Wenatchee School District Board Meeting 6-13-23

001good evening I welcome everyone to the June 13th regular board meeting we will open our meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag that the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation and under God indivisible with liberty and development for all thank you is should anyone wish to participate in citizen comments you may still sign up by completing a citizen comment form at the entry of the room and pass it on to Kim White any virtual attendees had the opportunity to complete the form ahead of time do I hear any modifications to the board agenda hearing none we're going to move to the consent agenda in this consent agenda we have the minutes from the May 23rd regular meeting the vouchers and payroll Personnel

002report Surplus report contracts field trips the CTE four-year plan Wenatchee Valley Technical skill center for your plan the April 2023 financial report in the June 2023 enrollment report do I hear a motion to approve the consent agenda move to the approve the consent agenda second I have a motion in a second is there any discussion hearing none all in favor of approving the consent agenda please say aye aye aye motion carries next on our agenda we have special presentations bill thank you we have some special guests here this evening to honor one of our Superstar staff members and I'd like to invite Linda McKay from North Central Educational Service District up to say say a little bit about a special award and and then we'll have Jennifer devere I'll speak a little bit about this

003employee as well so welcome Linda no choice hi I'm Linda McKay and I'm with North Central ESD and I just have the privilege and honor to share with you tonight that Christopher Chris Rosales was selected as the 2023 Regional classified school employee of the year only nine classified employees throughout our state are selected in each of the esds for this High Regional honor um and Chris is your Wenatchee representative I will share with you some information that was included in Chris's application what we call the application packet but what was submitted in terms of his application packet and what the selection committee learned about Chris and how he rose to the top so bear with me a little bit Chris is a para educator family Advocate and graduation specialist for the Alternative Learning Experience program

004at Westside High School in your school district Chris has been at West Side High for over five years Chris has become a vital connection to our students families and Spanish-speaking families at West Side High We simply could not do without him said one of the night school teachers he has become a master of the FAFSA and the Wasa and Chris considers this one of his most important projects He has been a part of recently Chris and his co-worker Jonathan gadina hosted a FAFSA wafza night and scholarships event for the West Side High School students that included migrant and multilingual students and families to learn about the opportunities available to assist with the costs of continuing their education After High School Chris stated often parents are not aware of the many programs and opportunities that can

005assist with the college costs our night was a great success we had different organizations outside of our school reach out to our students and more importantly to their parents to let them know about the wonderful opportunities that are available while this level of support is available at Wenatchee High School it had not been available at West Side High until Chris and Jonathan organized the event by the end of the event all of the participants had either started or completed the FAFSA and wafsa applications in addition to receiving information on where they could get additional financial assistance for college trade school or apprenticeship programs Chris knows one of the most important aspects in my field is connecting with every student that I come in contact with I truly believe that the initial interactions are the most

006vital part to the overall success and will also serve as a driving force for our students success in life every single colleague's nomination statement described Chris as and I quote because I counted it going above and beyond every single statement some additional statements included Chris's gracious kind and tough all at the same time he acts as a counselor cheerleader and the voice of reason he performs home visits offering students warmth and support yet demanding accountability and personal responsibility to witness Chris with our students is pure Magic a previous West Side High student said I noticed immediately Chris cares deeply about the students here at West Side he was someone that cared for everyone equally he was brave enough to give you advice and tell you like it is he knows that people are capable of

007being so much more than what they think they are and he won't let anyone have self-doubt these are just a few of the many examples that we saw in Chris's nomination I'd still be here probably for another 45 minutes if I read them all in Chris's words I want students to know that they can be the next president or the next surgeon or the next whatever they want to be as long as they put in the effort it is important to me that they know all the staff at West Side High are here to help them both academically and mentally congratulations Chris foreign thank you Linda for that amazing uh Chris is amazing I I there's just oh yeah oh no we're not done you sit down mister you Linda said 45 more minutes so

008got plenty of time tonight um no I just would Echo so many of the things that were said um amazing human being that cares um and goes above and beyond he stay he gets there earlier than he needs to he stays later than he needs to um and in that voice of reason and that reality check that Chris gives kids I think is really um really what kind of kicks them into gear and really helps them realize that after they leave us at West Side High School whatever they choose to do he really believes in him and that efficacy is so important to their success so Chris we love you so much you are a bright spot in everyone's day you've got an amazing smile and an amazing heart and we are so very proud

009of you Chris would you like to say anything thank you see if we can use that excuse different times next we have citizen Commons Kim do we have any here I see good evening I wanted to take this opportunity to share some thoughts with you that resulted from the school board meeting on May 23rd nowadays it's easy to feel overwhelmed with all the important issues that we're that are gaining for our attention and this is one of them I have a master's degree in education but that doesn't make me a professional and determining whether sex education in public schools is beneficial or harmful for children so I do two things I try to educate myself on the topic and I listen to both sides of the argument to see where the intellectual honesty and transparency

010is I admit that there are Bad actors on both sides of nearly every topic and this is no different but I'd like to put that aside and just focus on the issue at last month's meeting over two dozen people promoted the idea of advancing sex education to students throughout the Wenatchee School District I heard the following passionate claims first was that allowing the books that were in question will quote hopefully Shield these kids from ignorant and cowardly fear of certain adults unquote secondly those who disagree with allowing sex ed are guilty of quote hatred and it would not be tolerated in our community or in our school system unquote thirdly Those Behind the Banning of books are guilty of quote Prejudice racism and bias followed by the accusation of quote white adults petitioning school boards

011to eliminate books that deal with black history and culture from libraries and classrooms unquote I have no time to share more but I can only conclude that these statements were more antagonistic than honest what does it mean to accuse opposing views of being hatred and they will not be tolerated we all pay taxes to support public education and we are all stakeholders in the well-being of children there were numerous calls to approve all books all media at all grade levels for children's accessibility no criteria does that even make sense to you every adult has a Divine responsibility to do their part in protecting the innocence and virtue of small children according to the institute for research and evaluation injecting the open-ended policy of sexually explicit and transgender material into the hearts and minds of children

012has shown quote an exponential rise in the occurrence of gender confusion or gender dysphoria among young people worldwide especially among young girls unquote If This research is correct the subject of sex education in public schools should be honestly and openly debated thank you around my high tech um good evening I'm Roxanna venetta I am here to speak in favor of Library diversification in our schools as the recipient of the Laura Bush foundation for America's libraries I'm here to publicly extend a thank you to the foundation for selecting Columbia Elementary to expand update and diversify the book and print collection in our library with the goal of encouraging students to develop a love of reading and learning I'm also here as a multilingual learner teacher and parent as a multilingual learner during my language acquisition period

013in my teen years the school library became a welcome refuge in a world I did not understand the library offered a safe place with books words and resources that I could access I do remember being able to access media print in Spanish and online websites that offer the same as well with the help of Ismail vivanko who has worked at North Central ESD and other schools in the area I was able to fall in love again with Spanish Literature and find myself reflected in some of the classics such as 100 Years of Solitude or the Poetry of Octavio pass both great names of literature I'm here to support fellow librarian students authors and illustrators who are able to broaden a student's existence outside world and relevant experiences into illustrations in print bipod people's stories and

