May 23, 2023 VISD Board Meeting

001to open the board meeting I humbly make a land acknowledgment I would like to recognize your knowledge of the indigenous people of this land that we all pride of Indians their Villages were scattered throughout the many islands prairies and Rich Valley Country in the Pacific Northwest historians often noted because of the abundance of Salmon's shellfish that when the tides were out the table was spread today we pay respective to call tribe of Indians and to their Elders past present and nurture we'll do the public comments and it looks like we have a handful of folks signed in as a reminder three minutes for each person and we will start with Sarah Powell hello my name is Sarah Powell I teach about high school and last month I came and I talked about my concern that

002we were not meeting the needs of students in terms of the outside of the core academics and tonight I'm here because I've received information that in fact 198 of our students cannot have their schedules filled because we lack electives that's not they're not getting the elective they want that's not teachers saying we can't take any more that is 198 students without classes and on top of that we also have a number of core classes over limit including advanced placement literature which has an average of 39 students in each class English 11 an average of 34 students in each class geometry which has an average of 31 in fact there are so many geometry students that we are having to pull elective teachers pull from the electives to be able to fill those core classes so

003uh pre-calculus 31 AP Human Geography 33 yeah these are averages if they're not if they are all filled equally which which just doesn't happen in a small school one class can skew the numbers across the board on a side note remedy is actually capped in this District so it looks like with these numbers that were projected to run out of that remedy and not be able to meet the teacher contract beside the fact that students just don't have classes to take we need really like 1.4 FTE just to fill electives um immediately we could allocate a 0.6 to geometry and fill one of those leave Replacements and we could increase jewelry and we could bring our art teacher to full time um that wouldn't fix the entire program or the fact that that we have

004these holes but it would be a start so I'm just here to say we want to live up to the Vashon promise we are working hard and we are trying and we need more resources so when you are looking at budget when you are making decisions think of the budget as what you allocate funds for are what we are prioritizing and right now what it reads is that we are not prioritizing students having classes currently we have 50 Tas at the high school they're not getting anything next year 200 CPAs it's it's it's not the place that we want to be creative thank you hi I'm Mickey chapelka I'm a para educator in the developmental preschool and I'm also a co-president of the vesp union and I'm here um because I was looking at the

005board jobs yesterday and I was truly surprised disheartened and just flabbergasted that by the proposed increases in our administrators um pays compensation all year long we've been told that this district is in Dire Straits financially um and then to see these increases in the Optics to me are horrible it looks like the administrators are getting more money on the backs of students who are whose programs we're cutting and that's not that's not my priorities for the school district I doubt if any teacher's priority in the school district we all want good pay and we all deserve a fair pay um it just to me looked like very poor leadership at a time where we as Paris have repeatedly heard that one of the costs to the district is the numbers of personal days we are

006taking which requires us to get subs personal days mind you that were given to us during negotiations for our compensation in lieu of pay raises in the past so this is very personal to me and it does not seem in in touch with the Strategic plan that was developed just recently where the focus seemed to be on student and classroom and what's needed for the kids [Applause] I have three things um one is you require 48 hours notice to get translator but lately your email has been going out 24 hours in advance I think maybe you should prioritize getting them out 48 hours in case anybody needs a translator service you also don't send those emails out in Spanish which I don't understand and a few weeks ago I sent an email to the board

007outlining a situation where Slade lied to me directly and I'm upset that nobody has written back to me about that and I'm also upset that you're getting a pay raise now or proposing one for yourself if I lied like that at my job I would be fired so those are the things it says for all the check boxes did we miss anyone okay we will move to the superintendent's report thank you everybody for coming the first thing I'll do is invite well actually first of all is uh I'd like to thank the board for moving the meeting from the 25th to tonight I have a graduating senior and the Scholarship Foundation is Thursday and unfortunately I've always missed the Scholarship Foundation committee meeting because I've always been an important and so I appreciate the board

008moving to the 23rd so I can so I can go see my son um you know during that evening I understand there may have been some conversation or some interest in another reason why we were moving this meeting that's the uh the reason why we're leaving this meeting and we we found out around the beginning of May when I received that invitation so um I'm going to invite Kim mayor our director of business and finance just to give a quick budget update she'll be speaking about the exit conference which Toby attended today thank you very much for our audit as well as kind of where we are in the budgeting process and then I might piggyback a couple things in there okay so we had our exit interview today we have a clean audit for

009the 20 20 22 school over here everything looked good we there are some reporting requirements and our audit was closed in time for us to meet the deadlines it was a it was really a nice working relationship with our Auditors we've got a lot done in the interviewers that that went really well the other thing on budget is can I just talk about that just a little bit and maybe tell me if you wanted to share a little bit about the what you experienced in the audience conference yeah I also attended the uh the audits intro conference or whatever they call it so see how it happens or and audit happens annually and this year it happened right after um right after you started and so it was interesting stage as you were getting used

010to the books and the processes and the teams and and all the budget uncertainties that we've been facing to immediately enter to an into an audit so it was and it was noted by the Auditors that this was a new experience and they they did even though they're third party and completely independent they came to uh to the relationship in the spirit of collaboration and so that was a good uh I followed along the way you know here and there making sure everything was going okay and no surprises and today was I got the report or we all received the report this morning and I attended the exit conference and sometimes when you read the reports you're like what is you know this phrase actually mean and so to have a chance to talk to

011the authors and say you know what were the other audit results you did they're like well this is the good one this is the one you want as opposed to the bad one but they have uh their own set of euphemisms for these things um and it was it was totally clean which great that makes nine years in a row before I just had a few minutes so thanks to uh Matt Sullivan and K and then can continue that tradition and I did import them today that's great and also kind of a side note too uh Kim saved us three thousand dollars um in audit cost because she did some traveling back and forth to uh to you know to drop off documents for the uh thank you I was I was wondering I was

012going to ask the question there but it's more broken now so we paid for the audit to happen does that come is that a budget line in our every year okay so it's not like that's paid by uh um every this was as you may have kind of caught today this year was our single audit so it was just um mostly financials and one particular Grant and next year will be an account but every other year you have an accountability audit that covers two years and they looked at more grants they look at all your internal controls they would get a lot that's a lot bigger on it usually the costs in that year or more but the big thing is when you're when you're doing those audits how quickly can you get whatever they

013ask for to that saves you money if they're not sitting there waiting for you to get them documents and then of course they're travel and it has helped districts that is one advantage to cover they used to always be in your office so now they're doing them more than welcome so um there were some things that they needed and it was just you know I live off Island I just dropped them off on my way into work so the federal grants that they audited was how we got treated the Astro funds which was a significant amount of money and it was a new Revenue stream the different reporting practices and so that was excellent again a clear audit on that they also looked at exposure to controls you know we're a small District so that

