001e it is 6m so I will call the June 25th 2024 meeting of the wachi school district school board to order uh we will begin with the Pledge of Allegiance i al to the the United States America the for it stands one nation God indivisible with and justice for all and it looks like we do have two excused board members tonight so small crowd or receive your we will now begin working through the agenda are there any proposed changes or modifications to the agenda I None okay then we will move on to the consent agenda uh the items on the consent agenda were sent to the board and posted online last week with few additions trickling in over the last few days um the board has had the opportunity to review the material and individually
002ask the superintendent any questions on any item on the agenda this uh this week's consent agenda includes the minutes from the June 4th 2024 regular school board meeting vouchers and payroll the Personnel report Surplus report contracts field trips April financial report the June enrollment report 2023 24 highly capable District plan survey the CTE 4-year plan the wachi Valley Tech technical skills center fouryear plan and the summer Athletics round three uh event schedules do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda I move that we approve the consent agenda as presented I second that motion is there any discussion all in favor say I I I motion carries uh 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
003minutes before the meeting or in person paper forms are available at the entrance to the meeting Hall and can be uh completed and given to the board secretary Kim white unless translation is required each comment is limited to three minutes and Miss White will keep a timer that will notify you when your time expires individuals that need translation service will be given four minutes to make a comment plus the additional time needed to complete the interpretation Please be aware that the board is not obligated to respond to questions or challenges made during public comment and the board's silence will not signal agreement or endorsement of the speaker remarks the board appreciates you being here this evening and would like to remind you that all public comments should adhere to the same standard of Civility that
004the board imposes on itself and we will exercise the authority to maintain order in a Content neutral manner as needed with that said Kim do we have any comments this evening yes we do our first is uh Katherine McDonald um good evening my name is Katherine McDonald and I live in wachi and I have three strong athletic girls um I along with other parents have some serious concerns about the need to protect female sports as well as the recent changes of federal Title 9 regulations by the Biden Administration these changes will impact equality safety and fairness of our state's educational and athletic opportunities Congress enacted Title 9 of the education Amendments of 1972 to ensure equal educational and athletic opportunities for all students regardless of sex on April 19th 2024 the Biden Administration released new
005unofficial guidelines for Title 9 effective August 1st 2024 these new regulations redefine the framework of title n by expanding the definition of biological sex now sex includes sex stereotypes sex related characteristics sexual orientation and gender identity these rule changes are unconstitutional they erase women and girls they eliminate due process and they restrict freedom of speech and they strip parents of their fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their child as far as Sports men are an average physic stronger than women men have 66% more upper body muscle than women and 50% more lower body muscle men have larger hearts and lungs um a larger heart can pump more blood to the body larger lungs allow the body's tissues to receive more oxygen this is just a glimpse of the differences I have a fact sheet
006for you if you would like um I've been in contact with several coaches and one in particular has been coaching track and field over 20 years the top female shot putter um on her team throws an 8.8b shot 35 feet the top male throws 12b shot 57 fet how can people say that the girls just need to work harder and that males have no advantage over females he could easily pick up that 8.8 pound shot and put it 70 feet safety is another concern um female athletes have been severely injured while competing against biological male athletes distorting science doesn't help anyone it's time to create another League or division for transgender athletes to play sports while protecting biological women in their own sports and spaces the Kenwick School Board is working on passing a resolution
007regarding the title n revisions made by the Biden ad Administration I would encourage the matachi school board to do the same I've printed out a copy of kenowick as well as a template that wachi can use to follow suit thank you thank you you want me pass those here next we have TJ Ferell good evening um I am quoting here from Scientific American and the Mayo Clinic on the notion of transgender girls having an unfair Advantage it comes from the idea that that testosterone creates physical changes that cause an increase such as increases in muscle mass but transgender girls are not the only girls who might have high testosterone levels an estimated 10% of women have polycystic ovarian syndrome which results in elevated testosterone levels transgender girls on puberty blockers on the other hand have
008negligible trans uh testosterone levels the Olympics have a trans inclusive policies they've had them since 2004 but a single openly transgender athlete has yet to even qualify and why is that because their achievements are overshadowed by cisgender athletes who do qualify so the notion that the Olympics don't know there's a difference between transgender women and cisgender women and that there's some Advantage is ludicrous um Katrina kazes a senior visiting fellow and expert on testosterone and bioethics at Yale University says studies of testosterone levels in athletes do not show any clear consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance Sometimes It's associated with better performance but other studies show weak links or no links and yet others show testosterone is associated with worse performance in fact according to the male clinic male to female transitioners can expect
009less muscle mass and more body fat all within 3 to six months after beginning treatment some transgender girls report a loss of energy from trans transition which greatly affects their activity and athletic performance levels the trans girls that won races didn't set any records which you would have expected if they have sort of advantage that some folks claim that they do if they had genetic Advantage they would have come close to or broken the girls record in the in the races and maybe even challenged the records of the boys team that didn't happen claims that cisgender girls can't win against transgender girls lack both scientific validity and historical evidence there is no such thing as a Level Playing Field in sports some athletes are gifted in size muscle mass agility exceptional lung capacity or a
010host of other attributes some have access to a lot of money for trainers Specialists better equipment and transportation to training centers some have an exceptional capacity for mental toughness to train and compete harder than the rest we all know one or two girls in school that were naturally gifted at sports some of them were bigger more muscular or taller but we didn't exclude them from sports or make them play on the boys teams there is no sound argument based on science or history to force transgender students to compete as their gender assigned at Birth there are only parents disappointed in their own kids for not winning and they sound a lot like the folks who used to say that African-American athletes had an unfair advantage and shouldn't be allowed to compete against white athletes thank
011you next we have C mahua I'm surprised to hear clapping allowed because during covid there was no when people were giving public comments there was no clapping allowed after public comments so I'd like to keep that fair but um I'm here to thank Corey and those involved in getting the vaping monitors um brought to the wache school district on a broader scale um I have been they know advocating behind the scenes to make that happen and Corey um I just have to thank you for making uh the steps to uh have have that happen this school year so I have talked to countless um parents who don't send their kids to wache high school or put their kids in running start as soon as they can because of the vaping problems um at wache high
012school and so I really think this is going to be something to turn start to turn the high school around I think there's things that we can do but this is like honestly going to be um a big step forward for our community um there are two other things that since the topic is being addressed tonight that I wanted to discuss and I I haven't come prepared as some people um but I have three boys and I have three girls and they all play sports and so I have seen um in my own home the major difference between raising a male athlete and a female athlete which are both talented in their own right and respect but they are very different um their body makeup how um they are able to compete how they are
013able to endure is different and it's not um it's not a bad difference but it is a major difference and um I was at a rugby um tournament this weekend and to watch the girls rugby versus The Boys Rugby you would never put the girls um with the Boys Rugby players because someone would be severely hurt um there is a definite physical advantage to being a male athlete over a female athlete in those um type of Athletics um I would advocate for you to please preserve female sports in the wachi school district I think this is something that um both sides of the aisle can agree on there's obviously some that don't but I think that this is something that we need to really work to preserve and I hope that that you can do
014that and then also um just making sure that boys do not use the girls bathroom and locker rooms like they were allowed to this last school year boys that identify as a boy were using female um bathrooms and locker rooms at wache high school this past school year and I just advocate for you to continue to preserve female sports and female bathrooms thank you I have no more signups okay moving on then to our special presentations excellent uh we'll start off today with our executive director of learning and teaching Heidi busk she'll give us an update on math and Ela uh data updates thanks IDI all right I just have to remember to click and click I think I can do that um good evening I'm here tonight to share insights on our students performance
015in mathematics and English language arts as your director of learning and teaching I have the privilege of working closely with our district and school administrators and teaching staff to analyze data to better understand our students academic progress and identify areas for improvement over the past several years our district has made significant strides in enhancing the quality of the education we provide my role involves not only evaluating test scores and assessment results but also collaborating with administrators and Educators to develop and Implement strategies that Foster student growth and achievement tonight I will I will present a comprehensive overview of our recent data in both math and Ela highlighting Trends successes and opportunities for further development this datadriven approach enables us to make informed decisions that support our promise to our students and our big six outcomes
016as with any data review it takes some time to understand all of the information you will have time to ask questions tonight after viewing the reading data and also after viewing the M data but you might also have questions after you have some time to digest the data a bit more um I'm happy to respond as more questions arise when our administrators learning Improvement teams and plc's meet to analyze data they work through a data protocol with guiding questions to understand the data and determine next steps this protocol includes looking for celebrations and areas for growth so tonight here are some things for you to think about some guiding questions as you view this data um that will help you think about the data a little bit more what can we celebrate what is concerning
017and how do we compare to the state our big six outcome number three states students will read on grade level by third grade and Beyond and will continue to grow their skills knowledge and abilities throughout their education and we measure that by I ready overall and SBA we also know that but there are other measures along the way that help us know if we're on track to meet our goal to get a sense of how our students across our district are growing as readers we will look at grades three five8 and nine reading data from multiple assessments the data from different assessments is analized and used by plc's school administrators and District leadership to improve student learning the El Ela data you will see tonight includes data from multiple sources um oral reading uency assessment
018is one piece of data you'll look at this has been shown to have a moderate to strong correlation with reading comprehension we use data from this assessment to pinpoint targeted reading intervention and extension uh needs for students you'll also be looking at some common formative assessment data or cfas as we like to call them which are developed by teachers and aligned to our priority standards the grade level or content area administers the CFA in the same way at about the same time these cfas measure reading comprehension plc's use this data to determine best practice instructional strategies and next steps to help students meet or exceed grade level standards you'll also be looking at I ready reading data and you're very familiar with that we look at that quite often which is an external adaptive assessment
019that is administered two to three times a year in grades k through eight I ready assesses reading but does not assess writing data from I ready provides a benchmark dipstick measur of student progress this data is especially helpful for grouping students when or reading extensions who are on or above grade level in foundational skills smarter balanced assessment is our final piece of data we'll look at tonight which is the state required assessment that assesses not only reading standards but also writing standards the ELA assessment for writing asks students to read and answer questions from multiple sources and write to a prompt they write either an informational persuasive or argumentative paper or a narrative story and must include information from the sources in their text this is lagging data as the assessment happens at the end
020of the school year it gives us longitudinal data for our overall system Effectiveness and is part of the measure on the Washington School Improvement framework some of the data you will see tonight is disaggregated by multilingual Learners and you'll see that referenced as ML and then we dis segregated that with non-ml students so our ml students and our nonm students so you'll see that a lot throughout our presentation tonight before we dig into the upper grades I wanted to share some highlights from our K2 students so 75% of our kindergarten students are proficient in foundational reading skills that means they are fast with their letters and sounds they can segment words into sounds they can blend words blend sounds to make words they can read those letters they understand that this is an increase of
02111 percentage points from last year 65% of our grade 1 students are proficient in foundational reading skills this is an increase of three percentage points from last year and 63% of grade two students are fluent and accurate decoders demonstrating proficiency with oral reading fluency this is an increase of nine percentage points from last year these results come from the hard work of our Educators our tier one instructional routine based on the science of reading and a strong system of targeted interventions for students needing additional time and support to reach grade level standards while we still have work to do we are seeing more and more students mastering important foundational reading skills each year so now we're going to start looking at the data so this is our first set of data and it focuses on
