001good evening everyone it's six o'clock so we're gonna get started today is june 28th and we are here for a regular board meeting our president martin barron is joining us remotely um so to begin this board meeting uh let's start out with the pledge of allegiance thank you i welcome everyone to the board meeting and thank you for joining us as martin mentioned it has mentioned in the past meeting is conducted in english and we do have spanish interpreting services if anybody would like to speak in spanish and have it be interpreted into english so we're going to dive right into the agenda we are going to look at the consent agenda are there any modifications from the board for anybody on the board that would like to add a notification to the consent agenda
002okay in the consent agenda we have the minutes from the june 14 regular meeting vouchers and payroll personnel report contracts second read policies and bill trips do i hear a motion to approve the consent agenda motion to approve the consent agenda do i hear a second a second any discussion great all in favor please say aye motion passes great all right so um next is citizens comments um this is the time where we listen with the board as well as listens to our citizens and citizens are welcome to make a public comment kim do we have any okay hi jack welcome you will have three minutes um and kim will have a timer for you and she gets that up it'll ding they get every minute all right so my name is jack owen i'm
003a graduate uh from wenatchee high school 2019 um and i've come to bring to your attention or hopefully move it up the priorities of the current mental health facilities and there to address the inadequacies so um to start i just like to throw some numbers your way so um this data was collected before the coven 19 pandemic uh 36 of students uh 12 to 17 had persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness 15.1 had a major depressive episode 4.1 percent had a substance use disorder 18.8 seriously considered attempting suicide 15.7 made a suicide plan 8.9 attempted suicide and 2.5 made a suicide attempt requiring medical treatment so um as someone who has struggled with mental health and who has lost a classmate to suicide these numbers terrify me and we we can't we cannot afford to
004lose any more any more students um i'm sure you're all also aware of the school massacres that have been happening recently um seventy percent of these school shootings are committed by minors um right now it seems that our first line of defense against these are our school resource officers and um uh time time and time again they have shown themselves to be not useful um they should be our last line of of defense um i think it's safe to say that many instances of suicidal or homicidal ideation starts with misbehavior this behavior whether is being disruptive or doing drugs should be met with rehabil rehabilitative effort rather than disciplinary action our best shot at preventing homicides and suicides is to have easily accessible regular comprehensive and confidential mental health counseling in our schools uh we
005we can't afford to have any any sorts of barriers um these students who are struggling the most they can't afford the current facilities uh they don't have health insurance they may not feel safe at home contacting their parents letting them know but uh yes i uh we we need mental health counselors in our schools social workers and to educate our current counselors on these matters such as these crises so thank you thank you jack i want to just say my condolences on the loss of your classmate and uh just want to say that i hear you and i understand what you're saying and i realized the importance and thank you for being brave and coming to speak to us tonight i really appreciate it okay next on the agenda is the equity program review um
006first we'll we'll get an update from education northwest um paul will share a little bit about it but i just you know as a reminder the board did meet uh had a board workshop on june 21st where we reviewed the results um presented by northwest education northwest and we were able to provide feedback prior to the final draft that was perfect maria uh we have shannon davidson with us she's been with us many different times to provide a brief update on where education northwest is with their plan and the delivery of that shannon welcome thank you paul and thank you to the board for making time for this uh update and uh conclusion close to concluding our equity program review so i will share my screen and just uh take just a few moments to
007let you know where we are and what to expect next uh first just wanting to start by expressing gratitude uh to everybody who has been involved in this process uh over the past six or seven months we think of course the school district and the school board we know that this is a big investment for the district and we hope that we've produced a product that represents the balance of the multitude of voices and stories that we've been privileged to hear and learn from over the course of this project we want to thank our equity review working group for devoting a lot of time to meeting five different times and doing work between meetings to ensure that we stayed on the right path we wanted to thank the school board for for investing in this