014experiences are available in print and should be accessible to students I once told a friend that I found strength in the stories of others and I'm not sure my friend agreed or understood me what I meant to convey is the depth of Courage the validation that comes with dignity and the ability to empathize through shared human experiences those experiences were reflected in those stories I had read about people with struggles just like my own the stories we read to help to weave the fabric of Our Lives they support us in our search for purpose belonging and everyday Joy through all the Stations of our lives this is especially true and essentially vital for a young adult and children I'm here to ask adults to support literacy Equity by providing a variety of supports to schools

015and organizations who provide accessibility to books for students because their reality is not all students can purchase from Book Fairs bookstores or second-hand stores not all young people live in houses that are rich with literature the visit from our friends Robbie bear and Matthew Swanson from the busload of books tour to Columbia Elementary was a great reminder that we have a long way to go when it comes to connecting our students to the greatest purpose of reading the love of reading and that books are collections of knowledge and humanity and we are all stories our students need accessibility to libraries and it is our job to ensure they are able to do that reading is social justice and deliverance from the unjust systemic racism bias and Prejudice so prevalent in today's world book restriction or

016book Banning erases the presence of students who have who have come from marginalized groups by erasing our students we become complicit in systems that do not Elevate students voices but cause oppression of educational Equity thank you hello the young woman who was just up here said a lot of what I would have said so I won't repeat it but uh to reiterate what was discussed at length at the last meeting this the school library is often the only place that a student has access to books that they would never be able to see in their own home because their parents could not afford a wide range of things anywhere from an encyclopedia to Adventure fiction um I can remember reading Nancy Drew books when I was in elementary school and loving those that series although

017I understand the early versions of them were very problematic and racist that thankfully they cleaned those up um but uh there was a a young girl when I was in high school who was kidnapped and her kidnapper tossed her into the trunk of the car and she kicked out the tail light and stuck her hand out and was waving and somebody noticed this on the highway as he was driving her to wherever and when they asked when the police asked her how did you know to do that she said because I read Nancy Drew mystery stories and I thought that was a pretty powerful impact to have on a young life like that just that one thing uh would like to correct for anybody who wasn't here at the last meeting what was said earlier

018and that is the topic of sex education never came up nobody was talking about putting any kind of book into a classroom situation but simply making a book about a transgendered student available to those who had questions about their own gender or simply wanted to learn more about the transgender transgender experience in case they had a friend or a family member who was going through it certainly nobody has proposed putting that into sex education I'm pretty far removed from public school sex education I don't know what is or isn't taught anymore back in my day we had quite a bit of it and it was pretty thorough and it still didn't prepare the students for avoiding teenage pregnancies and and sexually transmitted diseases um the other thing that was said was that all types of

019media were to be made available to all students and that is not what was discussed either that was never brought up um the the book in question is for a young adult audience and targeted that way and very tame and as we discussed at the last meeting that one book is not going to turn your kid trans even if it's read to them by a drag queen thank you TJ thank you next on our agenda we have our special presentations thank you I'd like to welcome Mr Corey Stevens from Chelan County Juvenile Justice Center and he has a host of Staff with him here this evening uh good to see you sir and we'll we'll get an update on what's going on at the jdc thank you for being here absolutely evening board uh definitely

020want to thank you for the invitation bill um I um have obviously a sizable team here we took up a couple rows and so we'll get to introductions here real quick but before we do uh just on a personal note I wanted to thank the board my wife and I have two children that have attended Wenatchee uh school district schools uh they're still doing so and lots of positive uh memories and my son is going to be he's an incoming senior this coming year and my daughter is just finishing up her last year at Foothills so I want to thank the board for your leadership and your oversight and your and your service appreciate that um so time is short so let me go ahead and introduce our team uh Kristen Ferreira is the superior

021court judge presiding judge so she's here this evening and then Gary Smith is our longtime juvenile probation manager and he's going to speak for just a few minutes on juvenile court processes and programs for for offender Youth and then Jill stories our non-offender program coordinator and she's going to talk about civil program offerings then Emilio and niguez is our detention manager and his slide deck is going to feature some interior views of our Detention Facility but want to offer an invitation to any of the board members to come on down and meet with Michelle Campbell she's our detention school teacher she's been down there for about 12 years now I know Martin came by uh several months ago and she would love to talk about all the the features of the institutional Ed program with

022you uh and then Tracy Brandt is our juvenile court commissioner she's going to talk about court processes her bench philosophy and uh might even touch briefly on some of the looming legislative changes that are coming to the court next month that's coming quickly and then finally Delia Garcia is going to talk about functional family therapy that's a therapeutic intervention that that we offer to many of the court involved kids and and families so it's a tall order to get all that done in 25 minutes or so so I'm going to get out of the way and turn it over to the team thank you though students good evening I've been quite a bit so my name is Gary Smith been with the juvenile department for more than 30 years and I thought maybe tonight I'd

023share a few things about the juvenile department that you might not know so let me start by talking about diversions so youth who are arrested for the first time go through what for minor first offenses go through what's called diversion and diversion are legally legal agreements between the juvenile department and and the youth the youth do not go to court they cannot go to detention and uh the juvenile probation officers meet with the youth and their parents and create this contract and it's It Whatever the juvenile probation counselor deems necessary uh whether it's community service or drug alcohol evaluation or some counseling whatever the um and we will often ask the parents what do you think your child needs and uh and this program is quite successful in fact the majority of Youth who go

024through diversion we never see them again uh secondly a few years ago the Washington state legislature made it so that the majority of of Youth offenses are sealed to the public so when you turn 18 their offenses are sealed and and these crimes don't affect kids the rest of their life when they go to try and get into college or get their first apartment or house their offense is like like I said they're sealed don't offend don't affect them the rest of their life um something else you may not know the the juvenile department has worked with the school district for the last nine years on on community engagement boards um we we call them tip truancy Intervention Program but what that means is when when the Schools file truancies the we we do what

025truancies with the court because the kids are not going to school we put what's called a stay petition it's a hold and we have a meeting and we bring in principles or vice principals sometimes school counselors and so we have a meeting twice a month we have a juvenile probation officer or myself principals uh parents the students Children's Home Society has a counselor or or their programs and community volunteers and we try and figure out why are the kids not going to school what are the barriers we try and create a program or create a contract and and try and fix what's broken sometimes we're very successful sometimes we're not when we're not the case it ends up oftentimes has to go to court and uh then the court gets to deal with it but

026oftentimes we are are very successful the last three years in the in these Community engagement programs have been more difficult than the previous years um you guys have seen it you've heard it from the school administrators the parents um some of the some of the students who previously have not had problems or have problems you know the the suicide problems have gone up the mental health problems have gone up the gang problems have seriously gone up and and the juvenile departments dealing with those two um what kids when kids are put on probation for the more serious crimes we have probation counselors who um in essence what we are are let me turn my notes for a minute um are probation counselors are service Brokers we we refer you to treatment programs whether it be

027mental health substance abuse treatment anger management we also run in-house programs you're going to hear about functional family therapy in a minute we have non-offender programs we run an alternative Choice program which is social skills and a self-control program we run an education and Employment Program which is a job skills you know most of these kill most of these kids are going to go into into the workforce and so so we're working on the job skills program um let's see Dr Calamar has heard me harp on this uh two years ago we lost our student attendance Advocate um which used to be called the uh gosh what was it used to be called the truancy officer and we hope we know we know the budget shortfalls of the school we hope that in the next

