Wenatchee School District Board Meeting 6-14-22

001it is six o'clock um and time to open the regular wenatchee school district board meeting on today tuesday june the 14th and i will call us to order and to say the pledge of agents i welcome everyone to this board meeting and thank you for joining us um bienvenida este reunions [Music] the meeting is conducted in english but we do have translation services so the citizen comment will be spoken in spanish and be repeated in english the first item on the agenda is the public hearing on director districts and i will follow a script on that public hearing on voting district this public hearing on voting district proposal script the public hearing on the wenatchee school district's voting district proposal is now open the purpose of this public hearing is for the board of directors

002to hear and consider testimony or comment and ultimately to take action regarding the district's voting district proposal the public hearing will proceed in an orderly fashion and i would like to ask your cooperation in complying with the following rules and procedures established by the board of directors everyone present will be given an opportunity to testify and be heard however all persons wishing to be heard at this public meeting should sign up on the sign up sheet located in the entryway to the boardroom persons who do not sign in shall i speak only after all those who signed in have given their testimony the board secretary will be recording what is said at this public hearing therefore when addressing the board of directors begin by stating your name for the record speak slowly and clearly into

003the microphone so that your testimony may be heard only one person will be allowed to speak at a time out of respect for all speakers no uncivil behavior applause booing her harassing remarks or other audience participation during or at the conclusion of anyone's testimony will be tolerated this is the time for the presentation of testimony no debate is allowed each person's testimony at this public hearing shall be limited to three minutes to ensure that everyone is given the opportunity to be heard before hearing from the audience we request that district legal counsel danielle merchant provide background information on this issue and i now turn this over to danielle okay there's a short powerpoint um i'm going to not go over the prior steps that we've gone uh in previous powerpoints um so we're going to

004concentrate more on step three which is the public hearing in this one i'll just start so the public hearing is going to be run under the washington voter rights act and also under policy 1105 for the district both of the these things provide the district the authority to change its electoral system as we've talked about previously the board policy essentially acts as the law of the land for the school board and then the uh but it's also being done in the confines of the washington voters rights act the board has already invoked its power under the washington voters rights act to uh adopt a different electoral system than it currently has which is an undivided district where all positions are at large so if we go under the steps of the washington voters rights act

005next one this one so like i said we've already done step one was to draft the plan step two was give notice to the residents of the proposed plan and now we're on step three which is the public hearing next slide while you are listening to the public testimony and public comment you have to keep in mind this the requirements of the step one which is what you do to draft the plan the district has uh proposed a four district one at large plan and these are the things that you must keep into consideration when people are testifying next slide so we've done step two the notice has gone out to the public um in various ways and in multiple languages so now we're at the public hearing the statute says you have to hold

006at least one public hearing so you can hold more if there's additional information that you want to consider outside that you've received via maybe a written comment after this public hearing or something of that nature or if you want to provide the public an additional opportunity to comment on the plan so the next steps in my opinion is that step three continues you don't move on to the next step yet because once the public has the opportunity to comment on the proposed plan the board has to consider the comments and the testimony you can schedule like i said you can schedule another public hearing you can also schedule a another board meeting to deliberate and to consider and debate the information that was presented at this public hearing you can also amend the proposed plan

007to something else and then the last bullet point there is actually a step four which is once the board is ready to adopt a plan you schedule an open public meeting to adopt the proposed plan that is the brief overview of where we have where we started and where we currently are and our where we may be headed so any questions from the board any board member have any questions i do not have this team okay thank you thank you dan at this time the floor is open for comment and testimony from the audience please remember the rules and procedures discussed at the beginning of this public hearing i will now call upon the person signed up on the sign-in sheet in the order they appear on the sign in sheet and kim can you

008lead with the names and introductions we have i believe about five oh should i do that okay sorry i thought you did yeah uh the first person is paula griebe and actually that's a remote request okay i'm going to go in the order in which they're presented with the people in the room i happen to be the ones who came in last i think following the script which means that the initial ones are remote heather villanueva hi good evening um my testimony actually builds on uh testimony so i would not mind if she went first sorry or i can go if you'd like oh do you want to defer your position and go later okay yeah i'll go after her okay that's fine then uh christa hurling then is next and i apologize to the

009those gathered here for this confusion on my part hello you are up we can hear and see you thank you thank you hello wenatchee school board members my name is krista hurling i have three children in the school district and i am a substitute teacher i would like to comment on the options for redistricting and electing school board members according to our own website our school's population is 50 latinx and our broader community is at least 32 percent latinx taken from the most recent census data as i look at this board i do not see adequate representation of that group based on the populations we serve representation matters let me tell you a short story about this my two fourth graders were assigned ipads at the beginning of the year and we paid the insurance

010for them but their classes ended up never bringing them home in january i received a letter in the mail saying that i was due a refund for the insurance premium but i would need to pick it up at the district office during one specific week and only during regular hours with photo id i just started a full time long term sub job and because i was focused on doing my best there i didn't make it to the district office after school any day that week i also needed to pick up my son on my way home and he was already waiting 30 to 45 minutes every day while i wrapped up my classroom all this to say the timing was difficult and when i eventually communicated to the district asking if there was any other

011way to receive it i eventually got it hand delivered to me at the school where i was working which was quite a surprise when i mentioned all of this to a latinx friend of mine they were appalled no one seemed to have thought through how people without transportation might get to the do or parents who work full time and couldn't take any time off during the day among other issues there was no mention of any other option in the letter and since i had two students it was worth 50 which is not an insignificant amount of money at this point i honestly do not know if all the premiums have been returned to their guardians but i would hope so my point in sharing this story is to remind us that perhaps if we had

012more members of underrepresented communities at all levels of our organization this would not have happened there would have been multiple options for receiving your money back clearly communicated from the start and not such a narrow window to collect it as you move forward in deciding which option to choose for electing school board members i hope you will keep this story in mind every population and area of our city deserves to be equally represented and it matters for kids to see leaders who look like them and that they can aspire to be like there are some voting options that spread the representation much more fairly like five individual districts with none at large and even more ranked choice voting which can be done perfectly legally in washington please remember that our district is committed to equity

013everyone having a fair voice and that starts with who is elected to run the organization thank you for your time thank you very much krista i appreciate that uh the next voice that is registered for hearing is miranda scolisky also remotely hi everybody can everyone hear me okay you're fine miranda thank you all right hi for those that don't know me my name is miranda scaliski i am a mom of two kids and i currently have one child at the wenatchee school district and i currently work for the state of washington with the department of social health services i have been in this valley for over 20 years and i've seen this valley grow and just into a diverse community and i hope that continues to happen i wanted to give input as to the

014redistricting redistricts redistricting is extremely important in order to level the voting field and make it equitable for all of our community not just the majority while i do want to thank the community-minded individuals on the board who have advocated repeatedly and continuously for redistricting i also want to highlight that there are multiple that have done nothing but stonewall and efforts on the level playing field it has been spelled out in no uncertain terms that our current school board elections are in violation of which of our voting rights which means we are currently right now in danger of lawsuit if we don't move forward with redistricting there is no logical reason for a single board member to vote against redistricting unless they are afraid to lose their seat and what's more important of the power of

015a single board member that holds making are sure all of our diverse community is being represented that i wanted to keep that just very brief but thank you again thank you miranda yes uh summer peas is the next person hi my name is summer peas and i'm a rising senior at wenatchee high school i'm here to speak to you as the head of the wenatchee school district student advisory council our council is made up of 12 students across the west side and wenatchee high schools who come from diverse backgrounds and different idea points the proposal is something that we all support one of our members brought up how not only does this follow the washington state voters right act but it also follows our new big six strategic plan wsd wants to build a thriving

016environment for our students who we're all here to see and who this vote we should be thinking of in order to build this thriving environment for our students the strategic plan highlights hiring staff that represent our community and more importantly our student body if we're doing this in our classrooms there's no reason we should not be doing this at the board level students need to look up to the people who are making their decisions people who look like them people who can empathize with them in order to feel like they belong in our district if students do not feel like they belong in our district they're more likely to turn their attention places where they do feel like they belong after countless conversations with our counsel and then turning to our peers for their opinions

017this is something i can confidently say all students are going to support as students we don't actually have a vote in this decision so i ask the board to the board to please vote yes on the new school board district voting plan thank you summer emma philly can you can you please go to the microphone because this also needs to be broadcast and everybody needs to hear you thank you um so the comment that i had was actually regarding the cdf the um cbch contract and so would it be appropriate for me to do that at the public comments i should be done in public comment yes thank you okay thank you uh and we'll reserve your place there uh arlet lopez good evening members of the board my name is lopez rodriguez i'm a

018graduate of bonaire of the donaichi school district and a community organizer as someone who still has siblings cousins and friends in the district i believe wenatchee has the opportunity to positively shape future generations of leaders starting with how we elect our board i'd like to commend the current school board because you want to improve the way that we as voters parents and community members will select the future members of the school board and ensure that all communities are represented the school board already agreed that the current way of electing board members may violate the voting rights act the i mean the voting rights of latinos under the washington voting rights act however the proposal to move to four districts with one at-large seat does not fully protect the voting rights of la of the latino

019community nor does it ensure latino voters may elect a representative to the council i propose that the vote that the school board consider additional options to remedy the potential violation of latinos voting rights by considering the following options ranked in order of which i believe would be most effective proportional elections using ring choice ballots four or five districts using ring choice ballots or five districts using choose one ballots i am providing a packet through email of information that includes a detailed explanation and analysis of each option including the current proposal i also wanted to recognize the farewell we are giving to a dear mentor and great leader dr paul gordon thank you for extending the opportunity to be a part of several leadership programs and exemplifying what servant leadership should look like in 2019 shortly

020after superintendent gordon was appointed he and several board members and district staff organized an outreach effort called community conversations with our families and local leaders in association with different entities like the wenatchee valley museum and local non-profits like cafe and overall made in great effort to reach out to our marginalized communities i propose similar efforts be made before you all vote on a final model in order to have a truly representative electoral system i ask that the board engage with community in order to meet with to meet them where they are at and have dialogue about all the options on the table this would allow folks to gain more insight and information on how each option could affect families and children as board members you all made a commitment to address the needs of your

