Wenatchee School District Board Meeting 8-13-24

001e all right it's 6: PM so I will now call this August 13th 2024 regular meeting of the wachi school district school board to order we will begin with the Pudge of Allegiance I pledge alance to the flag of the unit States of America and to the rep stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all uh we'll start with the agenda are there any changes or modifications to the agenda no moving on then first up we have a special budget present ation hearing so I have a few comments for this uh welcome and good evening thank you for joining us for the August 13th special budget hearing the district has completed the 20242 budget and four-year projection and published a notice of this budget hearing in accordance with RCW 28a 50550 the budget

002is on file at The District administration office and a copy is available to anyone requesting one it is also available online on the district website the board of directors has August 27th 2024 as the date for adopting the 20242 budget any person may appear at this public hearing to be heard in favor of or against any part of the budget Sean Fitzgerald the executive director of business and finance will provide a brief overview of the 2425 budget then the budget hearing will be open for public comment public comments on other topics will be accepted during the regular meeting following the special budget hearing just wait a minute for the presentation to come up here yeah got to get it right you know all right well thank you and good evening president Norton members of the

003board and superintendent kalahar I'm here to check the angles again all right well thank you and good evening president Norton members of the board and superintendent kalahar I'm here tonight to present on the third and final presentation on the 2024 25 budget two previous presentations uh were presented to the board in June uh the numbers presented tonight have been reviewed by the north central uh ESD and much of what you'll see tonight will be similar from the June board meetings uh pending any Fe feedback from tonight's meeting this budget will be adopted by the board at the August 27th board meeting there we go uh to begin as always uh the district fund structure the school district operates on a fund basis and a fund is funds are self-balancing set of accounts used for the

004purpose of carrying on specific activities or attaining certain objectives the district uses five funds which is our general fund capital projects Associated student body or ASB our Deb Debt Service fund and our transportation vehicle fund the general fund is the district's largest fund and makes up over 90% of the entire budget and covers the day-to-day operations of the district uh moving on to enrollment uh so we have here this chart is a nine-year trend of birth rates occurring in Galan County and the wachi school district areas we use birth rates to project our incoming kindergarten classes and we start with the kindergartener birth year and add five years uh when we determine that's usually the average age of our kindergarten students so for example our student born in 2019 would be projected be to be

005enrolled in the school district for the 2024 25 school year we can see the district birth rates spiked in two uh peaked in 2014 and the County birth rates peaked in 2015 on our next slide we will see that the district enrollment peaked in the 15 16 school year uh generally there is a correlation between birth rates and kindergarten classes and as such we would expect that since birth rates increase from 2018 to 2019 on the chart here uh that we will see larger incoming classes for 2024 uh 25 school year than the current school year this still may be the case but our incoming numbers show it lower than anticipated and as such we are budgeting conservatively for our kindergarten mment Here is the district's enrollment from the 20134 school year up until the

006Pres to June of 2024 uh we see enrollment peaked in 20156 school year before losing um we see an overall decline of 900 FTE uh from that school year up until the present day as of June of 2024 we are currently at 6,740 FTE excluding running start and open doors enrollment uh once we have our final summer school numbers we anticipate our final ft for this year to be around 6,755 so um by our final numbers by the end of the month we do anticipate to see about an increase of about 15 FTE to finish up the year here is our uh budget enrollment as of June 24 as with the 2425 budget and the four-year forecast um based on our projections uh we're looking at for 20242 a decline of 225 student FTE for

007the school year and there are a number of factors that I'll kind of walk through here uh that we can see so beginning with transition to kindergarten at the beginning uh we're seeing an increase at this level due to the expansion of our transitional kindergarten program from three classrooms to four and we anticipate that program to grow uh classes average between 12 and 15 and so our actual numbers our registration numbers are reflecting that growth um as mentioned before with our kindergarten classes uh we're budgeting conservatively despite the increase in birth rates um for the 2425 school year so they're kind of similar to what we experienced this year uh just to be on the conservative and then if we follow that Trend um moving over the next four years uh we see a continuing

008decline in our birth uh our kindergarten classes and that is due to the decline in the birth rates we're seeing at both the county level and uh the birth projections we're seeing in the wachi school district area and so just using that General C- Rel and that Trend we're kind of following suit there um another thing we're seeing is just graduating classes are larger than our incoming classes so we can see here for the 23 24 school year uh 12th graders at 556 and our kindergarten glasses at 4:35 um so again a wide discrepancy there uh and then we can also see too just with our current 11th grade class which will be our 12th grade class um you see already about 100 FTE difference uh between those classes our current 11th graders and our

009current 12th graders so if the trends follow suit again our incoming senior class would be about 100 FTE shorter um we're also seeing uh a number of analyzing our classes that are above 500 FTE so for 23 24 school year we're seeing about uh seven grade levels that are 500 or more uh we expect that to decline to about five um five grade levels for next year and if that Trend continues uh we would only have be above 500 FTE for our grade levels in the we would only have two in the 27 28 school year uh so again that projects based on those Trends we see uh why there's declining enrollment uh other big areas we're seeing uh transition from elementary this to Middle School level the impact of the charter school in the

010area just from the fifth to sixth grade we do see a decline of FTE and we do anticipate that Trend to continue and we built that in for these projections um and then at the 10th and the 11th grade we're also seeing the impact of running start um right now we were seeing very high enrollment or registration numbers for running start for the 24 25 school year and that affects our high school enrollment uh so again we're anticipating an increase in the running and start enrollment but then that would be a corresponding decline in our high school or uh High School levels again just to reiterate kind of our analysis overall projection is that enrollment will continue to decline uh as we've discussed earlier with transition to kindergarten Elementary but moving down past the high

011schools we have our Al we are seeing increasing demand for Alternative Learning education uh right now our Valley um Valley is at our Max enrollment uh and so we're seeing increasing the demand there which would increase funding for the school district we're also seeing increased enrollment at special education uh and but however we do receive state funding up to a point so we closely monitor those enrollment levels and then also we're going to see in the fall the impact of the private schools uh we have a private school opening and then some expansions uh currently we don't know what the those actual enrollment numbers would be if students are withdrawing from W school district and uh enrolling in these private schools uh and we probably won't have this information until the fall to see the

012actual impact and then last funding um again we're funded on our budgeted amount from September through December and then once January rolls around actual enrollment numbers will be used by OPI uh for funding the district uh before I move on from enrollment is there any questions all right moving on to Transportation vehicle fund uh so again the purpose of the transportation vehicle fund is for the purchase and repair of school yellow buses only uh we primarily receive our revenue from the state reimbursement from for depreciation um but we can also receive funding from our investment interest income from the local government investment pool uh transport Lev is non- voted debt or transfers from the general fund or other ways to fund it our primary and our Revenue sources come from the depreciation reimbursement and the

013investment interest income um again expenditures are recorded when buses are delivered not when they are ordered and for the 2425 budget it makes up about 1% of the overall uh expenditures and then last funds are legally restricted so in other words they can only be used for the transportation vehicle fund they cannot be used uh for the general fund or anything other purpose of the school district um so just assumptions and methodology behind building the budget for 2425 uh we ordered five buses in the 2324 school year which are expected to arrive during the 24 25 school year which they will then be recorded uh we order three typed buses for general education which are expected to arrive in September and then we had ordered an additional two type A buses which are smaller buses

014for special education and they are determined to arrive sometime in the spring of 2025 uh the ultimate goal is to replace our aging and fully depreciated vehicles and expand Fleet um this also kind of BS the question it's like if we're having overall enrollment decline why are we expanding our bus fleet and so there are several reasons why we're doing this so the first is our special education even though overall enrollment is declining our special educ ation enrollment is still increasing so we need to ensure we're providing adequate transportation for those students uh Lincoln Elementary we were adding two new bus routes to handle the larger student population there uh a few years ago uh we discontinued our use of charter buses which were quite expensive and it has realized an overall cost savings uh

015for the district as a whole but as a result we would need to expand our own Fleet uh for athletic purposes um and then just Fleet capacity it's always good to have an extra bus or two on hand to be available uh for district needs whether it's Athletics emergencies um bus maintenance those things happen so having those available um is uh nice to have and then last we have our fund balance we have available fund reserves for this purpose and they can only be used for this purpose uh so while we have these resources we're going to maximize um what we can do for the transportation vehicle fund and with that we have our breakdown for next year in the four-year forecast so we can see here just the bus purchases for 2425 that's five