028year or two that that position can get rehired um because it's it's it's needed and lastly let me leave you with my um my philosophy of working with kids we need to continue to hire the best staff we need to we every kid needs to feel like they matter um we need to quickly reward good behaviors we need to catch the kids making good choices but we need to just as quickly discourage bad behavior or negative behaviors and poor choices and the juvenile department is here to assist when that's when that's needed and like Corey said uh if you would like a tour come down and see what we do we would encourage you to to come down and get a tour and would show you around thank you so hello my name is Jill

029storly and I am a probation counselor um however currently right now I am assigned to the non-offender as the non-offender coordinator and what that entails is a lot of um people have heard of the at-risk youth program we also have the truancy court and I also work with the tip as well and then we have chins which is child in need of services and then emancipations and marriage waivers so any non-offender matter I try to work with the families and or the student or youth to best guide them and provide them information and then also if they want to go through the court process either of these I walk them through the process um the majority of my time is spent screening phone calls taking phone calls from parents who need assistance whether it be

030their youth is running away there's drug and alcohol concerns curfew gang affiliation um if there's mental health issues um truancy and then of course sometimes just Defiance at home and so um I just welcome any parents call refer them to our office and sometimes it's just connecting them to the right service and so we spend a lot of time doing that um this is supposed to be a preventive measure to help the youth not end up in the criminal side of juvenile court we want to do preventive measures and even filing an at-risk youth petition is still a civil matter it's not like on the criminal history and that's always a concern from parents and it's really an intervention and it's about helping the whole family so I do have brochures tonight and I can

031leave them if you guys would like some or to keep here at the school district office we have them in Spanish and English and we have staff to assist with both as far as the language so there's no language barrier so that's it thank you presentation hello my name is Emilia I am the juvenile detention manager been there for about a little over three years but prior to that I was working with juvenile rehab for 15. so I went started from actually an on-call security officer all the way to running my own group home facility and now decided to stop driving an hour so so this is um detention this is on the corner of Orlando and Washington um this is really this was built um in oh my clicker 1998 once Clippers not working

032okay um 98 this is a head facility um it has four different units um and there you go it has four different units and last year it's numbers are a little different because of the pandemic and everything else numbers Statewide were low but last year we averaged about four and a half per day and Lincoln state was about five days um the really going back a slide really focus for detention is just trying to help families and even the youth really specifically is trying to become better people better learn from their mistakes try to help them while they're in our facility um this there's a range of ways we're working with Catholic Charities Mental Health Counselors working with Delia for family functional therapy different Services where we provide having school in detention um so it's

033we just try to help youth again become a better form themselves and everyone has made mistakes and we're just trying to help them learn from them so actually going back these paintings is one of the programs that actually we have in detention these paintings are actually made by youth in detention it's one of the programs we have a youth do while they're there and it's trying to have them EX participate or do different activities that they wouldn't normally do when they're home and a lot of them actually did not realize they would see their finishing product and actually kind of light bulb would turn on and it would you get to see that excitement in their eyes when normally it just wasn't there um uh so this is actually the out um this is on

034Douglas I believe is Douglas the entrances are sally port um this is actually where law enforcement um Drive youth in um to detention after charges uh this is an intake a part of the intake holding cells uh this is where we put Place youth um if they're a little bit uh combative or if just we're having a lot of Youth come in and temporarily put them in there until we can kind of get the whole intake process started um so this is the other side of that room where fingerprints this is all the interview process we do with the youth different assessments are done so that way we can actually make sure to place the youth in a different unit as appropriate um also we have also different uh a female unit try to separate

035males and females as well so this is our medical room this is where physicals happen where medications given out to youth if prescribed physicals are done prior to them attending treatment so that's one of the requirements some of the facilities drug and alcohol treatment so a nurse will come over from the jail and actually um complete that um top right and bottom left is Michelle it's our school teacher um from West Side um this is our classroom uh these are three of the students this is a summer program as last summer they have full year-round school they're about to end school on Friday and start summer school on Tuesday so this is credit retrieval um and just everything that you can think of regarding to Trent regarding education because we just don't want the youth

036to fall you know lose any of the credits or just fall too far back behind so um this is an example as one of our units is the female unit um all units look the same um they're all single um occupancy due to uh pre-up prison rape pollution elimination act so every room is a single a month so let's see uh this is our Dean it's secure crisis residential Center is for youth who are running away from homes um or they find themselves in a unsafe home environment this is a place where they can they actually law enforcement only law enforcement can actually bring them in here they can only be here 72 hours until we can get Services hopefully lined up for the family um and just kind of give some type of assessments

037with that um and when youth are actually in here staff have to be supervised 24 7. they cannot be they cannot leave the youth there alone in the room or anything else for safety purposes in our contract um this is a training slash Zoom now with pandemic we now do a lot of Courts over Zoom um these are two visitation one's non-contact on the left and the other is on the right we have two of each uh this is visitation happens Sunday Tuesday and Saturday uh for about two hours families just come in uh through the courtroom Lobby and actually get screened in and come visit family this is our group visitation room this is where different groups um happen regarding family functional therapy or um even Mental Health visits or even visits from law

038enforcement for interviews um that occur in this room um before youth are actually sent to juvenile Rehabilitation after being sentenced we give them a special visit for about an hour with their families um to as a one last kind of goodbye kind of thing so um this is the gymnasium that we have within detention um it's just another resource we use to actually try to get youth active and not just sitting in their units we try to get them tired just like little kids you want to get them tired and exhausted so it's also just keep their exercise going so um just keep them active uh this is our kitchen all staff make the meals so it was built for a larger group but the staffer other ones responsible for making all the meals um

039this is a courtroom Lobby and it's one of the security officers actually coming in screen visitors um so this is a list of with the short amount of time just want to this is just a list of different things that we um service network provided so a lot of the the main focus of detention um in my view is again to help youth learn one learn from their mistakes and just try to get them back on track um they they come to us uh just in a horrible situation and my thing um I figure my job is to build that Rapport have my staff build that Rapport that trust with the youth so they're able to open up and sometimes youth will divulge information which they wouldn't tell others and it's that opportunity that we

040can take to actually help them get them Services speak with mental health uh when normally they wouldn't um or drug and alcohol assessments done so it's just that's really kind of with my background the juvenile rehab is just trying to build that rapport with them and help them as much as possible so that is it thank you well first of all um I'm so proud to be a part of this team I just um I'm commissioner Brandt um I am one of four of the judicial officers in schlang County Superior Court um I do several different calendars but I do juvenile court twice a week and I do dependency course so child protective cases once a week um I preside over all of the juvenile offender cases where kids commit crimes and then also the

041at-risk use cases that Jill spoke about and then the truancy cases as well um I've been on the bench about five years actually five years this June um and I'm really grateful that we get this opportunity um to kind of share with you guys what we do because I think um there's a lot of misconceptions about what happens in juvenile court um I know that we've had visitors and different mentors come and visit and they're surprised to see how things are done in juvenile court because it is very different um but I think it's helpful that you all have an understanding of what our goals are in juvenile court and also what My Philosophy is as the judge that presides over those cases um there there's a belief that when kids come into the juvenile

042justice system that it's detrimental to them and I appreciate that view I understand that there's been a lot of um articles with regard to the school to prison pipeline um however um I also believe that letting kids fall through the cracks is unacceptable um and I think it's important again that um we uh Focus well let me say this um we can't help kids if we don't know that they have an issue we don't know about them we can't help them so when they're not referred to us if they're struggling or whatever it's it's there's nothing we can do we don't have a connection we don't go into the school if we are not the child's not on probation if a youth at risk hasn't been filed there's no involvement um with our court Michael