021community and your constituents constituents deserve to be properly informed on all the possible outcomes for future elections together we can better provide opportunities for all children enrolled in the wenatchee school district to thrive without exceptions thank you thank you arlette and now we go back to heather villanueva coming in remote yes thank you good evening school board members thank you for allowing me to speak today my name is heather villanueva i am the deputy director of more equitable democracy a national organization based in washington state that is focused on advancing racial justice by transforming our electoral systems my organization has worked to advance voting rights protections in washington oregon new york and virginia as individuals even before our organization was founded we actually were involved in the passage of the washington voting rights act we

022have also helped to enforce the washington voting rights act in yakima county and have worked with members in other states who wanted to change the way they elect representatives in order to ensure the voting rights of people of color are protected like in east point michigan and portland oregon i want to thank the school board for being proactive in addressing potential voting rights uh in wenatchee school district it's the right and fair thing to do i also support arlet in her ask for the school board to consider additional options in finding the final solution and to have a meaningful community engagement process in our analysis the proposed plan for four district-based member member selected via choose one voting is unlikely to remedy the issue of the latino community not being able to elect a candidate

023of choice though the district drawn to give latinos voting rights is 55 latino it is only 36 36 latino people of voting age population this means that that group will not be able to win an election if 50 of the votes are required to win as they often are in general elections that are narrowed down by primaries recommend a proportional system instead which our analysis has shown to be more likely to result in the latino community members being able to elect a candidate of their choice and win representation that is proportionate to the size of the latino voting age population the system while uncommon is not new the packet that arlett said to you has several background articles pointing to its effectiveness and increasing representation for marginalized communities we believe that this type of electoral

024system is permissible under the washington voting rights act if adopted in order to remedy a potential voting rights violation which in this case it would be avlit has provided a legal memo from the campaign legal center who represented clients in yakima county making a strong case for why this is so my organization is here to provide information to you and to the community and we'd be happy to share information to you to an analysis about this voting system and other options such as the five district option or a four or five district option that uses rate choice ballots while retaining single member districts that are let mentioned i would urge you to take the step that i let outlined earlier to provide a venue for folks to receive information and ask important questions so that

025community as a whole can make an informed decision with all options on the table please consider myself and my organization as a resource to you and i'll be happy to answer any questions that you may have now or as the pers as the process proceeds thank you thank you heather at this point is there anyone else who has not spoken and wishes to um i'm going to ask um one thing we brought up in the latest one ranked choice voting it's a subject that's been had some general background on and was not included in the background information uh is legal council willing to add extend the background information on that topic i'll provide a brief statement in response to the ranked choice voting in my opinion it is not available to the school district to

026adopt as its electoral system my office has met with ms villanueva and also has reviewed a legal memo that i think she the one that she's referencing that clc drafted and it our opinion remains the same that ranked choice voting is not available thank you hearing that there are no additional speakers and we have extended the background information um does the board have any questions for the speakers or presenters yes could you remind us if we have a deadline to make a decision there is a deadline um there's two deadlines that are kind of in the statute there's one that says november 7th i think and then one is november 15th either way whatever you adopt the the plan has to get to the county auditor by november 15th so so he can make the

027necessary preparations to do the balance to make a decision on what um because we've already voted to district is it to revise it's two youth to formally adopt the plan to adopt a plan not to okay yeah so you voted to propose a certain plan to the public for comment now you take what the public has said under consideration and then the next step could be to adopt the plan and then once the plan is adopted then it can go to the county auditor any other board questions or input this is a public hearing stage we're at at this point now if there are no further discretion questions and no further testimony i would entertain a motion to close the public hearing thank you julia i hear a proposal to close the public hear from

028julie second thank you laura there is a second we have a motion and a second to close this public hearing at this point i will ask all those in favor to indicate that they are voting in favor of closing the public hearing i i and i do not hear uh any opposition so that being the case the um the motion um passes and is carried this public hearing is closed thank you everyone who provided public comment and testimony the board is scheduled to take further action on the voting district pro proposal at the board meeting on june the 28th two weeks from now um and that is this item of business thank you the next item on the agenda is the consent agenda uh are there any requests to modify the consent agenda or its

029contents if there are not i will summarize the consent agenda it includes approval of the minutes from the workshop on the 16th of may the regular meeting on the 24th of may vouchers and payroll the personnel report the surplus report contracts as provided on a schedule field trips as summarized and second reading of policies that we looked at the first reading and discussed at the last meeting at this point do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda i motion that we approve the consent agenda as presented thank you maria do we have a second second okay do we have any discussion on the consent agenda that being the case i will call for a motion for approval of the consent agenda will all those in favor please indicate that by saying i i

030i hear eyes and no nays at that point the consent agenda is approved um this is the time citizen comments is the next item on the agenda which is the time for the board to welcome and listen to public comment comments do need to be scheduled beforehand we have a three minute time limit i will warn speakers when their time is about to expire as it isn't easy to watch the clock so kim can you introduce the first public comment uh we do have um emma philly who wish to make a public comment rather than uh comment on the voting district so take the podium and the microphone thank you um my name is emma philly i'm a registered nurse and a parent of two children in the menache school district i just wanted to

031talk about the cvch contract as i understand it more from a medicine background um so i i the last meeting um there was a speaker who mentioned um on page 12 section c is of the item number seven um that students under the age of 13 can be prescribed psychotropic medications without their parents knowing it and um i i find that very disturbing so i actually just looked up top five five different categories of psychotropic medications and i just wanted to talk to you guys about them um they treat depression anxiety um antipsychotics mood stabilizers and adhd medicine so um the the side effects of these drugs um most of them have in common uh the top being suicidal thoughts so um if i just go down the list here we have a just from

032the the top five medications that i looked up it was prozac adderall xanax and seroquel um suicidal thoughts hallucinations insomnia tremors panic attacks seizures anorexia um and physical dependence another one was sudden death caused by adderall for cardiac arrest in children i'm not saying that these medicines are bad i'm not saying that they're dangerous necessarily but they do require monitoring and i just i can't imagine having a 13 year old child being prescribed a medicine that causes or can cause suicidal thoughts and i don't know about it um i i don't understand how any parent can participate in within the care team of that child without any notification i think that the laws of the senate and the house have passed are dangerous that they're ridiculous um and um it completely removes the parent from

033um from caring for the child which is which is their role um and it gives over the power for medical decisions to the state um i feel for these reasons uh on page 12 um section c and i i believe it was on seven that it should be removed from the cvch contract it's it's just not safe thank you for coming to give us your comments emma appreciate it um i believe there are no more citizen comments is that correct just making sure okay um the next item is a special presentation a budget update jeanette will be joining us from the finance department to to review where we're at currently within the budgeting process which will is an ongoing process and we'll continue also at the june 28 meeting jeanette you want to give the

034board an update on as to where we're at right now yes i will we'll jump right in while we're getting that presentation going um so as paul mentioned the budget as you guys know is a really large process it is a living breathing entity um and so it's you know constantly in motion and at some point we you know cut that motion off and make that the official budget um so we're still kind of working through those final changes at this point um and you guys will see those final changes in the real document final budget you know pending any changes at the next meeting so here's just a general update for you guys um just again the budget is a value statement so we always try to keep that in mind and reference our

035promise statement and our big six values so just a quick follow-up on an enrollment i was able to get the 2020 birth rate data from the state website they finally released that so i'm anxiously awaiting the 2021. uh hopefully we get that this year and not next year um so we'll see um so the birth rate uh did trend down um so that is something that will impact us in the next um you know few years five years or so so that's one thing for us to kind of keep in mind with our kindergarteners in our you know class sizes rolling through so based on that birth rate projection i'm anticipating our kinder count like i said to go down but really a steady decline um so nothing like we saw during the pandemic but

036just really that small slow steady decline so i mentioned that the birth rate went down uh chelan county's birth rate went down 10 percent which is a lot so um that is something that we'll just have to really monitor it'll be interesting what 2021 shows and again our kinder classes are smaller than our graduating classes so we're really seeing that trend kind of go through our secondary schools and eventually you know that will impact the whole system unless we get a bump in our birth rate and our enrollment so projected enrollment with that birth rate data so it's really difficult to see in the next presentation i'll make sure you guys have a full page pdf of this part but essentially the district's enrollment will continue to decline over the next four years uh i

037anticipate that to be an ongoing trend unless something changes in the next few years but at this point um i think we can kind of just assume a little bit that you know we're going to continue to feel that that declined enrollment squeeze some years will be more than others so moving on to staffing uh just a brief update from what we saw the last presentation um so i did update the uh 22-23 budget numbers just a little bit they're not very different than what you guys saw previously really the point of this slide is um with our declining enrollment we will be needing to adjust staffing as we go along throughout the next four years um as a second kind of bullet point um states we will be adjusting but we also are keeping

038in mind the building operations and the building schedules um and making sure that our buildings are still able to operate on their same schedules where possible so you know a good example is in middle school if you remove a core instructional teacher that is going to make them not be able to run their schedule so they would have to completely redo their schedule which is not reasonable and then if their enrollment comes back then what do you do so you know really keeping those those changes in mind and those impacts to the system and again we you know we continue to analyze staffing we continue to analyze positions when they're requested or you know when somebody leaves really making sure that we're making those mindful decisions and jumping to the fund balance so the last

039meeting that we reviewed fund balance i was anticipating that we would begin next year with about 12 million dollars since then the legislature has passed their budget and within their budget was some enrollment stabilization funds um so that has um impacted the district positively as far as fund balance goes so i am anticipating now that we will be starting next year with about 13.25 million dollars um so definitely good news uh you guys will also see about in the middle of this little chart is 1.5 million dollars that i am proposing to assign to capital projects and that would be through a board resolution so we would do that formally through the board and that would be specifically for the softball field project that we've talked about previously um so that would kind of be