014employees of the district have access to a lot of traditional we've got a lot of double checks and they look at that and confirm that we're in good practice and there's no concern there so that's also excellent Beyond just the pure Central audit of the accounting practices thank you so we had an update from the state last Friday the f203 which is the driver for our Revenue will be out hopefully either Thursday or Friday of this week pushing it but finally they took the temporary system down today and they have to have a day at least a minimum of a day in between that and a new system going up so it could be Thursday not later than probably Friday what does that sound I could start getting our actual numbers in there and projecting

015what our revenues would be and things like that it's our apportionment it's certain grants and all kinds of things like that uh then uh the other system that's not up yet is the actual f-195 which is the system in which you communicate your numbers to the state into the ASD the ESD has the Educational Service District um they have to approve your budget so they will look at that before um you know and we're we're considered a Class 2 District because of our number of students and so whatever they whatever suggestions they make we have to you know Implement those changes so that hopefully is going to be out next week accordingly so it's going to be a real push at this point um I'm building budget in our working system now and then we'll

016upload it when the f-195 is out and then there's the manipulating you have to do in the system because there's some manual calculations and things too so we're plugging them while I'm getting that done and then I'll send it to the ESD for review I don't think we will have it in time to present a typical looking report but we'll see it just depends what day it comes out next week so we may have to present numbers or something like that for the first read and then have the actual documents with those numbers in it for the for the adoption oh um is the reason why we're in this scale mode like what Sarah was talking about of like why we have these crazy numbers in classes and we have all of this it's just

017because we we don't know the as exact numbers the state would let us know you don't know what those numbers are yet so we're in this holding pattern and waiting for this f203 which we usually get pretty quickly and super late this year and so we're in this this situation that Sarah you were talking about like and that we're all super concerned about and when that comes out we put all of our enrollment numbers some I have to collect numbers from some of the other directors for certain bits like um transitional and filing role and um and sped the special ed things like that right and that then those numbers get loaded into the f203 um and that tells us what our lab the budget will be it tells us what our special ed budget

018would be able to tell us what our enforcement will be it's based on mostly on the enrollment numbers that we put in there and then there's a few other other drivers it'll pop in the regionalization it'll do all of that it gives us the big number to budget for it again is based on our projections for enrollment but uh yeah that's what that's the tool that we need to tell us what our best guess for funding right so this is an unusual situation State doesn't come the session is late and that's what's ever makes Finance directors crazy because the session is late and we don't know what's happening we haven't you know the budget deadline is coming up and this year's surprise the session ended quickly and that was great it was on time but

019surprise they have to rebuild the drivers based on whatever changes by the session yeah right and so I think that's part of it it's not just a you know okay now we have them there you go they have to go in and rebuild that that tool every year and you know next year isn't a biennium so hopefully it'll be faster but we're really at the mercy of them and there were a lot of changes this year with multipliers with ibds with the meal all the meal stuff gets loaded in the same system the free meal the um there were a lot of changes in the in the formulas to K-12 this year we talked about this at the budget Advisory Board yeah yeah there's nothing for us to nerve-wracking I mean if this happens then

020it will be really for right yeah right once we see our revenues once we have a firm uh understanding of what our revenues are and we'll match up with the expenditures and then make decisions is there a projected date so for the 203 the projected date is really just Thursday or Friday likely right that I'll get it and then I have to build on that so there's a lot of numbers that I have to put in it and then you know transfer that also into that into our district system and then after that next projected next week that they won't tell us a day to get the S9 195 system which is actually the budget system itself that goes to the state and to our ESD but we they haven't said what day next week

021be helpful for the teachers to know or have a note maybe weekly or every Monday like what is happening or if there's even no news would that be helpful for teachers to kind of understand it as is time as I've been giving updates I've given them to Slade and I've seen a number of emails go out I don't know is that is that a law for teachers do you think you guys need yeah I don't know how the budget Advisory Board is communicating back out to their members and that's maybe something that we should be talking about we're all books the teachers are out like those of us that are there we know what's coming down the pike it's not about us so much as it is about our concern for the future so if

022we know hey this is going to come out and then we'll be able to post the positions that we can or then we'll know if we can have more hours it would take ease our minds I'm sure but it doesn't actually you can say Sarah we're gonna have three more jobs and it wouldn't change anything that's happening to me [Music] we get our stuff uploaded next week more information we'll have some updates on revenues and expenditures to make recommendations around and explore in restaurants around Restoration in anticipation of the June 8th meeting for first read of the budget with a still on track to approve by the end of June we'll have two board meetings in June to walk through the budget restoration process okay thank you questions too um I was just wondering why

023I guess maybe this is like another question about how where will those scenes go well we're anticipating once we get the revenues to have a better understanding so so does that mean that that rule hires and there'll be a new class what does it mean that right right so all right so Mr yeah Mr Erickson and Ms vancel right now are working on like what would it look like what are the contingencies or that are that could be in place so that they can make the decisions sooner than later but does that does that mean that we're going to have to create a new classes offered or did that mean that so are we going to police those kids in already existing electives that we just have bigger class sizes they'll build the master schedule

024once you get that FTE built in there so they'll keep continue building are there going to be new classes okay yeah yeah so we still don't know if yeah if there's any new high enough right all right it is a complicated and and there are many districts that don't do their Master's schedules even at this time of the year so we're we're a little unusual at least in my experience of building Master schedules come prior to your budget you know and so that's where that's where we are and that's where we've been and I think it's been a great benefit to students and families for that kind of predicting further out but um so those students they won't know or they will have a choice on the classes with their their electives it will depend

025and they'll use their their forecasting that they did in Skyward but they already did that to start places but the students want to have already given that have already given their information so sorry I'm just saying students put the requests in yeah and there's a certain number that requested say Ceramics but right now we only have the capacity to have free Ceramics classes right really there's enough interest to have five Ceramics classes so if we the numbers turn out right we would add those two more ceramic classes for example and so those students would then take Ceramics so it's not a new putting classroom let's say we have new classes that aren't surrounding classes those kids wanted to choose their new options they would go to their alternates right you go alternates so right so

026the first you put in your I can't remember how many yeah no I remember and then you put in your ball pants and so the schedule is built off that information and so any staffing that will be brought back in we've built on those projections from what students selected okay so that makes sense or it could be have to be able to hire so a lot of those kids well what they're going to get or they'll get something completely different right okay yeah for example okay uh I'd like to welcome uh next on my uh on my report uh we have the VHS pride flag and I'm gonna let Christina Ramirez and Thomas Elliott and Dakota Dakota's here um present essentially what has already been approved but it's very exciting or what we're about to

027see happen here at the high school and hopefully across the state all right am I allowed to be Cathedral kind of biased you all absolutely great I realized after I did this that this is actually a very udl of me [Music] I appreciate you calling out that udl's we're all learning what Gabriela is and how to implement it is thank you thank you all right so if you do not know me hi my name is Christina Ramirez and I prepared a statement as one of the advisors of Jennifer group and the queer Spectrum Alliance Club at the high school uh we at VHS are excited about the opportunity of flying the intersect the blues and pride flag on the school's flagpole during pride month and hopefully Beyond in doing so we hope we're unified and

