001You guys just saved. This is my script. Could have been exciting for all of us for the rest of the day, but um now I can read. So All right, we're now going to work through the agenda board. Are there any proposed changes or modifications of the agenda? >> All right, hearing none. >> Yes, we have one contract to add to the contracts, don't we? >> In the consent agenda. >> I think Kim already added it, but yes. >> Okay. I know she added it, but I Okay. If we needed to make it formal, I was going to do that. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, hearing one, resolving one. Now, we'll move on to the consent agenda. So, items on the consent agenda were sent to the board and posted online last week. The board
002has had the opportunity to review the materials and ask the superintendent any questions they have had about any items on the consent agenda. The consent agenda for this meeting includes the minutes for the 9925 regular meeting, vouchers and payroll, personnel report, surplus report, contracts, field trips, and the July financial report. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? >> I move that we uh approve the consent agenda as presented. >> All right. And seconded. >> Second. >> All right. Has been moved by Maria and seconded by Mark. Any discussion? >> All right. All in favor adopting the consent agenda as presented, say I. >> I. Not opposed. Uh motion carries. Uh bright spots. So Corey, I'm going to turn it on to you for bright spots round two. >> Excellent. I would like
003to invite uh Principal Lance Young and Principal Craig Allen to join me up here at the podium. >> Yeah. >> Have you guys join us? bad boy here. >> Okay, >> there it is. So, I had I had a fun and exciting uh lunch this uh this summer with Randy Spalding, who is the executive director of the Washington State Board of Education. And while we were having lunch, he said, "You need to take this poster, this this monument to uh Sunny Slope Elementary and Foothills Middle School." So, both Sunny Slope Elementary and Foothills Middle School were recognized by the Washington State School Recognition Program for outstanding performance during the 23-24 school year. Uh, Foothills, um, represented by Craig Allen, principal here, is being recognized for academic growth for low-income students. Closing the achievement gap with
004our students of low socioeconomic status is a challenge that takes intentional, strong tier one academic support as well as tier 2 and tier three interventions to make that impact. We appreciate the efforts of F uh Foothills Middle School um and continuing to do this challenging work even when we threw a schedule change uh on top of everything last year. So um and then uh principal Lance Young representing Sunny Slope. They're being recognized for growth for low-income students and growth for students with in special education. Recognized schools like Sunny Slope have made great strides uh to improve outcomes for students by closing gaps and showing tremendous growth and achievement. Like our students with low socioeconomic status, our students with disabilities always need robust tier one instruction and benefit from their individualized education plan and the support
005that they receive. Um, so thank you gentlemen. Uh, Foothills already has their sign, so uh, Lance, you're able to take this one with you and display that proudly at Sunny Slope. Let's give them a round of applause. >> Thank you. Here we go. >> I have a question. >> Congratulations. >> Yes. What are Lance and Greg? Thank you. Sorry, Craig. Craig, sorry. Alan. Um, what are you guys doing differently? I guess that um yeah, I mean that that um I mean I know it might be kind of hard to put a finger on it. Um, >> I can't speak for Craig, but I just feel like at Sunny Slope, we're constantly analyzing all the resources and staffing we have and analyzing are we best using them and leveraging them to to serve our kids and
006just maximizing every every minute we can. So, being more intentional and I guess I I'll piggyback off that a little bit. It is the flexible use of data in response to the data. getting to know the students across the board, their personal needs, their home needs, their academic needs, and being flexible and creative with how we're using staffing to address those needs. Um, this data, these awards are actually based off data from two years ago before our master schedule change. Um, and we had some pretty significant changes that went along with that and most of our sub subgroup scores increased dramatically as as we got those new interventions in place. So, we're excited to see where that takes us next. Next we have next we have our ASB uh reports. So we're excited. This is
007our first official ASB reports of the school year. School. Let's do that. All right. We'll do Westside High School. Thank you for being here. >> Hello everyone. My name is Risana Skiville and I have the honor of serving as the Wachi High School ASB president. I am excited to share that this school year is already off to an amazing start. Our ASB class is made up of 60 dedicated students who are ready to lead and help make WHS a better place. We've already began organizing activities that focus on bringing bringing students together, especially after summer break. During the first week of school, our senior senators hosted senior sunrise, a tradition where seniors gather on the track to watch the sunrise together. It was a bittersweet moment marking the beginning of our last year of high
008school. We had a great attendance and many students shared positive feedback about the event, especially the posters and snacks generously provided by parents. In the second week of September, we held our annual Panthers in the Park at Wala Wala Park. Students enjoyed games like volleyball, soccer, and spikeball along with snacks, drinks, and a movie. We were thrilled to see higher attendance this year compared to previous years, and we plan to host more activities like these to strengthen school spirit, connection, and belonging. Earlier today, we held our very first class representative meeting. Each second period class has a representative who attends these meetings to share information and gather feedback. Today's meeting was full of engagement. Students took notes, asked thoughtful questions, and expressed their ideas. We hope these meetings will serve as a way to amplify