040that first step in the financial process of committing funds to that project in the future obviously we don't know exactly when that will be um but committing those funds is kind of that first step financially speaking to uh work towards that so my anticipation is kind of doing that in august when we're adopting the budget so that it's ready to go for our closing our books officially on the current 2122 year so that that's all ready to go for next year so this is a summary of what i am projecting at this point our next year would look like at a very high level so again beginning the year at about 13.25 million dollars our revenues would come in uh just over 148 million and the expenditures would be about 151 million so expenditures would

041be higher than revenue those expenditures do include a four million dollar transfer to capital projects again to address the softball field project so um that would give us the budget capacity to be able to do the work that we need to and then in 2324's budget so you'll see that when you see the four-year projection we would do and potentially another transfer of 1.5 million dollars if needed to finish out that project because i do anticipate it will take multiple fiscal years to complete the project at this point so just building in that capacity to be able to complete that so uh for next year with the four million dollar transfer included that would bring the fund balance down to almost 10.2 million dollars which would be six point seven three percent which is um

042one point seven three percent of the board's five percent minimum fund balance policy and when we're looking at that um you know the four-year projection which we'll look at in the next meeting in two weeks and you'll see that 1.5 million dollar transfer we will be maintaining that five percent minimum fund balance policy that the board established so really the next steps um is really the heavy lifting work um so really polishing up everything balancing you know our grants and our programs fine-tuning make sure you know that we have that financial stability um and are able to meet all of our obligations and finalizing you know all of the other funds like capital projects debt service asb everything else and then preparing the budget for ospi that's due at the beginning of july and then

043at that time that will also be made available to the public and then in august we will do a budget hearing and a budget adoption so that's where we're at in the process looks like about halfway through but it feels like about a quarter of the way through for me any questions i'm opening up to any board members we will have a lot more detail in two weeks time on the 28th uh i think in comparison to the last update we've got you can correct me jeanette you've got hard numbers for revenue what you're working on is the final as you say fine-tuning of allocating it um so i think that's coming so what i look at is the next time around we've really got to look hard at maintaining our balance over four years

044and and what and the assumptions that go into that and then as a comment on the softball field that is a legal obligation we have a civil rights situation that is somewhat uncertain but it is a legal obligation yeah that's correct yes we have a civil rights um settlement that we're working through um and we just don't know when we'll be able to start on that project but we know that we will be legally required to do it right and then this projection budget that you've got includes the first steps to dealing with that fiscal correct there are no more questions thank you very much jeanette for that presentation and we look forward to hearing from you two weeks time the next two items are discussion items and the first one is a safety update

045yeah tonight i've asked ron brown uh executive director of technology and safety along with tom cooy to add some context to the work that we've been doing uh the work that the board has approved prior boards have approved to ensure the safety of our students and staff and community but i really felt it was important to bring ron to the table to give the board and the community where are we at and the work that it has been going on and the work that will move forward in the future ron okay you can share that slideshow liz as i'm going it's fine um so thanks paul board of directors thanks for having us for a safety update uh in the wake of some recent events we felt it was important to really give the perspective

046to the board but also our public community and what's wenatchee doing to address some of the concerns that are out there in social media that are out there in the public and to really ground what we're trying to do research as best we can so tonight's an opportunity i'm not the expert in this it's why you gave and paul and i had the authority this year to hire a safety security coordinator who has the background and expertise in law enforcement many years of that tom cui who's going to do most of the presentation tonight and give you a good idea of what has been happening in the district i'm i'm very confident we're in we're in a great place uh you know anything can happen and that's what we have to be ready for is

047anything can happen but we have many of the systems as you'll hear from tom that are nationally recognized and research recognized as to be the right steps and the proactive steps to keep our kids safe to keep our staff safe and to keep our community feeling like it's it's a safe place to send their students it is the safest place to send your kids it's to school every day i'm confident in saying that i'm confident our staff can say that so with that i'm going to hand it over to tom he's going to take you through some slides and talk about a little bit of the research and some of the things that we have in place in our district and maybe dispel some myths and maybe give you some other background to make sure

048we're all in the same place in our understanding when it comes to our school safety program tom good evening okay thank you for having me this evening we're going to talk about targeted school violence and i want to kind of talk a little bit about some of the nomenclature you may have heard school shooting school shooting is would be any kind of shooting at a school might not be even just an accidental discharge something like that would be a school shooting there you may have also heard active gunman active shooter that's a situation where there's a gunman that is actively shooting people and then you may have heard planned attack planned attacks are broadly used for all kinds of different venues and we're finding that in schools shootings targeted school violence 93 of the attacks

049are planned so what i'm i'm going to be using for my cues this evening is this uh 2021 study by the national threat assessment center when we came under homeland security the national assessment center kind of took over examining school violence and these targeted threats and they have in several years released different studies starting in about 2002 their latest one is this one and this is what i used to base this talk this evening on and i'm happy to say that all of the recommendations contained in this paper we have instituted and have had instituted since before this paper happened so uh this is the smart hardening um and this is kind of the the place where we started uh we did this many years ago um and these are kind of things that make

050our schools safer on a day-to-day basis uh this was kind of uh the the thing that started in 2002 when um ntc released their first study and these were this is kind of a base um uh line to do but these kind of things are are important for school safety on a day-to-day basis and they're important to the students to project to them a feeling of safety in order for us to educate our kids if they don't feel safe then they have difficulty learning so it's very important in our mission to educate that we provide them with safety and also that feeling of safety uh and when we are are changing our environment promoting our environment for towards safety so in 2008 there was bystander study issued where they discovered that most in most cases

051of a planned attack on a school the students at least some of the students knew of the attack and it was important to create a culture where one they felt that they were empowered to come and talk to us about these kinds of things and and two that that the culture within the school was accepting of them uh if you know school safety then you are a big fan of pbis and a multi-tiered support system these kind of programs are essential to school safety and you might not think of them as school safety programs but in reality they are because they build that that culture of trust so as i said there was a in in the majority of cases there was someone who knew that the attack was going to happen and we're hoping

052that those people that know that would come and talk with us about it but in case they want anonymity or in case they don't feel comfortable with that we also have the vector alert system it provides anonymity to those people it's sent to staff that will follow up on it and and then it was also important for us to have a defined threshold for when law enforcement would get involved in those and then we needed to define behaviors that that were concerning and prohibited so things like bringing weapons to school violent acts threats things like that that are just objectively concerning those create a need for an intervention and supports and then there are just concerning behaviors and those concerning behaviors are defined in things like a change in mood or depressed mood interest in

053violent topics or conflicts between classmates now it could be that those would be investigated and resolved by the teacher or that could be elevated to a vice principal or principal depending on how concerning the behavior was and also depending on the outcome of you asking about and investigating that behavior so we also so once we have defined a threat we have uncovered a threat then what are we going to do with that information so we've instituted the salem kaiser cascade multi-disciplinary multi-disciplinary threat assessment system boy that was a mouthful this is not a criminal investigation uh it's a behavioral social and emotional intervention and it involves uh school administrators uh our school social emotional staff could be school psychologists counselors myself our sros it kind of fluctuates based on the on the case at hand

054but it is basically to it's basically individualized to the situation and its goal is to create an individualized plan where we can support the student and and intervene to to maintain safety in the schools we have a safety and security team our school resource officers uh corey fuller and natalie steele are security safety officers janine owen and whoever replaces me because that's what i used to do and uh we have two technicians jeff skoonover and ryan horn a lot of there's a lot of technology that's going into safety in schools right now and those guys do a lot of great work for us i'd like to particularly talk about the sros they play a really important role in the prevention of school violence in nearly one-third of the 67 cases from this study that i'm

055referring to this evening sros played some role in averting that attack so so there were 67 attacks be um that were averted and one-third the school resource officer played a role the police at large if you take the police at large 42 of of the reports of planned attacks would come from the police that's equal to our staff so 42 for our own staff 42 for the police and then uh our greatest asset are employees and you can tell they're important because i gave them the fanciest slide and you may recognize the words up here diversity equity and inclusion and why would the safety guy be talking about diversity equity and inclusion these this is our promise and for us this is not just a promise this is action this is a work um when

056we when when you know about uh school safety you know that um meeting the kids where they are seeing them for what they are and when a student can see equity in the very foundation and fabric of their school and when a student knows that they belong and is secure in their connection and their relationship with their students then uh the school just becomes safer and the desperation that comes from an act of perpetrating an attack on a school just won't happen so if our mission is to educate and our priority is safety then our imperative must be diversity equity and inclusion thank you very much tom and ron uh and i'm very glad to have that safety update the next uh discussion item is the first reading of oh you are sorry running ahead

057running so um obviously uh school safety has been on the forefront of our minds recently with all the um national attention that's been brought to other tragedies that have been occurring around the country so in regards i just want to make a comment based on some news reports that i've seen recently particularly around sros i personally have always valued the relationship that we had with the city and the sros in our building and i feel like they are on the right track however there are many instances around the country where the sro relationships with student bodies have gone sideways and i just want to make sure and make a statement and affirm that our sros are on the right track that their primary purpose in our buildings is to build relationships with students because there

058are plenty of examples where the opposite has occurred that has increased paranoia among students and also that sros have been used to implement to supplant student discipline and to apply law enforcement principles to student discipline and that has resulted in numerous cases of students being arrested as opposed to discipline according to educational discipline policies and so i think it's pretty important that we affirm that our sros are not only receiving de-escalation training in a meaningful way but they are also receiving school discipline training so that we don't inappropriately apply law enforcement standards to student discipline and then in some cases give arrest records to students for you know common misbehaviors that are known to occur amongst young teenagers in particular please comment absolutely and thank you very much for your question and i'm glad you

059asked it so we could affirm uh some of the actions of our sros in our district we are in a very fortunate position um there are some some education laws in washington state somewhat codes rcws around sro trainings that were those have been passed in the last couple of years and our sros have followed all those those include de-escalation those include the points you were talking about in terms of school discipline one of the facets of our sros that i think has been in place is already in place because we have two fabulous officers we can't speak any highly of anybody they are just incredible school discipline is left to the principals the administrators the counselors the people at our buildings who know our students and they will involve those officers when it reaches a