008work for investing time and resources for reading the lengthy report draft and spending two and a half hours on the 21st providing feedback on the preliminary review findings and of course everyone who participated in this effort by sharing their insights engaging in the dialogue we hope that we'll be able to respond to your generosity by providing some information that will be helpful for everyone as you move into the next steps of implementing your strategic plan so just as a reminder there's been a strong team of researchers working hard on this project from the beginning we wanted to ensure that our team included multilingual multicultural individuals and i'm grateful to this whole team for bringing their skills and professionalism and lived experience to this work we have stayed on our timeline um we are uh we
009started the work really in earnest in january with a planning phase with the guidance of the equity program review working group uh we developed a evaluation or a equity review plan and we started collecting our data and hearing stories in february which extended into the early part of may we've been we've had our heads down in the analysis for the last couple of months and we're very proud to have reached this point of sharing our findings and reporting back with you and again on the 21st we spent a long time with the school board members really getting into the nitty-gritty of the findings going through the content uh they were able to ask some clarifying questions to point out places where we can make our content and our findings more clear and gave us guidance
010on finishing the last sections of our report so again thank you for that time so with the in partnership with the district with the school board and the working group we identified these five areas to focus our equity review and i'll just read through them quickly our first area was access to learning opportunities and this includes access to grade level opportunities and key courses required for graduation as well as opportunities for highly capable programming special programs extracurriculars and cte the second area we focused on was instructional practices and policies and followed by curriculum materials resources and policies our fourth area of focus was on discipline practices procedures and policies and finally on hiring and recruitment practices and policies and throughout the project we've been guided by the mission and the vision of the strategic plan
011and the district's promise to build a foundation of diversity equity and inclusion from which each student emerges future ready so you'll see that in our report we continuously do our best to tie our content and our findings back with the priority areas the action steps and the future ready outcomes that are articulated in the plan just another quick look at the data sources that we draw from throughout our report we collected qualitative data during our in-person site visit as well as virtually in total we did focus groups with 14 groups of students three groups of families and two groups of educators five of those student groups were in spanish and two of the family groups were in spanish we also held an in-person community event when we were up there on april 13th that had
012about 30 attendees we interviewed six administrators we had a number of conversations by email and phone with family and community members that we worked those those ideas into our report the best we could we also have had opportunities to contact the team be a digital suggestion box and of course we've been getting feedback from our working group continuously throughout the project for our secondary data analyses we were able to execute a data sharing agreement to be able to access student level data from the state level data set we also looked at state level workforce data from the s275 data set and we were provided with some data from the hr office of the district leadership team and then to ground our findings in some context and help shape our recommended priorities and considerations for each
013chapter we reviewed a list of adopted curriculum curricular materials a selection of ela texts and the policy documents listed publicly on the website this is just a window into our survey participants we did three different surveys one for educators one for family members and one for students so we uh this these tables show you our the number of responses that we received and a little bit about how those participants were broken down by racial and ethnic categories and also by grade level and just as as with focus groups we did offer surveys in both spanish and english for students and families so the report right now is in the final stages of editing and translation so what you can expect when we uh submit it will be an executive summary it's a very lengthy report
014we you have just seen all the different data sources that we draw from so we want to provide an executive summary that will give a high level view of the findings and considerations uh and then the report basically follows the structure of our five focus areas and wraps up with the conclusion in which we try to really explicitly link our findings to the priority areas of the strategic plan and we also provide a list of references and an appendix that has some of the more technical aspects of our methods and more comprehensive tables of our survey results the report will be available in both english and spanish within each chapter what you'll find is that we tried our best to really ground our findings in the voices from students and families so when applicable we
015start each chapter with what we heard from students and families from surveys and focus groups we then share what we learned from educators and administrators when applicable from surveys and interviews if the chapter is using the secondary administrative data we present those findings followed by in each chapter a table that provides an overview of district policy related to the topic of each chapter that addresses specific equity issues in those areas and finally at the end of each chapter we provide some considerations and a list of resources to help guide the next steps of what what to do with this information as you move into that implementation phase we hope that the data can serve multiple purposes firstly to help the district and the school board to determine priorities for achieving equity goals more broadly also