009student voices and bring awareness to the needs of our diverse student body. As we move forward, our goal is to keep creating moments where students feel welcome, valued, and proud to be a Panther. This is only the beginning, and I'm so excited for everything we will accomplish together this year. Thank you. And if you have any questions, I'll answer them now. Perfect. >> Thank you. [Music] >> Hello, my name is Laya Ornellis and I'm now the president of Westside's Leadership Club and I'm here to tell you guys what's been happening since uh the start of school. Uh we had an amazing start to our school year. We did a three-day orientation for the first week. One day just for the new students and then another day for the returning students and then the third day
010altogether, which I would say went pretty well. Um this gives us a chance to tailor our messaging and supports for the students based on their needs. On the third day, we also had an annual back to school bash sponsored by Sage Hills. The students were treated to pizza and legend ice cream. There were games, music, and free school supplies. As always, a big thanks to St. Chills for their support for us. Um, on the 10th of September, we had a open house and it had a really good turnout. Um, the dinner was fried chicken and potato salad and we had free child care. Families had a chance to learn about Westside, meet the teachers, and connect on a different level. Today, we welcomed our new communities and school site coordinator, Eric Zaldar. Eric will be
011working with a case load of students who need support and attendance and community resources. Eric will be a great addition to our staff and we're excited to welcome him aboard. And then we have a big thanks to Giza Credit Union for their debit card program and they raised money for Westside. Westside recently uh received over $1,800 that will go directly to our ASB account to support our student activities. So, thank you so much Giza for that. Um leadership has kicked off the year and is getting things going. We sent our Bomba socks from organizations in the area. Um, and as soon as the socks arrive, we will be distributing them. We also are getting started on our school spirit days and our Veterans Day assemblies as well. The biggest question I'm sure you all have
012is how is it going with the new uh phone free policy? And I'm here to say that it's going really well at Westside. The teachers have shared that students are not missing their phones and that they're very thankful to not feel the pressure to keep checking their phones and that they are getting a lot of work done in their classes. Uh, this brings us to the end of our update from Westside. Do you guys have any questions for me? I really don't have any questions for both of you, but we know that this is just the beginning of an amazing year where your two leadership groups will stimulate and encourage your fellow students. So, thank you both for coming and wish you well in both both high schools. >> Thank you for having us. Also,
013thank you for giving us the time to give you guys updates on everything going on in our schools. We really appreciate it. All right. Thank you guys. All right, that's great. Uh Kim, do we have any citizen comments? No. Okay, so citizen comments done. Nice work, everyone. Uh, and now we're going to go to special presentations >> program from planning to packing, moving to unpacking to decorating to more planning to procedures and the bottom line change. So I want to applaud the work valley as well as shy their transition team with best sites Duncan. U both programs are here to give us an update tonight. And >> yes, I'm Shelley JSing. I'm the director of programs at Valley Academy of Learning and I am really amazed and lucky and blessed to be working with students
014like these two right here. Um, this is Aurelia and Liliana from Manchek. And these are her their amazing parents that are parent partnered with us. So, we don't do all of the education ourselves. Um, we have students part-time in our building. And the parents do a lot of that other work with them in the home and they also volunteer a ton in our school. So, we're just really thankful that they're here. They're going to speak in a few moments, but I will talk a little bit about Valley Academy and our transition. Um, as Corey said, it was definitely a busy summer. Didn't have a whole lot of time off as we were trying to get that building unpacked and ready to go and prepared. You can see up here, here's our staff. We are small
015but mighty. We're really 9.7 total staff members when it looks at FTE. Um, but this is all of us right here and I'm just super lucky to work with them. They're so hardworking, have been willing to do what it takes to get us into this building. They have the most beautiful classrooms, which I hope we can do a time where we have you guys um able to come in and take a tour and to look at it. They've done an amazing job that way. Do I have a clicker? Look at that. So, just kind of some of the updates as far as the building. Um some enrollment updates and just the activities that we already have going on in our building. Um we have a library, a very large library that people can actually go
016in. Um, and it has not only all of our parent partnered curriculum, but it has books for our kids and it has a space for them to go to if they need to. Um, we also have a parent partnered room that parents can utilize um, if there's a gap in their student schedule to actually do the parent partnered piece, that homeschool piece. Um, we had our new beginnings. We had our full cafeteria full. Um, this is just one day. It would have been double this had we had everybody there on the same day. This was um day one of our um orientation where we had students and parents both there. Our parents went through parent education stations so that they could learn about the parent partnered piece and how to educate their kiddos. Um as
017well as we had students go through a whole bunch of new tours. I'll be honest, after our first day um we went, "Okay, we've got to meet at 3 because we're going to have to figure this out again." because it was all new learning for all of us cuz none of us had ever been in that building. So, we had it all prepared and then we went, gosh, we're going to have to try that again, maybe slightly with a few few tweaks um because there were things we didn't know. You don't know what you don't know about a building. I think the one really special thing about Valley Academy is you do have families together as you see our friends here that are with us, kids and parents together. Um you also see multi-grade level