043our goal um in Chilean County Juvenile Court is first to give kids support that's incredibly important um I make an intentional effort and if again I know that you guys have been invited to detention I'm inviting you to juvenile court so anytime on Tuesdays or Thursdays from 9 to 12 we have juvenile port and it's open court and everyone is welcome and I would love to have you guys come because I think it's important to see what we do um Emilio touched on the relationship and that's really what this whole thing is about and I think most of us know that if you've ever worked with kids it's about developing a relationship I try to do that every single time um I have a kid who I've never seen um I call them by their

044name I I speak to them directly I don't just hear through their attorney I want them to feel like number one they're important to me um I know who they are they're not just a case number they're not just a crime that they committed they are important I want to hear what they have to say because a lot of kids I think a lot of people that come to court feel like they haven't been heard and that's really really important to me that they always feel like I listen to them and I hear what they have to say um and and I care I you know I'm invested and I've said that you know many times to kids when you're successful I'm successful these guys are successful we want you guys we want you to

045be successful so we are very invested um I talk about their goals I ask them what they want to do you know when they get out of school um and I usually give a Shameless plug about my mock trial team at Wenatchee high school so I we actually have had a couple kids that have come through the court that have been on the team and so I usually do that um the other thing that we do is uh we provide accountability and I think that's kind of parenting 101. um there has to be some form of accountability when kids are off track um and they're doing things they shouldn't be doing that's harmful to them you know harmful to the community um a lot of the kids that come into juvenile court don't have great

046parental support that's kind of a consistent theme that we see um many of them come from single parent homes um or from homes whether it's not suitable caregivers so um we are expecting our society is expecting our kids to act in a certain way that never been modeled to them and they don't know how and so um this team this family that I consider family their their goal is to teach them that is to help them give them the tools give them the skills to be successful um accountability doesn't always have to be detention in fact um Emilio talked about the 50 bed facility uh I don't know what the percentage is but we don't have very many kids in our um ever I don't know what the average number is I think he said

047it was five um in 2021 but it's a tool and it's a tool that I use sometimes but it's definitely not the first tool and it's probably not the second third or fourth but it is in some cases a very effective tool um when we need to use it but there are a lot of other things that we do um a lot of other things and and um again some of that has already been discussed but we do community service with kids sometimes I write them I've had them write letters to their victims I had one youth write a letter to his brother because he was the big brother and I asked him to write a letter about how you know the strengths that he saw in his little brother and things that he wanted

048to see him you know achieve um as he grows up so we can be creative and that's the thing I love about juvenile court is I get to um kind of have a lot of discretion and I appreciate that because you know there's kids are not this perfect little you know cookie cutter thing they're all different and they all have different needs and our goal is to help them uh meet those needs and then achieve their goals the other thing that we do is we provide treatment which some of that has been talked about um most cases I feel like I'm ordering mental health counseling um and I have a lot of discussions with kids because they don't want to go to counseling so it's one thing to offer it but they have to engage

049in it so I try to have an open discussion with them about everybody goes to counseling counseling is you know it doesn't mean something's wrong with you I mean I have this discussion because if they don't engage we're not going to get very far with the counseling so and the drug and alcohol treatment and anger management and the fft that Delia will talk about but there's a lot of services that we provide in juvenile court that I think have been very effective but the goal ultimately as I said is that when the kids leave our system uh they have the tools not only to avoid going to the adult system but also to have a healthy and successful and productive life that's what we want um and I believe in them and I tell them

050that and we're never going to give up on him I don't care how many times they come through my court I still believe that they're good kids I know that they have strengths and we're just going to keep working with them until they turn 18 and we don't get to have them anymore so um one of the things that I guess I want to touch on is that um that belief that I have in youth um I think I have what I've seen that it when a kid believes that someone really believes in them that they matter it's kind of a game changer for youth I mean and I think we can all kind of relate to that um I started a mentorship program with Corey Stevens a few years ago and the mentorship program

051is kind of specialized it's just in juvenile court it's not not like your Big Sister Big Brother program I mean I guess it's kind of similar but the folks that Mentor in that program are highly vetted we do a lot Corey and I have met with lots of people and sometimes we think sorry not a good fit but we are very protective of the kids that come through our court most of the kids have trauma um and we are not going to have someone Mentor them that we think is going to give up on them or is going to be damaging to them in any way but it's a program that I'm really proud of if I had the ability to provide a mentor for every youth that came through my court I would do

052that but we just we don't have enough mentors um and it's really the way that it works is oftentimes I appoint a mentor at sentencing you know when I see when I've got to know a kid and I can see that he doesn't have the support that he needs and I I talk about it we never force it the kid doesn't want a mentor I would never order it so um it's not a requirement of probation it's not a requirement it's really I explained to them this is for you and your benefit this is for your support most of them don't even know what a mentor is but I explain it and then I ask them once I've explained it do you want to have a mentor and almost always they say yes I would

053love to have a mentor so um it's been a great program we have some amazing community volunteers that work with our kids and I'm really proud of that um one thing I do want to touch on that's not really about juvenile court but I think it's really important and I want everybody I won't go into a lot of detail but um there's been a lot of changes in the law in juvenile court and dependency Court a lot um just recently um some of these changes go into effect on July 1st and I'm just going to briefly tell you what they are because you know as administrators or anything I think it's important that you guys can pass this on because um it's going to affect what happens when school officials report uh to CPS issues

054that they see and it's House Bill 1227 basically what it has to do with is that there's a legal standard that the court must find to remove a child from a home um and the old standard used to be the release of such child would present a serious threat of substantial harm to the child that's what the legal standard was previously uh the new law see the specific language says that removal of the child is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm due to child abuse or neglect including that which results from sexual abuse sexual exploitation or a pattern of severe neglect now just to kind of sum that up what this means is the filings for dependencies will be down because um the things that used to meet the standard to remove a child from

055a home is that's changed pretty dramatically so um we won't have as many removals um and I know the department is working really hard to do upfront services to make kids safe but the reason I'm bringing this up to you is because um I really want to stress uh that you still need to make referrals um we don't want people to say well you know I'm not going to call CBS because they won't do anything and I've called and they won't do anything if there are concerns people need to call because one the part of this statute says a pattern of severe neglect um which you know so if there's not a pattern and there haven't been multiple calls and there haven't been incidences then you know the department doesn't have anything to work with

056so it's just important that um you're aware that this law is now going to be effective July 1st and I'm really just kind of touching the iceberg on the top it's very in-depth but I think that's the most important thing to know that there will be some changes and um just encourage everybody to keep doing what you're doing um because um it does matter it we need to keep kids safe so thank you for your time I appreciate it good evening I'm Dalia Garcia thank you again for the invitation to have us here um functional family therapy this is one of the evidence-based programs that we provide to families and youth between the ages of 11 and 18 years old we've been providing this resource for Chelan County Juvenile for the past 16 years up

057until recently we provided fft to only moderate and high-risk youth who are on probation or diversion agreements we're now providing fft to families involved in the at-risk youth case and also child in need of services this is a huge accomplishment in my opinion because we know that those families are also in great need of resources and also because the court is limited on what they can provide in those cases fft was designed specifically for Youth and families involved in the juvenile justice system as well as the child welfare system the model consists of 12 to 14 sessions and it includes three parts that have very specific goals I typically meet with families once a week for about an hour to an hour and a half when prices arise and additional support is needed I can