060point that those school officials feel like it is a legal obligation that we have to involve those officers they're not coming in and doing discipline on their own they're not interjecting into those processes without the administration being involved tom mentioned the threat assessment process we bring them in as a law enforcement perspective on that process when we feel like there's a potential student threat but those are two things we had in place and then they also had washington state codes or laws around that type of training you mentioned laura so our officers did complete that and we'll continually do that annually they're actually attending a national sro conference this summer with an emphasis uh as you know in the in the police world right now on de-escalation on mental health and on some other ways

061that they can be more proactive with our students i'll be very frank two sros it is hard for them to be proactive and not just reactive sometimes because of the amount of students a district the size of moses lake for example very similar to us have four sros it will be something that over time you will probably hear me ask for a support for more officers they to have more bodies they could obviously be more proactive they could get into our elementary schools more often and we can get rid of some of that stigma around police and their interactions with our students we want them to be involved with the students outside of a reactionary law enforcement arresting kind of mentality so we want them to be involved with the positive uh behaviors and supports

062that we have in place for all staff uh tom anything to add to that well yeah yes i i think um that one of the things that's important to know is that this is codified in both our policies and in our contract with the police department that um that the the concerns that you had are specified within the contract and that the that uh the sros act on our on our request they are not self-initiating discipline or arrest so so really it's up to the school district when when we bring those guys in or when they stay away we have any statistics regarding any arrests that have occurred of students well reporting is also part of that contract and i have not seen any of that reporting i just know that it is in the

063contract i would love to see that and i also think it's important to recognize that you know having law enforcement people on our campuses are a part of a comprehensive plan you know that student health behavioral health mental health student you know comfort and feeling of comfort and belonging and safety in the schools is also you know part of the plan so i don't know that you know having many more sros is completely the answer because i think that gives off the appearance of being a militarized type of institution and we want children to feel like they can be children in our school environment and i would hate to think that armed guards become the normalized condition of all of our students so our school resource officers are not guarding the school uh and there's

064a difference between having school resource officers at the school and having a school resource officer program and the program uh is such where they are getting involved with the students they're going into classrooms and teaching they're having after school activities they are having an office where the kids are welcome to come in during the breaks and lunch hours they're getting involved in the lives of the students and and creating those relationships and when they are just coming to the school in response to a call and then going to the next school in response to that call and just kind of going bing bing bing around around the district then that work becomes very difficult for them to do and that's why um they're that we want them to be proactive in building those relationships instead

065of reactive to only reacting to when they're called for a much more negative situation good point i want to see some dance competitions with the sros and our students they would they would be happy to do that uh it's been uh it has been a long time conversation you know we've they're fairly new to our district uh i'm fairly new to this role tom's very new to this role we have some plans moving forward uh you know one of our officers officer fuller said i want to stand up some pop-up soccer games this summer and come in my unmarks and get some kids together and that's what we need to be doing but the difficulty during the year is when there are incidents as tom mentioned they're very busy uh you know with 7200 students

066uh it it is a very busy time for them uh to to try to do that proactive work is difficult to schedule in so you will probably hear from me in the future you know asking for an extended partnership with the kunaiti police department and i know they have expressed interest to us to potentially expand that partnership and increase the number of officers so they they are having those conversations on their own to see if they're they would be in a position to to maintain a or add to that partnership we have because it's been very positive we have incredible incredible officers that are helping us out with tom's help uh it's been we've come a long ways with that as far as the reporting you did ask i want to really quick touch on

067that the state law did include our requirement to report on any incidents of behavior where the sro is a part of that process so we are this is the first year of tracking that it's the first year of actually recording that or being asked to track that so if there's a discipline occurrence and the sro is involved through an interview through consulting in any shape or fashion that gets reported in our student information system we will be reporting that to osbi so after this year we will have some data on on how many times that happened and what that looked like what kind of incidents those were thank you and again i do support the sros and i'm glad that they are in our district so thank you thank you anything further oh no i

068just wanted to touch base um on command at the process as a parent um of the incident that happened last was it last week yeah yeah last week um just the swift communication um on remind um this is happening this is what it is this is what it's not it's over and also the swift communication between uh the partnership that tom has established with wenatchee valley college because i think we often forget that we do share students or running start students um and so again as a parent as a community member you know i would like to send kudos you guys this way for the way that was handled and processed thank you yeah i would just finish by saying something very similar to maria that i am incredibly proud of the two of you

069uh of the work that we're doing in our district really pleased with the board's commitment over time this has been a this is not a this year thing this has been a long-term commitment to to creating safe environments for students for our staff and for our community one of the pieces that i just want to reiterate um came from a book that i was reading it's the violence project it is jaw-dropping it is about data to researchers have researched every mass shooting in the united states school and non-school mass shootings incredible amount of data ordered the book for our cabinet team but why you bring it up it connects to what ron and tom are talking about at the heart of all school mass shootings was a lack of a relationship relationships are the key

070to stopping these not quite honestly from the research this isn't opinion when they've looked at every mass shooting every school shooting it came down to a lack of a relationship a lack of connection a lack of belonging in that need to to feel connected sometimes manifests itself in a very unhealthy way so i am supportive of hopeful some federal legislation that that will come through that will look like additional dollars for sros and additional dollars for counseling and additional dollars for mental health those are those pieces that we continue to struggle in and even though the board and the state of washington have increased mental health and counseling we need more we need more professionals who are able to help guide us this pandemic did not help anybody but issues were there prior to say

071that the pandemic that's the only why is absolutely a false narrative we need to connect with each and every one of our students um it is profound what we can do as adults in each of those situations it was about a relationship or a lack thereof a relationship for these young people so i just commend the two of you that you lead with that relationship and as i i've gotten to know our two sros those two individuals um and throughout this entire organization it is that and you see it in our in our big six around belonging and why it's so important to champion social emotional response for our students and our staff it is not a feel-good thing it is not it is some of the deepest work we do in education i hear

072oftentimes why don't you just teach math and science and leave everything else alone well everything else alone are these little people these 5 7 10 15 18 year olds these little humans who need support and guidance social emotional learning is about those connections and feeling like they belong i am continue to be so proud uh of the our strategic plan and for our district highlighting the belonging and the connections and the work this district has done and quite honestly the support of this board and prior boards to supporting social emotional learning in this district and continuing to do that work there's a little bit more than i wanted to say but that's paul get you for those who know me that's not shocking almost turned into catherine there for a second right okay well i

073was too short but i want to make sure that everybody's had chance for questions and comments any more thank you very both very much um then back on track the next discussion item is the first reading of three policies i will review those um catherine and i met and katherine chairman um if i missed anything uh the first policy is policy number 2140 which is a revised policy this is in response to the senate bill 5030 specifically addressing on the name change to fit the comprehensive school counseling program which we'll be talking about a little bit later and again that plan is a comprehensive plan that includes social emotional academic um and just a well-rounded planned for us to adopt uh the next policy is 4217 effective communication which is a new policy um it's

074encouraged and it's basically um it's in support um to our 504 eligible student needs any family member community member that comes to any district event meeting parent conference that we provide the services that they need there is a wide range of auxiliary services that we must provide um similar to those aids that we provide for our english meetings for spanish translations the next policy is policy 50 5004 which is the infection control program this is the revised policy in regards to the governor's proclamation um for the covet vaccine requirements uh pretty straightforward they add the code vaccine to the to the requirements there and then the following policy was also updated in response to that same proclamation on policy 5281 which allows the district um to dismiss an a non-represented employee classified or certificated if

075there is um they refuse to comply with the vaccine requirements did i miss anything questions how many non-represented employees do we have part of that was also uh that they were required to take the vaccine or if they chose to uh ask for the exemption the modification so it covers both the the modifications as well so that is uh you you can't deny i'm not going i'm not going to get the vaccine or i'm not going to be turning in an exemption or an accommodation form you have to have one or the other that's not what i asked maybe ask it a different way [Music] how many non-represented employees do we have because the the thing that i just heard maria read related to non-represented employees and as far as i know a large majority

076if not all of our employees except our administrators are represented so the policy would not apply to them to the represented just represented refer to our labor groups that's i'll look into that piece because that would be a very to your point laura it would be a very small group of be a very small group because even our administrators are our representatives why do we need so let me look into that that question for you thank you before we bring it back to second read any other questions and discussion on the draft policies people will get additional information in between times and otherwise be ready for policy adoption um we now move on to action items and the first action item is the columbia valley community health contract before we get into the action item

077itself uh i asked dr kalahar to give us a brief presentation uh on the columbia valley community health and um the work that they do corey you've uh for the time tonight um i have with me some folks from uh the school-based health center partner columbia valley community health so first of all introduce the team that i'm working that i work closely with so uh andrea hoey is our nurse practitioner she'll be joining me here in a second deanna griggs is our school-based health center clinic manager and then escolare is our school-based health center coordinator and then we also have some cbch celebrities among us today so manuel navarro the new ceo and a strong supporter of school-based health centers is here um and i think uh is it felipe gutierrez next to him uh

078the medical director so thank you all for being here and joining us tonight um as you know um collaborating with medical professionals is nothing new for the wenatchee school district or for andrea hoey she's been doing that working hand in hand with us since the 90s which is great wenatchee school district's history with school-based health centers and and and my involvement dates back to 2012. um and uh took a team of west side teachers and some school psychologists and uh a school nurse to lincoln high school in walla walla which was great and at that time the thing that we were working on is how do we bridge the gap between students accessing medical and behavioral services from the school setting and getting them the support they need we were a little bit jaded with

079the referral process because a lot of times it just didn't work we would refer students and they would need to follow their own means or their parents means to get them to medical or behavioral success and so we're like oh my gosh how do we work within our community to figure out a better way to work on this and to get students the help that they need so we went to walla walla that was a fun uh experience and what we found there is they had a school-based based health center but we we found a lot more it was actually what i would say a career changing life changing trip to walla walla lincoln high school had the school-based health center as i know but they also had knowledge of adverse childhood experiences aces which