016buses um and as we can see we have although we'll be using our fund balance we still have adequate reserves and then as the years progress um we kind of draw down on our bus purchases so we're kind of projecting two to three bus purchases uh for the you know the next four years or the next three years I should say after that uh while utilizing our fund reserves and that would just be to at that point just replacing uh the Aging Fleet any questions on Transportation vehicle just real quickly for technical purposes when you're saying reserves you're just really talking about the fund balance there's not a special reserve line item like there is for general fund for this correct so it's the fund balance is would be the reserves for the transportation vehicle

017fund my question was are we able to I know it's fully deprecated or depreciated we're selling these old buses are we able to sell them or is it more that's going into the Surplus and then it's not like we're going to get more money into that um in the transportation fund from that sale um we do Surplus all buses are surplused and whatever um Revenue we realize from those sales would go into back into this fund yeah it couldn't go like the general fund or something else like correct okay yeah moving on Associated student body so the ESB fund is designated for activities or events which are cultural social recreational or athletic nature uh the fund is financed from establishing and collecting fees f and donations like the transportation vehicle fund These funds are legally

018restricted so therefore they can only be used for ASB purposes only and it makes up about 1% of the 24 25 budget uh looking at next year's budget and the 4-year forecast uh we can see uh that the ASB is continuing its Trend to return to pre pandemic activity and the budget reflects that uh forecast stay consistent year-to year because every year new students come in work on the budget um each School ASB operates independently and prepares their own budget uh which is then reviewed uh for reasonableness at the finance end but ultimately it is a collaboration amongst the schools and the ASB and students to develop their budget um overall we're just seeing again healthy activity and we anticipate this to either stay consistent or grow uh depending on school activities and Athletics any

019questions on ASB moving on to Debt Service so the purpose of The Debt Service fund is pay the principal and interest on our bonds or our long-term debt and we make payments every June on the interest and principal and interest in December we currently have one outstanding Bond uh which was re financed in March of 2024 uh saving taxpayers 6.6 million over the remainder of the bond term the district will fully pay off this bond in December of 2033 and it makes up about 5% of our 2425 budget and then again funds are legally restricted so any fund balance any reserves any revenues that are collected in this fund like Transportation vehicle and ASB can only be used for the specific purposes of Debt Service which would be paying off long-term debt so here again

0202425 budget in our forecast our revenues uh we work with Piper Sandler to ensure we're collecting a sufficient amount of funding to make our annual debt payments our expenditures make up our principal and interest to payments which are determined by the bond schedule so we have a fixed Bond payment uh which is currently projected uh all the way up to 2033 so the numbers here do reflect that payment schedule um and then again the fund balance uh our reserves are legally restricted and can only be used to pay off long-term debt and then this year we had a um did a Arbitrage audit and to determine because you can only hold uh so much money in that fund balance and there are IRS regulations um and calculations behind that so they want to ensure that

021you're only holding so much in your fund balance uh this was reviewed by an Arbitrage specialist and they found that we're compliant uh with our fund balance reserves and so uh looking like a very healthy fund uh for next year and the foreseeable future capital projects so the purpose of the capital projects fund is to account for financial resources to be used for the acquisition or construction of major Capital facilities that can be used for purchasing land Construction making Capital Improvements or remodeling main Revenue sources are bonds capital projects levies Sal Surplus real property grants our investment interest income and then transfers from the general fund our funding sources for capital projects uh so we have a number of them so we have a technology Skill Center State Grant of about 14.5 million this can

022only be used for the purpose of improving or expanding our WCI Valley technical skills center we also have a transfer from the general fund of $500,000 in case of emergency maintenance or priority needs uh this is State a pment funding only and if it's not used then the unused funds will go back into the general fund uh we also have a clean energy audit from the charlan County PUD of $150,000 uh that will be used for our again our clean energy audit purposes uh then we have investment interest earnings likely uh we're probably about $100,000 if we do reach this amount this can be used for any use in the capital projects uh we also have a a state CTE grant for $63,000 and then we just have some local rental income of $2,500 uh

023so if we look at the budget and the forecast here we do see the breakdown of where those Revenue sources are going for 2425 and Beyond um again as presented in June we're showing the full allocation of the 14 and a half million whether this will be the actual plan or layout of the skill center um we will see has things developed that's a major project with a lot of funding that's going to take multiple years uh but it's here to demonstrate this that those resources are being would be fully allocated and how that would look um and then on the expenditure side again these would be going to Skill Center or maintenance purposes uh equipment purchases would be the state CTE Grant and again the energy would be to the energy audit um again

024the fund balance we would be exhausting the fund balance based on these projections whether that comes to pass or not we don't know yet but it's there to again to show that assuming funding is fully allocated for specific purposes whether it's the skill center or emergency maintenance or um being compliant with the other grants any questions on capital projects I'd like to confirm my understanding but beginning with the skills center uh I can see you've got the 14.5 million spread over four years and I'm assuming that your allocation between sites and buildings is at this stage fairly arbitary just to some out okay um and then um in terms of the expenditure on other items those would mostly be sort of at this moment unforeseen contingency repair to our aging infrastructure correct and you've structured

025a budget basically that they're uh uncertain uh the budget shows that we will spend every penny we've got correct that we want allocated and can move around correct yeah no that's fine I just want to confirm that because I think that's important does this include the HVAC work we've already been doing this summer uh the HVAC work would fall if it was completed by this summer it would fall under the 2324 budget okay yeah and then rental income I'm assume that's like gy rental and field rental and that kind of stuff or uh no this is local property rental we have with yeah so we receive just a flat $2500 a year that goes into capital projects if we are renting the gyms where is that is that funding going here or is that general

026fund general fund okay thanks move moving on to the general fund so the general fund is used to account for all Financial Resources except those in the other funds is used for the norm current ordinary normal and recurring day-to-day operations of the school district and makes up about 91% of the budget uh budget just assumptions and methodology that went into building the budget and we'll go into more detail all these bullet points with the numbers in the next slide but again continued enrollment decline is projected that has been built in this also assumes a replacement epno Levy has will pass uh for the 24 25 school year uh although there's going to be a number of factors including a levy rate and then enrollment lid liit limitations which may put a cap on collection rate

027uh inflationary factors uh we're using a 3.7% ipd um even though ipd changes from year to year and we don't know know what it the final ipd will be until the conclusion of the state legislative session in April uh this is the current ipd rate that has been approved by the state and is being used for Budget projections uh we're also looking at a 30% annual increase for insurance um again uh schools Insurance Association of Washington provided us with a letter to our expectation is a 20 to 30% increase so we have budgeted conservatively uh I do believe we should be able to get our final numbers for next year by the end of this week but we'll see uh what that holds and what the final number will be uh it also depends on

028fund balance reserves so again um what we have at the starting of beginning of next year uh we're not going to know that until we close out year end and that won't be finalized until the end of October uh and basically depending on where we land our reserves if we have more than it's projected that's great uh but again we just kind of monitor it but we won't have a final number until the end of October uh we also have to assume there's no significant State Legislative funding efforts um the state legislature will be in a long session between January and a end of April to uh next year um but we can't rely we don't know what they're going to do if there's just with uh school districts uh struggling financially across the state

029at Nationwide but specifically Statewide wide we don't know what actions Olympia is going to take um and so we can assume that there's going to be some sort of increased in funding uh we just have to wait until what happens during the legislative session um we're also assuming some sort of budget reductions are taken every year uh we also budget for 100% Staffing so we do have certain variances between what's budgeted and actual on or Staffing levels depending if there's unfilled positions throughout the school year uh General if we do have unfilled positions that would result in cost savings uh but at this time we just don't know you know we're at school hasn't started yet and that's something that takes place across the school year uh again we're looking at our K3 class siiz

030compliance insuring we're maintaining that and getting additional funding there and then we have about $6.3 million in budget capacity for carryover and unexpected revenues and expenditures that arise during the school year that has also been built in there and then again as actual numbers and more information comes along especially when we get actual enrollment numbers and more solidified on our fund balance in the fall uh we we adjust our you know actuals and our projections uh from what we have today uh so revenues by Source uh so for 2425 we're looking at total revenues of 1291 million and we can see the breakdown here in a number of areas um so our largest if we're looking at our breakdown so state general purpose which is about 70.3 million makes up over half of our Revenue