058meet with families a second time in one week I have flexibility with that although I primarily focus on the family as a whole I can also address issues within each individual some things that make fft different than traditional family counseling is my schedule is very flexible so I am able to meet with families in the evenings and on the weekends they don't have to take time off of work as we know some families some parents don't have that option and so I can meet them where they're at I also meet with them in their homes I have the privilege of seeing how they really do life also I'm I'm able to provide family or fft to families more than once if they have multiple cases and it's completely free to them each time the first

059phase of fft is motivation in this phase I work hard to change the focus and the meaning within the family context by facilitating a positive strength based Focus one by reducing negativity and blame too and most importantly by instilling or increasing hope which is really important one thing that we see often with the families that we work with is that hopelessness of I've tried this I've tried that nothing has changed my son or my daughter no one understands us or they've had really bad experiences with systems so helping them to see that there is always hope is really important to me no matter the struggles the families are facing or how discouraged they may feel my job is to encourage them to push through to not give up on their youth ever no matter what

060and to not give up on each other the next phase is behavior change this is a part where we work hard to replace negative behaviors with healthy and safe behaviors after assessing the relational functions within the family and with the knowledge of protective and risk factors I choose very specific skills that will assist the family to improve their relationships with one another to eliminate eliminate the referral reasons why we're working with them in the first place right and then also to provide them with the skills to help them be successful whatever that may look like the third and last phase in fft is called generalization I spend few sessions helping them to maintain the change in each individual within the family and in other systems such as schools I also provide some case management and

061refer them to other resources that will continue to assist and support their current and future change lastly I provide them with a relapse plan prevention plan to prepare for future challenges because we know they will come we review their triggers discuss the skills they've learned and the and the ways that things have improved and can continue to improve overall I feel fortunate to be able to provide this resource to the families that we work with the work is challenging to say the least but no matter what no matter how small or insignificant uh a change may appear we know that it's a seed that has a potential for growth and Improvement and that's always worth it thank you but I just want to open up to the board if you have any questions or comments

062we'd be glad to field those I'd like to thank you all very much for a magnificent and educational presentation and what I wanted to say is when you look at the facilities you say these are superb facilities with the gym and the facilities for education when the one half few hours one morning that I spent there inside those four walls you saw great human relationships and a lot of development and hope what I think I've learned tonight is that nine tenths or 19 20th is outside those walls and the people in front of us are doing it outside those walls and keeping kids out of those walls and to have a partner for the community in the school district like that I just want to thank you thank you thank you for your presentation um

063this was very informative I think this was our first um since I've been on the board presentation that we've gotten a glimpse of how um this is the juvenile system works with the school district I would like to propose to Dr Kelleher for next year to have this presentation share with our leadership team because a lot yeah obviously you guys are working with our youth that are going back into our educational system and we need to continue to provide those wraparound Services after they leave your facilities and hope that they never return um so I'm gonna put it out there if Mr Stevens is um you know available to recreate this presentation for our leadership team they're the ones that have the direct contact with our students very thank you oh did you okay okay

064well perfect show thank you I have also uh toured the juvenile facility some years ago the entire board did tours of all the school buildings and administrators and teachers gave us you know pertinent information and we included the juvenile facility in that board tour might be something to consider for the future that the board the whole board would would go there yeah I'll just Echo thank you for all your work and for being creative to help getting students back into the schools and back back to where they belong I know we hear so much when it comes to behavior issues about keeping them out so it is good to know that when they're when they conduct does get to a particular level that this resource is available to them and is actually quite beneficial so

065thank you for everything well that's a perfect tie-in into our next special presentation for comprehensive School counseling program review and our jdc team is welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting or leave if you'd like someone's glasses did someone leave their first Speaker were they Linda's oh these okay thank you for our superheroes from uh Chelan County for uh stopping in we appreciate all the amazing things that you do and uh Corey thanks for bringing your team and we'll we'll have you back in front of our leadership team as well so that's great superheroes with the work they do saving lives we appreciate it good evening board thank you for having uh having myself and my amazing friend uh Justin Nielsen who I got the privilege to witness his dodgeball prowess earlier in

066the day at the annual fifth grade staff versus students uh Dr dodgeball uh Extravaganza at Mission view so it was a different side of Justin that uh I haven't seen before but I but I thoroughly enjoyed so yeah I'm pretty good against fifth graders it's good it's good it's good so we had fun it was great I also want to extend a shout out to Samantha Holton who's a counselor at Wenatchee High School who was part of this uh the creation of this presentation um and uh as we jump into this our work tonight came out of a house bill I'm sorry Senate Bill 5030 and uh and our counselors as we know wear many hats in their roles and are often asked to do a variety of activities and jobs and so what the

067comprehensive uh School counseling program is about is making sure that those jobs are aligned with standards and are aligned with the services and the work that we want those counselors to participate in we can do that too but um it's uh it's a great if you have insomnia um you could read the transition plan it's much like board policy at times no offense but um okay yeah don't mind okay we're gonna jump into this anyway um nope it was I was at the sorry yep up yeah and all right excellent thank you thank you thank you uh as we jump in here uh let's see here jump into this thank you thank you here we go so the purpose of the comprehensive School counseling program is that counselors authentically engaged with our entire Community entire

068School community advocating and collaborating to remove systemic barriers oh yeah oh it's not playing nice in the sandbox oh share with our Zoom folks okay I gotcha I'll go ahead and talk about the the next slide because some of this stuff we don't need to actually see I can just kind of talk you through it because you've all seen the comprehensive School counseling program twice now because this is the second time that we've come back and shared with you so in that written plan you've all noticed that it relates to the state and National standards and the three three trained areas social emotional learning academic development and career Readiness and it also Builds on a process of identifying student needs through a multi-level School data and that's the that's what we're going to show tonight

069too is we're going to show use of time data which is new for our counselors this year and also School data which is uh school goals for our counselors which is new this year as well we'll also see in that plan or you have also seen in that plan direct and indirect services that our counselors provide and then that we have established our annual review which is this is our second one that we've had here so perfect thank you so much okay we'll jump in here uh the components of the plan are pretty simple the foundation uh is component one program two to our component two talks about our program management component three is that interesting part that talks about the deliverables what are the indirect and the indirect and the direct deliverables that counselors

070um actually are involved in each and every day and then component four is the accountability and the assessment piece and that was what was kind of missing last year when we were building our comprehensive School counseling program so you're going to see some examples of that today and then component five is the administrative activities uh that our counselors are involved in the updates for this year that I'm excited to share with you is the use of standards that we have aligned our program to so ASCA is the American school counselor Association and that's the standards that we used when we developed the the um the counseling program we also have the use of data uh with regard to our goals that our counselors have come up with and the use of Time study you'll also

071see an increase of collaboration with our administrators and district office oversight which is powerful when we talk about our strategic plan and linking our strategic plan to the work that happens in the classroom and in the counselor's office so from that strategic plan relates to the building plan relates to our teacher classroom student growth goals but also relates to the counselor's office as well it's that through line You'll also see the highlights that we have our goal setting and then our use of Time study which I've mentioned multiple times so I'm going to talk you through uh the goal setting piece and so we have examples of two goals from all the grade levels and I'll talk about one as we jump into this really quickly so with the first one lots of words don't