016more specifically suggesting opportunities to strengthen supports and strengthen the equity lens in specific areas while implementing the strategic plan we hope the data can provide a baseline from which to monitor progress in areas that the board and the district decide to focus on in the next steps and it is this is a public resource we hope that it will be educational and informative for the community who just wants to understand how equity is how equity issues are functioning currently in the district to be able to engage in that dialogue going forward so we hope that you will stay in touch with us this is our contact information and how to reach members of the team and we welcome feedback we have really valued the chance to have this conversation it has felt very interactive and
017very um engaged and immersive in the wenatchee school district community and we are really grateful for that and hope and encourage that you will let us know what you think shannon thank you very much uh for for all of your work and the the work of your team and i know the board um is very appreciative as well and we look forward to that final report in the in the coming weeks board members any other comments just thank you to our community our parents students administrators um who went along on this ride um i think you know i appreciate my colleagues on the board also for bringing up the idea of getting our monthly reports um so yeah this this is where the work begins i was just going to say now that next piece
018is taking in that that report um as bill eagle steps into the interim superintendency and working alongside uh the board of education and staff to really develop that next plan that equity plan what does that look like going forward for the wenatchee school district shannon thank you for everything and continued success thank you thank you very much bye-bye moving right along all right up next on the agenda is the the budget update paul i will turn it over to you all right tonight we have uh the last presentation for uh this year until we reconvene uh back in august uh for the final budget approval uh tonight we have the 2022-23 budget and the four-year projections uh of the general fund as a reminder the budget is the the best estimate of the future especially
019when we're looking into a four-year plan um it's really important to remember it is that best estimate since the last time the board has met with us on the budget more fine to uh find uh combing of the budget has occurred so we're excited to present the budget to you as always the budget is a value statement and it is really reflected in our promise in our values and the strategic priorities again that priority of partnership as we work together as a as a board as a community to ensure we're doing right uh by our students as in one of those pieces as jack mentioned tonight how do we continue to support our students so let's start in enrollment so this is a really important graphic and i think it's a very telling graphic for
020where we're at within our school district you can see back to 2015 16 uh laura you will remember this sitting on the board at that time during that alcoa closure what an important part within the entire community but it also had an impact uh on student enrollment here in our district and it really was very impactful since then enrollment has been declining and then as we turned into covid the pandemic that too you can see where we're at as you look into that 1819 that 1920 and then these last couple years as we hit six you know 6971 students in that 2021 year and then this past year we did bounce up by a roughly 50 students in that 21-22 but the big picture is uh from a high of 76 students to where we're
021currently out of 6988 students and for us in education enrollment equals state and federal dollars every student is tied directly to to state and federal funds um again this this lays out uh the overall four-year projection for our enrollment again i'll always give the caveat here it is critical to remember one year out we're pretty good with student enrollment two years out it gets weaker three years out weaker four years out um it really is a shot in the dark but pieces to remember our graduating classes right now are larger than our incoming k1 classes so that's going to tell you that once that group moves out smaller cohorts of students are moving in and that's how we end up really looking at that cohort survival rate over time where does it mature move through
022within our organization also that uh yeah you can see the kindergarten classes there's a 50 to 100 student gap there in it we also have pinnacles prep that continue to add a grade level each year um and we're monitoring that we're currently projecting that at roughly 40 students per year as a decrease for us 40 students going to pinnacles that would be a decrease for our school district it's jumping into revenues so as the board and the committee knows the district has received significant amount of cobit funds directly and competitive grants from the state allocation directly into the cobot funds we'll be claiming in our full cares 2 grant at the end of the 21-22 fiscal year the largest grant came in form of the cares 3. and in this you will see that in