028clear statements around the inclusion and celebration of students and staff who identify as part of the peer Community we recognize and thank the support of the board in the whole District as we recognize this decision is bold not in our community but in our country and yet also necessary we live in a time where anti-trans sentiment is reaching an unprecedented level although we are only in may we have seen 549 anti-trans bills across the country created 63 which I've already passed mostly sales directly Target trans kids and direct their health care and their very lives this comes at a time when the mental health for this group is already at a concerning time the charter project found that 45 of lgbtq seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year including more than half a transgender

029and non-binary youth this may seem like a Country-Wide issue and it is but it is also an island issue raising this flag will now automatically solve the anti-trans legislation or suicide rates but a number of times an adult uses the wrong pronoun with the students what it will do is show our career students that we see them we are proud of them and we will support them finally I want to note the intentional choice of the black design the newest 2021 variation in progress log was specifically chosen to highlight the experiences of the intersex trans black indigenous people of color and our prayer Community separate groups mentioned are also the equity priority groups and bashland School District's strategic plan raising the flag on June 1st will not be the last step in making sure that

030our career students are welcomed known and treasured at our school however let it view the signal to our community that we are out we are proud and we are just beginning thank you okay um student my name is Dakota my pronouns are he him I have been a representative of the genderqueer affinity group at my school the entire year I spoke at a faculty meeting before and I don't know who was there but I did that um anyways I proposed The Pride flag being flown at our school as a symbol of support for queer students and queer staff as well as a way to welcome people that are coming from the middle school or people who come from off Island if they see that we have this flag flown at our school they know that

031we accept everybody and we launch diversity and I think that it's really important to show that our school is supportive queer staff queer students feel most comfortable I know that I feel safe if I know that everybody there is supportive and a way that we can show that we have a supportive Community is by flying the flag during pride month [Applause] of support from kids and the proposal and many of the students have signed it as well and so we just appreciate anything else that that Thomas you want to say I know you support Monday yes I want to say ditto ditto yeah thank you then are there any questions from the board or from our students thank you agreement yeah I I am yes yes 24 7 12 months a year yes thank you

032for doing all the work and you know representing other students and coming and sharing your time and your ideas thank you so much is so important thank you do you want to know anything anything else that the board can do well [Laughter] I don't work on it anything else that you bring to our attention that you definitely have giving me the time means a lot yeah I can't think of anything off the top of my head but continued support and if something does come up um we know that we can reach out to you always welcome always yeah always thank you next up is it's a quick board candidate update from that link I think thank you for having me and then click on school and not enough credit order no worries don't worry so

033position one uh Lucy has indicated she'll be running she's running unopposed and in position two we have Holly Gilman and Casey Alanis position three they're four K Bates Peter lamp here Martha Woodard Angela Marshall River branch and then the position number five Jake jacobich and so uh all candidates could expect an email soon from Allison and myself uh you know thanking them for their interest in being candidates to serve the board as well as some information regarding upcoming wasda which is the Washington State School Directors Association with some training and information for orientation materials and so but I know that and all of us are available for any candidate who would like to reach out to us specifically we'll be doing some of that external you know that Outreach from now and then upcoming events

034uh Okay so we've moved the June the eighth work session to make that a regular board meeting June 10th is graduation with one o'clock at The Graduate parade so the best some of the best seats are downtown we're going to go Sebastian and then 6 PM is graduation 16th is the last day of school and then June 22nd is our essentially final board meeting for this school year and that'll be the budget hearing and Peter will be posting our reaching out to the Beachcomber where we push we push out a notice for That official budget meeting for the 22nd so those are our commute ends all right um Okay so first we're just going to talk about your advice on Wednesday um vice principal informed me a few years ago that you cannot let the

035generous out of the class that's what we have so um we've had to rework the structure of it a little bit because of that um but um right now the way that it stands is there's four U.S history periods and there's eight representatives and there's going to be four two groups of four and those groups will go to two of the periods if that makes sense so every senior is only missing two periods um and I have doubled up the representation so that the Juniors will find the area a little bit less of everything that they were going to get but that's exact price that we have to make um and uh it's going to be sort of the same structure within the classroom of smaller groups but that's going to be less effective because

036of the size of the groups and so it's going to be more of q a Time less of the small groups but there are still going to be small groups because I think that's affecting them there's no reason to subject everyone to everything and so uh yeah um but right now the representation that we have is um we have one person taking a gap year for each of them we have um one person doing either trade or Community College and starting your own business for one of them or to both of them and then we have one person that applied to 20 plus support your colleges for each of them and then we have um me for both for all of the sessions that is going abroad and doing courageous Arts and so that's what

037we have yes that's it and then in terms of other things going on and other things going on students mind like you mentioned scholarship notebook is this week and there's a bunch of different graduation events being held soon and academic awards are next week and so it's a really exciting time at school right now um at least for the upperclassmen and we're wrapping up everything and there's a lot of actual events and a lot of Banquets and a lot of things like there's a lot going on right now and there's Powerpuff and there's tailgating humans have assemblies congratulations you know you all know but um yeah so that's that's what's happening that's cool and then nor you would maybe want to preview next year and maybe who a partner might be um and then our

038last stop meeting is we'll do like a you know what we typically do which is a pizza party and then uh we typically have those who are leaving to share some of their Reflections and kind of hits and misses we'll be giving them prizes and things like that [Music] yeah I I hope that that it will still be effective all the time things down so that next year people you know so you know I can do it next year [Music] um I I think it'll be I think it would help I I can't speak to how it's gonna go but I assume and I hope that it's going to go well um and I think that it will really help students who are dark about a lot of the things going on in their senior

039fall and the students that want to be exposed to a different pathway that is not a form of college whether it's not in the US or like uh liberal arts or that's not you know I think it's really important to subject kids to that um from their peers and to show them for her and I hope that it will be good and also it follows today the Juniors have a counselor visit in a history classes where we discussed the beginnings of like how to look for colleges and what senior year will look like and then looking on the websites it was just a lot of four-year U.S colleges I couldn't I tried to filter my results to anything outside the U.S and it wouldn't allow for they don't have a lot of data with gpas

040and stuff and so I think this is a an admissions because that's really complicated so I think this is a good thing what it would look like in Framing and how you go about doing that or just even like one of those things I'm going to trade in order to take a gap year so I think that would be really helpful and really offer a lot of support yeah thank you thank you all right foreign oh happy here on Tuesday that are opening up um we'll see mostly new faces here that will also bring new energy some I mean maybe some circulation of energy I think it's also a great opportunity with new folks coming on board who might have experience with boards experience in the district experience advocating core issues to to this and