072worry about those I'll just walk us through them but the first one has the first goal is what we'll talk about um by January of 2023 90 of our students will be able to identify the difference between being regulated and dysregulated and be able to identify at least one tool to help them stay regulated so that is the goal that the counseling team came up with at one of our elementaries and the two bullet points below there are two of the action steps that they enacted to help this goal come to life they coordinated lessons and student retreats to teach the zones of Regulation to their uh to the students then they had follow-up communication with each grade level as well as posters and supplies for each classroom now the outcome of the goal we

073have outcomes for second and third grade when I ask for them they're still collecting their data and coming up with some of the results but they had second and third grade done and the third graders uh a hundred percent of them were able to identify at least one tool to become regulated and 78 were able to identify the difference between what it means to be regulated and what it means to be disregulated the second grade I don't know why they're a little bit of ahead this year but they were a hundred percent uh able to meet uh those goals in our elementary program and so that was uh that was great for one of our elementaries beautiful um so the middle school here we have by March of 2023 90 of our seventh grade students

074will be able to identify the following healthy coping strategies support systems in the school that they can go to if they need help to increase a sense of belonging and increased awareness of myths and facts regarding suicide now this revolves around our hope Squad which is in each of our three middle schools and we've talked about before the action steps that they used toward this goal is the Hope Squad classroom presentation and hope Squad if you remember is a is a peer-to-peer suicide prevention program that is sponsored locally by together for Youth and brought into the schools in four different counties they also have they also celebrated the national day of Hope and uh and the outcomes here is that 92 percent of the seventh graders were able to identify healthy strategies which is great

075ninety percent of the students were able to know the systems of support where they can go to in the school um if they have um if they need to find that increased sense of belonging and awareness that was our that was our Middle School high school we have both goals uh from Wenatchee High School the first one here is by June of 2023 100 of our graduating seniors will have a high school and Beyond plan with an identified Career Cluster 100 of the students that walked last week had the high school and Beyond plan and identified a Career Cluster so making it a requirement helps but having our counselors work through that with each of those students also helped as well and that is that is a five-year process and we're working on helping that

076become a six-year process where students work on that in seventh grade eighth grade all the way through high school to build that plan at West Side High School they're working to increase career exploration for all students in all of their five programs they want to increase student career exploration opportunities through in-house and in the field Hands-On experiences and they want to increase that to 80 percent of their Juniors and seniors when I asked for the data from West Side High School they saw a 20 increase in their student career exploration and they reached 83 percent of Juniors and seniors so they were proud of those results and they're shooting toward 100 percent in the uh in the years to come okay let's see here my friend Justin is going to talk to us about use

077of Time study yes that work out yeah yeah that's great okay all right hi I'm Justin Nielsen school counselor at Mission view um so one thing that we did differently this year is we each of the counselors did a use of Time study to find out how are we using our time are we doing the work that's most impactful to students um so we did some of us did two two to five days depending on the elementary team did five the rest of the teams did two we just kind of wanted to try it out uh so we write down what we're doing every 15 minutes which is a little exhausting why some people chose to do two days um and then we would put that in a category of direct or indirect services program

078planning School support other or non-school counseling tasks and what our Professional Organization and what all the data and research shows that 80 of our time should be spent on those Direct Services that we're working with students in counseling advising we're teaching lessons and that we also should be doing those indirect Services which that's a referral to maybe an outside counseling agency collaborating with teachers and uh families uh 20 no more than 20 of our time should be on that program planning like lesson planning or or working on our uh comprehensive School counseling plan or School support this kind of like extra duties that we have uh so we took all the data from uh the Elementary from the middle and the high school counselors and we just kind of mushed them all together and we

079came up with this uh uh this says what we were doing um so instruction and counseling and referrals you see all those together that was about 77 percent of our time so this the elementary team we were pretty close to that 80 percent um you can see we spend almost a fifth of our time in classrooms teaching lessons which is really appropriate for elementary counselors to be doing um about 28 of our time on counseling and then our friends in the middle school middle school counselors um they were at 54 of their time in in direct and indirect services so we're not as close to that 80 percent um and so they want to be doing that work so it's just going to be a matter of them advocating for how are we going to

080get working with students more rather than doing maybe some of those non-school School counseling tasks or there's fair share responsibilities and then our uh is it going the right way all right oh I was looking at it but you weren't there it is so uh the middle school students uh school counselors were spending 20 percent of their time on the non-school counseling test so if they weren't doing that work the non-school counseling test and that could be like watching over lunch or bus Duty than they would be at nearly that 80 percent of time working directly with students gonna push them both um and then this is our high school um and when I said mush together what I meant was we put all the all their information together and we found the average so

081every individual counselors might be slightly different they're they spend about 63 percent of their time on uh direct and indirect services so uh you see a lot more time in counseling a lot more time referrals consulate consultation um and they we only did two days this year really we want to work up to at least five maybe ten days so we can take some more accurate data just because especially with High School counseling depending on the time of the year you're going to be doing a very different thing so um that could be part of it so we're going to look at that and use this as a tool to measure are we doing what we're supposed to be doing and what's best for students thank you yeah thank you excellent one of the things

082that I want to share with the board and this was a good Aha and good validation validation for Justin and Samantha and I we spent a Friday in May I believe um right next door in the north boardroom and met with counselors from across the state and ospi and kind of a zoom meeting and uh learned and we were able to literally submit our comprehensive plan to the state and get feedback instantaneously which is great because you don't always have that opportunity and so our goal was how do we grow as as a counseling team and how do we grow as a district with our counselors and how they respond to students and uh so they gave us some tips and some feedback and so we took the tips and feedback and put it into

083what we want to do next year and it's really growing upon the work that we started this year but the validating point was we heard from the state that our plan was very robust and one of the more more robust plans that they had seen at the state level and we were further along in our work than many school districts so we're like we kind of gave ourselves a high five and patted each other on the back and felt good about that but we wanted to also make good strides and goals for us moving forward as well so so next year uh what you can see from the plan is uh we do have a goal to increase hello did the same thing we have two slide decks going simultaneously super fun and confusing at

084the same time uh we uh wanted to make sure that the um the ask a model to reach the standards uh they ask that counselors create two goals and this year we created one which was the goal for academic career and social emotional where you saw a heavy Focus this year on social emotional and the career piece at the high school level so next year we will also be adding in addition to um the first goal we'll be adding the close the gap goal and closing the Gap is really addressing academic um uh attendance or behavioral discrepancies that we find throughout the school data and through this work and it'll Target things like students with excessive absences below expectati expect expected achievement or multiple disciplinary actions and so you're going to see that next year

085when we come back in June you'll see two different goals from the counseling side of things and then as Justin mentioned we will increase everyone will do at least five days on the use of Time study if not more so that we can generate uh the appropriate data and it was great to watch the teams actually find some time to do some iterator reliability on what direct and indirect Services really are and there was some good dialogue and uh maybe a little pushback and some uh some uh yeah some pushing to and fro so it was good to have us work those uh systems out um anyway so that is our presentation and Justin volunteered to take any questions that you might have no I'm just kidding we're here as a team we've got it