031sources so this is what we're receiving from the state um generally from our appor payouts so this is for basic education um Alternative Learning um essentially everything that's enrollment driven so our largest funding source from the state is driven by enrollment and as you can see how big a factor that is so again making up over half of our uh budgeted Revenue sources uh State special purpose that's special education um we also have um yeah so State special purpose would be special education our learning Assistance programs highly capable and bilingual again driven by enrollment uh but for specific purposes that we've received in the state our federal special purpose would be our federal grants uh local tax that is our essentially our epno Levy and that makes up 10% of our Revenue so a substantial

032even though that looks like a small number that's still a substantial number uh for funding District Operations Appropriations or expenditures for 2425 are coming out to about 133.7k regular instruction so that makes a basic education Alternative Learning and our Dropout re-engagement so we can see at 50 58.2 that makes up almost 44% of our budgeted activities support services that is operations so that would be district office Food Services technology maintenance and operations um all fall into that place uh special education is by itself again uh 14 a. half% of our budget is dedicated towards special education uh compensatory uh that's kind of our grant program so Title One also learning assistance program uh fall under that category vocational education is CTE making up about 7% of our expenditures um other instructional programs although that looks

033quite large it's 6.1 million a lot of that is our where we keep our budget capacity so generally when we finish out year end there's kind of wide discrepancies between budget and actual depending on how much of our budget capacity we actually use uh the remainder in there would also include billables um for fees and services so for example uh or um some of our smaller grants are in there and then uh wrapping up we have Skill Center uh at 1.6% and then we have other financing uses of $500,000 that that is the transfer from the general fund to the capital projects fund and that's where it's reflected any questions on revenues or expenditures we have any capital gains money coming our way capital gain the capital gains tax like the 900 million no okay

034[Laughter] yeah so because the revenues are broken down a little differently than the actual expenses can you just summarize where we [Music] lose where we're going negative in expenditures versus revenues is it a particular program is it largely you would see it more on the basic so regular instruction that's where basic education is that's where most of our uh Staffing our teaching staff is located in regular instruction but that would also be funded out of the state general purpose account which is again driven by enrollment I guess that's what's hard I think maybe to to view and to kind of figure out which which of these expenditures is causing us to go negative because if I look at regular instruction we're spending on just that item less than what we're bringing in from the state

035for general purpose so obviously there's other you know the way it's split out do you see the question I'm trying to get at it so so where are the major sources of not having enough Revenue versus expense yeah and it would would have to be and I can provide it to the board it's just a real Pro breakdown by program by program to see you just have to drill down further I mean if we want to really look at it I mean just the top of my head it's like special education um even though it's not here because so special education is falling under State special purpose for Revenue purposes and here it's its own category for expenditures if we drill down on that we can see that uh for our budget for special education

036it's above and beyond the state allocation and we do use funding um from other sources we draw from our we would draw from the state general purpose to cover whatever is in excess of what we've received from the state specifically for special education but I can't provide the board with a more specific breakdown of the areas that would be helpful because I realize there are some programs that we can do nothing about and we have to provide the special ed to to the exctly provided but if there are other programs we offer that we don't necessarily have to offer if they're the not panning out Revenue expense wise you know I suspect it's no but just taking a look at are we are we being as judicious as possible with with our finances and so

037for example like vocational education which would be CTE and our Skill Center uh if we did a breakdown of program if we really drilled down to see how things are allocated they would be they would not exceed their revenue sources so they're 100% we would call them fully funded um but yes I can provide more detail yeah oh and here's Appropriations uh again a different Viewpoint of looking at how uh our expenditures are broken out by salaries benefits and MSO uh so again we can see here a breakout of certificated salaries so essentially our teaching staff uh about 41% um classified as 17 employee benefits consists of both classified and certificated that makes up about 22% of our budget um so overall that's about 80% of our budget is salaries and benefits and 20% would

038be MSO so that's contracts supplies uh the transfer out again that transfer from the general fund of capital projects um if we remove the capacity of that 6.3 million and we looked at these numbers differently this would because all we put all of our budget capacity either in supplies or our purchase services so those do appear larger um than we may actually spend and so if we took out our $6.3 million in capacity from those two line items then Sals and benefits goes up to about 84% and MSO is about 16% which is where we kind of like to be uh we try to aim for that kind of 85% the 15% but the the extra capacity does kind of throw off those initial numbers so here's a breakout of the budget and forecasting uh

039So based on our projected revenues and expenditures we have and uh the transfer out of $500,000 uh that will look to be a $4.6 million deficit for 2425 based on all those assumptions and the methodology we kind of went through with the cining enrollment the ipd um and where we're going to sit for Budget at least budget wise um and so based on that uh we're looking at and then we have our minimum fund balance of 5% of total expenditures and then that doesn't that puts our unassigned balance uh just under a million dollar if this was actually if we came to year end and that would that would be our Finishing Line based on the budget uh and then we go beyond that 2526 on the revenue side we're going from 129. one to

040134.0 so again that's assuming we're going to pass an epno Levy uh based on certain Levy rates and collection cap and enrollment Lids uh which would provide a much needed boost to our revenues despite the continuing declining enrollment and so we could see a positive change in our fund balance but then when we get down to 2728 um it starts to turn negative again and what that is looking at is again we're kind of using this forecasting tool for our Levy collection and really when the enrollment lid you know kind of inflation on the expenditure side uh catches up so between inflation and enrollment decline um our Levy kind of collection rate would be limited so it kind of is kind of closing the gap on the revenues and so it looks like we're starting

041to look back like we be we would be going back and using our fund balance at that time um again these are all projections but we're kind of looking ahead and just kind of being aware that um inflation declining and roll and Levy collection Lids are something uh Finance is paying attention to uh when we're looking ahead uh mck disclosure so this is required by state law just to demonstrate that uh the budgeted State mck funding that we are receiving from the state for 2425 will be allocated so this MSO funding only uh reflects the funding for basic education so it um that's that's just what the disclosure is looking for so it's not including other things like grants or CTE so it's focused solely on basic education and districtwide support allocation um we receive

042from the state for Material supplies and operating costs and then based on our budget uh we have allocated 11.8 uh so since we're exceeding that amount we are demonstrating to the state that we have fully allocated MSO Monies for their allocated purpose fund balance so again I'm G ask a quick question about the MSO one I hadn't thought about that before when you talk about the capacitation that is that in the 11.8 million M Sal no budget capacity is excluded okay yep great question understanding fund balance so again fund balance is the district's reserves or savings account and not all fund balance reserves are available to use at any time so we have assigned committed and restricted funds and then again we have our unassigned funds which may be used for any purpose and the

043board has designated that 5% of budgeted expenditures of the UN as a minimum fund balance which comes out of our unassigned funds and the minimum fund balance is there to ensure uh that we have sufficient funding to maintain District Operations uh so this is our estimated beginning fund balance um again we're looking um of a uh total beginning fund balance of about almost 15 million uh I do want to draw attention a lot of these numbers stay consistent from year to year uh again we have the unassigned minimum fund balance uh and then we would have an available unassigned balance of 2.4 uh again just drawing attention to the committed uh fund purpose line of 3.3 million so this would include just the $2.9 million of offsetting budget reductions and the $500,000 for Capital project

044maintenance and emergencies um this will all be part of the board adoption resolution on August 27th uh just for the board authorizing that and so last year we did do the resolution for the 2.5 but um just kind of for kind of simple and uh Simplicity s we're just going to allocate the full amount again this year and then once the year closes out in the fall we can see how much of that 2.9 we used in the previous year and then once we see that um we will adjust that number accordingly based on what was used for 23 24 and then reduce that amount for 2425 later in the year and then our estimated ending fund balance um we would finish at 10.3 million um and it assumes that we would use all of

045the 2.9 Million to offset budget reductions and also assumes that we're using $500,000 in capital projects funding uh or for capital projects purposes and again if we don't use that $500,000 in fold that reverts back to the general fund and would increase this fund balance um but again staying consistent with the 5% on the unassigned minimum fund balance and then just looking at the the unassigned balance by itself of under a million dollars so getting there getting low um but during the school year we hope to maximize and strengthen these reserves uh so we do beat this budget we do want to come out better than this but this is what we're operating based on the current projections any questions on fund balance I do again actually you have to project with really major uncertainties