041past directors and to just coming with intention and passion to wondering things or to invigorate things to to in the direction that I think is that will be possible but it'll be we'll see we'll see what the makeup is but I'm just really glad for caring people who are showing up and setting up to take on this stuff to take on this role which I found to be challenging and and fulfilling I have more months on that on the board of course I thought there was a lot of positive energy some folks who are considering advocacy joined the work session a couple weeks comes out there will be further opportunities but I am keeping in mind and the world can continue to Roshan and ask for what else can we do what can we do

042or we're not a director what can I do when I'm not a direct what can the board ask of the community to support getting the information down getting um getting feedback doing evaluations that can come through different means than kind of a standard process of like how we get you know information packaged and then ends of the season and there's so much opportunity but it's it's a lot of great work strongly District is as you're seeing that growing student body numbers and just so much a strong a strong community and thrilled to have the update on the pride play so thank you for your work and the program commitment um I wanted to thank everyone for coming and um or your expressing your your concerns your letters I'm sure we haven't answered happy we should

043take a look into that many emails yeah and just so you know also we don't all answer letters yeah um and thank you for the flag and thank you so much for your time and your service I mean your ideas because I met with you before with a with another student language for her student and he was very careful your time and you also also mentioned that it would be maybe you have so much like the comments first concerns or have suggestions somehow make some time for them include schools and um well everybody thank you for forcing and coming in and I don't know good luck with the candidacy how I hope we have a great team thank you um I just wanted to I'm sort of going into like we're talking about next I

044just have had really great conversations with people over the last two weeks about um you know teachers leaving for a while I've had to leave and some healing conversations with people and it's been really um I've just had such really thoughtful conversations with people that I just I just want to acknowledge those conversations I've had and how great they have been just in the not to it's been they're hard they're hard conversations um is it's super tough and it's we are as a friend of mine said we're all on our own Journeys but we're all journeying together and I I feel like that's what's happening right now it's like we're all on our Journeys but we're all together in this and really powerful powerful thanks a bit and that's a great segue to invite Heidi

045to come forward join us to share the network do I have to go up there or do I stand wherever you are comfortable wherever you'd like I'm good all right well the camera's fine you're responding you okay um hi um I I feel kind of silly because I kind of said the statement and it kind of went out to everyone so I'm just I'm it's all in there but um we have created a work group it's been going on for two weeks now um tomorrow night will be our third you'll be on Wednesday nights it consists of a white smattering of Youth and teachers and administrators and staff and union members and community members and parents and I think that's I think I was about everyone it's a whole school board and um and um

046it's been the energy has been really good in the room and it's exciting where um going down a pretty intense process as described in that statement but I'm here to answer any questions that you have any for me or do you want me to your board has questions I think that yeah the statement is available in one hour an email I just would Echo the appreciation and the things for facilitating Employment Group together we participated in the first meeting and we'll be there tomorrow would agree with energy and that feeling in the room of Hope around and what do we do moving forward thoughtfully and together in response to some of the concerns concerns raised and how students and staff are healing and what more is needed so thank you and happy to be part

047of the journey and look forward to the next steps and Miller's been there for both people North been there and then uh but would you like to share any uh your impressions what stands out to you so far it's it's really nice to see adults and grabs around me have conversations that I've been wanting to have and I think that's really impactful I have I want to say thank you for helping us often at the school districts and leaders want to solve problems on their own they think they know the right way and and the tools and processes and I think this is really something that we can help with and to partner with a community group that that we trust of the community trusts and it has different skills that can effective Associated this

048conversations it was good for a mature decision to see that partnership and things of that for helping Spirit have that together going on because this is a this is something that is concerned of everyone and it's not a very ignoring what you're saying this is actually the the result of all the concerns and all the emails and the communications [Music] and thank you for helping us thank you everyone for your patience thank you all right so next on our agenda is our Alternative Learning Experience okay um here's us we had a logo contest so um Elliott Google is Junior made this image for us I think 16 students turned in images we made a big wall with this one in the center um kind of blew our minds that's perfect so um so this year

049has been so you've read the report and um and you might remember in it the sort of um graph where we were growing growing growing growing growing uh growing pains and we're starting to level up so that's what it's really like um that you guys last year's enrollment administers they're pretty steady and we're seeing what the pattern typically is and so um we enrolled year round and um we're currently we're looking at probably 110 who are who we already know about we're going to start off with but we already know how that will grow especially so um so we're sort of predicting a similar moment for next year and we're feeling like we've got our feet under us I'll knock on wood a little bit finally because there was all that growth and then post

050covid um I mean just a little background it's um we're we're primarily remote programs that were funded as remote And yet when the students came back from covid it was so clearless at the secondary level and with the little ones with K-12 um that everybody needs each other that there's such a desperate need for community and the connection and um and fun frankly I'm so happy I just sorry I just came from um from camp south just now and I got to see 100 fifth graders running and squealing and laughing in a giant field it was so awesome um so um gives me that right now so we have we have you saw the list of the workshops in the labs and stuff we've really kind of doubled our on-site offerings and then people won't

051go home because they come from the workshops and then they um stay at the playground um so we feel like we've kind of caught up with that we have a sense of the amount of programming we need and the numbers we need and the Staffing is stable I think the best thing that happened to me all year long well it's not true but the my favorite thing about the report I just wrote for you is that that the Staffing is exactly the same if we've got the people we need and overseas touching okay so um you read the report and you know really thank you so much for your time and attention I um the ale is we're required to tell you these three things that are in the middle of the report and then

052I write five pages for you and then they can get pictures too so that so thank you for your time and attention um just a few highlights for us we had we had lots of field trips and stuff here's our land acknowledgment um a a week and a half ago was it was time for dissection and um and I had no idea I thought we were gonna die some frogs and I I went over to loud and started George or science student was like oh no we've got pigs and turtles and I think this is a turtle situation um maintenance is putting a giant utility sink in for us because the dissection was a long stop here I guess what happened was pie the pie but uh the equipment as and then if we can

053just get the specimens each year we can keep that prayer so really important Rich biology and labs um this is a this is a mural there's sort of fragments of it it stretches this was designed intentionally by the students in Carolina Silva so that as many people could participate as possible without necessarily having to agree on the line Vision so the vision is there's the mountain and um and then it's kind of like like doodling on the I mean the inspiration notebook so um for a Sketchbook very popular Workshop and that's one of the one of the groups and community service we have this one of our one of our favorite workshops for the littlest kids is kindergarten through second grade they do this I think on Story Time and community service which mostly means

054they're picking up trash but because we get the little Grabbers but they have big buckets and buckets of trashy okay there was a we did this whole interdisciplinary thing about water this year that was pretty fun to be at different age levels and um included some uh partnership with the Nature Center field trips and um and um it was it was sort of spontaneous so it came together that this big theme about water again it's a little side field trip the other day School season more science labs a 50 Cent bonus if you can spot my child in these photos um soil testing for the this is the gardening Workshop more gardening stuff um just a second we're very excited um next in the fall we're gonna do cardboard engineering but this is um part