086yeah yeah yeah we've got this uh thank you for your time tonight uh any questions or concerns that you might have we would uh love to address those I do have questions couple questions perfect um one is your goal is you know 80 20 and um in some cases you aren't you as a whole meeting that whole so what are the reasons um that are preventing you from meeting that 80 20 goals that staff shortages not enough kids to work with no no no no no that's funny uh no um you know it's gonna be difficult because it was in the middle and high school so I'll do my best I know that some middle school counselors have duties that are non-school counseling tasks and so and sometimes it's just like there's nobody else to

087do that but they're things that have to be done and we're such helpful people really sure um so I think that that really is it um and so in the future I think you know down the line we'll uh be talking to administrators about at the beginning of the year about what is appropriate for the counselors to be doing what's not appropriate and then signing maybe even some kind of contract saying yes is what we're gonna do so yeah good okay I'm glad you're going to have those conversations so some years ago I met with American School counseling Association Representatives at a at a national conference and one of the things that I brought away from that meeting was that um the organization has ratio recommendations for the number of counselors um per student and

088at that time we were very far away from the Professional Standards uh associ that were recommended by a ASCA so how are we doing now I believe we are I believe we're closer but we're not to the Target um so we're closer because I remember wait we did have some huge discrepancies especially at the high school um but we are much closer I don't have the exact numbers it's 250 students to one counselor so I I don't know I mean I know my school is 400 yes 50 students so yeah we got a ways to go it would be interesting to have a report back to the board um with those ratios and and compared to the recommendations love to see that thank you yeah thanks Laura other questions or comments just to kind of

089piggyback off Laura's question you know what's preventing us from you know getting to 80 to 20 especially at the middle school level where we do have two counselors um at the middle school so I think you know we can like Laura said glad yeah you're taking care of that well and that's and that's where those use of time studies are really benefiting the program and the outcome because we want to get to those standards and we want to get to the ratios that are there and so the more information we have in our fingertips then we can work together as a team and that's where that administrator and District collaboration comes into play it's like what are our goals that we need to have for our counselors and address those outcomes so we can come

090back and tell you that the ratios are getting better yeah absolutely especially in the time where we see more students needing those additional supports so absolutely thank you and I have a curiosity question really you talked about um strengthening the district to building coordination uh to be more effective my curiosity area is between the two high schools West Side and Wenatchee high school and I'd call it a trans uh cross fertilization and partnership question to what extent can you draw from your different experiences and learn from one building to another and this could apply to all the buildings actually yeah um and then uh and support each other so but just generally in that area transferring ideas from one place to another things that work at the same time using this spreading the strengths around

091and are there differences where the environment is a little different in different buildings it needs that kind of thing if you could comment on that I'd like it or comments and I'll give Justin a chance to comment as well um we have time built into our schedule uh as as the district lead for counselors we schedule meeting times throughout the school year and some of them are as a Counseling Group all together and some of them some of the time is also at grade levels and so those specific grade level times is is actually what we use that time for as a sharing of best practices and alignment of resources and sometimes it's the sharing of knowledge of agencies throughout the the community what's available for our kids what has come up that you've dealt

092with that we can learn from and then sometimes we bring everyone together we had a we had a couple of suicide presentations this year and how do we utilize an access crisis response so that that cross-pollination for lack of a better term is happening and it's scheduled within our time together as a counseling team which is great because you need it at all levels like the elementary team they have specific concerns and they have specific resources that are you know attuned to their their students and the behavior and then middle school as well but if there is a time for us all to come together when we can actually learn from one another there too I'll let you I don't know you kind of took everything yeah and so we yeah we meet regularly and

093collaborate and share ideas and best practices and what's working at my building what's working at your building um and then also it's nice to because the only counselor in my building so it is hard for me to like if I have a question or ethical concern what do I do and so it is nice to have a team of K5 counselors that we can lean on each other and and um help problem solve together yeah so we have we do have that and it does happen so thank you yeah thank you everyone appreciate the time thank you next we have our discussion on our first read policies thank you we've got four policies up for first read tonight the first one is 5161 which is uh policy designed to promote mutual respect Civility and orderly

094conduct among employees parents students volunteers and and all of our stakeholder groups this policy is modeled after a Mercer Island policy that has become quite prominent across the state and led to a wasda a template policy as well in addition we have two other uh policies that are related 5283 and 3225 they both deal with employee identification Badges and student identification Badges and these policies are being suggested by the cabinet as a means of enhancing Security in our buildings and these really do help us identify who is in the building that may um uh who is not supposed to be in the building in terms of security so both the student and and the employee into the badges and in 1400 is really some housekeeping updates to a policy that talks about our meeting schedule

095we've added our Workshop schedule in there in a few items about months where we host really only one meeting per month so those are the items that are up for first read and the only other policy Committee Member uh here is Martin did you have any other comments or suggestions about these I think I might I might comment on policy 5161 because we are following the Mersa Island template and when you compare that to the was the one I think the way uh the policy committee I think all of us certainly me this was one about doing what's right which is about good behavior rather than talking about fixing what's wrong um and it recognized value with leading to with doing the right thing and I think it created a much more positive approach to

096this problem and Mercer Island had won awards for it and so we actually are recommending uh something very closely modeled on Mercer Islands thank you and I I did uh just receive a note that Catherine is here via audio uh Catherine did you have any additional comments about these first read policies okay we'll move forward then moving on to our action items okay thank you we have two action items one goes back to policies that are up for second read uh we have several policies up for second read tonight the first being 4210 which is uh regulation of dangerous weapons on school premises we had a an update from wasda that further clarified some of the exceptions in that policy we had 5001 which is an update that took care of some scribing errors uh

097that are important errors to address the policy as stated to One calendar year when it should have stated One calendar month so an important difference that we've made an update to there um and 4060 which is on distribution of information that policy is about how we share information to families uh about opportunities through non-profit organizations and government entities and the revisions to that policy protect the district from inadvertently creating an open public forum in in sharing that kind of information we also have two policies uh 5254 and 5252 which relate to staff expression and staff involvement in political activities and those uh updates really represent a separation of those two policies into distinct policies uh in the past we had them kind of combined into one policy uh wazda came out with a template that

098had the staff expression and political activity separated we have done that now as well with our policies and 611 which is a revised policy that removes some outdated language regarding tuition for kindergarten thank you do I hear a motion to accept policies presented I moved to approve the policy committee recommendations for policy 4210 50 000 and 1 40 60 52 54 5252 and 61 11 as presented second we have a motion by Martin in a second by Julie do we have any discussion okay hearing none all in favor of approving the policies as presented please say aye aye motion carries we do have one additional action item on the agenda for tonight uh concerning the purchase of a few buses over the next two years purchase of buses is done using the transportation vehicle fund

099and the transportation vehicle fund is a separate self-balancing account within our budget that is used specifically for things like maintaining our bus fleet there are sufficient funds in the transportation vehicle budget to accommodate purchase of some additional buses over the next two years and currently the district has about 37 buses with one on the Surplus list we do have our own mechanics who routinely service and maintain the fleet but the vehicles do eventually reach the end of their service life for that reason the district purchases buses for the fleet on a calendared schedule that is based on the vehicle service life and a few other factors and on this rotation we have been replacing about six percent of our Fleet per year for the past few years the buses we are requesting to purchase are

100part of that schedule and we'll replace fleet vehicles that are near the end of their service life we also are currently experiencing some pretty serious supply chain issues with vehicles and and so we hope to stay ahead of the supply chain issues over the next few years so the administration is requesting board approval to purchase several buses over the next two years that would be three buses per year for the next two years again that is about six percent of our Fleet which is nearing the end of their service life I move that we approve the school bus purchase uh as presented well second thank you we have a motion to approve the purchase of the six buses as presented um over the next two years totaling a cost of one million 230 973 and