023line 6000 that's where you will see that amount of money uh we have received many different covet fund grants for a variety of activities some of those grants are multi-year and are included in the budget for the years to which they pertain there is also additional competitive grants funded through state coveted funds that the district has been applying for we'll continue to see this trend throughout the 22-23 year and the 23-24 school year as that aligns with spend down deadline of the federal covet dollar so for us it really is that into that 24 23 24 school years is where the federal in state is saying that those dollars need to be expensed by the end of that so this is a really good uh slide for us this chart represents the anticipated revenues from
024the 2122 budget without the covet funds so really pulling out those covet funds where are we at and the 21 22 23 and as you can see through there so that is again stripped out of this presentation uh this is a more accurate representation of what we can anticipate for coming funds so you can see the revenue is trending down this is due to those factors enrollment decline taxable assessed value growth and enrollment decline negatively impacting our levy equalization fund we're losing remember roughly one percent in that regionalization factor that we have been for the last two years and that will continue for uh another two years beyond this uh the increase as you look here from budget uh 2122 you see a jump there that's due to the 5.5 percent ipd increase in state
025funding so the state because of the increased inflation they said it needs to be at that 5.5 in ipd so that's why that one jump you see that larger jump there but then as it goes down in that 23 24 that's enrollment numbers coming down again enrollment tied directly to the dollars the district receives okay levy and levy equalization funds as a district we're limiting the amount of the levy funds we can collect and that limitation is the amount that the voters approved as we worked through that a year and a half ago two years ago now we set the amount for the levy the voters went out and they said yes but that's where we're capped at for the amount of levy dollars we can get this means that even though our taxable total
026taxable property might increase in value or stay flat or decrease we can still not receive more than what the taxpayers approved us our current levy is approved through the 2025 calendar year levy equalization funds are provided by the state allocated based on the calendar year calculations and are also limited by factors in the state law the major factor in this funding are the prior year total enrollment and the total assessed value of your district so you can see if enrollment goes up then lea goes up but if enrollment goes down the lea goes down so they're they're tied directly to each other which is really important for uh us to follow the inverse happens with assessed value if the assessed value go up then our le funds lea funds go down and if the assessed
027value go down then le goes down this is due to the assumption built into the state legislative model that is that if assessed value increases the district is receiving more tax revenue locally which is generally not the case for majority of districts so in scenario 2 that reflects the wenatchee school district's position enrollment is going down assessed value is flat lea money is going down expenses a lot on this chart here again a budget is best estimate of the future and based on the revenues that you just saw we must make some changes to our continuing expenses we have refined the budget to ensure it is accurate as possible uh there is tons of information here which includes our covet grant related expenses in the categories 10 for federal stimulus and then category 70 for
028instructional programs for 2223 and then 2324. so the cobia dollars are captured in those categories 10 and 70 as you see up there in addition uh foothills middle school will no longer receive lap high poverty dollars as well uh after the 22 23 school year due to their decreased poverty data our 21st century cohort 15 columbia mount mission view uh pioneer and orchard middle school they're in their final year in their 22-23 we've applied for the new 21st century grants to support our cohort 12 and 14. this budget reflects receiving the grant and continuing those programs but we would still out if we're going to receive that we should know by the end of the summer if we're rewarded and that's roughly in the neighborhood of 500 000 also to the district's history of declining
029enrollment and change in state funding there will need to be a number of reductions to rebalance and achieve financial stability maintain a fund balance above board policy the reduction in this budget are not final as the budget is our best estimate all right this one reflects the budget expenses by type uh so these are to be considered as continuing expenses essentially expenses that are going away automatically with the funding sources that are not counting covet grants as i said foothills middle school the lap high poverty the 21st century cohort 15 grants the district spends the largest portion of funds on staffing related to expenses you can see in there roughly 85 percent all goes to uh staffing expenditures again these figures do not reflect any final plans they're showing the amount of continuing expenses that
030needs to be reduced differences between 21 22 and 22 23 staffing costs is larger due to the 5.5 ipd applied to staffing cost in the following staffing changes from last year's budget next into the staffing we will jump into uh so this the graph demonstrates where we're at with staffing uh from the certified and the classified side of the house the district is this is the the budget history again for ftes what we call full-time equivalents certified staff includes teachers and other certified instructors and certified administrators classified staff as everyone else as you can see through in the 1617 the district started to experience declining enrollment staffing was decreased in 1819 to 1921 is when the prior staffing reductions happened in 2021 when it experienced a large enrollment decrease during remote learning after pandemic while