022student reading growth from the beginning to the end of the year from I ready the triangle on the right shows fall data and the triangle on the left shows end ofe data for this year green represents students honor above grade level yellow represents students who are one year behind and red represents students who are two or more years behind as you can see we increase the percent of students reading on or above grade level and decrease the percent of students needing intensive interventions in grade three the I ready assessed ment assesses phology which is hearing sounds in words phonics being able to decode those words vocabulary and reading comprehension if students have already mastered the first two foundational skills their score is based on vocabulary and reading comprehension the comprehension strand assesses both literary and
023informational text the top bar for each set of data represents string data and the bottom smaller lighter bar represents fall data as we zoom in to see how students are growing in their understanding of what they read we can see that the percent of students demonstrating grade level comprehension of both literary and informational text increased over the course of this school year this is represented by that green portion of the bars as you look at the red portion of the bar you can see that there was a decrease in the percent of students two or more years behind this is year-to-year comp comparison so it shows a year this graph shows a year-to-year comparison of the percent of third graders reading on or above grade level in the spring of 2023 and then in the
024spring of 2024 keep in mind that this data represents different groups of students who come to third grade with different skills and needs each year looking at the data this way helps us think about and make improvements to our instruction when tier one instruction is effective we should not see that year toe jumps up and down based on the group of students that come in when we have solid instruction we can should continue to see that maintain or even go higher we can look at the percentage of students at grade level the previous year and know this is the mark to improve on you can see that the percent of students demonstrating grade level oral reading fluency increased significantly that's those top two bars remember that oral reading fluency has a moderate to strong correlation
025with reading comprehension notice how close the 20 324 yellow bars for oral reading fluency and I ready R for our non ml students I ready data shows that the percentage of students demonstrating Mastery of both second grade and third grade standards stayed about the same both years with a slight decrease for non-ml students and students with disability this data also shows fewer multilingual Learners and special education students are reading on or above grade level the final two bars show the percentage of students demonstrating proficiency on literary and informational common formative assessments cfas um this year we worked with teachers to write or last year we worked with teachers to write Ela reading cfas and align to our priority standards and then this year we're trying them out we didn't have enough uh teachers try out
026the um no this grade we did literary and informational a different grade we didn't have enough literary information but that's the data for that um so let's look at a cohort group this graph shows the percent of students who demonstrated grade level proficiency with second grade standards and then with third grade standards this is the same group of students looking at the data this way helps us see a group of students and their Mastery of grade level standards from year to year the first set of shows the percent of students who were fluent with oral reading fluency based on the second grade Benchmark and then again on the third grade Benchmark it is important to note that the Benchmark for the number of correct words read per minute in oral reading fluency increases over the
027course of the year and then from year to year so students need to read more words per minute to still stay at grade level it is also important to note that the rigor of the standards increases at each grade level so seeing equal bars doesn't mean there was no reading growth for these students if the bars are equal it means that the same percent of students were proficient with second grade standards and then showed that same the same percent of students were proficient with third grade standards we can see by this data that there was an increase in the percent of students who demonstrated grade level Proficiency in the non-ml group we see a gap again between the percent of non-ml and ml students demonstrating grade level proficiency in both years finally the last two
028sets of bars show the percent of students with disabilities who demonstrated Proficiency in second grade and then the percent in third grade as you can see the percent of students demonstrating reading proficiency proficiency is larger in third grade as we zoom into the cohort reading data from second to third grade a little bit more we can look at school by school data we can see the percent of students by school who demonstrated grade level reading Proficiency in both second and third grade in most of the schools the percentage of students who demonstrated grade level proficiency increased from second grade to third grade all right we're moving on to grade five our next set of data focuses on fifth grade this data shows how students grew as readers during the 23 24 school year like third
029grade the percent of students reading honor above grade level green increase and the students needing intensive interventions red decreased from the beginning to the end of the school year as we zoom on the data a little bit more we can see the percent of students demonstrating grade level comprehension of both literary and informational text also increased over the course of this school year this is represented by the green portion of the bars this graph shows the year-to-year comparison of the percentage of fifth grade students reading at or above grade level in 23 and 20 and then in 2024 again keep in mind this is a different group of students who come with different skills and needs you can see that the percent of students demonstrating grade level oral reading fluency in grade five increased for
030all students again notice how close the 2324 yellow bars are for oral reading fluency and I ready non-ml students we do see that it's not close for our multilingual Learners and special education students which means that we have some work to do in that area of getting that oral reading fluency increased for them because that really is the the passage to comprehension I ready data shows the percentage of students reading on or above grade level decreased a bit across all groups this data also shows fewer multilingual Learners and special education students are reading on or above grade level the final bar shows the percentage of students demon demonstrating proficiency on the informational common formative assessment this year and we are still in the process of trying those out and tweaking them and revising them so
031we don't have enough information on our narrative uh com narrative comprehension CFA for fifth grade this year but you'll get to see that next year let's take a look at cohort data this graph shows the percent of students who demonstrated proficiency with fourth grade standards and then with fifth grade standards the first set of bars shows a shows the percent of students who were fluent and accurate Deco readers based on fourth grade Benchmark and then on fifth grade Benchmark we see a good increase in the percent of students meeting grade level fluency benchmarks we can see by this data that there was a decrease in the percent of students demonstrating proficiency on grade level standards from fourth to fifth grade for both ML and non-ml students but a slight increase in the percent of students
032with disabilities demonstrating proficiency with grade level standards from fourth to fifth grade so that happened in third grade and second to third and fourth to fifth we continue to see gaps in the percent of subgroups of students meeting grade level proficiency as we zoom into this cohort reading data from fourth to fifth grade we can again see the percent of students demonstrating level proficiency of fifth grade standards decreased slightly from fourth grade at most schools let's take a look at how I ready grade five data whoops you probably want to see it too um compares to our preliminary Ela SBA data this is preliminary um please note that the SBA data represents only students who tested the final SBA percentage for our district um from the state will be adjusted to account for students who
033did not take the smarter balance assessment but you can see that the I ready reading and the preliminary Ela SBA are very close in their results in the percent of students meeting standard this is another way to look at our um cohort for our SBA over time um we're going to see how they compare to the state over time so the graph shows how Co our cohort of fifth grade students compared to the state average achievement level in reading and writing based on the smarter balanced English language arts assessment you can see that our cohorts achievement level is very similar to the state achievement level and grade eight for fifth oops am I on the right spot I didn't check this one there we go our next set of data focuses on e8th grade this
034data shows how students grew as readers in the 23 24 school year like third and 5ifth the percent of students reading on or above grade level increased and students needing intensive intensive interventions decreased from the beginning to the end of the year you might notice that the increases and decreases get smaller as we move up the grades it gets harder and harder to catch students up as they progress through the grade levels this is why it's imperative to get our students reading at grade level as early as possible so they don't need that catchup in middle school as we zoom into the data a little more we can see that the percent of students demonstrating grade level comprehension of both literary and informational text also increased over the course of this school year um our
035year-to-year comparison for grade eight of students reading honor above grade level you might notice that there's not an oral reading fluency category we do assess all students in oral reading fluency in sixth through e8th grades in the fall just to make sure that they are where they need to be and then we just continue to uh teach and assess for oral reading fluency throughout the year for students that are not quite there yet I ready data shows the percent of students reading onor above grade level decreased slightly for our non-ml groups and quite a bit for our ml group from Seventh to 8th grade the percentage students proficient with grade level standards in seventh and eighth grades stayed the same the data also shows fewer MultiLing Learners and special education students are reading on or
036above grade level the final two sets of bars show the percentage of students demonstrating proficiency on literary and informational common formative Assessments in seventh and eth grade again notice that they're pretty close from our already already non-ml data and then the the percent of students or literary and informational cfas and our cohort by school digging into that school level grade seven to eight I ready reading data we can see that the percent of students demonstrating grade level Proficiency in e8th grade increased slightly from seventh grade at Foothills Middle School and decreased slightly at Orchard and Pioneer I included Valley's data but it's hard to compare because their numbers are so much smaller than end numbers but I wanted you to have that opportunity to see that also and then our I ready oops our um
037SBA how our I ready and SBA grade eight data compare um please note again that this is preliminary SBA data but they're very comparable which tells us that our I ready reading assessment is a pretty good predictor and they say that it is they did a big study um over the course of a few years and and we can see in our own data that it's a good predictor for us of how students will perform on the smarter balance assessment and finally this is how our e8th grade cohort compares to the state over time moving on to high school this is our um grade nine English reading on grade level um ninth grade reading data shows the percentage of students who were on or above grade level standard on grade nine English common formative assessments
038uh they do not have they don't take the SBA and they they they they don't take the SBA you might they don't also take the I ready reading assessment you might notice that across our system from kindergarten to high school we have an assessment system that uses common formative assessments to frequently monitor student learning and adjust instruction as well as to provide targeted instruction for students needing additional time and support to reach grade level standard um because students are not assessed on the n9th grade SBA um we still want to see ninth grade ELA data from more than one data point interim assessments are made available to teachers to use as formative assessments throughout the year they are similar to SBA but focus in on a narrower set of standards and have fewer questions nth
039grade students took an interim Ela assessment which is labeled as IAB on the chart so you can see that right there for all students and then multilingual Learners the bottom two bars show preliminary SBA data for 10th grade SBA remember that this preliminary data only shows the results for student who took the assessment and the results will change for our district when they factor in students who did not take the assessment the bottom two bars show the gap between MLS and non-mls is being shored up so that's a good thing it appears that nth grade IAB is a strong predictor of who will meet standard on SBA and supports teachers in identifying which students need additional support and I'm excited to share this data with you let's take a look at our weda language assessment
040data the weda assessment measures students English Prof Proficiency in listening reading speaking and writing reading is often assessed through science and math concepts and problems as you might recall our professional development this year focused on wachi School District essential instructional strategies which included getting 100% of students engaged in listening speaking reading and writing in the classrooms our waeda data shows that we greatly increase the number of students who demonstrated English proficiency this year across our across our system um and as we look at this data pay particular attention to grades four and five in this last box and you can see it in last year's data but even a huge increase this year um of students who exited the program because they proved that they were proficient um in English language development based on the
041waeda um this year um we've heard in the past and and OPI heard it also that we have a lot we had students who would pass the smarter Balan Ela assessment and still not be at that level 4.7 that they needed to be at on the weda to exit the program so OPI heard uh what teachers and administrators were saying and they have a second way that students can exit the program now so the new extra ex exit criteria says that if students earn a score between 4.3 and 4.6 because 4.7 used to be the only measure in grades two and up um if they get a score between 4.3 and 4.6 on the weda and earn a level three or four on the ELA SBA they can also exit El services so this number
042is going to go up for our number of students who exited because we are waiting on OPI to validate that and then we have many students who met standard but weren't at a 4.7 so we're going to see that number go up in the students that exited this year so that was a lot of data um so I just wanted to kind of highlight some summaries and takeaways um as I was putting this data together and reflecting with with administrators and and teachers um takeaways students are growing as readers across our system because of our evidence-based literacy instruction and PLC work we see gaps between our multilingual Learners and our non- multilingual Learners we see that our proficiency levels are not where they should be yet students with disabilities are demonstrating response to instruction intervention
043we have a system of common formative assessments that monitors student progress frequently and provides information to teachers for which students for which students need more time and support or extensions and in weda we increase we had an increase in our exited students especially with our elementary students um our professional development data guides what we do so we know we need to continue with improving tier one first best core instruction and continue supporting plcs with systems for intervention and extensions questions for the reading portion or celebrations I always have a lot um thank you for the data um it's a lot and we're not finished yet um so help me understand with these the weda exited students those are counted as multilingual in the SBA and I ready because they were still identified as multilingual when