080literally at that time was not present in the world of education and it was nothing that i knew about i didn't know the kaiser permente research around that so it was life-changing they also exposed us to trauma-informed practices and what that looks like in an alternative setting that's like holy cow why have i not heard of these uh this school before and the world was exposed to uh lincoln high school soon after that through the film paper tigers did you do your homework okay um so uh and uh we also it also really it really validated the power of social emotional learning when we visited lincoln high school because we at west side had a strong background in social emotional learning and so we're just like oh my gosh we left knowing about school-based health

081centers but so much more that literally changed the trajectory of the work that we're doing from that time we wanted to bring lincoln high school's vision of school-based health centers back to financi at least the idea and the concept so we began to make more visits and we visited clinics in the west side of the state we built an advisory board and we started working on school-based health centers what does it look like how can it work in our community more importantly how can it benefit our students um the work led to a partnership with wenatchee valley college and as they were concurrently working on school-based health centers like holy cow well that helps west side um but really doesn't address the rest of the district and so we focused a lot of our energy

082on lincoln elementary and the goal of this work was ultimately to strengthen the relationship between our families our and the medical community and uh our schools um so let me just put it into context where we are with school-based health centers it sounds like a school-based health center sounds like this grand immaculate thing that we have in each of our buildings and we're really not there we are in kind of what i would call a grassroots stage and we've been there for a number of years although um with the support from cbch we have grown from just lincoln elementary and dabbling at west side high school we've grown and what we have in our contract is actually the 2020 contract we were we never actually brought that to the board because of covid and and

083things so we've resurrected that with the help of deanna and her team so that is the context literally andrea is the nurse practitioner for all of the medical school-based health centers so as one person doing a lot of work in a lot of different sites working out a lot out of a lot of different nurses stations and areas so that's kind of the context and unfortunately i think that the behavioral health side of things um which we want and need more in our schools it's it's it's just so overwhelmed the behavioral services are just overwhelmed in our nation in our world in our community that um it's going to be a struggle to get um the help that we need for each of our kids so we're starting off and we're we're fighting the good

084fight and trying to get this uh work for our students but it is small so it is a small context um i wanted to share with the board a couple of things uh because i think it's important and pertinent to the conversations that we're having so i'll bring these around uh so for those of you on zoom that are listening um i just handed out to the board the basically the consent form that is created by cbch for parents to sign before their students are seen in a school-based health center though so the cl the clinic permission forms do follow the state law and are required for students to be seen except for in those situations where the state or federal law allows access without the consent so that form is in front of you

085those are mailed home or sent home with our students at the beginning of the school year so that parents have the information related to the school-based health centers and they can actually take a moment to sign these documents so that their students can be seen the other document that we have is the wenatchee school district awareness statement for school-based health centers and this is on wenatchee school district letterhead and this document will accompany all of the packets that go home to students and families and provides the transparency that we're looking for and really helps grow that relationship that we want to have with our families and our schools and our medical community so it just i'll just read the top part in an effort to provide medical and behavioral support for our students and families

086in the united school district along with our partner columbia valley community health want to support our students and families by offering these services and are working to be transparent with washington state law that must be adhered to please see the information below that could potentially impact students age 13 or older through our school-based health centers and that that truly is the piece that we really want to make sure is in front of parents and is very well documented and well-marketed as we move into this process and with that i'm going to share a little bit of statistics and then i'm going to turn it over to andrea who is way more entertaining than i am so i'm excited for you to get to hear from her dr charles bosch's article healthier students are better learners

087also titled missing link in our school reform to close the achievement gap he shares that health disparities affect educational achievement which i think we all know improving students health is integral to educational reform the journal of school health shares that studies show a 50 decrease in absenteeism and a 25 decrease in tardiness two months after receiving school-based health center in an article called the impacts of school-based health center use on academic outcomes sarah walker and her colleagues found that school-based health clinics with medical purposes have a significant increase in attendance over non-users in addition to school-based health centers with mental health purposes on increasing grade point averages over time um and these were these uh similar findings were also shared with with us when we went to lincoln high school and they talked about their

088student body as well and then the school-based health center alliance of washington shares that school-based health centers reduced various barriers to learning increased connectedness or belonging help engage parents in the community save parents and employers time support teachers and school staff and reduce health care costs by reducing er visits our strategic plan outlines what it means for the wenance school district to offer the priorities of a thriving environment to our students and partnerships with cvch so school-based health center is the right way for us to grow our students for tomorrow the important work of the school district that stretches far beyond as paul you passionately shared with us far beyond academics and roles into social emotional well-being and physical well-being so we really want to address this contract and this partnership with our community when

089in a compassionate empathetic and ethical way that supports our families and students so i want to invite andrea to join me up here so you can hear the realities from a practitioner's side and and she'll give us a great deal of information and entertainment well thank you for the opportunity to give you an update my name is andrea hoey for people that don't know i am a bilingual family practice nurse practitioner i'm entering into my 35th year at columbia valley community health next year i was a school nurse for the wenatchee school district back in the late 90s early 2001 before i went to graduate school so my schools that i covered were columbia lincoln mission view and pioneer so nice to see alma chacon here so it's like we're getting old alma and the

090last time i gave the update was just uh prior to the pandemic so we kind of went on hiatus there but i'll give you just a little bit of our history of cvch's involvement with school district through the esd since 1990 i was approached by mike taylor if we would consider taking over doing migrant school exams for students and we have successfully done that and i've estimated we probably have seen at least 1600 kids in the last 32 years probably a little more in some areas what we have been able to provide at that point was well child checks school sports physicals referrals for dental vision hearing specialty care to pediatricians orthopedics dermatology cardiology kids with murmurs any other underlying health issues using that same model that we had experienced in 2016 we embarked on

091establishing a school-based health center at lincoln elementary for students and faculty initially a mental health counselor was brought on board two days a week that was to help the overwhelmed school counselor with families that were in crisis next cbch brought on a dentist and their staff came into the school two times a year to examine children's teeth perform cleanings and apply sealants and educate kids on how to care for their own dental health those needing in-clinic care were also provided transportation and brought to our main clinic um at 600 toronto street and provided sorry okay uh provided restorative care so those kids that needed to actually have some dental work done we had a van picked him up had permissions to transport and actually got those completed lastly a one-room medical clinic was set up

092in the special ed wing one day a week seeing kids and faculty members letters went home to parents and all newly enrolled students and families explaining this offering and if interested medical insurance coverage consents were signed melanie wallace the school nurse was instrumental in streamlining this process and helped in referring students it was great she would build my schedule before i got there she was there on tuesdays and i would be there on wednesdays or thursdays so we have served approximately 80 to 100 patients annually including well child exams vaccine clinics adult ill exams you don't know how many teachers and librarians will pop in saying i think i have a sinus infection or it is rash contagious am i okay to be at school today or their blood pressure was running sky high we

093would do blood pressure screening clinics for staff and acne ear infections murmurs coveted vaccines were administered to staff members and an ever increasing need above all is referrals for depression and anxiety that would include referrals not just to cvch but to be behavioral health at confluence catholic charities children's home society as well as cvch's behavioral health for children our goal has been to connect kids and families with the local community resources that are available during the pandemic most preventative care was stopped due to clinics being overwhelmed dealing with covet patients during that time hundreds of kids have been identified as not receiving any medical or dental care we are helping to work through that backlog and have identified over 100 children at just mission view and newberry elementary schools in need of preventative care that

094is why we are hoping to expand our services in the coming year beyond lincoln to the other elementary schools within the district as needs are identified how that process works bedit our coordinator for the school-based clinics she contacts she identifies who is in need if they haven't had an exam within the last one to two years she calls the parents and makes the offer explaining to them what we can provide she completes an in a really involved interview which typically if you've taken your kid to a clinic for their annual well exam you're going to be asked to myriad of questions we have followed that exact same template and we ask the exact same questions parents are also invited to attend and they either can do that in person or they can also do that

095with us through telehealth on the day of the exam students are called from class we bring them in we get their height their weight their vision their hearing i do a complete head to toe exam eyes ears nose throat heart lung abdominal musculoskeletal and a neuro exam we provide education in both english and in spanish to students and we focus on good nutrition how to brush your teeth properly how to limit your screen time to know more than two hours a day and how to get outside and kick a football and where you can get a free bicycle helmet if you're not if you don't have one at home handouts are sent home to the parents at the end of the day and that includes what type of medical milestones they should anticipate for their

096child for the coming year and again these are both in english and in spanish we also send home growth grids to show how those kids are doing for their height and their weight and their age as well as their body mass index and we include um a wonderful handout that for parents that either speak english or spanish or do not have much in the way of um it's a great photo so you know we can point to these are the foods you want more of and less of these and look at your hand size and as you grow older that hand that's going to follow you that's about the portion size that you should have and we also discussed a bit about car safety wearing a helmet how to prevent having a concussion tooth injuries

097that type of thing i call personally the parents at the end of either that visit they usually will tell us what's the best time to reach them or oftentimes i call them at home seven or eight o'clock in the evening just to verify that they got that handout and that they understand what that growth grid is and if their child is way off the chart would they like me to refer them to a nutritionist that can work with mom and family to help deal with that so we treat the family as a whole many times those referrals that come to me from within the schools will be from the school counselor teachers speech language specialists school nurse or parents or cps seeking help in getting children into services or counselors if a crisis is identified

098at a time when we are not in attendance because we are there only one day a week the staff as well as the administrators have my cell phone and they know how to contact me and do all the time is this something that we should send to the emergency room is this something that we just need to send the contact the parent and send them home or is that something that are they okay to be in school for this uh we also will help guide and educate them when that child probably should present for urgent care and if they need to and i'm seeing patients in our regular family practice clinic oftentimes i can work them into my own schedule and see them that later that day again mainly we've been seeing elementary school children

