalling and unfortunately not surprising and also the swiftness with which Chris Reich doll lets them know that that's unacceptable in this state is um uh it is yeah beyond admirable. It's really like let's be clear about what's legal in this state. Um, and uh, we will continue to keep our eyes on that. Um, I I I sort of wish those WASDA daily digests were available to the public to just like sign up for them. Also, I think it's mainly a thing that's just available to schoolboard members. But, um, I have forwarded them to a few people because there's no reason I

107can't do that. Um, and when things are interesting, especially on the national front, things like Chalkbeat and Ed Week and other national resources highlighting what other districts are doing in a in a myriad myriad of ways about technology, about, you know, innovations and learning. But, um, as as much as is possible in this moment in time, we are in excellent hands at the state level. Okay. Um, we have a second opportunity for public comment. Is there anyone here uh like to speak? Team CPF, anybody as individuals and as a collective? No. Okay. Uh, great. Um, let's move on to board director remarks. Does any of my colleagues have anything they'd like to say? Thank you for coming out. Um, I am I'm happy to see that the budget projection at least is where it is

108right now. I think that that's big with community and hopefully we won't get in the same situation as we have previously. Um, and I think that should should ease some concern a little bit as we face whatever this chaos is that we're currently facing. Thank you. Good comment. Uh thank you to our families at home and our children partners. Thank you for the long days for Cassie A and Slay. Thank you so much. Thank you. And Peter, of course, I'm sorry. Yes. All right. Um, I don't think we made any uh commitments to anything this evening that we need to Oh, except uh Dr. Mashi will follow up with you. Uh, thank you for coming. Um, other than that, I think we're good. We can uh adjourn this meeting. It is 7:51, almost an hour

109early. [Music]