044they took the IR ready and the SDA that's a really good question I they exited earlier than they took that their data came in earlier so I don't know if they would be counted as MLS or not so I will check into that for you that's a great question and I mean I'm pretty sure you know where I'm going with this um it's great that we yeah you're showing us that the district is showing us the data um it's still not pretty to look at and I appreciate you pointing out that we're not where we need to be with the multi- language learners what are we doing about it because this is something that has been persistent to the district yeah um and we can go beyond multi we can go to our low social
045economic students um we are seeing increases with special education which is fabulous we've seen a change in models um in regards to special education so we can definitely celebrate those yeah the reality is that with the district with a large number of multilingual Learners low social economic students Etc I mean great we're identifying them but what are we identifying what are we doing that's actually making an impact that is wonderful I'm glad you asked it I'm just tired of seeing the same numbers lagging and are non-ml are growing but the Gap the achievement Gap is not closing and that's what's so frustrating for me to see year after year after year um you know we have different strategies but that Gap continues to get larger yes um yeah so thank you for presenting it but
046yeah so so I'm so glad you asked that because last year was our first year of really focusing on instructional strategies that are essential for our multilingual Learners and we did a workshop on it and we talked about that and our district trainers have provided professional development to our administrators and our teachers as we walk around we're seeing a couple things we're seeing teachers implementing strategies but we're still seeing students who are not talking in the classroom yet and the strategies are to get kids talking so we don't abandon an that strategy and that practice after one year it's just in the beginning phases and this year our professional development will continue to focus on giving teachers more strategies and structures to help get the kids talking because if they're not saying it they're not
047learning it so we aren't seeing the student to student talk as much as we want to the good news is we're starting to see teachers providing time for it but wondering how do I get my kids to talk so the the professional development we're doing this year and I would encourage you guys to come and see come be part of our professional development in August is really helping to move that forward so we're starting to see pockets of that happening and we know that we were in the beginning phases and now we're in the getting more refined we're trying to get more refined on those strategies to now see the student talk piece so that is something that we are doing continuing to focus on because we will see the results when we start to
048get those students talking again we're also continuing the work on our plc's and looking at student data something we saw this year and I didn't break down CFA data by ML and non-ml um but our teachers talk about that every time they look at the results of the CFA so they know who their students are they sort by who our multilingual Learners are who are not and they're getting interventions we're stronger in the foundational skills piece we're not as strong when it comes to comprehension because that vocabulary piece is a big piece pie of that comprehension too so that's one of our essential strategies is vocabulary instruction with academic vocabulary so thank you for asking we don't like to see the Gap either because every student needs to be able to demonstrate grade level standards
049or Beyond and that's what we say right so they're ready and we we are working towards that but that's an excellent question and we're working on it every day every year well I appreciate you being so kind it's just it it's it we have a lot of work to do and um you know to see that Gap widening and widening um it's it's not good yeah one of the things to think about Maria and this we're gonna talk a long time tonight um one of the things to think about is when we look at our um fourth and fifth grade students and Beyond they the old model and I know we did this we used to and now we last year are multilingual Learners their opportunity for intervention was either reading intervention or language support
050they didn't get both and that model doesn't happen anymore so those students went through our system when they didn't get that opportunity to have that early intervention in reading so as we look at these upper grades I see yeah there's a gap because didn't get it here so now we're trying to fill that in and do have grade level comprehension standards so yeah that's all I'll say for now okay um I have pretty much the same comments from as Maria it is concerning to see that Gap um and I there's a lot of data I appreciate it and I appreciate having at least two groups or more more than two groups but two critical groups for me where you're looking at the differences and need to follow up on it perhaps we can learn assist
051attend more uh listen in more this year but where I was going was just uh something I'd like to look at it seems that the gaps are worse as you go up the education system the pre-re gaps are a little less severe than the three than the five than the eight um I don't want to grab false hopes do you see anything in that I would think the pre-grade 3s perhaps a less hurt by the pandemic do you see that speculative uh work work work not false hopes but I just wonder if you see anything in the short term that encourages you yeah um with our K3 is that what you're asking yeah um yeah we're seeing we're not seeing the big gaps we're not seeing the big gaps and in classrooms who are really
052implementing those strategies and a few other um strategies that haven't one other strategy that hasn't been rolled out across the whole system but some teachers are are using it we see in some cases in first grade Almost 100% of students in a school in a grade level in a classroom pockets of Excellence right now meeting standard mastering foundational skills if it can happen there it can happen anywhere so we just need to get that and share that along that's what data does for for us it tells us where is it working and how can we replicate that in other places so we're seeing it we're seeing positive across our system but in zooming in to places where this is the system that we need this is the instruction and this is what it should look
053like in every classroom you see any difference between an anglophone and a bilingual um Spanish English in terms of adaption adaptation to the science of reading as we're teaching it can you repeat that please for me do you see any difference in the takeup of structured literacy between two languages um or people who use two languages versus one oh like for instance our dual Language School um or I just mean generally because sometimes people will say that the science is constructed more for English less for Spanish even if you're learning in English you may have be influenced by Spanish comprehension in various ways do you scientifically educationally see any differences and barriers in the techniques that are being used um when we're instructing in English one of the things that we're seeing in our foundational
054skills instruction is that we need to tweak the research-based program that we're using thing to stop and talk about the meaning of those little words along the way so that is one thing that um one of the schools said you know we're really doing this effectively they are like topnotch following uh systematic sequential instructional literacy routine for foundational skills but they said our multilingual Learners aren't growing as much and they're getting that same instruction so why not so what they determined and they Tri out was we're going to make sure that our students understand the vocabulary like when we're when we're segmenting d a dog we're gonna have a picture of a dog just so that they have that because when they have that understanding of the word it makes more sense so that was
055one thing that they noticed Just In Action research what they're doing um I think that the vocabulary piece has a lot to do with it but students are are segmenting our SD instru instructional strategies for listening speaking reading and writing if we are using those and using those consistently and effectively kids learn the vocabulary along the way also because it's part of the instruction that we do but I do think that um the language has a is makes it a little bit harder unless we understand the needs of the Learners that we have great question one more one it's not a question um so one thing that we that you mentioned multiple times um that we don't really talk too much about is the impact that uh students that don't take the SBA has on
056District on the district um assess on our overall score yeah um so what is the well I guess it is a question how are we attacking that because if you have a large number of students or a number of students that don't take the SBA it's obviously reflected in our scores which brings down overall our district score which is what the public sees right yeah but we need to fill in those gaps as to identifying why those students are taking it what are we doing as an approach um and I'm assuming as students get older we have a little bit more of a challenge getting them yeah we do um it's definitely something that we need to talk about as a district and and address make some plans yeah and it's going to be it's
057going to be education education to our families of the importance of the smarter balance assessment and the impacts that it can have on their student it also we need to educate our families on um the impacts of what it has uh on their graduation requirements and making it through all of those um high school expectations so it is it's all about education we can do that I will just add one thing I learned is that the students who qualify for running start in those programs are able to opt out of the SBA so that was yeah oh I don't I don't I don't know that for sure I think it's a that no they can't there is still there is still an expectation that everyone sits for that SBA at it's a requirement yeah but
058I think a lot of them do choose not to correct yeah so that's another thing we need to work on right yes because I was presented with the waiver of hey Mom can you uh wave wave this for me after taking the first day so there's rumors and gossip going around the school that you can opt out of out of that at so well the state doesn't say op we can opt out so yeah have to work on that one thank you all right are you ready to move on to math okay let's do it oops okay big six outcome number four reads that students will be on grade level or above or Beyond by eth grade in algebra as measured by overall I ready overall in SBA to get a sense of how our
059students across our district are growing in their math skills we'll look again at 358 and N um math data from multiple assessments including common formative assessments we have them for ELA and math um and actually at the elementary level we've had um the math assessments we started those first and so we've had time to administer them see how students do Revis them then the next year we did it again so this year they took a revised version um and then they actually the teachers then got together and revised them again based on what they saw and the data that it provided um I already math again and we know what that's about we do know that on IR math it assesses um different domains so it assesses number and operations algebraic thinking measurement in data
060and geometry we'll look at overall data for these domains and dig in deeper to the data around our our priority standards that are mostly in the number and operations and algebraic thinking strands and then we'll also look at some Smarter Balance data again keep in your mind what can we celebrate what is concerning and how do we compare to the state and we'll start with third grade again this is our overall grade three I ready math data that shows that students came in and there were only 11% of students at grade level there was a summer dip and not solid on some skills yet and they increased to 40% of students at grade level at the end of the year um they also dramatically decreased from SE 42% to 177% the students that were um
061needed intensive interventions to reach grade level standards um so we know that I already assessment assesses all of those but we're going to dig into these two strands because this is where the majority of our priority standards lie so number and operations which includes place value conceptual understanding and computation and decimal and fractions I've got an itchy nose algebraic thinking which includes problem solving computational fluency and equations and then um we are not going to dig into geometry and data and modeling this this round the majority of our prior priority standards are in the number and operations and algebraic thinking domains so we will zoom into these two domains we can see that our third grade students demonstrated significant growth in both number and operations and algebraic thinking over the course of this year our
062year-to-year comparison shows the percent of students meeting standard um in grade spring of grade three and then a different group of students meeting standard in the spring of 24 we can see that the% of non-ml and ml students meeting standard each year stayed about the same in 23 and 24 we do see an increase in the percent of students with disabilities meeting both second grade standards in 23 and third grade standards in 24 and when we look at the comparison between the percent of students demonstrating grade level proficiency with our priority standards a smaller percentage of students were proficient in number and operation standards in third grade than in second grade and about the same percentage were proficient in third grade algebraic thinking standards than second grade the bottom two bars represent the percent of
063students who demonstrated grade level or above proficiency on this year's math cfas um one of the things to know and we'll talk about it more later is there are certain years in math that are more of a build on this the concepts and skills you know and then get better at those and there are certain years where they pop in a lot of new skills so grade three is one of those years where student stud in K2 have been working on addition and subtraction and really getting good at addition and subtraction and then in grade three we add in multiplication and division Concepts understanding and fluency with basic facts and we also add in fractions so understanding fractions um as numbers up until grade three they've seen fractions as on a pi and they cut
064the pi or in fourth in a box and third grade is the year when they start to really understand fractions as numbers on a number line and then they do work with comparing and equivalent fractions so big jump between second and third grade Mastery of standards and so um I just want you to be aware of that third grade is one of those years G grade two to three cohort data shows the percent of non-ml students demonstrating grade level proficiency decreased from second to Third grade but multilingual and special education groups had the same percent of students meeting both grade four and five standards with the gap for multilingual Learners and special education students continuing in math the bottom two sets of ours show the percent of students who demonstrated proficiency with second grade St
065standards and uh third grade standards in number and operations and algebraic thinking um which brings multip lication we see a slight decrease in the percent for number and operations because it brings in those things we talked about multiplication and division Concepts and fraction understanding we do see an increase in the percent of students demonstrating grade level proficiency from second to third in algebraic thinking um and the thing about that in third grade is that the big focus of algebraic thinking has been um in K1 two um three on problem problem solving and then writing equations to match the problem which is much more difficult than it sounds but um so third grade their algebraic content standards didn't change a lot it refined and got deeper into problem solving with larger numbers and with um so