099but if they were older and having mental health issues or a crisis i would refer them urgently to our behavioral health clinic and encourage them and their family to obtain services together i do have principals and school counselors come to me all the time saying we have a really concerning situation i do have and they are already trying to get into services they might be six eight weeks out and if there's really a crisis you can't wait so i do have the ability to pick up the phone and call the back line and say hey i have a situation i'm really worried about it doesn't require calling the you know dmhp which is the designated mental health transition specialist but they need somebody to take a look at them today so that is something that

100we are extremely stretched within our clinic as well as all clinics in the area as far as the lack of services for mental health so i think anything that sros or anybody else can do to help on a state level provide that i think it's well within the benefit of the school district our mission is partnering to achieve optimal health and wellness with compassion and respect for all and i think that's an alignment with the mission statement within the school district so i could touch base briefly on um the one concern i know the state law allows us as medical healthcare professionals to provide care i don't write that law i do respect it i can give you assurance i have never prescribed any adhd meds any anti i wouldn't prescribe an antipsychotic for i

101don't even do it for adults um but i i know that i am allowed within my licensure but i have never done that within any of the school district clinics but i do really work at focusing on trying to get kids and their parents together and get them the resources that they need and that's probably the benefit of my 35 years of experience of knowing who is where and who can i call you know behind the scenes to help get those urgent needs taken care of so any other questions thank you for that assurance andrea i really do appreciate that um so addressing the concern that was brought up earlier a student i know from my own health okay let's go to section seven in the exhibit a medical services that talks about um prescribe

102psychotropic medications through the school-based medical and mental health providers are required to monitor and support students who have a prescription for these medications so if the students are prescribed these medications then it's required that the medical and mental health professional are monitoring those students for any um any uh side effects or whatever but i know from my own experience in health care that even as an adult that it is extremely difficult to absorb the medical messages that are being given to me from my practitioner and that i have an advocate outside the medical community that i often discuss and confer with i'm concerned and this has got nothing to do with cvch really but i'm glad to say that you have not prescribed has more to do with the law i'm concerned about a student

10313 14 15 years old making you know serious health care decisions on their own without the assurances that that monitoring is truly occurring and that the student doesn't have an independent advocate to advise them and walk through the options and the potential side effects i can assure you for the most part from my experience working in the valley that those kids whether they are in foster care or are from homes that are struggling that they are we we really work at getting them a healthcare provider usually it's pediatricians that we really push them in that direction who really are the experts to prescribe those medications or psychiatrists can also prescribe those um i i know a few of my other another practice partner was here okay have you had very many do you know very

104many providers that have prescribed for 13 year olds that are living on their own or have this is casey wyatt and he actually is my supervisor so i'm like i want to make sure i'm saying this correctly but in my experience but i think it would be pretty rare for a family practice practitioner to write a psychotropic medication for anybody under 18 usually um yeah and definitely like we're going to look at your med list if you come to us and you have a question about your medication or if um your parent has a question about the medication that they can feel free to ask us and if we can't answer we'll find the answer for them i do know that the school nurses dispense a lot of medications that are prescribed by their pediatricians

105and that is given in a regular setting we have no involvement with that but just so you know that those medicines are being routed through the school district and kids come down to the office usually at lunch time to get their medication but i bet if you look in all of those prescription bottles you're going to see their name is attached probably to a pediatrician more likely than not thank you and it is true the warnings on it the first thing you see is always suicidality for anybody so yeah so i don't know so is the presentation over for purposes of comment on the contract or because i have similar concerns that laura raised and was wondering if it wouldn't warrant some type of modification to this contract work for we're getting into i think

106if you have uh clinical questions now is a good time to ask them if you want to have an issue of modifying the contract we should do that after a motion no more questions for me i have a question okay who is coming to help you you have i mean when i look at all of the schools that you're going to be working at i'm there one day a week i'm at wenatchee valley college two days a week and i have my own practice of 800 patients it was 1400 but thankfully when i got to go to the schools i got to cut that down to 400 and then we're up to 800. so then i asked who is coming to help you and what determined the um so as you in our contract we've

107added on initially we're at lincoln and boy they've got great facilities there for you i saw you have your own office and and the the the things they have there are amazing and again it started out with in conjunction with wbc and and west side and now we're adding a mission view john newberry orchard middle school wenatchee high school what how did you determine in each of those um in our contract in each of those services what you would provide in those schools for instance west side you're doing medical services wenatchee high school just behavioral services dental and behavioral at orchard medical admission view and medical services at john newberry and all three at lincoln elementary what how did you determine how you were gonna i'm gonna defer that to manuel navarro who is our

108ceo because i have nothing to do with the contract i just find out what day i'm scheduled and where i go and again you know right and so he was the one that has worked through all of the minutes and the bolts of the contract yeah thank you um manuel navarro uh from columbia valley community health so as as corey mentioned this is really just a grassroots kind of movement and this information you're seeing before use from 2020 from conversations we have been having with school districts the reality is that cbch has been working with the schools throughout the district for since 2000 every year we we complete over a thousand dental screenings working directly with the school principals and nurses to come in and do dental screening we've had behavioral health counselors basically have

109their own clinics in the schools since 2005 when we identify a behavioral health provider who's had five or more kids that are going to the office we just try to make it easier for them to and their families to access those services so we've been working in the schools for a while the the contract here is an attempt to really start to formalize that relationship for legal purposes but also just for uh you know transparency and clarity with the community parents and school board for sure and so this is an organic i think what you should focus on is the contract itself once we get that formalized then we really will begin working with the school district and the individual schools to look at what services uh they feel are appropriate and what services we

110might be able to expand so i wouldn't look necessarily at the addendums as they are today those are just examples of what where we were in conversations in 2000 it's going to be organic and i really want to stress we use the term school-based health center or who's school-based health clinic and like you said at lincoln elementary it's a fantastic facility i looked at the facility cory offered me at west side and i was like that's not a clinic but it's it's really focusing on school-based health services how can we provide these services at the school uh whether it be in a room whether it be with our connect mobile whether it be in a great room like at lincoln elementary so and as this grassroot our goal is to continue to develop the relationship

111and really start to fill the need as we start to build it up so i know andrea's overworked but she's also committed to this and i think as we start to see uh what we can do with the school district we're committed to adding resources to this service so thank you any further i just have a quick comment you know this goes back um hearing andrea speak and alma being here um this i started working for a school district in 2006. and we would literally bus students to a school site so they can get a health physical and um and that was the whole district high needs students for one week a year um and you know we're talking about facilities it used to be right here in this system yes and you just have

112a screen dividing you know one section from the other and going through the list of students that would get to receive services we would have to cut them down because we can only they can only see 25 a day a day yeah and we're talking you know 12 schools um and then the the process that came after that you know um heart screenings referrals for for uh visual um anyways just just being in it um come a long ways to where we were um this was a service provided by the esd and now the fact that we're in our buildings um providing the service is huge for our community and our students one other thing that i might mention to help show how we've collaborated with the other schools prior to the pandemic i put

113a schedule together for all the school nurses throughout the district and let them know one day a month that we would provide vaccine clinics because we have a nice facility at lincoln and they arranged to bring a lot of those kids prior to this beginning of the next school year um on that particular day every month so we could get them vaccinated and current so we try to do a lot of the legwork in the summer time the clinics are super busy a lot of people like to go on vacation and boy in the month of august is always the most hectic trying to get everything in so that had been one focus so hopefully we'll be able to get back to that this next year so okay thank you andrea um at this point

114i'm going to ask if we have a motion to approve the this is really really important to me and emma speaks to a lot of what you were saying when this contract first came to us there was nothing in there that that spoke to this age issue um again there's nothing we can do about that it's state law if you're 13 you can sign away your rights and sign away your parents ability to know what's going on in your health care i have some really personal experience with this this exact time last year a family member of mine her child was in absolute crisis uh to the point of uh death and without her really understanding or knowing this year old had signed away her mother's ability to know anything that was going on so

115this mother my family member is with me trying to get help for her child who is a child that is that relies on her mother completely and would want her to know every detail but somewhere along the way she was you know offered this do you want your mom to know about and and signed that um so it it's very personal to me so when this contract came again can't change the law that washington state has has uh passed but you know this 13 year olds are not adults they can't vote they can't drive they can't legally have a job they can't i was looking up some other things that can't open a bank account they can't even get a tattoo but yet we're in their infinite wisdom letting them decide whether they have the

116people that love them the most involved in the most critical aspect of their life their mental or their physical health um and that is why i did not i pulled the contract last board meeting because i thought it was so so important that we have something in here um that that addresses the parents and you may think that a 13 year old is is old enough to make these decisions and it's their right to sign this and that's fine but then let's look at it from a liability aspect as a school district if we are the facilitator of this contract with cvch as a school district and we are bringing school-based health centers clinics care into our school which as a nurse and a nurse that went in and did vision and hearing and lice

117checks with kids and all of that stuff in the schools i'm all for that um but i just think here in washington state we have got to just put front and center um parents you've got to recognize that your 13 year old can get these services um without you knowing um and so uh corey thank you so much for this this paper um i think we can maybe even send it out a couple times or maybe work on it a little bit but that i think is just so critical um because you know and particularly in our hispanic communities there yes we want those services available yes we want the services available for any child in need because they can't learn if they're not healthy but parents have got to be made aware of what

118what we're offering what's available and what potentially their child can can receive in in terms of health care um and again i stress that if you putting ourselves as the facilitators parents aren't going to go to governor inslee and say i'm suing you because my child did this because you made this law they're going to come to us as the facilitator of this this contract so um that that was that was the reason that i pulled it last last board meeting and the reason that i think that this is so so important i am for the the cvch coming into our schools and helping but um most importantly i am for parents being told again and again and being made aware of of the potential care of their most precious uh person in their lives

119and their children so thank you thank you for the presentation thank you again corey for working on this and um i think we also need to remember that not all of our our children have that parent advocate or that guardian um that that can um speak for them um we do have a fairly large homeless population in our district so we need to um also keep those students that are marginalized in that respect in mind when we look at these contracts this doesn't take anything away from them at all and hopefully they they would get an advocate as you spoke about to help care for them and that's something i recommended as a nurse forever take somebody with you when you're getting some kind of medical care information because you will not absorb it when