046which you've highlighted yes what gets voted on what gets legislated uh what the enrollment is which we won't know about until October and the bit that I wanted to um highlight and make sure I'm tracking is the just under 15 million starting balance is the same as you projected in June um in June uh at the end of April which the last Financial amount for this year we got um through uh August 31 we still don't know what the results are you were um I think at 18.6 or so 1.5 million is being voted to be transferred to Capital which would take that to 17.1 so you do have a little bit of UN in the uncertainty and you won't get a read out till October between 17.1 at April and the 15 approximately there

047yeah and so you know I realize this can go either way and then when you talked about possibly being able to not use the full 2.9 that was carried forward last year if we didn't use all of that 2.1 in the final months of the year then that would be where some additional funds would come from if we were fortunate yeah I mean we're just looking at it I mean if we looked at the current the current fund balance right now since we closed out I mean the most up toate numbers would be as of June our general fund balance has gone down to 12.5 so and we do expect the expectation is that that's going to increase for July and August because um April and October would be our largest revenue year um months

048for each school year followed by July and August when a lot of Grant Revenue comes in um so no we don't know it's just going to depend when things close out in October so the uncertainty is there but I'm dealing with um a high number from an earlier month okay yes correct quick clarification because in slides previous you showed the $500,000 coming from the general fund to the capital projects but then it's not reflected in this general fund balance so if we're starting at the beginning of the year we're saying it's part of that 3.3 million so the committed to other purposes oh okay that's where we're saying we're putting setting aside $500,000 of the general fund for Capital project fund purposes and then assuming we would spend that by the end of the year

049it would clear out entirely uh budget timeline uh so again we have the two budget presentations on the 4th and the 25th of June uh it was submitted to the ESD by on time by July 10th uh we have received their feedback and incorporated into tonight's presentation and the final budget um so again August 27th will be the budget adoption uh at the regular meeting and then it just needs to be after we receive that uh adoption from the board uh we will submit to Opi by the end of the month any other questions thank you just want to just give a huge shout out to to Sean and the finance team for this incredible work we all know it's a lengthy process um and our approach to the budget is the forecasting model that

050Sean has developed and I think that it has um it's it's helped us in a variety of ways and it will help us for years to come the budget is a living process and it's something it all it changes and it moves Martin to your point earlier and um it's a big topic for the school district so Sean we appreciate all your work and your Finance team so thank you thank you any other questions for the board if not then the 2024 25 budget hearing is now open for public comment there's anyone who has not submitted a public comment form please do so um we'll open the hearing at 6:46 any comments we don't have anyone online okay well being that there is no comment um unless Sean or Corey want anything to say any

051final piece I will close the hearing at 6:46 all right thank you all right moving on then to the consent agenda um items on the consent agenda were sent to the board and posted online last week the board has had an opportunity to review materials and ask some of my questions a little bit late uh the superintendent any questions on any item on the agenda sorry for that um this week's consent agenda includes the minutes from the June 25th 2024 regular meeting minutes vouches and payroll Personnel reports contracts and the 20242 athletic rental fees do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda I moveed that we approve the consent agenda as presented seconded moved by Maria seconded by Tucker any other comments or discussion all those in favor say I I all right

052motion carries we will now move on to Citizen comment if any member of the public would like to make a citizen comment please sign up online 15 minutes prior to the meeting or in person paper forms are available at the entrance of the meeting room and can be completed and given to board secretary Kim white unless translation is required each comment is limited to three minutes and Miss White will keep a timer to notify you of if your time expires um individuals who need translation service will be given four minutes to make the public comment plus the time needed for interpretation Please be aware the board is not obligated to respond to questions or challenges made during public comments and the board silence will not signal agreement or endorsement with the speaker remarks there anyone

053signed up for public comment okay moving on then we are to special presentations I think first up is the softball complex update yes and we have uh Rob and John here from Turner in towns and Hy John are you joining or are you just you're here for support I love it thank you for being here we appreciate app it yes uh he's still in training yeah he train I love it we have to we have to build him up a little more but no next time we'll let him we'll let him present excellent and we've got a slide presentation uh and it's going to be the right slide presentation and it's G to be amazing so Rob is here to talk us through that and uh Rob thanks for being here John thank you as

054well we appreciate you both thanks for the kind words Corey good evening bour uh quick update on where we're sitting kind of where we're evolving um throughout you know moving through the summer we've had several challenges and some design hurdles and all the things that come with a project like this and I can get in to depth a little more with that so here's kind of where we're started which everyone knows and was our our sense of how it was being built or we want it to look like this when it's done and here we at at the current moment of today um you can see both dugouts you can see the Press Box I hope you can see that and then we're getting the fields got waiting for its top layer before we start

055installing the turf uh so so far we're you know we've completed all the masonry work for the locker rooms uh and the dugouts and our subgrades complete uh getting ready to install the big back stop post that are like 30 feet high that's going to control all the netting uh we had some structural issues with that with the city uh but we've worked through all those things um I've got to know everybody down at the city and I think we're on a first name basis too to say I think we're going to lunch soon uh some interior framings being installed within the um locker rooms which you can finally see what they're going to look like um and again the turf is arriving next week to be installed start the installation here's another look at

056as you can see the inside of one of the locker rooms so you can see it's nice and high and quite big and it's not going to be um kind of you know you won't feel panicked in there or it's it's big enough to be comfortable and that's the outside of the uh Press Box and then that is the outside look for the lock rooms in the bathroom it's kind of unique building architecturally for what we're doing is can be pretty nice when it's done so schedule update we're uh hope by the end of this week to have the interior framing done our uh light poles from musc's been delivered so we're going to they're going to start putting those up next week uh we have a lot of work on the parking lots and

057the hardscapes around uh the building which um well should go pretty quick I'm I'm hoping whoops well I went the wrong way good that's a quick that's a quick finger dang who knew okay um as we as I stated earlier the turf is going to be going should be completed by the end of the month uh which is going to give hopefully my plan is to have this so the softball team can actually practice on it we're still going to be doing some work around the vicinity uh but our goal is to after um Labor Day for it to be uh they can get on in practice we have some testing to do but I we're hoping that's done early we have uh Mechanicals going in all the conditioning spaces the air conditionings and heaters

058and the locker room and the bathrooms um and we hope to have there's a certain particular kind of programming that we have to do the lights so we hope to have all those lights up and running by and program teaching everybody who's going to be involved with the lights it's one that you can go on your phone and they can turn them on at any time by the end of the month as well here's kind of a look of there's the lights there in the Box it says muscal and here's kind of the look of this uh scoreboard that's going to be coming in it's kind of fun to see it uh this is the back stop padding and the wind screens we've had some different iterations and this is what we settled on and

059so we're good to go now um we're hoping to get those on time but it may be a bit of a delay on these uh not to stop any kind of practice or any kind of games so looking at the end of the month you know we have uh inspections with the city PUD has got to change over the power um John and I and The Architects will start a pre pre punch uh at the end of the month um substance of completion and Handover we you know we're targeting the 30th I think it may be after that you know after Labor Day uh and then we'll do our um final punch list of the week uh after Labor Day and then we have scheduled for all the it uh systems to be installed early

060September we're looking pretty good um you know it's been a lot of fun doing it uh a lot of Heartache um so but assist the way construction is I guess that's why I stay in it any questions I know Maria does have I won't give you that much of a hard time that won't be fully completed by the end of August um but I mean I'm reassured that it will it won't impede what needs to happen after the August completion Target in original Target goal won't impat the the ladies from going and using it yeah there'll be some training and stuff and what to use and how to use it when you know so it and it'll keep evolving as we move into the end toward the end of September too you know it's almost

061like any type of thing that you have we have in our contracts have 60 to 90 days for punch list and close out so there's still going to be some work going on even though they can utilize the field and uh you know hopefully the 100% capacity U but still that's a moving Target too which is good I mean they'll be able to practice on it kind of get a feel for it and get used to it and they'll be Kinks worked out with the Lighting systems and electrical um parking's always going to be an issue uh but you know in the next two weeks it's going to come a long way too I'll think of something else yes quick question some of these um the cost overruns I know we budgeted for contingencies are