031also needing to staff online school we ended up moving a large amount of staff from buildings to wia in 2122 based on the anticipated enrollment returning to the buildings in an effort to keep class sizes low we moved those staff back to their buildings or replaced their building positions wia staffing wasn't budgeted in the 2021 school year as it wasn't a known factor at that time so when you see the those increases in these last two years 21 20 21 and 21 22 again remembering around the cove at dollars and making sure that we were we wanted to continue having lower to average size class sizes it was key we also heard that from our educators across the board that this year was was a challenging year for our staff and why we wanted to
032continue to see that next year so we again have lower class sizes using those cobia dollars to ensure that we have that coverage there and that's literally why the federal and state government created those those dollars all right so here's the four-year staffing plan and again i want to tell you i've said it like 15 different slides now uh next year out is pretty good assessment of where we're at in enrollment you're two three and four that is a little bit harder to to ensure we did project a number going into this year and we were 50 students above that number uh so it was a really great projection but on the plus side we saw 50 more students than we had projected for but again that's in a one year cycle let's get to
033the fund balance articulate my d uh based on utilization of the coven funds to help support lower class sizes and other covert related costs we're anticipating beginning the 22-23 fiscal year with 16.25 million in fund balance which is 13.1 percent of anticipated expenses we're also recommending that the board adopt a resolution to assign uh 4 million to future capital projects for the softball field based on that next slide there yeah thank you ron based on the utilization of our covet funds to help support lower class sizes uh cobia related costs we're anticipating to end 2223 next year uh with 13.9 million in fund balance which is 10.6 of anticipated expenses as you can see that is a decrease of 2.3 million dollars in our fund balance you can also see that our unassigned 890 bucket
034is where you see the largest decrease and you see the 4 million still set aside for softball fields this is because there is not a transfer of those funds reflected in this budget if we do transfer those funds the overall fund balance would go down by that four million dollars so it's held so it's in kind of that savings that fund balance account and then once we once the board says yes expense them then you'll see that decrease uh in that line item yes yeah so it does not mean that all four million needs to be spent in that fiscal year but it gives the staff the ability to to move that that forward so on next slide on the 22-23 four-year projections this is a summary of the four-year budget this budget reflects approximately
035nine million in reductions needed for the 23-24 budget this plan shows the minimum reductions needed to maintain a total fund balance above six percent in the fourth year of the project reductions in this presented plan are two million and twenty four twenty five and another two million in twenty five twenty six again we have to present that um but again the enrollment is harder to project years out it just is depending on what the reductions actually end up being and the value behind those reductions this could impact the plan to ensure we still meet the financial total reductions necessary to achieve fund balance policy so on this this slide shows the estimated ending balances in the categories of fund balance for the district this also shows the need to potentially make further reductions in the
036future to ensure that we have enough funds to support our restricted and assigned comment commitments of the fund balance in 24 and 25 26. um budget reduction next steps so again budget is our best estimate of the future based on the revenues just so we must make some changes to our continuing expenses we've refined the budget to ensure it is accurate as possible again due to the district's history of declining enrollment changes in state funding there'll be a number of reductions needed to rebalance and achieve financial stability and maintain a fund balance above the board policy especially when those copa dollars are removed from the overall uh district budget that's where we will see those those reductions being made this is where we're at this next piece will be going to the esd on july
03711th per statute following that we'll have a public hearing on august 9th where we'll review and summarize any changes then august 23rd the board will formally adopt the budget at the regular meeting i'm sure there are no questions not taking questions tonight what's next on the [Laughter] agenda board oh your microphone executive session the it's something that's notable to me i'm seeing that the e what slider you want just to him uh 22 23 for your project projections okay a few just a couple before we're done and it's on a couple of different slides but it's the fd certified employees from the 22 to 23 budget is 593 and then we're going down 2324 to 553 okay thank you slide 16. [Music] slide 16 run um yeah you're right that one does show it yeah