120it's about you you tend to go uh and you don't hear those things so um yeah this notifying parents more about this information doesn't take anything away from somebody who does sign away or does not have that particular parent or guardian one more round just make sure to miss anybody um i guess do you want my comment now or during discussion go for it um [Music] so my my only thought was i shared the same concern laura had with in particular that one item in the uh psychotropic description and i'm wondering if if that is part of this contract if it can't be further qualified in there that if it if a pharmaceutical referral of that nature is deemed appropriate that there be some type of referral out or some type of extra oversight measure

121i'm glad to hear it's never been used so it may may not be entirely necessary but if we're looking at something that could be long term and this particular provider is not there anymore having assurances like that in there i'm also a little concerned saying that these the scope of services is to be more funchable let's just get the agreement and then work on the scope as of the services as we go because i think it's the scope of services that is maybe causing some of the concern in some cases um and then just in terms of speaking to scope of services i would like to see the cbch agreement that actually goes to parents align a little bit more with with what is actually going to be provided at these i know it says

122including but not limited to but i notice you know one of the big heading items here is behavioral health services and it doesn't necessarily say anything about behavioral health services it says mental health counseling but nothing about behavioral health services it also doesn't mention anything about pharmaceutical prescriptions so to the extent that this is i don't think our parents are going to read a 13-page contract with the scope of everything that could be provided but if we want to give our parents some idea of what the service is that's offered as we develop this scope of service maybe having a little bit more clarity in that document as well so it's so they don't come to us and say i didn't know you were going to prescribe anything or you were allowed to prescribe at

123these clinics because it doesn't say anything about pharmaceuticals in that i said i know it says including but not limited too but you want to get close to at least all the big sort of big items in in the list i would think so that's just a more of an edit issue based on whatever we've approved in the master agreement i would agree that the whatever we call this not a permission slip but a disclosure i would call it consent form well it's not really consent either but um i know what it says i don't necessarily agree that it is a consent form because of the 13-year rule but um in which case it's an acknowledgement not not necessarily consent but i do agree that um prescriptions ought to be mentioned in the list of

124things that may include but not limited to seems to make sense but that would be added to that and if i didn't say this already i do appreciate the relationship and partnership with cvch and i do know that there are this this section is is a stumbling block however there are lots of positive reasons to have school-based health care centers and i do support them overall okay at that point do we have a motion to approve the contact and then we can discuss that i'll second that did i who said so moved i did sorry okay thank you and second for maria yeah uh do we have any further discussion on the contract i'll just echo that i would like to see subsection c of the appendix a little more clarification or modification to the

125ability to prescribe the particular type of proposed medication okay any other i have i will speak if nobody else does right um this is an affiliation agreement between the school district and columbia valley community health it is extreme and a great privilege to be able to have that kind of support and affiliation agreement i think we spent a lot of time discussing the law we've spent a lot of time discussing um clinical and health factors um i think the comments that have been made both uh by the providers and other people of attempting to behave in a considerate way are relevant and i heard an aside that we could if we found it was reason to modify the wording on a consent document that is not a locked in some part of the contract correct

126paul correct yep so from my point of view i am very comfortable and very grateful if this relationship is permitted to continue at that point i will call for a vote that was in favor of this affiliation agreement contract with columbia valley community health please say yes do we have any nays thank you very much then this contract is approved and i much appreciate the services of columbus valley community home the next action item is the comprehensive school counseling action program which i think comes straight out of the new policy thank you we have a short presentation for you so we'll uh we'll i'll invite my dream team up here i've got justin nielsen from mission view come on up haley griffith from foothills come on up samantha holton from wenatchee high school come on

127and we have a slideshow presentation that we'll get started here in a second but we're just gonna keep on moving and thank you cvch folks for your time and for being here we appreciate you all um so as mentioned earlier uh our work this evening came out of substitute senate bill 5030 which i think that you saw the the some of the name changes and some of the massaging that's happening um we we do have the name change represented here comprehensive school counseling program transition plan and uh and so the next slide please as we have talked about our counselors wear many hats and are often asked to do a variety of things in their building and i think that it's really pertinent at this time that we talk about what things that have already

128been discussed and that is the state and nature of mental health in our valley and i think in our community in our nation and probably in the world it is um you know at an all-time high and this work is so important that we have in front of us and so we are excited um i am i have the privilege of overseeing the counselors this past year and it has been a joy to work with them and a privilege to work with them as well and i think that they're really ready to take on this work and so the purpose here um counselors authentically engage with the entire school community advocating and collaborating to remove systemic barriers to help all students feel safe valued and supported in their academic career and social emotional development and

129that is the purpose of the work and it closely aligns to our strategic plan and and our promise and what we are all uh wanting to do um and so our counselors and the work that they're doing truly relates to the emotional health of our students um and the overall um well-being of our students and our school system so the work is critical um next slide please this is this is what i hope you have seen already in the plan you've had a chance to review that you see that the plan is has been written to relate to the state and national standards in the three trained areas of sel academic development and career readiness we are going to be working on the second bullet you'll see that component 4 has a lot of work

130that's left in component 4 and that is for us to work on next year we'll be doing some goal setting we'll be setting up some assessments and we'll be doing some evaluations of the work that the counselors do and then we'll come back next year about the same time and we'll share that data with you and so we're excited about that we also what you did see is explained how direct and indirect services will be delivered and then we will establish that annual review we'll just see again next year every year moving forward with in this work so um next slide this is kind of what i was describing the components of the actual plan you were able to see the foundation you're able to see program management you're able to see deliverables both direct

131and indirect component 4 is going to be in progress that's what we're working on next year building goals establishing those assessments and so on and then you saw some of the administrative activities so these three amazing individuals are here to talk about their part in the plan and they have collaborated with their uh grade grade level counselors a lot over the past year um and uh we are all in agreement that the plan moving forward is our plan the entire wenatchee school district councilors agree on the plan and we're excited to dive into component four so next slide please we'll move on to elementary school with justin nielsen take it buddy thank you i'm justin nielsen i'm the school counselor at mission view elementary mission be proud um oh thank you uh so i just

132want to talk very briefly about how school elementary school counselors are meeting students needs in these domains our calendars that's what things that we do every year about the same time all the elementary counselors we push into fifth grade classrooms provide suicide prevention lessons we teach students about anxiety and depression we give them research-based coping strategies and we give them plans for if they're worried about themselves or someone else for direct services we're working with students so we provide individual counseling that's short term we work on things like problem solving so that students can learn to resolve conflict peacefully we learn we learn about we teach students about emotion management and we also been doing increasing amount of crisis counseling for indirect services we're working with others to help students uh we have child study

133student study teams at every elementary school and school counselors are either the facilitator of those or a member of those where we problem solve around students who are having trouble in academics or social or emotionally or behaviorally and create a plan for them moving forward for administrative activities um this is like the paperwork kind of things that we do uh not the most fun but important it fits in with what things were saying here earlier because uh one thing i do is i help make those referrals to outside counseling agencies when students need more support than what we can offer at school so i'll actually fill out as much of the paperwork as i can you know get that handoff going um i kept i keep data on it um last date i had that

134was reasonable 2007-18 less than half the students i referred actually got to see a counselor even one time because it's there's just a lot that can happen between between the time that i refer them and they're seen so uh i'm really happy to hear about the the school-based uh health centers i'll allow my middle school friend all right um i'm haley martin formerly haley griffith i got married over the summer um so some of the calendar items that are specific to middle school i'm just going to give you the general flow of how the year goes we start with transitioning our new students both sixth graders and any new students to the school and right away we start away start transitioning our eighth graders to high school and we start with exposure to um career

135and technical opportunities in um the wenatchee high school and tech center opportunities but also for careers that they could be potentially interested in and then um in the winter we start bringing in the high school and west side and tech center to get kids thinking about where they want to go next year and then spring it seems like everything hits all at once um we are doing high school registration for our eighth graders we're transitioning um our eighth graders to the high school through transition meetings making sure that they have the support set up at the high school and we're also doing the same for the receiving students that we're getting from elementary schools um during this time we are working on scheduling which is a huge um beast not quite as big as the

136high school for us but it is a big project and i think that if you were to ask someone who didn't know anything about school counseling um they would probably say your school counselor does um career and college readiness and they do scheduling and really truly my calendar items are such a small fraction of what i do in my day most of my day is spent in direct and under indirect um counseling services so like justin said we're doing individual counseling we're doing group counseling crisis has become a really big part of our job parent partnership through parent meetings but something that's really specific to middle school is where they are developmentally so i never know what's going to walk into my office every day especially in a middle school but i do um there

137are some common themes so working with anxiety self-awareness who are they going to be how does the world perceive them um and a lot of relationship a lot of relationship stuff and then the indirect services in addition to what justin had said because a lot of us we do the same thing something really cool about middle school student studies is that we are able to meet during the day as a whole grade level team to really come together with all of our expertise and all of our perspectives and really make a whole a holistic plan for a student to help them and that is really really valuable in the middle school um and lastly administrative scheduling is the biggest i mean scheduling is a big thing that we're doing in administrative but also um we

138are doing lunch supervision and i know that that is not necessarily written into our job description but it is so essential to building relationships with kids and um i love that part of my day i know a lot of other people do too so supervision um is super good for building relationships and building rapport with kids pass it to sam hello um i'm samantha holton i'm a counselor at wenatchee high school and very similar objectives but a little different at the high school so my calendar it looks different every month but traditionally in the fall you know we're on boarding um our students especially our incoming freshmen getting them acquainted with going from 700 students to 2100 and what that transition looks like and then you're full on to college admission season and so your

139college applications fafsa nights wasp nights uh scholarships parent information about all of that and then suddenly it's winter kind of into spring in your asvab sat um act a lot of testing going on more scheduling and then into the end of the year uh scheduling credit checks you know getting all of those kids to graduation some high flyers maybe we're transitioning them into west side or figuring out how we can get them to the finish line um direct services this is my favorite part of my job where i just be one on one with my students this year that really looks like a lot of post-secondary planning but a lot of stress management coping mechanisms healthy boundaries healthy relationships and a little bit of reality therapy i feel like they've really regressed maybe isn't the