062we within the contingencies or we like outside of well one of the big issues was we when we first started I'm sure you were informed but we found a uh City water main that ran underneath there that the city didn't even know about um so there was no you know that's what we call unforeseen condition and it was quite uh was quite a bit of work to get there and and to also meet the city's um requirements there's a certain requirement the city has over and above what we would do typically on this site and actually that fed a bunch of houses across the street so when we turned it off to put it well get it back together they they lost water for a little bit but we informed them so it was wasn't

063a bad thing but I didn't know that I don't think the city did either that they were there was people probably in free water for all these years you're not a popular guy well comes with the territory but anyway it's been a great project and we have we still have a long way to go uh and it'll continue to move positively and uh we're going to hopefully keep any of the cost overruns which is contingency I think has been used up or close to it um we don't anticipate anything moving forward I don't forecast any not as good as Sha but um I don't see any big issues coming up that I've uh after diving into it more than I ever have I don't see anything coming down the pipe so I think we're for

064that we're in pretty good shape I think it's a great investment for your community too it's been it's going to be great and with my assistant John he's done a great job with everybody and we've got to know a lot of the locals in the town that are working a lot of local contractors have done a lot of the work and they've been great to work with right John yeah we have a great Electrical Company we like here all right thank you for your time if there's anything else you guys could always email me reach out to me or get get me through Corey anytime and guys want to come by the site let me know I'll walk you through it do we have a projected ribbon cutting date we don't have one completely solidified

065um Diana will be working with Rob and the H group to figure out when exactly to do that we'd love to have it co inside with something around uh softball either practice or a game or something that we can do too so that'll be coming very soon okay because it'll be very important for us to Showcase this and as I was sharing with both Rob uh and John earlier it is pretty special I'd love to have any one of you come out and just be out there it's uh it's pretty special just to be there between all of the varsity Fields um it just it feels really good and uh something that we can all be proud of awesome thanks guys yeah thank you safe travels gentlemen you are welcome to stick around for the

066Strategic plan highlights uh conversation or you can get on the road whatever works for you understandably so excellent I'm gonna grab that thanks guys apprciate right thank you okay we are going to jump into H 2024-25 strategic Plan update and uh I'm uh we're throwing some challenges in here to look at that all right Liz is doing it um so we're working with a little bit of a new system here so um what tonight's presentation is is really um some highlights of uh the work behind the Strategic plan and the work of the Strategic plan over the last couple of years and uh and this is going to be the first of many presentations that will come to the board highlighting the Strategic plan and the work itself so tonight is about highlights and so

067we're going to talk about things that we have worked on and things that we have accomplished and then in the coming sessions we'll talk about the data collection where we are at the end of the second year as we move into the Third year and then what our plans are for the future as well so this is part one of uh a a variety of uh information that you'll receive moving forward so I'm excited about that see if I can make this dream happen here there we go and we start off with our uh promise uh to the students to build that Foundation of diversity equity and inclusion from which uh each student emerges future ready and then uh from there we go we move on to our values um as we start off the

068Strategic plan and one of those values uh is excellence in learning and so we have a couple of highlights that we want to share here um about uh our excellence in learning so the PLC is uh is a is a huge focus of of ours and it was a three-year Journey that we were on together as a district and the PLC at work uh Community we focus on our collaboration on the the four questions here the four PLC questions what do we want students to know and be able to do uh how will we know if they learned it and how will we respond when some of the students do not learn it and then how will we extend that learning uh for students who are already proficient really the basis of our collaboration time

069and our teacher Collective efficacy revolve around these four questions um and how we utilize that time in Monday morning collaboration on the other side uh talking about our guaranteed and viable curriculum that we have built also over the last three years is hugely important those classroom based assessments that data collection grade level content and curriculum and then the essential strategies for all students so we know those best practices that are great for all students but they're essential for our multilingual Learners the other value that we're going to highlight tonight is uh equity and uh in this in this process we we want to highlight the monthly meetings that we have with our leadership team about growing our learning on the promise statement that I just shared with you how are we as Leaders learning and

070growing um and understanding how we build that Foundation of diversity equity and inclusion for each student one of the things that we've done in this in the 23 24 school year is we outlined our goals for this particular year which uh highlight our continued professional growth and our learning as well as uh a new form of collaboration that we'll be utilizing um that we'll be using a problem of practice methodology that we're working on solidifying within our system and we'll continue to work on that um and then how we uh really honor um and understand and realize the equity work that happens on a daily basis um in the things that we do pay attention to and on the things that we may not be paying attention to that we need to um and then

071finally how are we leading this work in the future how are we taking what we've learned and that professional development and bringing it back to our schools and our buildings and helping our staff learning and grow as well uh we also have some uh automatic placements of students in advanced classes uh for Math and English based on uh meeting specific criteria uh on the smarter smarter balance assessment and this will pop up a couple times um there'll be a few things that are a little bit on repeat as we get to the big six data points and the equity program review so you'll hear that a few times and then also how we have restructured over the past uh two years our systems of intervention for students that need additional time and support um and

072really working that we still have uh work to do in this area as we are building interventions uh in math for uh students as well so you'll see a little bit on that as we get to um our big six data points so what have we accomplished and this moves into our priorities here and the first priority that we're going to focus on is uh our thriving environment and so that thriving rep uh environment as you remember is a welcoming space where all individuals flourish they're seen valued they feel safe and they know that they belong so in this area we have done a variety of things that are listed here um we've had uh safety care training uh an increase in safety care training for our staff um we we began that Journey as

073uh a lot of our uh special education staff had that training in many of our Paras um but we're realizing that more of our staff needed that particular and intentional training and so we've uh gotten more uh involved there as our bcbas um have flu Ed the number of bcbas that we've had that training becomes a little bit more difficult but we're still committed to that uh we had some social emotional team training last year uh and uh also some work in the restorative justice we still need um we still need to do some more work in our restorative justice training and we're looking to find um some quality professional development um that we could bring in or that we could find um that is reasonable and close for us to do that work and

074then as you all know we highlighted here the stronger connections Grant which has helped in a variety of way it actually funded the social emotional training and the restorative justice work that we've done as well as that bottom tier our SSS positions our student services specialist positions that has funded that uh last year and then for this year and the next year as well so we can continue to have uh those amazing individuals working with our students okay another accomplishment here is our priorities so we have a partnership priority uh this is where the this is all about relationships so relationships between uh students staff families schools and our community that enhance student well-being and success uh what we've highlighted here under this priority is our uh Partnerships with different agencies and companies in the

075area we have uh cbch we have sa we have the north central Washington Tech Alliance our inter agency meetings with some of you which some of you have attended uh right here in our main boardroom where all of the agencies uh locally come and uh learn exactly what is happening in our Valley that can help support students and then we have other additional Partnerships um that we have here so the schan schan County PUD we have together for youth we have Sage Hills Church Gesa Credit Union and many more so this is just a highlight and um an acknowledgement of those Partnerships that we have uh in the community okay we have our big six data points as you all know know well and I'll go through each one of those individually and share those

076highlights with you and then we'll move on to the equity program review and I'll uh pause for some uh some questions or comments that might uh come from the board so number one uh experiencing highquality instruction students receive and participate in grade level or Beyond standards instructions and assignments and this is again where we highlight our wian sorry got away got away from myself uh this is where we highlight those uh W School District essential instructional strategies those best practices that are great for all students but essential for our multilingual Learners and then the district trainer model the professional development model that we have come up with for the Wii School District as you remember we had a coach model before and through budget reduction process we had to eliminate that and we have our

077district trainer model which I couldn't be more uh proud of and more happy uh with uh the idea here is that as districts move into a budget reduction world the fear uh is that you might Plateau the work or you may just not move forward as fast as you have been in the past but our district trainer model has really leveraged uh for amazing people in our district under the guidance of Heidi busk um and Amber Burks to not allow the WAN School District to plateau in the midst of budget reduction so really proud of that work and uh the continuation of that work moving forward and then of course increasing uh teacher Collective efficacy as we work to build um highly effective teams and we work uh to build on those four PLC questions

078that we talked about a little bit earlier as well number two in our big six uh is belong and are connected students know they belong and they have healthy relationships with staff and peers and so we know that uh one of the things that we do for our students is that annual culture and climate student uh survey for all of our students which drives student uh sorry School Improvement plans and we know that our principles are looking at certain pieces of this to understand and make sure that their students do feel seen valued heard and that they're safe we're also doing some school culture work uh with regard to positive behavioral interventions and supports and of course our social emotional learning all coming from the grant dollars that we were able to receive from that