066um it makes me wonder if that's why we saw percentage increase there um we one of our essential strategies this year that we provided professional development on for math was our problem solving language routine which might have led to an increase in the students demonstrating Proficiency in the problem solving area zooming into the I ready strands that address our priority standards this data shows a decrease oops did I get to the wrong one hang on all right we did that okay we're ready to go on there we go um zooming into the I ready strands that address our priority standards um number and operations um the data shows a decrease in the percent of students meeting grade level standard in the number and operations strand as reflected by the overall District data a list of
067grade level skills for each grade is listed in the boxes so you can see the increase in the standards and when something is brand new sometimes it takes some students longer longer to master than others and so the way our standards are written is we introduce it in one year and learn it conceptually and then we practice it in the next year and then the next year is where that standard says you need to be fluent or Master this this certain skill or concept because we're moving on so um a lot of new was in grade three in number and operations when we look at the um algebraic thinking Strand and we see school by school again um we increased from second to third grade in almost all schools the percentage of students meeting standard
068um and then again notice how the skills change from second to third it's pretty much the same just with larger numbers um okay and then we move on to grade five an overall grade five I ready math data shows an increase in the percent of students who are honor above standard and a s significant decrease in the percent of students needing intensive intensive interventions in math and as we zoom in on those two strands over the course of a year we can see really good growth from 20% to 49% um over the course of the year in numbers and operations and in algebraic thinking from 177% to 39% So within the year students are are growing their skills our year-to-year comparison shows a percent of students demonstrating proficiency with grade level standards in 23 and
06924 on both um the I assessment as well as grade five common formative assessments a reminder this is different groups of students we again see the gap for our multilingual Learners and special education students the bottom two bars show us that the percent of students proficient on grade level standards decrease from fourth grade standards to fifth grade standards again this helps us focus our math professional development for teachers in this area and we'll dig to see how those standards those two domains change between fourth and fifth grade so this is our cohort grade four to five so we see a decrease in our non-ml percent of students meeting grade level standard for non-ml are I ready I think we already looked at that one number and operations and I read algebraic thinking there we go
070now we'll dig into the number and operations strend further notice the new skills and Concepts that are addressed in grade five so through grade four they are now seeing addition subtraction multiplication division more work with fractions comparing add subtracting multiplying fractions decimal fractions and fraction word problems in grade five in number and operations they dig more deeply into dividing decimals and um this is the first year in grade five where they start to learn about decimal place value and then they do operations with decimals so there's a lot of concept building in there and I already I already doesn't I don't feel that it gives students much opportunity to show their conceptual understanding on this um on decimal place value it's really a foundational year for them as I shared earlier we often see this
071dip when there are new more complex Concepts and skills introduced at a grade level so when we look at algebraic thinking again we see that dip but what happens in fifth grade is something they've never seen before so in fifth grade they're evaluating expressions and equations they're learning about order of operations and ordered pairs that's all there is in the algebraic thinking standards for fifth grade so it's completely brand new Concepts for them to learn about in fifth grade um and and they did grow you saw growing over the year but we're not seeing we're seeing that dip in the percent of students mastering that from grade to grade there here's how our I ready math compares to the preliminary SBA and here's how we compare SBA to the state grade eight we still see
072a growth in our green but it's not as much as we get into those upper grades it's harder to catch kids up when they're not they don't come in with the skills they need to start with and then um a a small increase in our students who need additional time and support um we're seeing growth in our number and operation Strand and our algebraic thinking Strand and our year-to-year comparison for grade eight I ready math subgroups remember this is not the same group of students we see an increase in the percent of students demonstrating proficiency of grade level standards for non-ml students and a significant Gap with our subgroups we also see a decrease in the percent of students demonstrating Proficiency in number and operations in algebraic thinking and again those standards change our grade
073eight I um algebra and algebra thinking we um saw tremendous increase in the percent of students demonstrating uh Mastery of grade level standards over the course of the Year this is a huge celebration this might be due to our priority standards being heavily aligned to the algebraic to algebraic thinking and plc's engag in cycles of continuous Improvement and tier one instru instruction Focus also on academic vocabulary for math grade seven to eight cohort data shows the percent of students meeting grade level standards increased at Foothills and Pioneer from Seventh to e8th grade and the percent of students meeting both seventh and eth grade standards stayed the same at Orchard again it's hard to compare Valley due to those small numbers this graph represents the percent of students demonstrating proficiency or above in proportional reasoning reasoning
074on grade eight cfas the standard on this CFA falls under the algebraic thinking domain on I ready we see the percent of students meeting standard on the CFA is similar across all three schools and this graph represents a percent of students demonstrating proficiency or or above on P Pythagorean theorem on grade 8 cfas by school and this would also fall under the algebraic thinking strand of I ready this is where when we look at this data and you're probably wondering why is one school's bar so much higher than the others and we wonder and as a as a system we wonder so did they do something differently teams talk about that or do we are we all administering the CFA the same way are we using some allowing notes and some not allowing notes we
075have common Administration agreements in k through eight for our cfas but are we all following them do we need to look at them again so that's another question we wonder um or maybe you know the rigor of the assessment is like different maybe we need to look at that and see um are we all teaching to the rigor of the assessment and teaching that standard rigor or above the proficiency so a lot of questions happen when we data that looks so different here's how grade eight compared um oh I didn't put the numbers on there I'm sorry um I already math and preliminary math SBA and here's how our eighth graders compared to the state and now we're going to look at high school algebra um algebra one these are this is CFA data for
076nth grade because they don't take the spa um the graph represents the percent proficient proficient or above on algebra one green is proficient blue is above um when I look at this data it makes me wonder um a couple things like do we have the rigor of the standard um are we really does our CFA reflect the rigor of the standard um and do we have common scoring agreements for this standard so here are our math takeaways we see a trend of within the year growth according to I um an increase of learning results with students with IEPs we see gaps between our multilingual and non- multilingual Learners and special students with disabilities we see our proficiency levels are still not where we want them to be because we guarantee these standards we should see
077are students meeting these standards there's a system of common formative assessments again that monitor student progress frequently um and provide information to teachers for which students need additional time and support weeda growth is showing great increase especially at the elementary and waa assesses reading through math story problems word problems so that's an interesting concept that we learned um about WEA uh data dips in years for new and more complex concepts are being taught we tend to see that and significant growth in I ready algebraic thinking domain in 8th grade might be attributed to the work of math plc's we wonder and then professional development kind of as we look at data we think that how are we going to help this be better um we need to continue focusing on tier one first best core
078instruction in math um and time and support for students not yet at standard we don't at elementary level across our system have an intervention system for math like we have for reading at all buildings yet so that's a grow for us PD strategies to teach fractions and decimal operations in grade 35 we see that as a need and we see um that more opportunities for students we need to provide more opportunities for students to engage in the use of iabs that are directly aligned to the smarter Balan assessment all right um before I stop for questions this just kind of talks about what are some next steps for us um so we will continue professional development of WSC essential strategies that are essential for our multilingual Learners and excellent for all Learners um which includes
079structured student talk academic discussions vocab academic vocabulary and academic language and also supporting structured reading and writing because remember the SBA assesses not only reading skills but also that high demand writing on demand writing um which is rigorous and and I'd love to share more about what students can do um in that area and then ongoing leadership professional learning and team data reviews our leadership team looks at data looks at CFA data talks about CFA data and we'll continue to do that on a regular basis and then support plc's and guaranteed and viable curriculum oops all right I'm ready thanks for hanging in there with me it was well worthwhile and it's similar Food For Thought similar pattern similar long-term work thank you very much and to your people thank you one of the questions
080I have is it's disappointing to see the the what looks like a decline in year-to year especially in the math I mean 23 looks so much stronger than 24 and you're explaining in terms of we're adding new skills to these third graders that they didn't see in second grade are we picking the best places then to be measuring students would it be better to measure them in like fourth or sixth grade if there's not as many new skills taught because if we're SK if that is the reason for the skew of the dat how do we yeah develop a strategy to to help that and we do have data for every grade level um we just picked certain ones or I would be here for days sharing it with you but I can definitely share
081more data with you but yeah it it almost seems like the way that especially the math the way it's the standards are built second grade would be a great way to say check in on like are they proficient with addition and subtraction and probably solving um with the basic facts and numbers within a 100 because that's a year then third grade it changes and then fourth grade might be a better year so look NE next time we might look at second and fourth and see what we see there that's that's an interesting idea yeah I'm just thinking maybe in terms of looking comparing third to fourth grade did there they you know I mean yeah maybe first to second grade would work as well are they on track for yeah but two that are closer
082skills that's what I'm think because if that's the explanation it's hard to know are they or are they not I mean it's super disappointing to look at from the data because you want to see we've put all this work in and you want to see the progression year to year and so to look at that it's it's what are we not doing what's going backwards and at all levels we have things to work on clearly but yeah I agree that's a great idea and one of the things that that um was like a bright spot at the beginning of the school year is the sixth grade math teachers said I don't know what you're doing but these kids are coming in stronger in their math understanding than we have seen in a long time so
083it might not show every year in this I ready the way that we are assessing I ready but what kids are coming in with and their depth and understanding of fractions has improved and we haven't even targeted professional development for teachers on fractions yet but one of the things that happens with math in elementary school especially is our teachers have had years of reading professional development years and and some writing too and then with our structured literacy and the science of reading again a lot but what has happened traditionally in math professional development is we adopt a program and they come in and teach us how to use the program and that's it and so I'm passionate about not letting that happen anymore because our teachers deserve to have the most knowledge like they do
084with science of reading in math instruction and so we're really working on that um in many different ways so I know that when that work continues and the more we build our knowledge of our big people the more we can develop the knowledge of our little people so we need to make sure we can continue to do that um but it's they just haven't had the opportunities to grow professionally in math as much over the course of years in elementary as they have in literacy so we're gonna we're gonna help that we're g to give them more opportunities for that okay my comments are the same I mean what I about reading I mean they they they transfer to math yeah all right well you hung in there that was a lot of data I
085had 56 slides and you saw them all so thank you so much and please attend our professional development come and see what we're learning in August I think it might be really um insightful for you or we'll come to a workshop with you again so thank you thank you next up is the special presentation for the consolidation and budget reduction update excellent Heidi thank you so much for uh for the data and uh and the work that you and your team are doing and we're excited to um hear how that work and professional development um helps us next year as well so thank you um good evening uh board of directors and thank you for the time this evening uh this is our final board meeting for the 2324 school year so wow uh that
086went amazingly fast um and uh tonight I plan on sharing with you an update to the consolidation planning on the closure of Columbia Elementary and our budget update so there's lots of different topics here um that we'll be moving through and I'm going to try to um do that succinctly U with my notes and on the screen for everyone so first off I want to share uh the information on what we've been up to since our May 14th decision and uh we begin with the continuation of our transition planning um as you are very well uh in the know of uh we were planning for two different scenarios uh this year one with the possible closure of Columbia Elementary and one with uh possibly not closing Columbia Elementary so we are continuing that transitioning planning
087uh throughout much of the uh the spring actually late winter and spring uh with that work came uh additional mailings to families describing the pertinent information once that decision was made and then um so we had a mailing that came out immediately following the the decision and one that came right after school was out um which a letter from potentially their new principal so if the students went to Lincoln they got a letter from their current principal uh SC duber and then if they went to uh Washington they got a letter from their new principal uh Jessica Bryant we also had um there's been a lot of orchestration around uh the staff packing and moving planning um moving a lot of people in our system in a short period of time um so we've been