055of the egg drop challenge there was an eight job challenge yeah I was astounded actually most of them did not and I was scared okay see that's how high up I was um and dropping them um Thanksgiving and think about an entire all of like maintenance and Tech and we are so welcome okay nice okay so um on the 13th is our annual Shakespeare production actress kindergarten through eighth grade 12 30 in the VHS theater we hope you can join us to the 13th on the sixth we'll have a dress rehearsal and all the fifth graders are coming we have a hundred those ones that are running in school right now foreign this event and the art show we have coming up first Friday in June we open up the Blue Heron with our K-12

056and um music we've got a um I know a lot of guitarists now we've got a guitar teacher installed in the study hall with high school students and so before of them are gonna take two so that's a blue heron one second you know five-ish um and that show will be up for at least a month the shows on another 13. and then um also the student link graduation is on the 8th Thursday the 8th we have four in VHS theater um we got 20 reps is we graduated 20 year before last as well yeah I think we're you know we're crossing our fingers it's 20. come on I'm not 19. so thank you so much thank you Thomas thank you [Applause] Dr Spencer so this is the center for educational Effectiveness survey we've been

057doing this survey in our school district I think first year we did it was a 2011-12 somewhere in there or 2012-13 the first time we went through a formal strategic plan process we conduct the survey annually it goes to staff students and families um we switched a couple years back to going on all every other year cycle one just helped save costs and just because you don't see a whole lot of growth in year by year so um and we also have a number of other survey tools that we are using in our district currently the information I gave you in the packet is similar to the information I gave two years ago when I did this report so I gave you the summary Pages for staff families and students on the nine characteristics of

058Highly Effective schools so you can kind of get a flavor for how we did I went ahead and wrote in the 2019 numbers the reason why I did this we had this kind of anomalous year 2021 maybe people remember what that year was it was the covered here and much to our interest in treating our numbers went off the charts like high like high satisfaction and sense of belonging like totally contrary to what you thought would happen during coping um and so I put these where I had them available I just kind of rolled them into a side so you can kind of ground them with this year because you'll see we dipped every every single I don't think there's a single thing anywhere in the survey where we didn't dip because we're more in

059a normal school setting again what that is exactly we don't know we'll never quite be able to put a finger on it it just maybe because our district could be thinking back to all of the efforts by everybody the community our staff we were really knocking it out of the park as a school district during the really difficult shutdown time in terms of what we were offering in this community teachers everybody entire system was just on overload working constantly so that might be part of that I don't know we've never quite figured that out but still when you compare even if you go to 2019 there are still some dips from 2019 and so you know those are kind of wonderings for us to as we get back in and start to level off and

060figure things out so those are those three pages um we should jump down yeah and then the other information so then I focused primarily on student feedback and I focused in on the areas that um I'm kind of embedded into our school Improvement plans so on the social emotional learning survey the one that we really zero in on is the belonging identity you'll see an element of that and every one of the school Improvement plans and from the other the nine characteristics the one that you would see is the supportive learning environment that's also an area that we focus in on there's just tons of data in this survey and so that's what I gave you there and then if you scroll to the diversity yeah so then a few years back prior to the

061center of educational effectiveness of developing this tool we had created our own racial Equity sorts of questions that we were asking about once they came out like this tool we went ahead and started using this so this is the second time it's been run on our survey but it breaks down the Museum of go through each area academics and so on but this is the student perspective and there's one for staff and there's one for families as well I'm sure you know if you want to take a deeper dive into all that data so they would be happy to give you these files um but anyway you'll see more of this probably in the fall as schools come back and do some reporting out on their school Improvement plans they'll probably be making some references

062to different data points that are from this survey so so use this tool um and then just a little bit about demographics I always find the demographics of the survey super interesting because um it's student self-identification so it doesn't always match what's in our official system because our official system is populated mostly by what parents fill out on the forms so one of those areas that definitely is discrepant from what we currently have in our system is when you look at gender on this survey we had 9.4 percent of our students who do not identify the binary world when it comes to their gender identity so you say 9.4 on this and if you look at the way we track that in our official system is gender X which is the state label that they've

063given it and it's like less than a percent wow interesting so you know there's just and the other thing about this this the results I did give you here are grades 4 through 12. the primary grade so kindergarten through three have a slightly different surveys similar questions but not nearly in the same thing so I didn't include that in the packet play so they're not in these numbers but we had over 600 students participate in the survey we had virtually all of our fourth fifth sixth seventh and 8th graders this year we didn't quite get the same participation of the high school for different reasons we had about one quarter and it was kind of equally split amongst 19 to 12. so um that gives you an idea there but then it's also just interesting

064too in the way that students self-identify whether it's race or other demographics that we track it doesn't ever fully match just when you look at the number of counts of who for example like in our formal system we have I think seven students district-wide who identified as Native American on this survey we had um 16 students to identify so that's probably some of those students who get put into the two or more racist category that self-identify as Native American but the state identifies them as two or more races so it's just kind interesting when you're thinking about how students identifying our official reporting tools aren't always super helpful in helping us understand how our students foresee themselves any specific questions and the data's there you can just share one thing uh just to add on

065one of the things we learned when our administrative team was reviewing the data was because we give this survey every other year there are you know sense of belonging and and the core learning environments we're going to begin to pull some sample questions from the survey so that in the off years we can do some more formative assessments so that you know when when we do have a you know a formal year that we're not kind of in the dark or surprised about what kind of things we might see or we're not seeing regular event decisions in a yearly way rather than every other year so we'll still pay for the survey you know the more comprehensive package every other year but you'll do some targeted assessment in the in between years just on on

066those just without the right the characteristics that we have identified in our school Improvement plan so that's one of our kind of as we have a you know in this completing the first year of making sense of our student adversal Improvement plans this is one of those making sense moments you know where you're like okay every other year gives us you know you know great data in this instance we see that kind of interesting Spike with covid but there's some gaps that we know we're going to be there I think when we do this next year in terms of Howard how we're tracking progress and how we're recording that out in our report we do have a new survey that we're tracking twice a year due to our inclusive practices project I mean our Universal

067Design for Learning so we did a survey in the fall and one we're just finishing up now that surveys staff and students but students in grades three seven and nine is what that program set it up and very similar questions in terms of sense of belonging and being known by teachers and all of that so for at least for the student piece of it yeah other questions I'm assuming on leadership to teachers I don't know how the building principles are sharing it up currently but I've put parts of it in the monthly teaching advantages that are they'll pull it out at staff meetings I know the school Improvement teams the school leadership teams that's what it is um you know that they've started out this year that involve families and students and staff and so

068I think the idea is to start thinking more readily available but like say there's a lot of data so it's trying to zero in on those situations that were really interested in addressing in our strategic plan and and then also flooding any of those areas they're like wait what's going on here [Music] the interest to me at least is the discussion around the data and what what I mean yeah by yourself timing but when what part of the year the survey launched this survey is done right before February break so we usually do that first two to three weeks of February sometimes we'll stretch it it depends sort of on our community response that drives it the most great response back from Community will keep you open a little bit longer but with students it's