018um families at our at our school. So if you see the picture on the right, this family um right here actually has the oldest is a 10th grader and goes all the way down to fourth grade in our in the very same school. So in the same halls with each other. Same with this middle right here. They go from a second grader all the way up to 8th grade. Um, and then we just have another family right there that again is able to come uh to school together and to be even in some classes together depending on what they choose because we have cohorted grades versus just singular grades. Um, we started Valley High School this year. That was quite the trek and quite a lot of planning. We have 22 students in our high
019school classes. Um, most are full-time. Um we do share a few with the Wachi Valley Technical Skills Center and that's been a great combo for us for our kids. Um and our teachers worked so very hard to make that happen. Um we had days and days and days of planning and trying to make sure that we were following the guaranteed and viable sites that we have with the Wachi School District when it's looking at standards that are important, but also looking at um just anything else that we needed to have done coming down to a Skyward grade book, which we hadn't had. Um there were all a lot of different trainings that they had to do. and I'm just so thankful of the hard work that that team has done. Um, we created another new
020program called the Mustang Link Program. Um, it's kind of like a one room schoolhouse. Um, it was trying to figure out how can we get these children into the program that they want to be in at that grade K2 um without trying to hire a whole bunch of different other teachers. So, as we looked at that, we built this program um with primarily grades one and two. And in that mixed classroom, um they are doing a bulk of their academics um in there on two days as well as having some electives. Um when you look at that, we have an a teacher named Mrs. Kirby who has done a ton of the planning with me and um a really good special shout out to our learning and teaching team who has been very awesome at
021working with us as well. Just coming and saying, "I will help you in whatever it is that you need." Um they've been great. Um again, our students are engaged in core subjects plus electives in that. And then our online program, um, we did lose a large group of eighth graders, but we're already starting to build up because those eighth graders were going into 9th grade and we did not offer 9th grade or 10th grade online. So, um, they went into more of our traditional models, but um, we are building our program using a one-teer model. Um, Mr. Gelb and he's doing an excellent job of building this program and walking kids and parents through the changes in the program. And I know that our students and parents are feeling super supported and loved throughout the
022entire process. You can see um where we were last year as far as um FTE. You can see that we have definitely been increasing in our numbers. Um the when I started we were at 174 full-time equivalency students. Um and um this last year we were at that 188.41 FTE. Um this year you can see that we're at 286. Um so you can see that that FTE has grown. Our kindergarten students continue to be part-time. Part-time for our students is 14 hours on their learning plan. They do six at school and eight at home. Um and then our others um most others are enrolled about 100%. We have a few that are less than 100% FTE. But as you can see um we have this new building. Um we've had some room to grow. We
023have some new programs. Um, but I think that our students are going to say kind of the best of what they see in the building. So, um, here's Aurelia and Liliana for Manic. Hi, my name is Fantic and I'm in the seventh grade and I've been going to Valley for eight years now. I really like the way Valley's learning style is. I can pick my classes from a mountain full of choices and learn at my own pace. I really like all my teachers here at Valley. I like that it's more flexible in a way so I can learn other activities like Polish school, which would have not been possible without Valley. I always have fun in my classes and learn and I can always move to a harder level. And now that Valley's in a
024way better building, my parents don't have to worry about parking and the classrooms aren't squished anymore and there's actual grass. It's amazing. The new building is beautiful with the trees, grass, and space. It's nice not to be next to a hotel, carpet making factory, and train tracks anymore. Valley is amazing, and I want to keep coming here for as long as I can. And now that we've the new building there has high school program now, so I can stay here for longer. Thank you for approving the new book. >> Hi, my name is Liliana. I'm in fourth grade. I've been going to Valley since kindergarten. What I really like about Valley is that we got more varieties of teachers and classes. I like this building better because in our old building, the cafeteria and gym
025were in the same room and like from fourth grade basketball like the balls like kept bouncing on the tables like Yeah. And then I also really like how we actually got windows in our classrooms now. I >> think one other thing to say is it's you our our students are excited to also have a place to go outside and play. We had not one little spot to really be outside and they now do. Um, and we've just utilized that space except for today because it was too smoky. Darn it. And I really realized how many students we actually do have in building because our gym was full. Um, but we're thankful and we're thankful for I'm just so thankful for the hard work of my staff. They have gone above and beyond and I just
026am really blessed to work with them. So, thank you and thank you board. play volleyball. >> Thank you, Shel, for being with us tonight. Thank you for joining us as well. >> And thank you both for coming up to the mic and speaking loudly, clearly, proudly, and bravely. >> No, that's not it at all. Do you have a presentation? Shane. >> Yeah, you're welcome. All right, so I am Shane Renie. I'm our director for special ed. And so I'm going to share with you about our transition with our transition program to Valley Academy. So you can see in our pictures that was our old home um portables. I mean it looks like a jail, but it's not. It's just the portables. And then Columbia. So, well, if you give a transition program a new home,