101six cents any discussion yes I do would I have a question and clarification um which is uh if the district evaluated electric buses and what the district's conclusions were in this recommendation uh and the reason for asking this question is buses are a very long-term investment um we are looking at change from diesel to electricity electric over a long period of time there are federal subsidies available from time to time and they're things like which might be relatively minor that the air quality around schools can be improved very slightly so these are all things that I think should be reviewed when we make these long-term decisions and I I would ask if we got information on that review yeah great question so we have discussed the possibility of electric buses and it we continue to

102evaluate that every time we look at this and at this point we thought it best to continue with the diesel and the gas vehicles for a couple of reasons one is our Fleet is now used for all our athletic uh trips and our music trips and and many of the trips that we do out of the area which means most of our Fleet really needs to be able to travel long distances multiple times per week we are in a geographical location in terms of our Athletic League uh and and and surrounding districts that we often interact with that we send buses to Yakima for example almost five times per week for events during the school year uh as well as Tri-Cities Walla Walla so we have some long distance trips we also look at the

103cost Associated and right now buses are currently the electric ones are currently about twice as expensive and they do have a shorter service life so we continue to watch for state and federal subsidiary grants that that may be can help us move more in that direction in the feasible future but for now our current wholesaler who does sell electric buses doesn't recommend those for our use based based on the type of travel that our Fleet engages in in the price although they do sell the electric buses and I guess all that to say martin that um it doesn't put the electric bus discussion completely off the table for the future but for right now we feel like um it's it doesn't seem as practical or economical as the other options no thank you Bill I

104think that's a very good discussion and it's good to know that we are being rigorous and thorough in doing this kind of review uh Martin brings up a good point and I appreciate the response as well um Bill uh we spoke with the board member from I believe Walla Walla who had received grant funding to purchase electric buses um and so maybe reaching out to how our other you know smaller remote districts dealing with you know just as a possibility as we move forward I will say I I work with an entity that works with electric buses and maintenance is a big issue because it's a whole different level of Maintenance they're basically large computers now so you have to have very specially trained staff that they even struggle with hiring qualified individuals to be

105able to do that maintenance so that's just another what I see is a hurdle we would we would face but keep looking into it for sure any further discussion I have a motion on the floor all in favor please say aye um opposed motion carries now we have our superintendent report excellent thank you uh so as we move into the last week of school for the school year I just want to say congratulations to our graduates we wish them all the best and a big thank you to all our students staff and families for a great year I am looking forward to West Side High School's graduation ceremony tomorrow night that will be a wonderful event and I have a couple of other uh announcements that I think are important for families in the community

106the Wenatchee school district will once again be offering free meals over the summer for any child ages 18 and younger we will have those meals available Monday through Thursday June 26th through July 27th that will include breakfast that will be served from 7 30 to 8 30 a.m and a lunch provided at 11 30 to 12 30 p.m those meals will be served at Columbia Elementary on Alaska Street which is right across from Columbia Valley Community Health in addition to those meals we have a non-profit Community partner Small Miracles that will distribute lunches at several locations between July excuse me June 26th and August 3rd from 11 A.M to noon the distribution sites in our area are Lincoln Park met Howe Park Pioneer Park Washington Park and the office of the cafe Group which is

107located at 766 South Mission streets wanted to give a brief update on our audit the Washington State auditor's office is still in the progress of completing their look at our 2020 2021-22 fiscal information so you know how audits work they look at the prior year and at this point the state auditor's office has caused considerable stir across the state with respect to emergency connectivity funds from the 21 2021 pandemic year the purpose of emergency connectivity funds was to help ensure students and families had items needed for at home online instruction during the pandemic when anti-school District used the funds to purchase devices for online learning during the pandemic districts across the state who access these funds including Wenatchee are struggling with some vague documentation requirements from the auditors the state auditor's office cites lack of

108guidance from the federal agencies on what documentation should be required related to the funds and have continued to be a little bit vague with districts across the state including ours on what documents need to be submitted it also does appear that Washington Auditors are interpreting the requirements associated with the emergency connectivity funds in a more stringent fashion than most other states in the U.S so at this point our esds ospi and state lawmakers are communicating with federal official officials regarding the use of emergency connectivity funds I want to be clear that throughout the audit process when Nancy has been transparent and forthright and we've worked collaboratively with our team of Auditors we have submitted all our records related to the use of emergency connectivity funds and we are awaiting a response for additional context related

109to emergency connectivity funds uh anyone who is so Desires in the public could search the auditor's site for the rebuttal of several school districts who have already received findings regarding their emergency connectivity funds including the Seattle school district and I think it's very informative to see the rebuttal that some of these districts have put forward and last in my report as you know June 27th will be my last board meeting with you in my interim role and I wanted to say I've appreciated the opportunity to serve again in Wenatchee and I look forward to Dr kalahar's tenure thank you board communication uh yes just briefly I will not be in here in person at your final meeting Bill and I'm really sorry about that I may or may not be able to connect via zoom

110and I just want to publicly thank you for all you have done for our district during this past year you have been amazing you have been exactly what we needed and I'm so thankful that you are here at the time that you were and we could not have done this last year as well as we did without you so thank you so much for everything and I appreciate you very much yeah oh sorry one more thing uh off topic um we have been receiving quite a number of Communications in the public uh from the public over the last couple of months regarding uh dress code um our school district's dress code and so uh at uh maybe the agenda planning meeting I'm not sure which meeting I did put forward the idea that um we

111ought to have our policy committee take a look at the district stress code to review it to see if it's currently relevant with the expectations that we have in the educational environment and look forward to hearing about that review at some later date okay um this is a time of year where you can celebrate something different every single night and they're all really really great and I should keep silent but they're two things I particularly enjoyed I really enjoyed the report on the Multicultural family night last Wednesday of issuing academic Awards uh to uh elementary and middle school students it was an amazing event and it was very good to see the uh uh Pack Core the actual board of directors of the parent Association and two High School seniors how they have really developed

112a great strength in their organization this year and that was a very fine occasion and I particularly enjoyed seeing the profiles of the valedictorians and uh I guess I can say girls 11 boys five lots of Engineers lots of I.T um going to fine institutions so it's um if I look at the new logo there you can do anything from Wenatchee and our students are kind of proving it and doing it in high-tech areas I just want to say a big congratulations to all our students that graduated and all the counselors parents teachers everyone who helped get them there to that place it was fun to celebrate with them I also enjoyed celebrating the retirement of some of our great staff always sad to see him go but glad to be part of their Journey

113good luck to everyone who's finishing this week thank you I will Echo last week we got to celebrate our retirees um a lot of years of service and congratulations to our certificate and our classified staff as they Venture on into these new adventure of not having to be at school in come fall um and that is it for me if there is no further discussion or communication the board will now enter will now raise us into an executive session for a period of 45 minutes or until 8 30. to consider the minimum price at which Real Estate will be offered for sale or links when public knowledge regarding such considerations would cause a likelihood of decreased price pursuant to policy number 1410 and RCW 4230110 this discussion will be close to the public the school

114board is not expected to take final action following the executive session thank you okay at this time this meeting is adjourned