069nice we can usually get close to 100 of the students because we will be speaking bit about how we use Home Room there's more periods or whatever and so that to us is a super critical piece as a student voice but obviously Elizabeth Warren too and the survey is uh optional for a student yeah they can choose not to do it and obviously we encourage them to do it but um enforce them do you invite students to weigh in and what qualitative considerations yeah in this conversationally and all of that yes absolutely all the time okay we engage students on student leadership or in the building we use School leadership teams uh age students see they engaged all of the different Affinity groups of the high school to participate in a staff meeting where students

070came and shared what they were thinking and feeling the staff and so yes or the constant engagement with students we developed a survey for our classroom teachers to give I would say it's been hit and miss as to how well that's been received but it was very specifically designed from our horizontal instructional framework based on what we were hearing from students that was consistent across all the schools no matter what grade level there were just some consistent things so we were able to pull those elements that align to our instructional model and we have a survey that's that can be used in their classrooms to get that feedback around those elements yeah I would say that we work really hard to incorporate student voice in most qualitative qualitative ways where they get to respond I

071don't know if that's when you're experiencing classrooms but it's supposed to be so um yeah we really encourage it thank you and we'll move to the discussion portion of the agenda four items and you're up so don't go too far don't go too far okay four items for discussion and we'll start with uh curriculum So yeah thank you so this um hopefully is somewhat familiar you'll see it a couple times a year usually I show it to you in the fall and I get on the spring this is just sort of my grand scheme of curriculum mapping trying to kind of keep us on track with this seven-ish year adoption cycle um so one of the things that's nice to note for next year which I think is good because we don't have any major

072adoption activity going on next year and what's good about that is that the math adoption of high school is not complete usually with our larger adoptions like math over multiple grades we usually try to spread over two years for that so they weren't quite ready to go and all in on their algebra geometry Algebra 2 sequence this year so we're doing what we call a gap here where we're purchasing one more year of the old curriculum while they kind of figure that out so it's good that we don't have any other major things going on and the idea the way this works obviously I've talked about this before is try to kind of make sure that you have only one major thing going on and then some more minor things going on so it balances

073out and then you just kind of map it out over seven years sometimes it's eight years but we're trying to keep that cycle um together it has rough estimates so every time we do something I try to update just so we know for planning purposes and for budgeting roughly what it costs to do the whole adoption on something and yeah so this year what you have before you is pretty straightforward we have Middle School Central Health curriculum and they've opted to go ahead and stay with get real we've had really positive results it's a great curriculum because it really focuses family engagement and keeps family at the center of decision making with an emphasis on you know delaying sexual activity and also then just being informed in all the different ways to do the purpose

074control and all of that so it's scientific it's medically based it meets all the requirements for the state even though you've gotten great results because the the feedback from the students and the feedback of what we're seeing and we're not seeing the teen pregnancies home yeah because it was not it was not great and this what's really nice about this one and they also now have Spanish editions out but all in every lesson has a parent family engagement piece that goes home we are switching over so we won't be using physical um do the workbooks we're going to be doing the online version online materials so that would be a switch but do we save any money by doing that no it's a funny thing Publishers get really smart about this years ago um they

075make it sometimes they make it cheaper to package like both the textbook and the online together I mean they've learned the game so you kind of you don't save anybody but um you know in terms of like just waste they can put this into Google Classroom so it's pretty accessible for students so there's that piece and I just want to thank the Healthy Living team you're happy and honors food bank to work on kind of taking a look at that and putting that together and then the other piece that you're looking at tonight is one of our electors at the high school is AP Statistics or advanced placement statistics and that was Nick Warren and Hogan who put a lot of time to effort but I also want to thank students and the parents who

076completed the the class on bias review and then completed their forms for the bias review and participating in the feedback process and so that textbook is what he's recommending we're buying a classroom set of 35 typically they only offer one class at a time but that's going to be an interesting question as we move forward this idea of doing just by classroom sets of texts and then rely on the online text um you know what's more sustainable and what makes the most sense but um so he's put that recognition in and he's basically it questions I just appreciate in his analysis or your analysis the student feedback on the pilot of the AP Statistics I can't AP just expose my mind statistics but that's amazing and I appreciate the work that clearly the compliments that

077have come into this thank you I thought some of the student comments and the review uh were interesting given that it was a statistics textbook they're like I don't see a lot of like family representation or history but that's probably okay but it was also you get an Insight that they're looking for gender neutral pronouns and other things that um you know there's a lot of different perspectives and yeah yeah we created that for us we actually updated it was an old form from ospi that had been built years ago and the person who built it wasn't working those kind of set a workshops like they haven't been updated that form and it was clear I mean it was just being refreshing but we also developed a little online course so anyone who's doing a

078review goes through our little online course that kind of helps give examples and all of that just to give a little bit more background so the folks who aren't living in that daily like our teachers have an opportunity to come understand what it is that we're looking for anything else okay well any vertical just about the book the physical books I just feel that I know you know we're always going they do digital world against them [Music] exactly in a different ways so consider keep I would like to consider this copies because I mean it's just the brain benefit for our children [Music] what do you guys think that's great [Laughter] [Music] technology is reliables all right Adam B uh certificate Administration compensation agreement for first readings yeah so I don't know thanks Peter for

079bringing that up uh just as a reminder for folks last year as we negotiated salaries for vea which is the Vashon Education Association the ESP on National Education well I don't want to get it wrong so support personnel and then SEIU as well and we at the same time did contracts for building administrators and certificate administrators are different than just as a reminder the classified administrators so certificate administrators are who we're discussing tonight and so Stephanie's part of that group she has a certificate disability principles our director of student services and our director of teaching and learning so Kim our director of business and finance our director of Human Resources Food Services technology and Facilities facilities of Maintenance they are classified and considered and so um classified administrators received the ipd from last year the

080implicit applies to price deflator which in some vernacular it used to be Polo so cost of living increase so our alleged state legislators look at what the cost of inflation is and then they to pass through in the legislative session the biennium and typically provide that for what they consider our non-supervisory certificated staff and so that pass-through happens but we as a district typically will apply that you know broadly to to all groups that aren't negotiating and so last year just as a kind of a reminder the ESP and VA received seven percent increases to those ipd the five and a half percent plus one percent and so those are the agreements that we entered into with those two bargaining groups at the time we were anticipating bargaining or providing the classified I mean the

081certificate administrators with a similar salary increase of seven percent but because of some budget constraints we reduced that expectation to five and a half so last year our certificate administrators received a five and a half percent increase how we were moving forward um kind of not bringing us up to speed There's a summary document that we have in front of us with the summary salary schedule that for the 23 24 and 25 I'm recommending that that the certificate administrators building principles director of teaching learning director of student services received the same increase as vea members are receiving consequently that would be ESP because they'd have similar agreements and so for next year ITV is projected right now or actually in state law that's 3.7 percent and so when you add one percent uh to that