038i'm looking at a different one but okay is that that's the number that i'm looking at that seems quite noticeable to me is that is that accurate the number of positions we're going down that's yeah okay again projected that's where we're at um when we pulled those copa dollars that's where that's where a lot of that occurs again the district was infused with roughly 22.2 million dollars in cova dollars to maintain funding to ensure that we had those lower class sizes to get through the pandemic but that 22.2 ends in that year and that's where you see those con you know us the district having those future conversations it is also why the cabinet team working alongside our principals also developed our funding formula so we have a consistent way to have those conversations around
039class size targets what does that look like in the future we used it in some instances this past year but that will be in it full use as we go through it as we look across our district how do we best support our students while recognizing we have a decreased enrollment leaa funds coming in and the regionalization of one percent less each year we're one of those lucky districts that that fell into that role as well so it really is this combination of things that are coming at us good question thank you catherine martin do you have any questions oh thank you no at this point i think we'll absorb the numbers and look at them thanks i have one one quick question on slide 12 budget expenses by program we've got other instructional program
040that's 70 is the number in front of it and it looks like we're going down from 11 million to 4 million in 23 24. what is included in other instructors that's the cova dollar roughly 16 million dollars in cova dollars there so that's where it's categorized is in that one so thank you for highlighting that um yep so it you see where it it's normally added that 5.5 of my glasses on my screen are seen accurately so from as julie highlighted 11.8 to 4.5 that's where the cove this year's coba dollars are loaded into into that number yeah yeah those uh the kobe dollars are really in categories 10 and 70. those are where the two you will see that dramatic decline once the copa dollars are removed from the district and my only other
041question is and it probably doesn't matter because we're looking two to three to four years out but on the projection slide 21 we go negative and the unassigned yes so that is to keep um and get to slide 21. so you for board members who've been here in the past uh you've seen that to ensure that you keep with your five percent uh within the board policy that is what it would take to maintain that 6.1 million dollars yeah you would have to have that additional piece in there but that is that's been a very typical piece with a four-year budget that the the district has presented especially in years three and four because it's so far out and we take a very conservative approach to student enrollment numbers great okay and just as a
042psa um starting july 11th that um the budget is available to the public um i believe in the past we have kept hard copies of it i'm here at the district office so anybody that's you know interested in reading putting themselves asleep by reading the budget um that's available i'm pretty sure it's also available uh electronically thank you and to prepare for the august 8th hearing correct yeah great okay so august august 9th is a public hearing yes um okay so then we're good with budget we're going to move along to action items um tonight a fraction we have resolution number zero three two two and this is to adopt director district's plan uh this resolution is for the board of directors of the wenatchee school district number 246 to adopt a district-based plan for
043its electoral system for board of director elections provided providing for the submission of the plan to the chelan county auditor and seeking approval of the plan from the chelan county superior court do i have a motion i move for approval of resolution number 03-22 as presented a second thank you julie okay at this point do we have any discussion the only piece that i put in their board is around the ranked choice voting as the board's attorney has done an immense amount of work on this question i was presented at the hearing um from her perspective from my perspective and now we she was able to engage skip more the county auditor mr moore said that ranked choice voting is not available in chelan county this also aligns with danielle marchand's view of the work
044and it aligns with the rcw that regards around voting and how the ballot must look within that rcw is very clear as to what a ballot must look like uh so from my perspective from the attorney's perspective and probably most importantly the county auditor perspective ranked choice voting is not an option in chelan county and from many different perspectives they don't believe ranked choice voting is an option in the state of washington but that's not our concern our concern is county and the wenatchee school district so from those pieces i wanted to make sure that because the board did ask for for their follow-up and danielle board's attorney did an incredible job of reviewing that and giving us much deeper insights and information i really appreciate her reaching out the county auditor as well just
045to make sure that we're answering the questions that came up in the the hearing and that's what that hearing was for so that's it from my perspective on that i think it's important and what you noted to us too is that it would mean an entirely different ballot system for people to vote on so what they're used to and what they would see on their regular ballots this would be something entirely different people would be very confused and as you noted mr moore has pointed out that he doesn't have the the equipment to even um count those count right choice yeah i thought that was important to know so sorry back to you so i initially thought it might be helpful to have one more hearing because you have the time available to be able