088working on that the logistical side of things the actual moving side of things which is happening this week as we speak um maybe not as I speak but it was happening during the day today um and I talked checked in with our director of uh maintenance and operation uh Brian brocky and he said things are moving uh moving uh swiftly and efficiently um and everything's going well um however you move things around you uncover other items that present themselves so it's it's going smoothly as uh as could be we also had um our op our openhouse um openhouse information planning was much earlier this year um and planned in advance with additional information and planning to support our new students and where they will be going um we also had uh additional planning that was
089taking place with all of our departments um and our uh teaching special so we had planning with our nutrition services our custodial services our maintenance and operation teams and then the teaching Specialists of Library art music and fitness some of the work uh that our transition teams were uh were working on as well I'll just put them up here we had our uh logistical planning with increased students and so everything from supervision uh to intervention to recess Etc uh so lots of different things that those groups are uh looking at and planning for uh one of the things that we may not think about a lot but our building administrators are is what are the parking lot routines for efficiency and how do we not slow down the process of dropping off and picking up
090our children and making sure that safety is accountable accounted for um the other pieces as well as nutrition services um what does Food Service look like what does the timing look like with an increased number of students in your building um and those are very unique challenges that uh that Lincoln and Washington are working on as well we also have uh some schools that will have transition to kindergarten or TK for the first time and so they're working on planning for the space for the children um also working on the flow and the movement of the students throughout the building um planning for the specialist schedules uh making sure that each of those uh uh TK students has access to um uh art and music and fitness uh as well as their other courses so
091making sure that they're in the rotation of the specialist schedules um and then ensuring that we have curriculum and we have furniture for four-year-olds that needs to be addressed um in a timely fashion so we have uh we have one new additional classroom that's at Mission view uh and then we have a new classroom at Washington in a new classroom at Newberry this year other things that are happening is uh working really uh well to make sure that the information to our families is getting out and we're at we're uh um accessing obviously the mailings that I talked about uh we're leveraging uh uh radio which we will continue to work on uh throughout the summer and as we move toward the beginning of the school year and we're also uh transitioning to parent Square
092um as many of you know in the system we've had some challenges with our uh our blooms our shift to blooms this year and we're moving to parents Square which is a program that uh purchase remind so um we're excited about that transition and our communication uh protocols and increasing that communication with our parents and families and then as always utilizing our website uh as best we can and adding the cool little popup feature that Diana puts in there for us so thanks Diana love that uh let's see here additional support so how are we intentionally supporting all of our students as these shifts are being made um is a hugely important question and making sure that the correct resources are following the students and as we talked about uh in the late winter and
093in the spring uh we know that our students with IEPs and with disabilities will have their support following them as well as our special program uh migrant and bilingual students uh and so we know that that is happening and here are a few other extra resources that are going to be provided to help students transition to their new schools at Washington we uh will see the intervention shifts which we talked about in the written analysis and also followed up with in the addendum to the written analysis and we also have uh some increases in uh our library books so literacy language access and diversity through bilingual editions so there were many books um at Colombia that will now move to Lincoln Elementary and will also move to Washington Elementary we have also increased um uh
094from a time Family Advocate to a full-time Advocate uh at Washington uh Elementary which we are excited about to help increase bilingual support and access for parents and families as they uh come into the building and uh and need to understand what is happening and uh get directions on how to support their students in the building in addition uh we have TK planning and classroom preparation at Washington and then um we have the potential potential addition of student support specialist time uh with we have a grant funding through our stronger connections Grant to have eight uh student support specialists in our elementary schools and we know that with the closure of Colombia that would leave uh an additional uh SSS is what we call them so I'm trying to use the the language of the
095student support specialist but we would have an additional SSS and so some of that time we're working on having that land at uh at Washington Elementary and also support the other ssss uh as well and at Lincoln the extra some of the extra resources again this the same uh few at Washington there with our intervention specialist shifts and then the additional Library resources uh they are also adding uh additional Staffing through their High poverty funds they have dollars that are given to them uh for the uh level of socioeconomic status students that they have in their building so they'll have an additional uh counseling resource there as well and we're looking at and I'll explain this in a little bit more detail we're looking at busing uh for Lincoln students that are in the Lincoln
096section of the Columbia boundary uh as well and I'll explain a little bit more about that when I move into the safe routes to schools uh part of our presentation today and I have to catch up here okay first part of today's presentation that's the first section there so wondering if you might have any questions or clarifications that I can um address at this time okay let's keep on rolling um as we get into the safe routes to school um in our collaboration with the city of Wane uh law enforcement and the traffic safety commission uh these are some of the things that um are we're working with with our schools um Lincoln obviously working on uh grappling with the The Walking issue and the fery street kind of debacle um we are also working
097on the short and long-term goals of what that looks like and making sure that the area around Fairy Street is adequately addressed as a school zone because right now that we know that it that it could be better and then also working on um on on busing for uh for those students because of this work we we still have concerns about the short-term goals versus the long-term goals of that Fairy Street crossing and we're working on bus routes uh for the students of the Columbia boundary who will be going to Lincoln and I'll explain a little bit more about what the difference is between those short-term goals and the long-term goals and what we're hoping for um and uh and what we don't think that we'll be able to get right away as soon as
098we would like to see that Washington we're working on uh of the safest routes uh for students to get to school walking um we're also we know that Washington has a large uh uh parent drop off and pickup and so we're working on uh those Logistics um also playing with a little bit of Bus drop off and pickup we know that there are three buses that come to Washington um and they have an amazing access for bus ramp uh pickup and drop off um so we're looking at how that coordination works as well so just a few things that impact the safe routes to school okay so here's some of the short-term uh the short-term items that we are looking at um in collaboration again with the city of wachi law enforcement and tra uh
099the traffic safety commission we've identified some short-term goals that we would like to see happen um one of those is extending the no parking Zone on either side of the street at Ferry Street to increase that visibility for students so when students are when cars are coming up that hill then they can see the line of sight a lot a lot further so that students um are easily uh identified we know there are some students that are crossing uh that street already um and we and so no matter what we know that there will be students Crossing uh regardless of busing routes or um whatever it is that the district puts into place so we want to make sure that these short-term gains um are are done as soon as possible to protect the safety
100of those students um we also have uh we want to add some school zone signage in that area and make sure that we increase uh the knowledge and understanding of our community members um and our families and just the general commuter that this is a school zone and we need to be aware of that uh also working to um extend that school zone signage from for the Walkers all the way from our Lincoln Zone to Pioneers so having that stretch all the way up Fairy Street as it turns into Russell Street as well um so we're excited about that Prospect because we do know that we have some students that will walk that entire Continuum and then the younger students will go to Lincoln and the older students will walk to Pioneer Middle School and
101then the even older students will walk then to wane high school so making sure that we're uh working on addressing all of those we've also discussed extending um the merge lane to turn onto the okan aen street so that uh so that is not as abrupt as it has been or is right now so we'll be looking at extending that and the nice thing about that is they can extend that with just some paint um so that will be helpful for us in a short-term goal um we also um have have asked um that there be some Road signage painted on the street so as we have um some crosswalk uh identified areas but actually have signage on the street that says student Crossing um and when you see that in some of the more
102metropolitan areas it's very large and you can see that very well super ident identifiable um and then finally on the short term is we're looking to have uh potentially some movable signage where you might have um all sorts of little yellow people and they have some they have some signage and you can see that downtown a little bit um and we'd like to work on some of those things those are all things that we can address in the short term to help our students who are already Crossing and the students who uh may also be Crossing even if we are busing students from that area we know that some students will still be walking um so the other part of it though is the long-term goals and the long-term goals um we're we're excited about
103but they're not going to be here right away and we know that because of the way the grant process works um but I think that we as we're learning more about it we just want to make sure that those long-term goals are things that we want for our uh walkers in the future and we want to make sure that their safety is Paramount so as we work with the city we're learning that the city's uh the city's three e right how do we combine engineering education and enforcement to create safe to schools and so our long-term goals um are to improve safety for students throughout the district and one of the things that is a byproduct of the work that has happened um on this transition plan is that uh this collaboration between uh the
104city and the traffic safety commission and the school district is we're actually auditing the entire safe routes to school program and not just those that impact uh Lincoln and Washington because of Columbia's closure so this will be ongoing process that I am really excited about and so we're going to improve the safety for students throughout the district but long term we do want to improve the safety for that uh that fery Street area uh the city of wian is collaborating with us on their priority list uh they had a priority list before the conversation about closing Columbia happened and so they've allowed us to work with them and identify additional priorities and then how we've kind of rearranged what those priorities are looking like and how we can go after some grant funding to go
105uh to address these items in the future so there is grant funding that is specifically for the city of Wan uh that they will be going after and then there is a grant funding that is available through the traffic safety commission that the WAN school district will be going after to continue our long-term plans uh with safe routes to schools and the grant funding from the traffic safety commission will allow dollars to help facilitate data collection for the city and the school district um so we will be able to understand where we have uh more dangerous uh patterns with Traffic Safety in the future uh it will also help us create school zone beacons for fery street or other identifiable uh Crossing areas and finally it will help with uh bulb outs um this is
106new language for me uh and obviously we know what bul bouts are but um very common in the uh in the vernacular when we talk about this the engineering side of this work they can paintt in a short term they can paint bulb outs but obviously they're not as impactful as the real physical bulb outs that we would like to see in the future and so because of some of these items being too far uh in the Horizon we've decided to uh to bus our students in the Lincoln section of the former Columbia boundary until we can get some of these uh more long-term uh items taken care of uh in the near future just for the safety of our students okay and I have education and enforcement and so we'll just run through this
107uh section here um for the education side of things we still plan to have a communication plan for our parents our students and our families we are going to leverage radio announcements on various St on various stations so that we can give some public service announcements to help uh as part of the city and the school district and the Traffic Unit um in in helping uh safe routes to schools for our our students we'll leverage social media announcements um working with Partnerships with local agencies um we also have some we're also working on some popup tents and some publicity and uh how we can really help our community know and understand when school begins we're going to need them to help us in these certain um hight trffic areas we also want to partner with
108our parent volunteers because the more adults that we have at some of these uh uh Crossings the better and there's a program called Target zero uh which which hopes to end traffic fatalities by 2030 and they are looking at uh building programs in our secondary schools uh in the area so that was one thing that came out of this work as our understanding of Target zero okay with law enforcement uh we will look forward to having uh dedicated officers on site and those are not just our sro's those are going to be uh uh some of our traffic uh unit as well and some other dedicated officers that will help during the beginning of the school year uh there will be a law enforcement social media push um and the law enforcement is very excited
109about um The Presence they have on social media and uh and the community uh ability to get that information out we'll also have law enforcement present presence before and after school uh for an increased period of time and that will be uh mostly our SRO off our SRO officers that will be um working with that and then looking forward to creating additional opportunities for other information to be shared and the traffic safety unit uh are basically there ready for a full press uh to have the community slowdown so that's uh exciting uh information uh for us to work with and that's kind of the update on the three e there around uh safe routes to schools any questions or clarifications that I can uh share with you or write down and bring back to you
110just quick question um have parents started receiving information about the potential bus route and how are we going to know if that's going to be widely used versus the walking yes parents have thank you the great question parents have received information uh about that and we are planning at this point for it to be widely used until we hear otherwise or see otherwise it might be who shows up um at the time but yeah thank you good question yeah Maria uh it just made me think of uh safe routs to school campaign uh similar to what I know there's cost involved but similar to what the Pud is doing about the bike lane or the the trail um you just you know it's catchy it's it's out there um again you know funding permitted absolutely