082that would be a 4.7 increase and then from 24 25 you have a 4.9 increase because ipd is I can project to be 3.9 in this process we have um we went back into or I went back into the comparable districts for certificated administrators if you recall our comfortable districts for classified and certificate of staff were really um balanced between Regional and life-sized districts so we have districts like who built Granite Falls but we also have districts like Tacoma and Franklin Pierce and South Kitsap and so um because we base the salaries on high school principal salaries there's a uh basically an allocation based on percentage so everything's based off the high school principal salary we looked at still comparable districts within the study that we did four years ago now um looking at the

083like size and pay and steps for certificated teachers and we took districts in that sample set and specifically identified amount of districts who had high schools similar size to ours and I'd show those comps a few weeks ago now in the morning some time ago some time ago and so the new comps um are Meridian they are North Mason Grant Falls Coupeville and Fashion Island I think that's our I think they're five and so when we looked at the comps what we see now is that the projected increase right here puts our administrators at both the mean and the median so um you know with Coupeville and granite Palestinian above bash on and then North Mason and Meridian standing below so what you see is a two-year contract also at the bottom there's a slight

084increase in professional development funding from 950 thousand 950 to a thousand dollars um and they're able to they don't use that they're able to carry an equal amount forward but no more than two thousand dollars I'm rushing through it it's a lot of there's a lot of information is it um this first year there's only four steps and then follow me and there are five or is it is it a copying is there is there a fifth step yeah yeah okay there's a fifth step there it's a okay yeah yeah it was a picture that on top of a picture um but essentially you know what this uh and what I've been saying um you know year to year is that people matters in our district and we make investments you know in our people

085and so prepare us to custodians to teachers to leadership every one of these folks in our district um and I understand that there's constraints and budget reductions um I fully understand that and at the same time I know that principles are leaving the profession of at a dramatic rate we saw awsp this year put forward two bills one which just passed to support principles and in their roles because once again principles are leaving these positions at aligning rates the other point that I want to bring forward is that for for the continuity that we want in our in our buildings we need to provide competitive salaries having turnover in building leadership and even in District leadership has been seen we've seen the research on that and it shows that outcomes for students dramatically decrease when

086you have them involving more administrators it's not positive for us or it's not going to be we're not going to be able to continue what we want to do with our with our national promise if we have a again High turnover of principles this year we are seeing High turnovers of leadership and I've already heard from some of our members that coming into our district they have they have already received pay reductions you know from their old districts coming into our district and and it's because we have you know we have means uh we should be you know we should be providing the needs to at least keep up with what I believe are a truer representative set of comparables because it really is important and critical for us to be competitive as in all

087positions kind of to put a you know one maybe final point on this is that we've seen over and over again a small pool of applicants across all positions from Perez to custodians to teaching you know teaching staff to maintenance and facility staff and principals as well these these positions um you know there's an island factor of finding housing and living on the island as much as the island in fact they're taking a ferry as well so in order to make that kind of commitment once again providing comparable and competitive salaries is I feel in our best interest if we want to again keep moving forward and this is just a this is a first read um yeah an opportunity for a community to weigh in and if they've done so please continue to weigh

088in please continue to to reach out uh to us and we'll answer questions I have a quick question I don't know if you'll if you'll know it off the top of your head you said that these salary levels been bringing these positions right to the mean and median compared against the comparables is that against were the comparables are this year or they're also going to be next year they're matched to next year okay so there is one District that I was diagnosed to it's like who feels not I know that timing can be we're right so I heard back from uh three out of the other four districts that you know what their what their percentage is going to be for next year uh the one that I didn't I just projected ipd at a

0893.7 in the past when I've tried that just because of the timing you don't necessarily know the information and then we try to shoot for let's say the the bottom yep are the other districts increasing at the same rate yes so so that's that's essentially a separate Coupeville um Cooper had a kind of an unusual circumstance and how you know their salaries were based um they're not anticipating they're not projecting any increase next year but the other districts are either they match teacher salaries that seems to be a common theme mostly centered on the idea that we have some staff who are being supervised by principals who make less than they do per diem and so that's um you know that's not a a good message that keeps administrators in your District if you are

090supervising staff who are making more than anything for him so but a long the long answer that is most of districts are doing ipd or ipd plus one which is what lowest Union okay item three on the related more history and context similar history of context show you in Peter not better the just the other content from them so um I apologize for not providing this immediately in the board docs and this was added this morning as I do not anticipate some of the questions around my contract and so I'm recommending that my contract increased by 3.7 percent and so essentially the ipd or the cola per se that has been passed through by the state legislators I did give one to give the board some history and some context in terms of where my

091salary sits in terms of a region and when I was originally brought on board and so Northwest leadership Associates brought forward a set of eight districts as comparables when we went through we went through the hiring process five years ago there are people who helped us yeah yeah and so at that point in time there were eight districts in that comfortable set and Bash on size wise uh was number six out of eight and salary wise was five out of eight and so to date that has still tracked similarly so any increases in my salary have been tracking similar to all the districts in that Chronicle set so I've not been advancing that in the rate nor have I been regressing at a you know in terms of our region I know there's been some

092questions about you know kind of the size of our district and um the market rate for salaries of superintendents and there's maybe a some misinformation or not enough information out there for folks to understand around where markets are right now for superintendent salaries and kind of once again for context when I was brought on into the region well into on the Vashon there were four other districts that had hired superintendents only myself left and so superintendent turnover is also a concern for for boards and districts and so again providing compatible salaries but once again my salary has been tracking very similar I don't have the data when I was here you know five years ago in terms of the dsv data but right now my salary tracks fortunately well with districts of our side in

093terms of if you see we are the 32nd I should say maybe the third smallest District or the 32nd largest District down 35 and then my salary is the 31st salary in terms of the amount so and that data is provided to USD so I I know that there's some conversation or around the the second part of my addendum which is the ongoing the three percent experience stipend and that stipend was brought in in 2019 it was interesting talking about it and thinking about the middle of a pandemic we just closed schools and then we're trying to do all this you know to try to do budget you know we're trying to do contracts and negotiations and what a crazy time and at that point in time when I brought on this idea of an

094experience section for six years if you know Toby is about remember when I was asked five years ago where we were how how long did I want to spend in the district and it was to seek us graduate so that would be seven that would be seven years so during the second year in the pandemic I wanted to really send a signal to the board and ensure the board that I was committed to another six years and that you know I was hoping that that building upon experience and then again kind of keep tracking uh you know that salary that that would be a commitment that I wanted to make sure I I made planning clear um now that we're in a place where I'm providing kind of this continuity of contracts so I'm not