046to do that and and the only reason suggesting it not because i think we need to change the plan i think the plan does comply with the statutory requirements that we're required to follow um but because the testimony that we primarily heard from the latino community that we're really trying to further with this plan was that they had concerns that this plan didn't work without the ranked choice voting now i i think we've got the information and had some of the discussion about why ranked choice voting doesn't doesn't really work and why we wouldn't update the plan to include that i don't know if there's any value in in just keeping the record open and having one additional hearing to take further comment from the community on on the plan knowing the rank choice is
047just simply not going to be included in it it was it was just a suggestion i wanted to make sure that we appropriately dealt with um the comments we received regarding ranked choice voting and i think we've got more information so i'm satisfied with this discussion i'm not suggesting any changes to the plan i just thought given the the time that we do have if there was any interest or value in kind of doing a further reach out i realized there was expense associated with the noticing um my thought would be that we don't do the radio ads or the whatnot it would be just the basic legal notice but the better effort being to engage the community to come to the meeting to comment by doing some of the community in-person outreach that was
048proposed just just to engage more members of the community get them to comment again i'm not suggesting a change to the plan i think we meet the statutory requirements as is so i could proceed either way but because we do have time and we really didn't get a lot of comment on the plan how it would work without the ranked choice voting so i'm the person that originally raised the question about having an additional investigation regarding rank choice and i'm completely satisfied with the investigation that's been done i think you know we've had this on their agenda now how many times three four five and it's been in the newspaper and i just said it's been on the radio i sort of feel like there's been plenty of opportunities not that i want to shut
049anybody down but we have gone how many thousands of dollars did we spend ten thousand ten ten thousand dollars trying to get people to come to meetings and we did receive comments we've addressed the comments i just i don't see reason to throw more money at it and have more advertising out in the public maria i'd like to add a comment if you can hear me i have a differing opinion to julie's in terms of the nature of the feedback i felt that consistently the dominant feedback from all communities has been in favor of director districts and proceeding ahead and i do note that almost without exception the ranked choice input came from people who were not community members and i think we also had feedback from community members who were interested in that who
050had a much more balanced view based on the legal opinions so i i actually have a differing impression from julie thank you martin um i'm an echo what laura and martin both said i um you know i actually had a conversation with heather villanova who actually resides in tom water and i think that's what martin was referring to um our la recites i believe here in wenatchee um but ms biando actually resides in tum water and she represents an organization um but i actually she reached out to me i connected with her and my conversation with her was very good um and it actually i went in with an open mind um and the fact that there was a lot of questions that weren't able she wasn't able to provide a a answer with a
051backup um you know presented a lot of red flags no other district in the state of washington no other elected position in the state of washington has ranked choice voting when i asked four districts um with boards in the country that have this voting system she said new york used to have it but they moved away from it she was able to provide some data and based on her data her numbers were on um the latino population and i said well there's a difference between the latino population or the eligible latino voter populations versus the registered latino voter population so there's a little bit of a you know costs for alarm for me to be able to support uh the system um and then yes we're going in with five seats um open and maybe
052it does work when you have five seats but then i said well what about when you only have three because we know these are gonna be staggered well it doesn't work as well with three seats what about two okay now it doesn't work so again my conversation with her um just it just there was a lot of red flags that this that system doesn't quite work well for ours and that was before we got the information from skip more um and our attorney and i agree with laura um you know this has been in conversations that i've been involved for at least two and a half years almost um we have received communication via the public hearing uh public comments email um so i think we've received comments from different avenues at different points in