027they Oh, I for I had this myself will be so excited. Um, but when you have a 20-year teacher that gets asked to move a classroom, they have to pack. Thanks to Still for a 100 boxes and tape to pack their classrooms. After they pack, they're going to need to unpack in their new space. Lots of directions left for the movers. Um, in order to unpack, they needed to empty out some of the classrooms. And thanks to Reyes Gonzalez, our custodian over at Castle Rock and uh here at the district office, cuz he came in and helped pack it up for our team. Everybody stepped up. Um, then they're going to realize they need some keys because they couldn't get in. So, Charles Bowman, our locksmith, saved the day and got everybody keys to the
028gate and all the classrooms. Um, once they have the keys, they realize they needed to find a spot for the bus drop off zone. Very simple it sounds. It is not simple at all. We had about eight different plans, but Jen C is the only person that can make that happen for us. Once she got the bus stop, we needed routes for all the students. So Myra, our office, one of our secretaries, called all the parents in the transition program to see if they needed transportation, confirm addresses, um, which meant she was calling sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes in the evening, and then Cara did all the routing for us. It is a little bit of a puzzle because some of our students start at the tech center, some of them
029start at the um, transition program at Valley, and some of them start at the house across the street. So, it is a little bit of a um Rubik's cube. Um once the kids get to school, they'll probably be um hungry. So, Stephanie, our nutrition service director, she served up a perfect plan for us for breakfast and lunch. Um and a great ordering system. So, kids had to make choices and decisions ahead of time and plan ahead for their meals. Um and now the students are ready to learn. So, our team, um, Beth's team really spent a ton of time in this space to make it what they need. Um, they have amazing classrooms. So, some of our classrooms they use for their learning time, for their IEP goals. We have a lot of community partners
030that come in. Um, and PITS comes in and they do their job coaching and training. So, there's lots of different spaces uh for those times. They have a lunchroom where they get to also make some of their own meals and prepare, but then also have community to eat together. Um, spaces to interact with friends. So, they have this lounge room. Um, and then another room that has this ping pong table. They have a healthy living and exercise room for exercise. Um, I feel like they're kind of steering away from that one a little bit more than we thought they would. I was like, maybe we need to get some better music, like some lights or something. I don't know. Um, and Beth has done a fabulous job turning this into a very welcoming environment. Um,
031and having lots of opportunities for kids to learn about access to their community, so they have the bus routes. They have flyers of where they're going. Um, the kids are loving it. They're happy. They kind of roam around. I was there today for a meeting and one of the kids met me at the door. He's like, "Hey, where do you need to go? What are you here for?" Like, he was like, "There's a security guard." I was like, it's like a door man. He was great. He could tell me exactly where everybody I mean, I knew where everybody was in the building at that point. Um, but a huge kudos goes to Beth Sykes, the teacher. She put in a ton of time and work and planning to make this all happen. She's a packing
032expert, an interior designer for learning spaces. She had a vision um and she really rallied her team. Her para team is really amazing. They came in unpaid a lot to help um because they were so excited with it. Um Brian Brocky um was on speed dial, but he was always ready. He's like, "Okay, what do you need? What do you need? We can make it happen. What do you need?" I mean, there's a few things he's like, "I can't make that happen." But he had a solution. Um and so he was really super great and we were so appreciative of that. Um and then so if you give a transition program a new home, you will have classrooms and community spaces that are more than rooms. They're stepping stones to real life. So I just
033wanted to share a few of our quotes that we have from our students and parents. um as they've gotten to experience this new space. I love having my own space to learn and practice skills for my future. It feels like I belong here. Having a place to hang out with friends and do activities makes school fun again. Every day I'm learning something new that will help me be independent. Parents, the new classrooms and community spaces make school feel alive and welcoming. The staff and spaces are helping my child get ready for adulthood in ways I couldn't at home. this program is giving my child opportunities I only dreamed about before and seeing my child gain confidence and independence in this space is incredible. So, we're just super thankful that we had all the help from
034everybody to get where we're at. Um, we already have some ideas and plans for phase two um once we got everybody in. So, yeah, thank you Thanks, Sean. Sean sent me a text like, "Hey, your mic's not on." Um, so, uh, Shane, thank you for your leadership, uh, through this move. And I want to thank our school board um not only for allowing the district um the time that we needed to make the right decision on what to use Colombia for, but I think that that time um has paid off uh valuable dividends. Not only when we see um happy students and happy families and uh a space that was made for education being used for education and for students. Um, I also just uh am thrilled with the energy that is uh in that
035building and in that space. So, thanks for your leadership during that time. It's and I was going to share a little bit more with Shelley, too. Um, it's it's more than just moving when uh when you have your entire program uh change in some capacity. And the change we knew was going to lead to better learning opportunities, but it's still hard at the time. And so, we just appreciate your leadership and I'll extend that thank you to Shelley as well. So, I appreciate you being here. Awesome. Any other any questions or thoughts? All right. Well, we will just keep right on rolling. We have uh Mariah Thorno here from uh the Wanche Valley Museum and Cultural Center joining us tonight. Uh she's going to describe some capital projects and undertakings that they have going on.