111time yes well I and that's one thing that we're realizing though to your point is um there can be more information about this and more intentional work and I think the statistics that uh law enforcement is sharing um with us and the work that they're doing is giving us a uh an increased awareness of the importance of of this work and so I'm really excited about not only having it um impact this the beginning of this school year but also impact uh the routes to school all over the place because we know there are some shifts and there are some traffic patterns and some bus routes that have history that may need to just be looked at again to increase the safety aspects for our students so thank you okay I will keep moving on
112here um and as as I mentioned uh in April and May um the 1H School District does not have a definitive plan for the use of Columbia Elementary right at the moment uh we will not have a school program or uh other AG agcy occupy the site this fall just want to state that again and clarify that again uh because that that there was some some rumors that were circulating um and some of the reasoning behind that is there is the time um is necessary to really understand the most appropriate and economically viable program for uh the Columbia facility um we want to make sure that we have that site occupied um in the 26 uh 27 or sorry 20 sooner than that please the 25 26 school year sorry I messed that up there
113um and then we also want to make sure that uh we understand that because we don't have another program in that building at the beginning of uh the school year this fall we are still able to realize all of the cost savings that we had planned for um without that occupant right away and I'll show a little bit more about that in uh just a little while as we go piece by piece through the budget reduction plan for the 242 school year and we'll talk about the actual uh cost savings that we're planning on realizing um here we are at the end of June um we also know that our system has a large amount of movement already planned for the summer as I've I've uh shared earlier with our maintenance and operation team as
114they're moving uh many people throughout the district there's a lot of things that are happening um and the closure the closure decision timeline really did not allow for us to create other changes and opportunities to move existing programming into Colombia by this fall um and we also know that with without having uh an occupant in there fully occupying the area we're working with our maintenance and operation team and safety to be sure that the building is maintained uh and safe as well the building will still be used uh for district trainings um it will be available for some short-term um Office Space and programming as needed um and our user groups will still be able to uh have facility uses for the classro space the gym space and the outdoor facilities and we want to
115also um encourage our community members to uh use this as well because it is a Community Asset that will uh remain a Community Asset our long range uh our long range uh facilities committee uh we shared with them a little bit of information that I'm going to share with you right now um the district goals for the Columbia facility our goals are to use the facility for a wian school district uh programming we want it to remain a Community Asset we want to also use it to help grow our enrollment we know that declining enrollment is something that we have projected to plague the wian school district in years to come so how can we use Columbia Elementary and additional 1 School District programming to grow that enrollment and we also as I mentioned already
116we want to make sure folks know that it is available for uh indoor gym use and facil facility use for districts uh the district and user groups um offices and for training and we also want to honor Colombia's history what will not happen is it will not become a homeless shelter it will not be abandoned it will not be boarded up it will not be sold it will not be left unmaintained it will not be an and it will not be kept from the community and it will not be forgotten so we want to make sure that that is clear um our longrange facilities committee appreciated the goals and what will not happen um they shared with us some concerns of the cost of keeping the facility maintained and not having a program in there
117um and the space to occupy that they also saw the need for using it to potentially grow enrollment through a current uh District program when we asked them what they believed that we could use the space for there was a variety of uh of uh ideas that were generated from that facilities committee on the topic everything from I don't know I don't have the expertise to know uh to um a conversation about after school space maybe a city recreational center um they also mentioned obviously Valley Academy of Learning and uh utilizing this space as a facility for Valley Academy uh to potentially grow and have some green space and you know not be out in the area where they are or they also mentioned some Alternative Learning options as a way to bring students back
118to the district or to grow enrollment um and they also mentioned renting the space out as well so a lot of different ideas there when you say renting the space out we are we we don't need competition right within our district so that include that I'm thinking Charter private pools that may need facilities um can you help me understand that relationship or I guess I want to I want us to keep that building uh for the use of the community to the grow Wan School District enrollment yep I'm just I'll take us back to the district goals up there it is not our goal to rent the space or to have it utilized however if we did bring in school district programming um we may couple that also with uh a local nonprofit or something
119in another part of that space but it'll be for our uses okay yeah great question though I appreciate it so we are looking to grow our yes that's why I'm asking I appreciate that I appreciate that other other comments we're okay okay all right let's jump into uh some of the budget information here uh just uh to to let so kind of shifting from the different pieces stepping away from the Columbia facility at this point um just the budget update in general just want to share because there are there are there are things that are flying around out there and just want to make sure that no programs are planned to be removed or significantly cut back due to budget reductions for the 2425 school year just want to make sure that is known and
120we'll show us a couple of slides to show what our plan has been um since February for budget reductions and how that has not changed and so I just want to throw that out there um unrelated to District budget concerns though I do want to let the board know that we have had trouble securing some of our Afterschool programming funds due to lack of availability of Grants used to support the program so there will be there could potentially be an impact that is noticed at our middle school and our after school programming but we are working on securing other grants to help support that funding for this fall we'll be able to maintain all the after school programming in our elementary schools based on the grants that we do have and some other special programming
121so just want to let the the board know that and um our update on enrollment uh as you know the projections for next year are very important and Sean's going to spend some time uh with us in just a little bit talking about that and the methodical uh process that he has gone gone through with that but we wanted to give a little bit of some registration early indicators um kindergarten numbers are low and we knew that going into this school year even though our birth rates um are not as low as they are projected in the coming years we are still seeing that uh that happen so kindergarten numbers are low uh we still have time and we uh know that some of our Kinder kindergarten registrations come later uh later in the fall
122uh running start numbers are higher than no normal and Sean will allude to some of those numbers in his presentation as well uh TK is doing well at the the the three locations for the four classrooms that we offer so we're excited about that because that to us is new enrollment and that is growing our enrollment the more TK classes that we offer and the more fully developed they are the more enrollment that we get um we have also been reaching out to our office managers to track uh student withdrawals so that we can know where where students are uh are leaving and so we can confirm our projections what we do know though is if students are registered in other programs um or throughout the uh throughout the valley they don't always withdraw right
123away and so we may not know some of those until a little bit later but we are doing the work um Valley uh is uh is their registration is at 270 students so they will be at full capacity uh and I would say maximum capacity as well uh for the school that they uh are working in right now so here's our budget realization um okay let me catch up here our budget realities so this is where we have made um our proposed uh budget reductions for the 2425 school year and I just kind of want to go block by block uh through this and so based on the last month and a half of work that has gone into this and some of the moving of uh of our personnel and some of the additional
124retirements or resignations that have happened how how strong we stayed with this budget uh reduction realization and so for the Columbia closure I can say that there will be a at this point in our in our planning there's a full realization of that $2.8 million um for middle school I'm going to look at Kelly because I do not always get this one right but to make it simple there is one net ad back through all of the changes correct so we can we can say that that's probably a $1.9 million um real ation there uh for the high school as of right now that number is solid with our 671000 uh as well and then for the additional Staffing piece um we we'll realize that uh $1 million uh bucket I do want to share
125that we we were going to change a title and we're going to change some funding we ended up changing the funding but we needed to keep the title of the assistant director of mtss because that position uh had had evaluate they had to evaluate staff and so in order to evaluate staff you have to have the uh the the the director title so we we realized all the savings but we did not change that title as mentioned earlier in our presentations on April 23rd uh for the MSO that's Sean's Department uh Material supplies and operating costs and he has guaranteed that we now have the 2.5 million uh adjustments for next year and he will share a little bit how that plays out then um through our fund balance and then I want to go
126this because since we're going in the Wayback machine and we're talking about some things that we presented on April 23rd I do have some other slides that will that appear repetitive because they are um but they're also important for us to understand about our budget reduction factors and and we can you've seen this probably ad nauseum at this point but declining enrollment declining State effort a local effort assistant declining State regionalization funding the rising inflationary costs annually from uh from our ipd rise of 3.7 um we know that we're exhausting our federal emergency covid funding so hopefully next year you will not see that on any slides that will be exciting um and we know that our available unassigned fund balance equals our financial stability and so if the district's unassigned fund balance reserves run
127too low we know that the district would need permission from the school board to access the minimum fund balance reserves and so we're not in any danger of of that happening now but we know that that is going to decrease over time that fund balance will um based on declining enrollment and inflationary uh actions so um at the bottom line we also show that next year when we start talking about the 25 26 uh school year our reductions will assume that the district will pass a replacement epno o Levy uh we know that less Levy Revenue will result in larger reductions necessary for the 25 26 school year so be a full court press for that um as we move into the fall and then our long-term impacts uh again a repeat slide uh from
128April 23rd presentation enrollment and inflationary factors are annual issues that we must contend with um we know through the decision that we made this year that delaying reductions only increase the gap between enrollment Decline and inflationary costs we have hit that hard this year or we I'm sorry we will hit that hard in 24 25 folks and I'm very proud of the WAN school district for us to be able to do that because the larger reductions in the current year will lessen those reductions in the future and then all of our next year will be based on enroll enrollment stabilizing this is a repeat slide um this slide is from the April 23rd Schoolboard budget update it shows that with our current reductions we will see fund balance loss of$ 3 to4 million next year
129that will need to to be reduced in the 25 26 school year if current projections for enrollment decline hold and so the arrows here point to that fund balance loss and then the only category that we have filled in for the 25 26 uh school year there and that is going to be the reduction number that we'll be working with for future budget reductions based on enrollment or enrollment decline so it's old news but I want to repeat it uh so that people see that and remember that because we don't want to forget the work that we've done for this coming year but also to remember the work that we will be working on as well and then just clarifying and solidifying that the budget reduction magnitude of this year it's big but it will
130get us closer to a couple of different things aligning our revenues and expenditures and aligning our staffing with enrollment as we've talked about so much this year I want to thank you for your time and what questions clarifications or concerns that you might have uh for me to answer now or bring back uh to you later as we move forward okay thank you so much I really appreciate your time and I'm very excited to uh bring up executive director of business and finance Sean Fitzgerald as he talks about the preliminary 2425 budget we are still going folks we've got this I got the mouse that's okay all right uh thank you and good evening president Norton members of the board and superintendent kalahar I'm here tonight to present on the second of three presentations on
131the 20242 budget uh which is taking place between uh June and budget adoption at the end of August on June 4th I presented on the ASB capital projects Debt Service and transportation vehicle funds and tonight the focus will be on the general fund um just as an overall um District fund structure school districts operate on a fund basis and funds are self-balancing set of accounts used for the purpose of carrying on specific activities or attaining certain objectives and the district uses five funds General ASB capital projects Debt Service and transportation vehicle the general fund is the district's largest fund and makes up about 90% of the entire budget and covers day-to-day operations of the district uh we're going to start off with enrollment uh so it's to recap the April presentation on enrollment um we
132start off with our comparison of birth rates uh for the that take place in the wachi school district and Chalan County overall as we can see here the district birth rates peaked in TW and we use the birth rates as an indicator for incoming kindergarten classes um although it's not you know a one to1 there's a general correlation between increasing birth rates coincides with larger kindergarten classes and vice versa and so when we look at the birth rate data from the State Department of Health we see that our district birth rates peaked in 2014 there at 634 County birth rates have peaked uh in 2015 at 954 and then we know that District enrollment peaked in the 2015 16 school year will which I will show in the next slide but again just conforming to
133that correlation and then we can see in 2019 we have the numbers highlighted in green and so when we're using kindergarten projection we start with 5year olds so we go back five years and we use the birth year plus five as our incoming kindergarten class so as you can see here from 18 19 we saw an increase in birth rates which suggests overall if that correlation holds true that our Kinder incoming kindergarten classes uh would be larger um than the 23 24 class um and then however following in 2020 we see a sharp decline in the birth rates and overall you see a slight blip there in 2021 at least on the county side but overall beginning in 2020 up until 2022 we're seeing an overall decline in birth rates um at this time no