095anticipating addendum changes for the for the following year um it's the it's this idea that I want to provide a sense of commitment right now there's a five-year strategic five seven year strategic plan and I'm hoping that I want to see it through and so this is again the signaling that there's another commitment by me um to perpetuate this uh increase or the duration of a contract and not end in you know two more years essentially and I know there's maybe some not Clarity around you know this idea of increase some of the timing pieces yeah and so just you know so with the boards what I'm proposing for the board for next year is a 3.7 increase which is straight at 80. really appreciate you explaining all this because I think it's hard just

096to see it on paper and just do it today because it pretty much exactly what I said to you but we're reading the data you can just look at it but not it's important yes well it's been an unpopular conversation uh every year yeah so I recognize that and duration when did that end that would end in 24 25. policy thank you policy revisions and Doctor Who she's playing you're on here sorry I just saw Steph saying whoever's talking we'll do 40 we'll do 40 to 18 first okay language access thank you um actually so link Jackson says this is a required policy for us to have in place for the start of next school year um what was nice about reading this was that we actually are already well on our way to addressing

097many of these things so parent square has been a huge tool for us this year because families select the language that they want to receive their messages in so if we're all being disciplined as staff and using that tool families automatically get the translation in the language that they prefer um but this idea is that we're we're making information about students schooling information about schools available in Heritage languages and when possible having in-person interpretation which is probably our biggest challenge on bash Island um we just haven't we don't have the interpreters living here who are available nor do we have any luck getting outside agencies want to travel across for an hour meeting or whatever do we just added a second over the phone interpreter Service as a backup it's quite a bit more money

098than the one we have currently but we've had on occasion times when they when we dial up and the connection's not great or we're not able to get the trans The Interpreter that we need so we did add a second and check our service recently that's on demand that we can use that they also have video options and other options that we don't currently have available so um this is just basically assuring that in our district we're going to make sure that we communicate yes we can in Heritage lendages and provide those services for your charge notice how in-person interpretation so that's what the purpose of this policy is yes um so when when a parent who has checked the box that they wanted to get into whatever language it is are they getting every

099email or every con every communication from the district is coming through to that language so it doesn't matter if it's coming from links or the district office or if they're using parent square and they've been set up so one of the nice things about investing in the family engagement coordinator position to Media we've done a lot of one-on-one with families helping make sure that they have the tool set up correctly and know how to access that but if we're using that as our messaging tool yes they're going to get it in the language that they prefer if folks are still relying on Skyward then it's not necessarily guaranteed so that's where you might still see a lot of Staff will often take whatever message they're sending out and provide a translated usually in Spanish only

100we have by the way we have 23 Heritage languages other than English in this school district and our multilingual Learners program there are 15 languages so you see that the language is broader than just our multilingual program but a lot of people don't realize that because obviously Spanish is the predominant language second language in our district [Music] are those going out in believe all those are coming through parent Square because I get them and those are all going in Heritage languages correct if they have it set up in their app to whatever language they prefer they're getting that in their language and it gives you the ability once you have it to see the original so if you want to do your own uh translation of the document you can or sometimes to compare because

101you know it's not a perfect system obviously they're constantly getting better those services but you know there's always something that doesn't quite translate in the same way so yeah so yeah it's really encouraging all of our staff to use that tool you know when counselors do their newsletters to adopt a template that's in in the parent Square app because then it's going out we're not quite all there yet but we're getting there where's one of the experience of not being able to use it and you call or you call them and see someone that you're doing yeah okay yeah it's nice when we have our family engagement meetings because occupies the families will help each other towards the ones that are more familiar with the tools but yeah so that's what the purpose of the

102policy is we're already providing most of these we're getting better we're providing more training each office staff now has a book that they can open that is called I speak and the parent can point to the language we're piloting a translation interpretation device in the main office right now using say hi I think that's the name of that but it's like right there on your on on this it's a Chromebook touch interface that will do the interpretation right there on the spot um so you know and of course we're still continuing to try and hire bilingual staff whenever we can and for working on so after a different native language for words where you can just walk into like any schools like main office and they have the power to register you on that or

103is it do you have to contact can you do that on like the VHS website it's a it's an automatic so um the message is when you get a message from parent square if you haven't already done it it gives you that like assignment for parents oh okay so you click that link and then families can set themselves up so you can actually download an app where you can use the web-based interface most of our families end up using the app and what's nice about that too is you can choose as a family when you receive those messages so they'll like put them all into a digest so you get it all at one times the king throughout the entire day um I seem to not have mastered that myself so I'm getting the digest

104and things throughout the day but like if there's anything um if there's an emergency we have the ability to override so like if we have to get information out right now we're going to override that okay you set it up or on the web you set it up yourself the trick with that it was funny because like nitty and I were media is our family engagement coordinator we were playing around trying to decide how good the interpretation was and uh or translation was and um and uh so I switched to Spanish and she was in English and she wrote her message in Spanish so it came like it came through it was just like it was funny because like it depends on how you set it up so if you're set up in English but

105you type your message in Spanish it's going to come through if I'm able to come through with Spanish right so you have to match when you're typing a message you have to match the language that you chose so there's little nuances like that that we're working with with families but it's pretty good the feedback we've had from families is pretty pretty good and it's nice because you can directly communicate what do you say a higher level of Engagement since yeah I I would say so yeah especially since we've been doing our family engagement meetings and all of that we've really built some amazing relationships we were just talking about that today or yesterday they're all the same day since we have you know been I mean code really forced us to kind of really examine

106what kind of tools we were using you know for translation um I mean we were you know remember we were translating Google meets you know um in real time it was pretty it was pretty interesting kind of all the different ways that we tried to adapt and um but we've seen since especially since Lydia has joined our team um especially stepping or kind of guiding Our Family Outreach it does feel like we come a long way they're still it's always room for improvement there's always folks to engage with there's always reluctant folks for whatever reason what's nice is now there's an office in Oscar because of the RCW there's actually an office and Lydia and I spent an hour with the gentleman who's heading up the office there and he was quite fit we were

107excited we were equally excited to be engaged with each other about what's going on in our district and what's coming down the road in terms of support for schools this is that's not just unique to us there's a lot of challenges so there's some great resources coming and we're just going to continue to build on that but we do need to get the policy in place I'm also working on the procedure that matches the policy this is basically taken from also right put into bashron size District with the right language like the right title for the person and all of that so yeah okay everyone thank you Dr Spencer policy 4210 uh it's not as exciting as the language access this is a again an essential policy that came from Mazda every other month or

108so we get a batch of policies to review for was that any that they identify as essential we make sure that we update them and so if you take a look through this it's supposed to be more expecting and wants to kind of refining the process with a few of the kind of new regulations regarding you know student discipline and policy 3421 so there's some updating around that as well I'm really not a lot of substantive change in particular okay these are first reads for this this comes from Washington yeah Washington State director's Association okay and I apologize uh Allison had to catch up eight o'clock yeah we're moving to concert agenda in a minute do we have a motion to improve please they consent agenda a second all those in favor please give a

109solution that's great there we go