079stronger connections Grant and then again highlighting the Partnerships here we have a couple of partners that weren't mentioned previously with our Daybreak uh telea Health Services Children's Home Society which whose name has changed to a kin and I'm still trying to get used to that um so I'm using them both um uh and then cbch uh of course for our school-based Mental Health Services as well so those are the highlights there for number two number three reading on grade level uh we have our structured literacy routines I'm sorry students will read on grade level by third grade and Beyond and will grow continue to grow their skills knowledge and abilities throughout their education in the WAN School District um we highlight here structured literacy routine uh common uh reading foundational skills assessment which happens three

080times a year our reading inter intervention uh based on skill and need that we've been growing over the past uh two years and then finally our formative assessments number four ready for algebra students will be on grade level or Beyond by eth grade in algebra uh specifically number and operations in Al algebraic thinking and you can see here that we have a variety of things that we're doing uh seven in fact here some of them are repeats but you can see that in the K5 Arena we have our math problem solving routines and number talk our fact fluency our mathematical mindset and then the fact that we are building intervention strategies around mathematics in three of our elementary schools and from what I understand we'll have more this year that are finding ways to utilize

081their staff to build uh Stronger interventions in math and then number five is our on track for graduation students are on track to graduate by the end of their nth grade year and Beyond um and these are some of the items that we're uh excited about in this area um targeting that ninth grade success we know that research tells us that n9th grade is a pivotal year that transition tells a lot about a student's uh academic um and social emotional trajectory uh we are working with our with our counseling teams and the high school and Beyond plan to create a smoother middle to high school transition um also leveraging College in the classroom uh and then four Avid is still alive well and strong and we are proud of that work as they continue to

082graduate a large number of students um and then we highlight our our migrant graduation Specialists as well um and the work that they do to help guide our students through to the end and then you'll remember back from our Workshop in April that we uh Jake buol was here and he really Dove deeper into big six data point uh six uh and uh talking about CTE but this one is involved in real world relevant learning students are engaged in a Continuum of learning experiences that create awareness exploration preparation and work experiences to be future ready so we'll just bust through these uh we have the data center technician pathway Grant uh we have our program Pathways that are clearly outlined leading to post-secondary credentials and family wage employment all CT all six CTE program areas

083that are present in our secondary schools 23 dual credit courses aligned and articulated and then that 26% growth in individual students who are experiencing CTE experiences in the 23 24 school year and uh Jake is committed to as we are uh to for seeing that just continue to grow and that is a great time to just pause for a minute and see if there are any comments uh uh concerns or questions that I can address uh tonight or bring back at a later date that's a great question Miranda we are looking at this point um at finding some professional development that we can leverage um but we have not reached out to other school districts that are doing it well um at least I have not been involved in that work that might be something

084I can check in with uh with Mike Lane under student services but that's a great idea because there is good work that's happening out there and we need to know where the the right steps are excellent thank you other thoughts or comments I have one question yeah in regards to the equity um under our values the autop placement in advanced math and English classes yes based on SBA data esba SBA Esa yeah okay tomato is there um based on the data that we get from OPI there's a clear Gap in our the performance of our U marginalized students and our an encounter White so are those are we seeing the same Trend with these placements where there's a disproportionate number of our marginalized Comm uh students versus our white students non-marginalized well the great thing

085about the placement is that is just that's one way that students are able to access this those courses as well they can also opt into them so it's not the only way that students are are accessing those courses but it is one clear path I guess my concern is that if we are using I mean they can opt in but if we're using placement data I'm afraid that um that that Gap is going to continue to widen because our numbers show us that who's meeting the standards versus who's not gotcha my other question and you might go into this further but uh looking into uh what have we ac have accomplished under our priorities of thriving environment if we recall the the survey um from while working on the on the Strategic plan early on

086the student surveys many of our students didn't feel safe or felt like they belonged and so which prompted the equity audit um and what we have accomplished um I see trainings mainly trainings but I don't see any deib training in this for our staff to be able to create a schoolclassroom environment looking deep into our biases unconscious biases um because that was one of the themes that came up when students didn't feel like they belonged they didn't feel safe um so what is the district doing to address those concerns that go way back to the beginning from the surveys um you know the the cultural acceptance the the um again the biases yes um I know we do have some State requirements um so has has something been done is there plans on yeah yeah

087if you go back to the equity slide um from our values right there the the bullet point that says the monthly meetings with the leadership team so we are we are working with the leadership team to grow that and then if you look down to Leading the work this year they'll actually be engaging with their staff on bias training and moving into equity and what that means for their staff I I'm hoping to see something um bigger than that um we have restor restorative justice training we have social emotional training um we ourselves even myself as a person of color I I I can't teach Miranda I can't teach you about diversity equity and belonging because that's not my expert area right um and so it's great that the leadership is having these conversations and

088they're training but it unless we're having a neutral Party come and provide that training it I mean to me it's it's not sufficient okay um again we have to look at the demographics of our district and making sure I mean it's same thing with the social emotional approach right we have trainers we have um this is something we've been doing years and years and so our teachers are trained to identify we have a process um but I feel like we haven't even touched the surface in regards to making sure that all of our students feel safe they feel belonged like they have a sense of belonging um and you know I'm I'm hoping that that's I mean this is something that we've been talking about since Paul Gordon was here uh we talked about having

089a obviously this is off the table with budget constraints at when not but having a de uh a de um coordinator director whatever it was um and so I want us to revisit that because I think our students will I mean if not if we as a district as a leadership team as a board are not doing anything that is kind of putting it out there I don't think I mean some administrators some leadership members might be more successful at it but again unless it's coming from the top down I don't think you know again go back to policies we have policies but doesn't even everybody's implementing policies right okay thank you so you would like to you would like to see something bigger than um than what we have planned so we'll we'll get

090together and work on that sounds great other other thoughts or comments yeah I I kind of going back to theing environment as well I I see we've partnered with a lot of Health Care emotional care those kinds of organizations what are we doing strategically districtwide to help kids find activities and programs that they can connect with in addition to you know it's great we have all these support services but what are we doing to make to help you know maybe students find the math program that they may excel at and may then feel connected to the school and give back and stay engaged through high school or or what are we doing on that level because it feels like there's a disconnect we've got a lot of of services we're doing a lot of cultural

091awareness work but we're not steering kids or helping them really engage with programs and services Beyond you know they may help them through their their 12 years of school okay like besides uh like are you thinking extracurricular or math extracurricular like anything that can help them because I I Envision that as well as part of the feeling connected and belonging wanting to go to school and having this you know helping build a school identity that that others want to be a part of I think it helps with our enrollment I think it helps with the student experience and so we've got a lot of these social emotional support services that we're looking into but I don't hear as much are we training staff to help guide students to areas of Interest or other things to

092help kind of expand their Horizons and and improve their experience in schools okay can I just bounce off on that um I'm not sure it's necessarily within the thriving environment but I could see that as a partnership right the Partnerships that your school district may have with the uh the YW y whatever what what is it Le St YMCA YCA um you I really like Peach jar but I know you know email is a kind of a a hit or miss especially with um so uh but you know saying off what Julie saying um we do have we have an opportunity for continued Partnerships or growing um those Partnerships to be able to provide um the information um give resources to support and maybe that kind of goes with the belong and our connected sort

093of responding to the culture and feedback survey or what are we doing to help students feel connected to facil further their interests so that they they do stay engaged absolutely and I think we can we can provide some of those um as well like we could take a um what's happening at elementary school what's happening at Middle School like it there are things that are happening I have not they're not part of this presentation but I can bring those back for sure absolutely I think that's can I enter that on a little bit what's the name of the event you have at the end of the year at the high school when all of the extracurricular activities career opportunities oh um uh and it's designed to bring introduced eighth graders into everything they can do

094does that engage engaged that's thank you because there's you know I'm wondering it's kind of a question for Julie um because what I see that I think is very encouraging is it's not just in CTE and shadowing and jobs it's the change in which we are going into the middle middle schools is really talking about Pathway to graduation which is linked to Pathway to having a meaningful career and I think that to me that that kind of addresses you know where are where is there an opportunity because I think that's now maybe in about its third or fourth year of being significantly more aggressive if you go to an elementary school you'll see the high school graduates coming in in their purple robes around the fifth graders all of those driving deeper um you could