134birth data has been available for the 2023 birth rates um as soon as that data is provided by the State Department of Health we would upgrade uh this graph but this is the best information we have at this time uh here is our enrollment our 10-year enrollment Trend going back from to 20134 so again we see our enrollment peing in 1516 and then we see a decline uh into the 16 17 school year all the way to 1819 again we see some stabilization in 1920 but then the co pandemic hits and we see a large decline uh beginning in 2021 uh we see a slight in increase into 2122 but the lockdowns lifting uh would suggests that students are returning back to in-person learning um however we're now seeing back um we see that peak
135in 2122 and 2223 and 2324 have seen uh declin since then uh back in February we had projected uh that we were going to finish the school year around 6738 FTE that's excluding running start and open doors and our June enrollment is at 6,740 um so that can tell us that our enrollment for the end of the year isn't going to fall below 6740 and that the only data remaining is Will incorporate uh some of our summer and School enrollment which would only add um even if it's a little bit uh but we're well within our projections uh for the year uh here is our uh comparison for how we're finishing with 2324 versus what we're budgeting for next year and for the next three years after that so we're seeing we're projecting a large
136decline between this year and next year we're looking at 225 uh decline in enrollment that's what we've budgeted for um and just kind of reiterate some of the patterns that we're seeing uh transitional kindergarten uh we're seeing an increase from 42 to 56 and that's due to the expansion of our TK programs uh so our expectation is we're going to see an increase of enrollment there uh with kindergarten although we have seen the higher birth rates and therefore correlation to higher class sizes we've kind of dialed it back and taken a more conservative approach on the kindergarten enrollment uh just because we've seen some of the low uh enrollment numbers at this time um and then as we jump in third graders under the 2425 budget is very large uh it's kind of our second
137you can see in our second grade for 23 24 it's a very large cohort and as you can see it's the only 500 plus class we have um until our seventh graders at 2425 so um we're experiencing the 7th through our 10th graders we have kind of this birth bubble we have 500 Plus classes uh the third grade as well and as we see with our incoming classes those 500 classes are disappearing uh which will kind of contribute contribute to overall enrollment decline in years to come as that uh birth bubble moves through you also see that we're seeing a dramatic um from our if we go from 2324 to 2425 at the fifth and sixth grade levels we see a drop in enrollment due to the impact of our Charter School in the area
138we also see a large drop in our enrollment from the 10th to our 11th graders uh due to the increasing uh demand in running start enrollment which would take away from our our 11th and 12th grader enrollment at the high schools and then last but not least we can see our 12th graders 23 24 is 556 and our 11th graders are 461 so that 461 class is much smaller than the outgoing 12th grader class so right there you're seeing just a drop of about a 100 students just with that smaller class uh so we see this combining factors of um the charter school smaller kindergarten classes without outgoing larger um uh graduating classes which is overall um contributing to the enrollment Decline and as we see we're just projecting that similar Trend out for 25
13926 through 2728 so we're assuming that these Trends are continuing and if they follow it then we're projecting a continued enrollment decline uh of triple digits for the next four years um so again just a summary of the of what we just went over overall projection is that enrollment will continue to decline and then we're seeing increase in the transitional kindergarten just due to class expansion looking at our elementary schools graduating classes are larger than kindergarten and we're paying attention to the birth rates and the correlation with our kindergarten enrollment at the middle school level it's the charter school at the high school it's our running start um on the positive side we're seeing uh increasing demand at our Alternative Learning Valley is at Max cap capacity which helps increase our Bea enrollment special education
140we're continuing to see an increasing demand and enrollment in that area however those funds are specialized and can only be used for special education and we only receive state funding up to a point uh We've also taken into account the expansion and openings of additional private schools and we'll see the impact of what that brings for us in the fall um and then last but not least just funding so it's like we're funded on the budget amount from September through December so if we do better than 225 we we will ultimately be funded on student FTE but that begins in January so you don't lose any funding or you know if you we come out better than projected But ultimately funding is adjusted on actual enrollment but not till January any questions on enrollment before
141moving on all right so we're going to jump into our year end projections and preliminary budget um so for our 23 24 yearend projected projections we are projecting our ending fund balance to be 14.9 million which is about 4.3 projected higher than budget now that's great uh the larger the fund balance the better uh but it's important to break this number down and understand what it means um half of this or at least half of the savings is due to we started off the year higher uh by 2.2 million and that was due to the district deliberately using onetime stabilization funding to build up the fund balance Reserve so instead of teaching staff being funded out of uh basic education or our state funding we were using Federal grant funds funds and then this other
1422.1 million which I have highlighted in yellow is due to a multitude of factors again not hiring to budgeted Staffing levels and deliberately not filling non-essential positions during the year to reduce costs or unfilled turnover uh we also had some Leaf without pay factors we also use stabilization funding like Esser to fund staff that originally would have been funded out of basic education and reducing discretionary spending and the focus is on this 2.1 million because this is overall part of the $2.5 million reduction plan for MSO and miscellaneous costs that was identified in both reduction plans this year so we wanted to take advantage and reduce these costs we saw cost saving areas that can contribute overall to our reduction plan without affecting staff and that's what we're kind of incorporating here um again projections
143will be reviewed and refined by the op adoption date in August and this is a conservative projection so if we finish better uh that what we're currently projecting right now we will review and evaluate for reductions for 25 26 and even with the savings identified this year overall fund balance is on a danward tra trajectory which I will go on in a few a couple of slides any questions on this before moving on um so just to reiterate some of our goals for the year end um from the written analysis our goal was to maintain strong fund balance reserves and minimize fund uh staff reductions through increasing revenues and reducing expenditures and this is being achieved in part by the $2.5 million MSO production and any additional savings we will find when we close out
144in for the year end it is important to note that the district intentionally built up reserves through the use of stabilization funding uh like Esser from the federal government uh this funding primarily came from Esser with other funding sources as well and the district used this funding to M maintain the Staffing levels while enrollment declined um and just pointing out that for the current 23 24 school year we had about $2.8 million in Esra funds remaining uh which will be exhausted and used up by August 31st uh so here's our preliminary budget and forecast um so right now we're projecting for 2425 we have a $4.3 million deficit now that does not mean we have to reduce by that amount but reductions will be necessary if enrollment continues to decline based on our projections um
145when we start looking at 25 26 and Beyond we're seeing a substantial increase in revenues uh despite declining enrollment and this is due to the V if assuming uh epno Levy passes in February of 20 2 um ultimately we also have under other financing uses $500,000 for each year and this is just um a transfer from the general fund to the capital projects Fund in case our maintenance and operations uh needs to address any emergencies or priority needs on our maintenance side because we have uh we do not have a sustainable Revenue Source in our capital projects Fund in the short term uh so we will need to look at if the fund balance isn't fully used up in capital projects by this year we'd be looking at this our fund balance any available fund
146balance in there uh which would be limited um but just kind of more as an insurance policy to take care of any emergency or priority needs um I do want to emphasize um budget reductions have been built into this forecasting for each year in order for us to maintain a positive fund balance uh on the unassigned down below as you can see I think we have one year in 2627 uh being able to have uh unassigned fund balance that would be above a million dollars uh and then we start seeing this decrease in 2728 um and even though we're assuming we're passing a levy uh that would take we would start seeing Revenue sources in the 25 26 school year we see the revenues and expenditures start to to um at least the expenditures start
147to catch up to the revenues in 2728 and that's due to a couple of factors one on the expenditure side we're assuming that inflation would cost would continue to increase at a like a 3.7% ipd and then also on the revenue side uh we have uh the levy is subject to an enrollment cap lid uh so knowing despite what you um the district goes out for and the voter approved Mount there's going to be a cap if there is continuing declining enrollment um and so assuming that enrollment cap with the declining enrollment um then you're going to see uh the levy funds being unable to match those Rising expenditures due to inflation so I know that's a lot of information before I move on is there any questions on preliminary budget orning of the forecasted
148number first uh because we're going to be talk I'm going to talk about the capital fund a little bit later on I really want to highlight that other financing uses you said it but I think I would repeat it it's $500,000 a year because we do have not created a uh reserves in a capital fund it's using operating funds and you mentioned it it's there we all need to recognize it correct um um so what is going in what is the assumptions and methodology um going into this budget and forecasting so overall we have continued enrollment decline projected we're also assuming that no significant State Legislative funding efforts will occur um it's been a while I mean we're going into a long session for the next year um so we won't know what the state
149is going to decide budget wise until the end of April um um but for the last couple years there hasn't been really any significant action uh by the state to provide additional school funding uh Beyond only in special areas like special education and some slight increases to funding in MSO uh and certain Staffing positions which is appreciated but um in no term um addresses just the rising cost even just addressing inflation um and so we cannot assume that the state's going to step in and um bail the school districts out despite um what is occurring Statewide um we're also assuming budget reductions are taken every year just to align Staffing with enrollment uh we're also assuming the P Levy passes subject to an enrollment lad we're also assuming the inflationary Factor as I've mentioned before
150of 3.7% ipd uh that is the current um ipd rate that's been announced acted by the state I mean it could be 2% it could be 5% it could be 3.8 next year we don't know so we just use the rate that the state has approved and what we use for uh we're also budgeting for a 30% annual increase for an insurance uh last year it increased by a similar amount and we received a letter from the schools Insurance Association of Washington who is our insurance pool and said prepare for an increase between 20 and 30% so uh that's what we're going to budget for and assume going forward uh we also budget for 100% Staffing which we know um with turnover unfilled positions so we know ultimately that part of that deficit that we're
151seeing isn't going to be fully materialized because we know we don't maintain 100% Staffing for the entire year we're also going to ensure maximizing K3 class siiz compliance as best we can and then also we just um in addition to the budget is a $6.6 million in capacity uh for carryover and unexpected revenues and expenditures that rise during the school year but this has no effect on budgeted fund balance again it's just authorizing additional reserves if necessary uh during the school Year and may or may not be used any questions before moving on to fund balance know the interest of comments on outside everybody's Proby concerned about the annual increase in Insurance everybody's hearing about locally I just want to comment that I read an interview last week with the I think it's the president
152of Lloyds the world's largest reinsurance agency that insures all the insurance companies and this is a global phenomenon brought about by all sorts of international climate and risk factors and uh so if anybody's wondering about have we got good insurance providers that's the kind of thing that's happening all around the world so here's a breakdown of our fund balance so just going back to our written analysis understanding fund balance our fund balance is our District's reserves or savings account and not all fund uh balance reserves are available to use at any time and we have four different types assigned committed restricted and unassigned and with a caveat with unassigned is although it may be used for any purpose uh the district has a board policy to main 5% of budgeted expenditures as a minimum fund
153balance to maintain operations to pay bills process monthly payroll and maintain operations and this m this minimum fund balance comes from the district's unassigned reserves uh so here's a breakdown of the beginning fund balance projected beginning fund balance for next year and so we can see we have have um fund balance about 14.9 million uh if that projection stays true either will increase or decrease we will know uh when we close out the year end um really just highlight we have a number of you can see a number of restricted and committed items uh that leaves the unassigned and the unassigned minimum fund balance as separate parts uh we have committed to other purposes and this is continuing just to utilize fund balance to offset budget reductions uh that the board authorized and the $500,000
154for Capital project needs or emergencies and then our estimated ending fund balance if the projections held true and we utilize $4.3 million in fund balance our expectation would be that the committed um balance would be used for emergency maintenance um and that we utilize um certain amount of fund balance to help offset budget reductions uh for the 2425 school year um and then just highlighting as you can see with the smaller fund balance um the unassigned fund balance gets incred smaller and so once we dip below that then you're starting to look into the minimum fund balance reserves uh as you know for uh necessary payment budget timeline so here we are June 25th uh so our deadline for submitting the budget preliminary budget to the estd for review is July 10th and then August
15513th we'll have a public hearing um based on the ESD review the numbers will no longer be preliminary it'll be reviewed and refined and presented at a public hearing uh followed by budget adoption at the second board meeting in August and then um again our the budget is due by state law toi on the last last day of the school year which is Friday August 30th um between now and August 13th um again the presentations from today and three weeks ago were preliminary they're going to be revised and reviewed and sub sent to the estd and we'll address and incorporate any feedback and present the proposed budget on August 13th with those revisions any questions thank you very much and I thank all the staff who gave you input for putting that package together thank