053the last couple years and you know i'm satisfied where that we have met the criteria we've heard from different parts of the community so i'm okay moving forward and to clarify martin i agree that the feedback has been support for direct districts and i'm not not in support of director districts that was in in no way shape or form what i meant it was my sole and only concern was some of the comments were specific to it doesn't work with director this proposal doesn't work unless there is also ranked choice voting and i wanted to make it very clear that ranked choice voting was not going to be part of our of our director it hasn't been and it won't be and until tonight we hadn't had a real good public discussion of of why
054ranked choice voting isn't an option so if there was any interest in keeping it open just to one more time let's let the community have that bite at the apple i agree we've met the statutory requirements there's no reason that we need to i'm not proposing any change to it i think the feedback we have had as director districts for sure i just you know when our community is mentioning if it's concerned and saying this doesn't work without this well we're not adding that so this is it do you want one more shot if not i agree this has been on here multiple times we can move along if um i agree with you julie i heard that quite a bit at the last meeting people said ranked choice voting quite a bit so i
055think it was important it wasn't it was important very important to address we heard that in several public statements from people last board meeting so right so on the board on the floor we have a motion uh to adopt resolution number zero 3-2-2 um so now we're we can take a vote all in favor say aye thank you i think we have uh the motion carries thank you um okay so next on the agenda we have board communication we'll start with catherine this time don't encourage [Laughter] move on take the mic i do um as our community and most of you guys know today is paul's last board meeting with uh the wanted school district and so i just want to thank paul for his time and service to the wenatchee school district um thank
056you for taking the time to really listen to the needs of our community and when i mean our community our community as a whole and most importantly our students the voice of our students thank you for starting some difficult conversation in our district i think it has really helped address the entire student population and the needs and the direction the district will be going in um you're leaving the district in good hands and um you know we're very proud i'm very proud of the team you have created and you know from now on i just wish you well to you and your family and again thank you for your service maria thank you very much um it has been an honor uh to be the superintendent of the wenatchee school district i sincerely appreciate the
057board previous boards [Music] for for the work i hopefully i've left the district in a better place than when i first started um and that that's something i i believe i've done and it's something that i think will serve the district incredibly well i'm incredibly proud of the strategic plan because that was an entire community staff effort that will guide the district forward um but thank you thank you for allowing me to serve as your superintendent i have loved every moment of being your superintendent i've loved engaging with our community all of our community i have loved engaging with our staff i have especially loved engaging with our students um this is an incredible place incredible place and why i say that anytime i was interviewed on the radio was because of the people and
058i mean that the people in this valley and in this community and in this district are special they really are um there's a care and there's a compassion for for this community and people love this community uh so thank you you know a special thank you to my team kimberly joe for always having my back sorry i put that out there she always had my back she was always my right left and sometimes my feet to make sure that i got through the day my cabinet team just rock stars each and every one of you uh for being there quite honestly putting up with me i'm the only person in an organization that needs literally eight other people to support so i can do my work hey you you were there every day and i
059know there were some really challenging days but i i would i would never have picked a a different team and i really do mean that i i will miss i will miss the people so much and that's the hard part that's why i get choked up each time because i really do care uh about this place and about this district and i only wish uh the wenatchee school district great success and you're right over the past week and a half bill's done some transition time in the district and boy we've said it together uh i i really connected with bill i didn't know neither of us really knew each other until this past week and a half of transition time i'm incredibly impressed uh with bill and his knowledge and his leadership so i i'm
060excited to be handing the torch to bill um and have made sure that he knows that i am a phone call away as i'm gonna be reaching back out to him as well so thank you thank you the wenatchee community martin i'm sorry i skipped you did you have any comments i used the last time i was in person to make my comments no i very much appreciated what you said i very much appreciated what paul said and thank you wenatchee school district team we got a job to do as you commented earlier uh with respect to the equity maria it doesn't end it starts now so thank you everybody thank you and bill you got two days off before you start july 1st is right around the corner no he doesn't uh does that
061conclude your superintendent report that it does perfect all right so then that leaves us to it during the meeting meeting twitter good night you