095go to Orchard and they have their eighth graders write little essays about what can I get into to do as an activity or everything in the high school so I feel that that which you didn't mention that I do want to say that I think there's a whole um front in which we do this and we can leverage it and and work on it really well absolutely and highlight it we can add it to our highlights yeah definitely other thoughts okay awesome thank you appreciate that all right the the next part of our slide presentation jumps into the equity program review Maria which you mentioned earlier and one of the one of the values of this is one to remind ourselves what were the five areas of the equity program review that the district uh

096went through in 2021 and then we have a few highlights that um have been part of the work in conjunction with the Strategic plan as well so just to highlight that let's see here so the first one is access to learning opportunities to what extent do students in the 1H school district have Equitable access to grade level learning opportunities and again we have the first part is the automatic placement in advance uh math and English class which Maria has mentioned uh as well that could also be a gap extender um and we want to make sure that we address that piece um and then the idea that um our inclusive practices uh training and support in all of our schools districtwide um the development of a newcomer process and then of course the most important

097part of that is the replication of that across all of our schools and how are we addressing uh our newcomers and helping them uh find success and then increase professional development uh and support for our multilingual Learners um again with that essential strategies work that our learning and teaching team has been uh working on and will continue to work on this year the second area of the equity program review is instructional practices and policies how do students and families experience the district's instructional policies and teaching practices oops went a little fast there so uh increasing CTE offerings and real world relevant instruction is one of those um access to rigorous curriculum and challenging instruction through college in the in the or college and the High School courses and then again on repeat the washingt wachi

098school district essential strategies for all students the third area of our Equity program review is the curriculum materials resources and policies to what degree is there Fidelity to and accountability for implementing cultural and linguistically responsive curricula and here we have again highlighted our increased support for improving access to curriculum for our multilingual Learners um and then those two guiding questions that we uh that Heidi shared last year at the beginning of the school year uh when we talked about our district trainers how can we collectively take ownership for accelerating the language development and current content outcomes for our multilingual Learners what high leverage strategies can we use to engage 100% of our students in rigorous academic learning and then for the elementary we have slated the integrated and designated ELD Reading Writing speaking and listening

099and then in secondary we have our integrated ELD Reading Writing speaking and listening as well number five is discipline practices procedures and policies and the the highlighted areas here uh we have specific and intentional student services uh Team meetings at the elementary and secondary level level we've also been working with the state um guidance to help students stay enrolled um as and at one point there was a very hard and fast rule that if a student missed 20 consecutive days of school they had to be withdrawn um the state has uh has come to actually covid and the pandemic helped that um uh but the state has uh become much more flexible and so have we in working through uh with families that might need additional time to communicate with the school are going through

100some challenges and we don't always have to automatically withdraw those students at that time we can work with them and have a little bit of flexibility uh we also have uh multi-tiered systems of support we'll be kicking off the school year with a needs analysis to determine uh any additional areas that need to have realignment with regard to our positive behavioral interventions and supports um our seal and our behavioral interventions and then finally we have uh our hiring and recruitment practices and policies um working on uh policies um and procedures to help us conduct employee exit uh surveys so we understand exactly why employees are leaving our system and what we can do to um remedy that if possible um posting jobs outside of the school district and looking at leveraging bringing in Creative Talent

101when we have those jobs available and then growing our own Talent uh students and staff to grow uh into Paris and teachers and we'll see more of that this year as we continue to partner with Eastern Washington University and they continue to bring programs and grant funding to our school district to help pars become teachers and to be and help uh teachers move through um and gain their master's degree and more so we're excited about that and then what's next is uh sharing the Strategic plan data and gearing up for the third year so that those are things to come um when I look at what we have here at this point today is the highlighting the accomplishments so this is the presentation highlights just some of the work in the specific areas of the

102Strategic plan and the equity program review and then we'll be bringing in some data collection as we look at how did um uh our metrics uh work after the end of the second year of our strategic plan and then share that data with our stakeholders through school board meetings and then finally discuss the plans and the outcomes of what this uh year has to offer uh for the school district with regard to the Strategic plan and keeping that uh topic front and center as we move forward excellent so have time for other comments uh questions or concerns and from the board if you have any thank you for your time this evening yeah students like a a growing an opportunity of that outside of Lewis and Clark well I think the um our immediate plans

103are to continue the work at Lewis and Clark at right now through the Dual language Grant and to continue to build a program that we feel is proficient uh moving students forward in that area and then look to grow afterward strcture we're we need to be working on aligning our Middle School piece right now now and so Foothills is working on that as they're also uh working through their new schedule um and those programs so that is still work in progress for us um but uh dual language is an opportunity for uh our district right now and students can Choice into dual language if they decide to but yeah we have a we do have a dual language team um and we do have the Dual language grant that is helping Drive some of that

104work and this year as far as the demographic oh yeah yeah ours is more of a 5050 model thank you other thoughts I well okay okay so um I hope my colleague on the board kind of joined me in asking these challenges questions um because I'm looking at this we we've had this since 2021 and going through these slides um you know I want to remind that Equity is not just about language access English language development it goes beyond language race um and so given that we do have our our our student population is predominantly Latino I get how we are kind of guiding this through language English language development um but just looking at the say for example the instructional pract practices and policies these are the this is something these three bullet points

105that are shown here are stuff that we're already providing District why again the equity review or the audit let's call it what it was highlighted discrepancies of how we are leaving a percentage of students our practices are leaving students students behind and so it's great that we have awesome CTE offerings rigorous curriculums are essential strategies for all students but there's a gap what in addition to these are we doing to address what we found based from the equity audit I mean again it and and and again you know curriculum and materials what are we doing to show that the work curriculums or the teachings that the pract instruction practices are reflective of this of our of our student population at whole when we're picking out curriculum are we looking to make sure that in our

106K12 in our k6 K5 K8 level is our curriculum reflective of our students is short stories authors um I know you know my experience with wonders yes and that was during Brian fess's time I believe um but what have we've done since to make sure that our students see themselves in the resources and the material in the policies right policies a lot of our policies are written um where subconsciously they're targeting a specific demographic are you know are we and it maybe it's not policies but it's it's um procedures I'm going to use the dress code for example and that's just one of many right whether we like it or not um the discipline procedure policies I mean I think that is what it is the hiring and recruitment practices I know we've had multiple

107conversations uh Kelly and I again these are our current practices what in addition to this are we doing to recruit highly qual qualified diverse employees if you look at our teaching number our teacher numbers the diversity at the secondary level they're not reflective of our student population race gender identity you name it but this isn't tell me what we've changed to incl to to change what we've been doing that hasn't worked absolutely we still have lots of work to do Maria and I don't see the tip of the iceberg in this and this is what super frustrating to me and I don't mean to throw anybody under the buzz but again this is these are conversations we've been having since what got us to this audit to this Equity audit and I just feel like

108we have we've been sitting on it we haven't moved the needle and and not to I know we haven't been sitting on it but I just feel that we're highlighting stuff that we are already doing that's part of the Strategic plan it's not moving the needle in regards to the equity gaps that we have absolutely and I hope again I I hope that I'd be more than happy to sit and have a conversation with anybody my colleagues on the board to to better understand my perspective um especially as the demographics and our dis District change we're going to have to rethink the way we do everything because we need to make sure that we are serving all of our students regardless of their ident that the identity factors I agree and uh not that it

109answers your questions but I'm very excited to share with you and the board the problem of practice methodology that we're putting together with the equity lens um I think it'll be work that you'll be proud of um I think all five of you will be proud of that work um and I think it will be something that will help our district actually tackle some of these tough conversations it's not going to answer everything and it's not going to probably get us to a point where the board would be you know happy with immediately but at least it's it's where we need to be when we are addressing these problems and practices um because there are blind spots that are um preventing us from seeing what actually needs to take place and thank you for bringing

110up and that's why I invite my colleagues because we all have blind spots right and I as the only person of color sitting up here sorry m not the only person of color uh but as as a Latina a female you know my lens is is broth um and so it's frustrating to see to see to not be able to pinpoint and say oh this is you know in the last two years this is what we've accomplished this is how we're closing the data the the gaps um because I'm can we pull data on these and say that we're actually moving the needle on it I would like to see that I think that's a challenge for us as a district um but I don't think we're there yet and I don't know how much