036But I want to share with our school board. Um one of our strategic plan priorities, and we talked about this last meeting, is partnerships. And here's another example of partnerships where we're thrilled to work in in concert with the museum and cultural center uh during a time and helping them with some storage and classroom space in the former valley academy. So we're just h excited to to be part of that team. So Mariah, thanks for being here tonight. >> Yeah, thank you all for having me. Um again, I'm Mariah Thorn. I'm um executive director at the Wachi Valley Museum and Cultural Center. I've been the director since 2022, but at the museum since 2013. So, I've worn lots of different hats down there and got to see the museum go through lots of iterations and
037transitions and growth. Um, and before I kind of show you our future, I'm I'm thrilled to be following these presentations. It's a theme of of packing up, moving, and cool new things happening tonight. It seems like um I I thought I'd just kind of give you a grounding of of um where where we're where we've gone from and why we're here at this moment. And our partnership with the Wachi School District over the years has been foundational for that. We serve on average uh 60,000 people every year, but I would say 40% of that are students, whether they're Eastmon students or um or WACH students. Um and it's through lots of different opportunities that we do that. I want to thank you for um hosting Fiesta's Mexicus out at Triangle Park. They're an affiliate of
038the museum. We're thrilled to be able to um have that cultural festival each year. Um Mariachi comes to um our Day of the Dead event and as part of Multicultural Fest. Um we're thrilled to be able to host your fifth graders and their beauty of bronze programs each year. You know, this this partnership between us, it just it fulfills our mission and I hope it's um adding something of value to the school district as well. So, thank you for that. Um, I have a great team down at the museum there. There's 17 of us and they do everything from manage our collection to um take kids on tours through the school um through the museum to put on our big events to manage our building. Um, what I say we've seen time and time again
039is when we're really struggling at the museum, it it's not our talented staff. It's not the volunteers that are coming out. It's not people wanting to engage. of 60,000 people coming, you know, nicks, bricks, field trips all over the place. Um, more and more we found that it's our building. And I think if there's anybody in the valley that can empathize with outdated HVAC systems and weird configurations, it's you guys. Yeah. Um, we have an example of this is uh we host uh regularly uh second the the entire second grade from a school um Washington will come down each year to see Beauty of Bronze. So that's about you know uh 120 second graders come through um the museum in one day um they see beauty of bronze they go upstairs undoubtedly one somebody will
040need to use the restroom so 15 people will decide they need to use the restroom and in the women's stall on the second floor which is the only restroom on the second floor there's one stall so you can imagine what that's like with this string of second graders coming out and we find that time and time again um the front doors of the museum are not accessible there this steep set of stairs that go up. Um, when school buses pull up in front of Mission Street, we have students flooding out onto the sidewalk on Mission Street and we're working as hard as we can to get them quickly up those stairs because Mission Street is a highway in this town and not a safe place for kids to be. Um, just lots of iterations like
041that that we see as we invite more and more people into the building and we've gotten to a point where we need to do better for our community. So, I'm going to walk you through um what our vision for the new um museum is going to look like. And just to give you a little bit of a a position, I spoke before that our front doors were off of Mission Street, which is what everybody thinks of. We're two buildings right downtown. If you don't know where we are, we're right on Mission between Arando and Yakama. The biggest building is the old post office um from the 1970s. Next to it is the older post office from the 1920s. And there's a sky bridge in between the two of them. um what they're nationally historic buildings
042so we do struggle with what we can do particularly to the front but what we realized is the national registry does not care what we do to the back and behind the museum is Centennial Park so this is our opportunity um Centennial Park is something where we take our kids out for summer camp um to use as recess it's something that we use during summer camps and after school programs right now we have about 15 kids doing robotics down at the um at the museum. Um our maker space is off the alley. They are now coming out into the alley out to Centennial Park to be picked up by their parents. So, it's a space we use a lot, highly underutilized by the community. Um and we often have to go through and clean up
043the park um in order to make it safe for students. So, knowing the National Registry doesn't care what we do to the back, knowing we have this great green space behind the museum, our aim is actually to turn the front of the museum towards Wanachi Avenue and towards the park and make that our new entrance. Um, so if you want to press pause or play, I'll I'll walk you through. So, this is our our new plaza um coming up the stairs here. Um, this will be a space where school buses will be able to pull upon Yakama. Kids will be able to stream out into the plaza. We have big reading steps right here that they'll be able to sit on and we'll get organize them before they come into the museum. And aside from
044these steps, there's also an accessible ramp that's going to be coming um up to this plaza. This plaza is going to be our home for our native salmon bake that we have each year. It will be where our cultural events will be able to come out. Next bricks will set up there. Field trips will set up there. It'll really become a part of our community space. And then the second video um is then walking in the new front entrance. So what you're seeing here is um we're building a building in between the two buildings. Um getting rid of that sky bridge. Um and this is going to be the new lobby of the museum. So you'll be able to walk in here. There'll be a central elevator. But one of the big important pieces, one
045of our our best used spaces is Coyote's Corner. It's our children's museum that's upstairs. We're going to put that right off the front door of the museum. So, families will be able to come in. They'll be able to um play in Wanachi Valley in the miniature. We'll we'll still have the the railroad there. In the back, you can see our pipe organ and our our gallery where a regional high school art show takes place. But kids will be able to climb up into an apple tree. Um they'll cross over the uh bridge here. You could see the little girl looking down at the railroad up ahead up into a loft where we're working with the Forest Service to curate exhibits and play spaces on forestry, um, wildlife, wildfire ecology. This is going to be kind