156you thank you moving on to we have no discussion so action items look like first up is the policy second read yeah policy second read after our first read there were a variety of requests and some clarifying fixes uh to the board policies as they were presented at that time since then Kim and I have gone through the policies we've made the requested and appropriate updates we resubmitted the information to the board and um and did not receive any other questions or concerns so I believe that we can move forward with uh with a motion to accept the policies unless there's further discussion do I have a motion uh yes I would like to protect that we approve the policies as presented for second read and I second that motion moved and seconded any discussion
157no look good to me so all in favor I I I moving on superintendent contract is yeah that's what I have right yeah superintendent contract so I'll I'll go ahead and introduce this one um since as you recall at the June 4th uh 2024 meeting the board voted unanimously to amend the superintendent contract to remove the title of interim and to extend the contract for an additional year through 2026 so uh Maria and I have worked with Corey to complete the proposed changes to the con contract which is being presented this evening um it's been circulated to the other board members I do want to point out to anyone that may be listening that under the existing agreement Dr kalahar was entitled to a salary increase um at the level of ipd which is like
158a CPI you've heard us mention it before he has declined to take that salary increase so the starting compensation on this uh contract that becomes effective J July 1st of 2024 is at the exact same pay as the prior version with no increase um so with that um any I guess I can if there's more discussion we can move to a motion and then discuss after a motion I move to approve the amended and restated superintendance employment contract I would like to Second all right moved in second is there any discussion yes I do want discussion all right um okay um the important of this action item is much much greater than just a contract extension and that's really why I wanted to say something uh when I'm stopped on the street people ask me
159questions about how the district works and the importance of the superintendent and uh these this discussion I think addresses the kind of um interests that people have um it's everything it's about everything we expect of the superintendent if you just look at today's agenda we talked about highly Capital students we had ambitious Career and Technical education plans uh we listen to having to climb a high mountain in renovating math and English Arts skills we've got tough budgets for general fund operations and we're looking for funds for capital projects and physical infrastructure that's kind of the menu uh we know that uh Cory kahar Dr kahar is here because we made a n Nationwide search for a superintendent and ended with a unanimous decision to choose him as our executive leader uh for the wachi school
160district the removal of the word interim is overdue and the extension of the contract is timely because we must work together in the long run and I think that's part and parcel of this contract renewal um elected School Board delegates to the SE superintendent the executive responsibility and powers to manage the schools and the Education Services they provide the superintendent is the only person who reports directly to the board the superintendent is also the professional and advisor to the board which all makes his leadership the key to success the board's oversite role becomes one of support for the superintendent using coaching and encouragement what matters is the achievement of high performance and good results the superintendent leads the invaluable team of education and student welfare Personnel who can make this possible the district faces great
161challenges on behalf of its students but what I want to say is every challenge generates its opportunity this is true for the students world and in the district's provider world I like words that Dickens published in 1859 to describe the situation the school district and we all face it was the best of times it was the worst of times and our goal of moving forward together is to make it possible to grab the problems with one hand while the other transforms them into growth and Improvement the uncertain and fast shifting world is challenging for today's youth economically for their careers and personally for their lives to be fulfilled to become fulfilled citizens what they learn needs to adapt and the skills taught need to be extended methods and Technologies won't stay still the physical instructure
162infrastructure of the district is an urgent need of renewal the district's long-term facilities committee takes one step down that road which is very much one of collaborating with our outside external Partners from The Wider Community if you look inside ourselves the school district has opened doors for the whole diverse and universe of wachi students it provides the widest range of Education Alternatives areas of study extracurricular activities and advanced curricula in our region let's support the value of its scope and the way it reaches for excellence long-term progress in all these areas is a huge and demanding ask from one contracted executive if the rest of us pitch in constructively we'd be helping ourselves in the long run and that's what I wanted to say because this is not just a simple contract it's a relationship
163between all of us we are taking looking at Corey to uh hopefully approve his extended contract and amended contract we depend on him he depends on all of us let's go for it together I don't have a quote from 1859 but I do have something to say um I I mean you know as always I tend to agree with Martin quite a bit um but I think uh the elimination of the interim was highly important for the stability and the continuity of the work that's being done in the district uh interim oftentimes is seen as temporary uh provisional and again if it when we did that National search um we knew that uh in the long term um Dr Kar would be able to provide those that for the school district although we have been
164faced with um quite a bit bit of challenges our first year as uh in in your interm role um you know with anything there's always room for improvement room for growth but um you know you have the best interests of the District of employees uh teachers staff um and most importantly our students so that comes appreciated um and um not only are we by removing that interum and extending one more year are we allowing that stability and continuity but also the start of rebuilding that trust Factor um that we haven't had that um for a few years now so I look forward to the work I asked Tucker if he wanted to make any comments and so he provided me with just a statement to read since he knew he wouldn't be available tonight and
165actually unable to vote um says hello everyone I apologize I couldn't be there to say this in person traditionally after a superintendent search the selected candidate is given a three-year contract and the title of super intendent while I understand the reasoning last year's board used to justify the interim title I think that the district is in need of stability giving Dr kalahar the full superintendent title and extending his contract to include another year serves the Dual purposes of giving Dr kalahar the stability he needs to thrive in his role and the district the stability it needs to address the difficult challenges that lay ahead of it Dr kahar has my full support and I look forward to what the district will accomplish under his leadership thank you and so I I will just add um
166I spoke to briefly the last time um when we selected the superintendent we were looking at a sort of unusual situation where the the whole board could have turned over immediately so it didn't make sense to uh tie a new board to uh too much to a leaders leader because as Mar Ria pointed out the relationship is super important and I think you've built a very good relationship with this board this board is operating very well I think under your leadership I know this year was not without challenge is it certainly wasn't perfect um but we we also realized that we were selecting somebody that didn't have the you know years of superintendent experience and I think you've taken that um very seriously in your your growth strategies and your mindset and I just appreciate
167all the work you've put in in a a challenging Year and that you've worked with us on and and really um being accountable to our community understanding how important that is um I do think that removing the interim title is both deserved um for the accomplishments you've had over this year but also uh to help build that stability for the district going forward because um I think you among others will be the most accountable to anyone else we could see here because you've been in our system for a long time you know the members of our community and I know um that you feel that we're all in this together so I feel that's important any other comments I just want to say thank you for for all the kind words um and the faith
168um that you have in me and it's just an honor and a privilege for me to be able to serve in this capacity so thank you so much there's no more comments I think we're actually supposed to take a roll call vote so uh Martin I Maria I and I am I excellent uh thank you very much um as I mentioned I'm honored and privileged to be able to serve uh the school district for another two years and look forward to uh great things together uh working as a collaborative team and a community uh and the next the next uh action item is we have a resolution uh and uh let's see here the resolution uh the fund transfer from the general fund to the capital projects fund um the fund transfer is for two
169general reasons uh the first reason is to cover uh the soft costs uh and change order related to the softball complex above the $4 million Mark um and the second purpose is uh to use the funds as a short-term solution to the fact that we currently do not have a revenue source for our capital projects uh a fund which has been mentioned now a couple of times and I think that that's important we do need to develop a long-term plan and part of that work um has been the completion of our facilities uh survey and study that happened in in 2023 and we approved in early 2024 but also um Contracting with our pre-bond team and the creation of a long-term uh facilities plan we know that that work needs to be done we are
170what we are suggesting here is an interim plan to address this problem um some of the the numbers that were asked for a three-year average of capital project spending is $593,000 a five-year average of capital project spending is $829,000 so just an idea of what we spent um on those uh capital projects uh opportunities um this just helps us do that work in the future moving forward so I appreciate uh the board looking into this um and coming up with or helping us with that short-term solution and then moving forward as Sean has shared that $500,000 that we'll uh do each year just so that we can help uh our keep some sort of funds for our aging facilities at this point until that long-term plan is fully realized great I would like to propose
171a motion to approve resolution number 0424 which is uh to transfer funds from the general fund to the capital projects fund for the construction of the softball field and I second that motion been moved and seconded uh any further discussion I advertised I was going to say something so although it's repetitive I want to emphasize that you know at the moment the capital fund reserves are depleted and it is urgent and I urge that we take an initiative to raise funds and replenish them and I'm glad to see that that is a topic for the long-term facilities committee um and these reserves would conserve we see the needs things like HVAC or roofs or completing softball fields um this is an interim measure um and it is the only available res resource we've got right
172now for a legal liability to complete the softball field uh I would just like to see it have minimum use and put in a pep talk let's hope that we can find a better long-term solution for Capital reserves yeah I agree and Echo that I think we put a lot of faith into being able to run a bond potentially in the next year and so we may be shortsighted the uh intention of what are we going to do with the capital funding so um I do think now as Bond potential Bond projects are further out on the horizon that we need to look seriously at at what we're doing with the capital fund projects uh any other discussion then all in favor iose nope motion carries excellent uh the moving forward to the superintendence report
173I have three things that I want to share uh one I just want to share that I was able to attend uh together for youth's key leader prevention event it was a couple it was two weeks ago um but uh there's been a gap in between our board meetings so uh I just wanted to share though that this key leader prevention training uh at the NCW Community Foundation conference room it was an action-packed two-hour event that began with a presentation from the drug task force um and we got I got to meet Gambit the drug sniffing dog uh so that was uh super fun to have the dog in the presentation as well but it was really interesting gave us a rundown on the area's most prevalent narcotics um and the concerns that they're seeing
174not only from Patrol but also in the jails and then on the streets actually too so it was a it was an interesting look at um what uh narcotic uh problems are plaguing the wanci area um we also want to just share an exciting kind of new initiative uh called FAQ Fridays that we're going to launch on Friday July 22nd uh this initiative is designed to keep our community informed and engaged over summer break as much as they would like to be sometimes people want to maybe not be engaged but this is an opportunity you to engage over summer break with a short weekly video segment posted on our social media where I'll be addressing questions submitted by parents students and community members and sharing valuable updates and information about the district plans for the
175upcoming school year um and how it'll work is questions will be submitted online via direct messaging on social media or through our website and uh we'll work with the team to select and answer a couple of questions each week and the initiative aims to keep everybody informed and and involved as we prepare for the challenges and opportunities of the new school year um and I'm looking forward to uh the community's participation and engagement in this endeavor um and as we mentioned together we can ensure that everyone stays informed about District plans and development so I'm excited about that through the summer um and then just give a shout out I got a letter today uh from Chris R superintendent of Public Instruction and chief John batist uh from the Washington State Patrol and again uh
176the office of the superintendent of Public Instruction the Washington State Patrol wants to congratulate us and our Administration and our transportation team whose diligent and tireless efforts protect the safety of Washington's students on our school buses the recent Washington State Patrol annual inspection of your school buses show that your school district has again demonstrated exceptional results gosh keep kicking that I apologize for the past two years the results in your District have been outstanding and these results demonstrate your understanding of school safety um when I shared it with uh with director Jen C in transportation um in a great leadership form she said we have an exceptional team here in the transportation department we have a great group of mechanics who take care of our entire fleet and we're taking it back to teamwork and
177so she is proud of each and every one of them and I appreciate that response from leader your J so just wanted to celebrate them and that is it for the superintendent update right because it's the season of celebrations very rapid fire graduations M bilingual migrant students Awards transitions final meeting of the student advisory Council congratulations thank you and I will just add I enjoyed going to participating in the graduation ceremony that we had uh both wach High School the weather couldn't have been better it was great celebration wests side I really enjoyed having it at the Town Toyota Center I felt like it got a much better uh crowd um it just felt much more well attended so I was glad um that that space worked out for them and that it was one
178of my all-time favorite speeches when the student referred to his mom as the arsonist was the best I will remember it forever um so you have to watch it online if you want to know what I'm talking about so anyway um this just a long time uh between meetings but yeah that's congratulations to our seniors and looking forward to a nice quiet summer I hope and if there's nothing else we can adjourn y all right for