111longer we're going to wait right I would agree I think that I think the data the data would be challenging for us to to find and to share um but we do have I think that's the work right that is the work that we need to be doing and so that will be um that will be coming yeah I think it might be helpful to see some of these curriculums that we already have I know they in themselves have moved some of their framework already you know I've seen some of the things that my my kids bring home from their worksheets and things and I can see some of some more inclusive material in some of the work we have maybe more examples of that how is that working what do we need to do

112above and beyond that to to move that needle yeah I for see our budget situation being a significant challenge in terms of changing our our staffing demographic if we are moving the same people around to avoid um cutting folks and whatnot we're not going to materially change change our demographic as I understand it until we can openly hire more more folks so those are I see our challenges and what are we doing to address address that like a prob yeah I I this is this this is not a conversation and we're just starting this academic year so we can't use these excuses as a budget I mean yes we are under limitations but we do have to start exploring and thinking outside the box because again we can't we can't continue to wait we just

113can't every every year you'll we can find a list of excuses of reasons why we we we have to stall on this or not move on this or we just we have to be creative and for clarification I wasn't suggesting that's an excuse for the demographic is saying this is the reality is that we may not achieve the demographic we want so what are we doing with with what we have to to make the improvements that we need I appreciate that thank you the that all right I did I took I took Co copious notes but Kim took better notes and uh so we will be able to address those and as we bring back more iterations of the Strategic plan conversation and the equity program review Equity audit um then we will be able

114to um share more of that information with you and highlight that the areas I obviously we don't have um we don't have what we need to satisfy um completely but we will share what we do have and then the plans moving forward on how we address that word because that's what we need to do so we will not wait thank you appreciate that and thank you for the time this evening uh we had we had a lot of our we're we're building our stamina back we're first meeting of the year we've got a lot of presentations and everyone has done a great job and so I I will just move into the superintendence report since that's what's next here I do have a a few things that I want to share first and foremost we're

115very excited about the new school year we had administrators back last week uh we were able able to feel their excitement um and we bring back our non-year round staff next Tuesday and then following that we have students we are two weeks away and so it is amazing and so couple of things to share can we say anything more about Mariachi first place uh for mariachi at the National Conference in Albuquerque that is super cool um what an incredible accomplishment from Mariachi director teacher coach Eddie Cortez his amazing students the parents the families the supporters of the program it just feels like a truly defining moment in in everyone's uh in everyone's lives uh also uh if I if if you've had a chance to follow the FAQ Fridays uh we've had a couple of

116we well we've had five of them four no five we've had five of them so we had attendance cell phones Summer School athletics the last one was on maintenance and operations and then we're going to have the next one will be on traffic safety and so we're going to bring in our our sro's and actually um I'll be collaborating with Mayor Mike puyer on one with the the Traffic Unit as well so I'm excited you know that they are being seen by some folks when the mayor asked to to jump on one so we we thank the city of Wan for that um and then a shout out to our M team and I know that you all you as board members know what our M team has done this summer because I've shared some

117of that with you but um as Brian brocky will attest to each one of you it has been a summer to remember um or maybe to forget um with regard like HVAC issues irrigation and suppression sprinklers have been the vein of the of our M folks uh back um as they've been working through this uh summer we know that Orchard had some issues and is still currently having issues we're just hoping that is mediated before uh our students come back um be great if it was mediated before our staff comes back uh next week Newberry had some issues Mission view had some issues and then we currently have three units down at the high school right now that are affecting CTE uh World languages and the library area so we'll need to get uh hopping

118on that so Sean thank you for uh the the forethought with the transferring of funds into the uh capital projects account we'll be needing them um and then today uh I had I had a kind of what I felt like was a random meeting with the American Heart Association um but it was it ended up being super informative for me I knew we did great work with their help but had no idea the magnitude so um the students of Wan School District uh serving others and saving lives to the kids heart challenge uh the American uh Heart Association works with five of our elementary schools 405 students and families Enga are engaged 282 families learned handson CPR for children and then warnings of a stroke uh warning signs of a stroke which is great um

119and then uh these students and families and schools raised $30,000 to help save and improve lives uh through CPR training quality hospital care and research and then the schools earned a collective $2,250 back into their PE departments I was like holy cow I just didn't know the scope and it's those little nuggets of information that uh just help us realize that we are able to make an impact in our community um through the amazing students and staff that we have so that's it for the superintendance report thank you so much there any board communication started that in yep um I spent a very impressive par day couple of hours in the migrant summer school at Mission View and um you know my comment afterwards is was an enjoyable interesting useful for me to see The

120Learning connection between science and language which they do their approach to mathematics and also to learn how much how much I didn't know and I was going to add and I will add kudos to the m because shortly after that visit they had to relocate and everybody scrambled and I just really want to thank I also wanted to thank the leadership and staff at the migrant summer school because it's fun to see them doing their work and then pass the same congratulations on to m&o um and actually I got this here you know we talk about what we do and what we don't do and I'm actually gonna talk about the um administrate Administration advance and I'm going to address some of what we discussed uh five minutes ago in that but you know we

121are are the public school district we're the one that has open doors we are comprehensive you go through this and you see how many groups this District attempts to serve it is awesome this is a great publication this is what you do in this District this is what we try to give to our youth so that they can go and I'll get off my soap box but this is a really good example of effort I think um anyway the impression I I enjoyed sitting in on the administrative leadership meeting and the overall impression I had was this is how an Enterprise should function um we're dealing with um an awful lot of work that we need to do the uptake percent on our efforts if we're talking about Equity are still very very low the

122staff are dealing with massive uncertainty and I'll just make I uh I think one comment we talked a lot about what they talked a lot about making students belong but I think something that came out of getting input from outside the leadership group is how much the staff within the buildings also need to belong and be empowered and we need to get out of this building and into all the other buildings and generate that same spirit this gets back to I'm using my management experience when I sit in on this kind of meeting this was a good one and I think the school district should be pleased about that um you know and planning is big emphasis of what you do you're not going to do anything unless you plan well and then planning takes

123time to get traction and then you have to have patience before you get statistics to show you made advances and absolutely we need to think outside the box kick ourselves on the rear end and do more than we're doing but it's not I mean I've been on the board long enough now to know the different tone of how people were trying and I'm going to say trying but I think we need to support and and work really really hard because I think their efforts are there we need to make them better um and something else that I wanted to say is I felt that there was an atmosphere Cory you wrote notes and you said Kim's going to take better notes we need to take this as a lesson listen to people listen to their

124ideas listen to constructive criticism that comes from outside and pay attention and I did feel that there was a little bit of that sort of atmosphere that was healthy in the room that I that when I sat in there I'm not sure where they got it right but I did have that positive feeling so um I really wanted to say that um it's kind of like you want to turn a ship around you go back to um 120 years and ships ran on cold and the first thing people did is they shoved shoveled coal in the stokers down in the engine room took a while for that ship to turn around we need to make the ship turn around faster but we also need to recognize that it takes that ground workor and let's try

125and give ourselves the energy to do it really hard following Martin on that I'm gonna stick with welcome back everyone and go from there e um I also want to make a comment on that on that guide fair game I had a second bite go um no I actually was looking for something for U my son's school and I came across a digital version of the of the uh the guide and so I I went through it I had all my questions answered and then some more all the information is there and so I immediately you know communicated and said you guys this is this is really good work um you know I found all the information as a parent and then the stuff we've discussed here on the board is also you know in

126in in the guide so um so yeah it was it was great and then that that afternoon um it came in the mail so yeah the hard copy so I was like oh it's even printed even better um so yes um you know kudos to everybody that I know that's a big effort from different departments um throughout the uh throughout the district so Kudos and and then that's exactly Martin what what I'm referring to you know it's beautiful it's Spanish English there's um I I think in some areas it leads with the Spanish um and and that's a great example of you know we this that's we can't just stop there you know this is something that I was a broken record when uh covid started we do communication and we're doing a fabulous language

127a uh giving that language access part now letot replicate that into two different pockets of the district all I've got is good luck to our two wachi area baseball teams in the World Series this week so lots of kids from uh the the 10 years and 13 years that are in our district so good luck to them as they start their bracket place that's all I got I guess I will adjourn you go