046of their special place that they're going to get to come and play. Um, after that, they'll they'll come down these stairs and this is the coming down the river exhibit. It's on hydro power in the dam. Kids will get to slide down a a a ladder or a slide and climb up a shoot just like they do at Rocky Reach Dam. And next you'll go into um our our ice age theater. So this is an interactive immersive theater in the round and it tells the ge geological story of the Wachi Valley. So you're going to sit there and get to feel the lava flows in the basalt columns that were formed, see the ice dam form in front of you and the floods break. And I'm hoping that people will really get to understand the
047origin story of the Wanachi Valley. After that, you'll come up the stairs or up an elevator um to the what we're calling the Valley Gallery. So, this is a the views out in the Wanachi. So, kids go through and they see the Pangorn. They'll um exhibit, they'll be able to come out here and see Fanter where Pangorn landed. So, connecting students to um to history. And then this is coming into our main history exhibits. We're going to start with the ma um megaplora and fauna that was here in the valley, those giant sloths and blue rhinos that were all over the place. Um an exhibit on um our indigenous people, the Kovville tribe, and we're co-curating this actually with the Kovville reservation. So, it'll have Clovis points, the petetroglyphs, baskets um and and a way
048to tell the stories of our first people. After that, you'll come into um the the the start of um of the the fur training and mining that happened in the area. Um over here is the Miller for Trading Post. That first trading post, kids will get to play an interactive game where they actually get to be a trader in the Miller for a trading post. Kind of like the Oregon Trails of our days. Yeah. Um it'll go on to we'll talk about the railroad and the Stern Wheelers. um and the development of our valley and downtown, the introduction of irrigation and um and the fruit industry and really becoming the Apple Valley capital of the world, how that became the people and stories that made that happen. Um after that, we're then going to kind
049of deep dive into some different particular stories. And so the first one I'm going to show you or the one I'm going to highlight here is the Pangorn story. This is a highly exciting story of the first Trans-Pacific flight um across the Pacific. We want people to be able to sit down in the cockpit of Miss Feed Doll and take that flight. Um, what did it take to get across there to dodge the mountains at Stevens Pass and make a belly landing um over here in um up in Vancerfield? That sister city relationship that we have with Msaw will unpack that relationship and that culture. Um, and where did that launch us here into the future? um both with the dams, with Alcoa, with the development of our our cultural community, changing demographics, places like
050Pibbus and New America Pack that really made the valley what it is today. We're going to impact all of those stories and give people a way to have a more engaging, exciting way to to to learn about that. Our exhibits are going to be bilingual. They're going to be immersive. Um they're going to be multifunctional. Um, but it's more than, you know, exciting exhibits and a new plaza are just the start. We're going to have an upgraded maker space. We're going to have classrooms. We've never had classrooms before at the museum. So, we have summer camps and kids are all over the place in different exhibits, which is darling and fun, but um but we really want to give them a place to to have a classroom, to have these robotics and STEM classes, to
051take 3D printing classes. Uh we'll have an art gallery, a place for artists to show their work. We'll have a workforce training cafe that um that we'll be working on with the with the technical skills center and and then of course, you know, that that that connection with with the park and ways that we can transform the park to better serve um all of our community. So, we're we're you guys are helping us make this happen, not only by allowing us to um bring your students in, be a part of our programs, but we're incredibly grateful for being able to lease out the Valley Academy. We have over a 100,000 items in our collection and we've got to pack all of those up this year in the theme of packing and transport them to a
052place that sounds like it's we we do not want windows. So, I'm really glad that Aurelia and Liliana have their windows. I do not want them. That's the best that's the best case for collections. So, I think this is going to be the perfect place for them. It's also going to give us a place to continue on um those after school programs that we do. we knew they were going to be a part of our future. The demand the last couple of years are making them a part of our present. So, we're going to be able to carry that on um in those spaces as well. So, thank you very much for that and and hopefully we'll all see this happen. Um groundbreaking will happen in 2026. How early in 2026 is going to be
053an exciting bit of future here that we can uncover. Depends on funding and all of all the things that come into facility plannings that you guys all know so well. But um but but we're we're grateful to have a home and that we can we can start on the really big heavy lifting that we need to do. So yeah, thank you. And I'm happy to take any questions. >> So I'm going to lift something out of what I was going to say is board communication at the end for all three of you because tomorrow I get to go visit the Colombia campus and I asked to do that to see on site a little bit of everything that's happening with the facility. So, uh, your description of the future of the museum is extraordinarily powerful
054and just great to hear. It's very exciting. Lots of the work that we've seen done in the last 20 years and to see the same themes carry forward. I'm just going to say it's just very good. Anyway, um, so yes, the museum's leasing and I really wanted to stress the value of the partnership with the the that the school district has for students and for facilities now with the museum. So, thank you for that. And then when we look at transitions, it'll be fun to see you and your rich new settling in place. Um, and then obviously Valley also settling into their new and enhanced facility. So that's why I lifted it. I was going to say those are the good things that a board gets member gets to do, but I think this is
055a time to say I we appreciate and value what the three of you have just presented to the community as a whole. >> Thank you. >> All right. And I'll just add um Mariah, it's been a joy to work with you over the last probably 10 months. I think that last a year ago, last fall, we kind of met to kind of talk about what this might look like. And so, just thank you for your patience uh with us and uh and continuing the partnership. It's been a joy. So, thank you. >> Yeah. Yeah. I thank you all so much. This seems like that's kind of been the best of both worlds for all of us. Hopefully, it will be and and we're just thrilled. We could not be doing this without you. Thank you.