140best word but maybe not bloomed as much as they would have in an in-person environment and so you know teaching them social acuity taking accountability um self-advocacy skills these really important student developmental skills that they just might not have been able to build as much these last few years and then the other aspect of direct services is celebrating with my students i love that one-on-one celebrating their successes that's huge and you know for so many of them they haven't had that in the last few years uh indirect that is deeply rooted in collaboration um with fellow counselors families and then outside services are huge i have a lot of students who are on you know two-month wait lists for services and so it's awesome to hear that that contract is gonna go forward hopefully um

141but my indirect is just really collaboration consultation admin activities are going to be scheduling for sure um and then the paperwork i'm a running start counselor so you've got those enrollment verification forms every 10 weeks but we don't have a ton of admin activities no lunch supervision or anything like that at the high school level but thank you for letting us share a little bit of what our job looks like in our day to day told you they were amazing um uh so yeah so basically um the the next steps for 2022 and we're going to start early in august uh during our district days and our principal's days is working on our goal setting working on our data collection pieces um and then we'll share the data that we collect with you next year

142and i'm really going to lean on these three to help guide and drive that work they are deeply invested and they know the um the law very well so they're here with me if you have any questions i know this is an action item and uh just yeah we would be able to field any questions that you might have on this work thank you any comments or questions i just have a quick comment in regards to you know i hear problem solving emotion um emotion management and all that i hear sel weaved into a lot of the work that you guys do um as well as plc's you know the student study teams we learned a lot about especially at the middle school level how the teams work together um to support students in different

143aspects um so just um thank you for you know to paul to corey for just enlightening us on those subjects um i know a lot of the sel is also done at least at the elementary level my personal experience is done at the in the classroom um and seeing those connections um so well i i think what i hear is that you guys do you guys provide direct referrals to well i guess maybe not i don't know maybe you don't have an answer to this because some of the contracts are new for like um the high school but uh i see referral services going into our school-based um health services um do you guys currently do that or do you go through the school nurse how does that flow but um we can refer to

144agencies on our own yeah uh we typically collaborate with our school social workers but we are able to refer out as well catholic charities has been amazing to us readiness to learn is kind of like a sub-funded group and that has just been phenomenal especially for my migrant eld students because they did have a lot more um bilingual support in that role so that was very helpful so it sounds like you're doing a lot of this stuff already is anything in this plan is this more memorializing sort of what you're already doing or is this is there any new piece that we really need to pick up on because i you know i waited to hear the presentation and now going back and trying to flip through 31 pages i'm like i don't know what

145no you're absolutely spot on a lot of the work is um what is currently happening happening in the in the district right now and it's um and it's not that is what is happening in all buildings there are other things that are happening in specific buildings and uh but that is what you're seeing right there is a great um overview of what is happening in all buildings and that's why the collaboration was so necessary for us to do the work to get to this point is we spent a lot of times in small breakout rooms on in zooms um so that we could get people to really say this is a line we are doing all of this work right now um and then the next piece is is our goal setting and evaluation really

146what do we want to do to push our program and how are we going to make sure that our counseling program at the moment school district aligns to state and national standards through the work that we have to do and that'll be great because i think that there's a through line in that work is how do we create goals and set goals at the building level that also work to or at the counseling level that address the building level that also address the strategic plan so we're going to be working a lot with our administrators and what that looks like going down into the classroom and the counseling role and all the way back up so we're excited about the work and excited to bring back to you the findings that we have so that

147was a great question so sorry i have a question um some years ago i met with representatives from the american school counseling association um at a nsca conference and at that time they gave me their manual which i skimmed and read some of but i became aware of the recommended ratios of staff to students we were maybe at a tenth of the recommended um ratio and i'd like to know if that has improved um because you know obviously our state funding model is never ever ever at this rate going to fund the um recommended ratios by the professional organization have we gotten any closer however come come with me because i was just going to say these these folks probably have a better knowledge of that than i do um i just want to say

148huge thanks because we are getting a part-time additional part-time at all the middle schools this year and i think it seems hopeful with the new house bill um that that will continue but it will be helping our ratios out hugely at the currently this year um we have about 580 students and 1.5 councillors at almost that's at my school i don't know exactly the numbers at the other schools but um that will help significantly um having an additional part time for us to be closer to our ratios i'm a full-time counselor at my school and i have about almost 400 students on my caseload and it is a lot um but i'm hopeful that this next year will be a lot a huge weight lifted off my shoulder so thank you to anyone that was

149a part of making that decision isn't it isn't it true that the association though recommends you know five times that many uh one to 250 students from what i understand is that the house bills that that bill that was just recently passed this last session was going to increase for the next what yeah next what three four years so we'll start out small and then add more funding for that support any in that case do we have a motion to adopt the comprehensive school counseling transition program is that right plan uh motion to approve the counseling plan sorry i don't have the title in front of me yeah i think the title is confusing consequences school counseling program transition plan okay uh any discussion at that point uh in that case will uh those in

150favor of this adoption please signify so by saying aye aye that's uh unanimous approval the final action item is a school bus purchase pretty straightforward no presentation on this one it's yellow we're gonna pick it up we're going to get some kids on it we're going to drive it not you not you that's that's the presentation does it come with a full sink of gas okay all right i'm waiting for a motion to approve the purchase i move for approval of the purchase of the yellow school bus okay i will second that motion okay any discussion i know make sure it's full before we pick it up that's right it is we've been given the numbers and it's in the budget and it takes longer to purchase buses by about a year than anybody thought

151because of the supply chain so we're um approving and committing now for later delivery yeah but can we afford to drive it yep okay if there's no other discussion uh would you please indicate if you're in favor of this purchase by saying hi we are all done with action items thank you very much and we now move on to board communication i just want to say that i we did the two graduations i went into going to the high school graduation thinking nobody wants their diploma from me i you know their principal their teacher their counselor and i felt a little silly going and doing it but i have to tell you it was one of the greatest honors of my life getting to look these kids in the face as they stood 10 feet

152away and i'm telling you i could see some of them i thought we're gonna pass out some of them were like where do i go where do i go and they just had to go 10 feet from from where they were to us i could look at some of those faces and see them going into their classroom as a kindergartner it was absolutely one of the greatest honors of my life it was so moving and i to be involved with that was was a thrill and uh yeah i'm sure they it wasn't thrilling for them and they still would have preferred to get their different from somebody else but i it was an honor to to be a part of that so that and that's it i do want to add a couple of words

153but i'll be brief uh i will be remote at the 628 board meeting and vice president maria eniges will preside so i have a couple of things i want to say while i'm present in person i've got one simple tribute to paul gordon and i'll put it this way the terms of reference of the interim superintendent contract are to execute the 2022-23 plans not we're not i'm not itemizing anything but that tells you that there are transformational initiatives in the work that's been done and it's our job to continue and complete also i want the people of wenatchee to know that paul and incoming superintendent bill eagle who is here there you are right are putting in a great collaborative effort to make sure that the district receives strong commun community and an excellent handover

154i do want to acknowledge both of them we are gratitude to both of you and thank you paul it's been a pleasure and honor to be a director and president with you thank you sir it means a lot um superintendent report for me incredible gratitude for our staff our students our families another incredible year um you know just these last few years have been one challenge after another and i'm just incredibly grateful with incredible gratitude for our staff for our students and for our family and for community to come together and really serve our students the way they have for our staff as a superintendent i couldn't have asked for a better staff collectively working each day for the betterment of students bam this doesn't get any better when you when you get to meet

155as our board members have it and that's something i'm really proud of of having our board members in our schools getting to meet our staff getting to know the work that our staff does on a day-to-day basis it's hard work but as you heard here tonight it's work from passion it's work from i want to make our our schools our students our community better um boy i could not i could not be more honored to have been superintendent the last three years uh with a better staff honest to goodness outstanding the way they started the year the way they in the middle of the year and the way they finish the year just continue to to work continue to work each and every day for the betterment of our students that's who our staff are

156in this community we should be incredibly proud of our staff and continuing to lift them up continuing to to to support the work that is occurring the work that we here to heard here tonight the incredible partnerships don't happen by chance those just don't magically appear those are staff members who work diligently to make those partnerships come to life to for the betterment of our kids that's our staff and great partners throughout like cvch and countless others that we heard about tonight uh incredibly grateful for a culmination in graduation um the graduations are are all you know very emotional one of the graduations that you know maybe doesn't get us celebrated as much as our transitional student graduation that occurred wow that's one that needs to be on everybody's must-do list to be able to

157see some of our young men and women who are graduating from our transitional program who are 20 to 21 years old who have goals and aspirations and hopes and dreams of doing greatness in this world and they were on full display during that graduation and the work of our staff and i'll highlight a staff member and you all know him as chef every student in the transitional program mentioned his name why because he gave time and effort he created relationships meaningful deep relationships with these young people that's why connect back to what we were talking about our school safety so what shaft does to connect with humans to make them feel connected and belong that's what our staff does on a day-to-day basis he exemplifies all the good that our staff does on a day-to-day

158basis that's why i'm proud to be the superintendent and why i'm also sad to be leaving the wenatchee school district is because of our staff um but i also want to recognize our students we've got students here tonight we have former students in the back i love i i love our adults but boy when students that that voice of our young people that's another piece of honor for me is lifting up the voice of our students and hearing our students and hearing our students who come back to us from colleges and universities around the state and around the country who are making a bigger difference in carrying the wsd brand beyond our walls wow wow that to me is so crazy cool and then to see the next generation the next group of students who

159are sitting before you here tonight who who are moving and shaking because of the the footprint that the previous seniors left for them to say no it's okay to have a voice and to make a difference pretty cool stuff so thank you thank you paul lots of heart from everybody we appreciate it and at that point i adjourn this board meeting you