056>> Yeah. Well, thanks for coming in tonight for the presentation. >> Absolutely. >> All right, we have no discussion. We're going to move to the actions. Um, we have a second read on six policies. So, do you want to go through them or you want me to go through them? We're just going to cruise. All right. Cool. Do I have a motion to approve the second read on policies 2020, 2021, 3206, 5011, 6580, and 681? >> Yeah, I I move that we uh approve the policies as presented. >> I'll second that motion. >> All right, it has been moved by Maria and seconded by Martin. Uh any discussion? All right. All in favor of approving these uh policies say I. >> I. >> None opposed. Motion carries. All right. And that moves us to the
057superintendent report. Hopefully with a live mic. >> We have the right mic. Okay. So, I just want to share a couple things that have happened in the in the past couple weeks. On September 13th, Maria and I were both at Fiesta Mexicus on Saturday. I know Martin was there. You were there on Saturday. I know you were there on Friday. >> Friday. Okay, perfect. Um and it was just great. We were able to join um local leaders, uh students that receiving scholarships, the fiesta's staff. Um and we were able to be on stage uh for some celebrations in Elgito. Um it's just a great celebration of community, culture, understanding, and fun. And what I loved, I loved it was that it was back at Triangle Park. No offense, I just love that. Um it was
058great at the college, but it was it was cool to come back. Um, we parked a few blocks down as I think most most people had to because it's just busy. But I as we were walking by to see families out in their front yard like having gatherings and listening to the music and then I saw one gentleman who I don't know how he did it but he had like 26 lemonades in his hand and he was going to across the street to the party and then he was followed by his son who had a cardboard box of all of the food that they had bought and they had this whole group. It was just really fun. And so it's more than just what happens at the park. It's really what happens in the community
059local. So that was super fun. Um I was also last Tuesday I was able to join uh cafe um for their vision casting and kind of their their future. And we were at the communities and schools boardroom. So Alio, who was here last uh last board meeting, they've got a beautiful space in the old Wanche world building. Um roof I think one of Rufus' old offices is up there too. You have to go check it out. But um the the the power was being there for cafe and sharing about what I used to think of a local agency. Not so local anymore. They have branches all over the place. Anyway, um their goal is to uh raise $3.7 million over the next 3 to 5 years and uh it was great to see Tona Shicone
060come into her own. So that was just a great uh great time when we think of partners that were there. Lots of our school district partners were also partnering with Cafe. So, and then we had the Wachi Valley College uh annual food truck extravaganza last Friday. Um, huge. >> Yeah, >> huge. Uh, and I was able to have fun 15 minutes uh of fame or shame in the dunk tank. Um, and I was very thankful it was a warmer day. It was like, oh my gosh. >> Next time you have to give us a heads up before you're in the dunk tank, not the after the fact. >> Yes. Yes, they were. Yes. I got to confess that I was supposed to take photos and I forgot to see whether they failed or not. >>
061Okay, I'll have to take a look at that. But, uh, I was dunked two and a half times. Um, the half was the first two were actually people that hit the hit the mark and then one little guy couldn't quite do it, so he just pushed the he just pushed it, so we went in. It was great. Um uh Diana and I have been collaborating with our advanced energy management student interns who we heard from uh very recently. They are um creating a new campaign called the occupant savings campaign. And the occupants are our staff and students in our buildings. And the goal there is that uh the students are requesting us to make slight behavioral changes in our daily activities to conserve energy throughout the school day. things like turning off the lights when
062we leave a room, putting our computers and projectors on sleep mode, and closing of the blinds at the end of the day. Just some simple things like that. The campaign will kick off on the 29th of September. And Diane and I with Isabella Garcia got uh our first budget bite of the year this morning. And so you'll see that on social media on Friday. I'm very excited about that. Uh we also last week had our first superintendence advisory committee meeting and we discussed uh with them cell phones as Leila brought up to us. And so I just wanted to read some of the comments that came from our students um as we asked them how they were how life was as a high schooler and an adolescent without cell phones. Um from the beginning of
063the day to the end. Um, we had one student that said, "At first people were hesitant, but it seems better now and it has worked to help uh us focus on learning." Another student said, "Students are complying um but some have severe phone addiction." Um, this particular student says she really likes the policy. It requires students to actively participate in their learning. Another student says that he feels that better communication skills are being developed. Um, and it also says that students should be uh more challenged academically so they don't feel a need to use their phones. I thought that was very well said. Um, another student said that they're paying more attention now and also putting themselves out there to make more connections. Um, and probably the most uh I don't know out of the
064the the most out of the out of the box comment, but I thought it was very um I don't know, it was just very uh detailed. Um, but this this young lady said, "For me, what I'm realizing is it's harder now to get out of awkward situations." Um, and which I loved. And she said that she used to be able to use her phone to remove herself from awkward conversations. And so she's realizing that she needs to go through those uh situations to become a better person, you know, and and learning that. So anyway, uh there are lots of positive things that are coming out of uh the the cell phone policy. So thank you to the board um for your diligence um on that work and again allowing the district to take last year
065to learn how to do this well. Um and I feel like we're off and running. And in October 14th, uh we will hear from uh Mrs. Dero, uh Mrs. Moser, and Mr. Jeling on how it actually is going at their buildings and schools. So anyway, thank you. That's superintendent report. >> Thank you, Corey. And sorry for the interruptions from everyone. >> Mark, we're going to turn you loose first. >> Always me first. >> Uh so I talked about this last time, but the fall musical was cast Little Shop of Horrors. So auditions are underway and been uh involved in that. It's exciting. And just because I can't not mention it, also very excited about the museum. And also seen a lot of uh Wanchi school district kids that are interested in uh helping us with
066the haunted museum, which is a big fundraiser for Mariah. Uh there's been an awful lot of powerful and good stuff to report on from the last two weeks and I'm going to be a bit like an echo chamber, but I think that the the reports are so valuable that it's worth doing it. Lance, I haven't asked your permission to come and visit Sunny Slope, one of our two award winners yet, but I did visit both Foothills recently and Pioneer. And when you see the strength of the AVID program and how it penetrates the various groups of our students and you see the penetration into the middle school of career and uh uh graduation planning involving families and students and you see that development. Those are things that when one visits both of those schools I
067got a a view of that and it was really really positive and so that was a good thing to do. Uh the first meeting of the core pack that's the parent advisory council for migrant education was very successful and full of enthusiasm. They elected a strong full complete board of five members and there are two student representatives who are returning for their second year and that's that is extraordinarily valuable. The first family night will be on October the 16th at the high school. So that's uh a good start to the year in that area. Um and um I I also listened to the student feedback u at superintendent's advisory council. That was like at noon and at 8:00 at a at my wife's book club meeting, I got very essentially the same feedback from an
068independent source. And then when I visited a part of the school district the very next morning, so within 24 hours, I'd heard essentially the same story about cell phones from three different places. So I hope that is uh validation. Um uh and then uh we listened to ASB and to Ila from uh Westside talking and um uh it's been a time of seeing great examples of youth leadership and their willingness to give service to the community both inside and outside um schools. And I should go back to yesterday at lunchtime. I put on my uh Rotarian Rotary Club face and went to the inter interact meeting at the high school and see faces of students who are have leadership positions elsewhere. So crowded around and very enthusiastic. So the strength of the students was shown
069to me. And then this morning I I was an observer at the planning and design meeting for the text center modernization project and got a firsthand view because I haven't been involved in those kind of things in the last few years of how the team combines being both practical and realistic and creative thinking and collaborating interactively covering many many dimensions not getting tucked into a corner in only one area and looking at um functional and constru construction goals. So, uh it was very good to see that. And yeah, the other exciting was uh watching Corey go in the dump truck. >> All right, Maria, you're up. >> Um Martin puts us to shame. Well, puts me to shame. So, um um I would like to see Corey go into the dump truck, though. >> That's
070another fun. >> Yeah. Um I have nothing to add other than um I I want to just point out that uh the A aem program um has been a a a group of conversation at the college as you know as a as a um public entity. We're also need to do the clean building comply with the clean buildings and all of that. But um the school district has been highlighted in the work that they've been doing. How do we get on their list? you know, how how do we get grants to be able to support the um the internships? Anyways, um I just want to say kudos. They're um they're kind of the talk of the college these days with with this initiative. So, thanks. All right. So, um I will echo what everyone said
071about the phones. I heard it more as the hallways are so loud now, which is good because I think that just goes to show that what we're we're missing was people actually communicating, people talking to each other. And I think now I'm I am good. I'm glad to know that you can get out of awkward situations with my phone cuz I still get to have mine. So I will you learn something new every day. Um, I had the uh the the fun activity today of going with the mountain biking class from the high school up to number two canyon and seeing kids in a whole different environment and it was a lot of fun and we had a lot of challenges and I saw a lot of crashes that people bounce back up and I
072took that home to my kids and said you can just get back up and get back on your bike but um they didn't believe it. Um but I also wanted to thank Mr. Lacader for reaching out to uh the broader community and saying he couldn't make this field trip happen without people volunteering to help and he reached out kind of broadly and said would you be interested and it was a great way to not only interact with the students but also to see something interesting that the students were able to do that they could have done without the teacher kind of making it happen. So that was that was a great great opportunity. Um but other than that I think that's all I got. So means journ