Wenatchee School District Board Meeting 5-10-22

001that's what mary ann said ready to go it is six o'clock this evening may the 10th uh tuesday uh and i call to order the regular board meeting of the wenatchee school district board of directors and first of all i ask us to say the pledge of allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i welcome everyone to this board meeting and thank you for joining us gracias for assistencia the meeting is conducted in english but we do have translation services so that citizen comment may be spoken in spanish and be repeated in english explications the first item on the agenda is the consent agenda and i do have a request to remove one item item e the principals and directors

002um collect a cba bargaining agreement so that will not be part of the consent agenda are there any other requests to modify the consent agenda that being the case uh the cons it includes the minutes of the 21st of april meeting special meeting the 26th of april regular meeting vouchers and payroll the personnel report contracts and field trips is there a motion to propose approval of the consent agenda move to approve the consent agenda as amended thank you julie thank you laura so we have a proposal and a second to approve the consent agenda as amended is there any discussion that being the case could all those in favor indicate that by saying i i i so the consent agenda is um approved by everybody the next item is citizens comment and unless some people

003have checked in very recently i believe we have none is that correct okay the next item after after citizen comment is an action item the contract with the north central education service district for interim superintendent services i the contract for the interim superintendent services is in the board package so that everybody can read it i believe it is true to what was signaled uh when the committee was authorized negotiated uh by way of introduction there are two priorities for the proposed actions to find successes to superintendent gordon first and foremost a complete implementation of the district's existing 12-month plan and programs a pathway that's been approved by the board and in which i have confidence that's the short-term priority secondly to achieve the strongest most widely open and deepest candidates search for the highest quality

004superintendent the long-term top priority in the contract you will see in section 10 priorities the district defined for superintendent effort during 2022-23 in section 5 enhanced board oversight of progress towards achieving the district's goals a smooth handover from superintendent gordon to the interim superintendent is essential section one provides transition time between now and june the 30th to achieve this and to build effective connections all around to all parties in the district in section 10 the ntesd provides a backup alternative if we suffer the misfortune of the interim superintendent becoming unable to continue to clarify this is a dedicated person who will be full time inside the district the ncsd was uniquely positioned to serve the first priority our next 12 months doing what we're out to do and committed to do do so within the

005short time frame that we faced and then create a highly favorable foundation from which to work on the second long-term priority uh the superb candidate that we hope to get for the long-term future and they add local ncw knowledge and sensitivity to the process and they do so with high quality personnel so that's background and content on the contract which is in the board packet at that point i would ask if there was a proposal to approve the contract i moved for approval of the contract with the esd north central esd for the interim superintendent services for the next school year thank you lauren is there a motion to a second for that motion thank you julie uh i now open this up for board discussion i think the only question i had that jumped

006out at me is in the termination section um it discussed termination by the board which could be for any or no reason um but would result in paying out the remaining of the remainder of the contract my understanding was that if the particular interim superintendent that was assigned maybe isn't working we could still continue to contract with ncesd and would potentially just have a new superintendent appointed and so there may need to be another sub point in there that yes termination of the relationship in and of itself um would would incur that penalty but if there's a means for substitution of the um of the the person and that wouldn't necessarily be a triggering termination of the contract um the contract one of the journeys that we went through was realizing we're not writing an

007employment contract we were writing a contracted services contract um and i'm trying to absorb what you're saying there i believe we have a good relationship with the ncasd and they would be performing their services for the 12 months um if the person was unable to continue the ncsd would be able to offer a substitute which we could accept or not accept that's the other aspect of the termination and i'm trying to think of a scenario um this is without sufficient cause i think the answer would be if we had sufficient cause then we would deal with the cause in that sense so that i would interpret this has been reviewed by our legal counsel we could ask for a subsequent review i don't really want to delay this from the point of view of a

008commitment in principle yeah and i agree i don't want to delay it either i just want to make sure i was understanding that because i i completely agree if we were to be terminating the relationship with ncesd entirely then then for no good reason then yes of course we owe a fee um the way this is written is if we terminate that interim superintendent we wouldn't be able to do that we would have to terminate the relationship with the contractor we could go to the contractor and say we are dissatisfied and we can work together does the contractor we're just saying would you grab them yeah i was just going to say that if you look at item b right below that it specifically says um if they're unable to fulfill the interim duties then

009they would assign it right but it says because of retirement death or disability it doesn't necessarily say because the board didn't didn't approve the service being provided by that one individual so i think we're there we knew what we were talking about it's just when i read it there i go i thought we had that option if it wasn't working you bet the intention is that if the person that is hired that is assigned to the job isn't a fit or it's not working that we would have another person be able to fulfill that role and if for any reason you didn't want that that would be the termination agreement of the entire contract but we do have a backup in case or several actually if for any reason the person assigned is unable to

010fulfill the duties thank you michelle i would want to add that this is very much a help each other goodwill kind of contract with one of our traditional service providers and i have a great deal of confidence that if we run into uncertainties or things that we didn't expect that we will almost always get a satisfactory resolution and i didn't want you've said that and i think i would be confident with that yeah that's all it looks it's just what we discussed so i'm fine i do have a couple questions um the out of work contract on the second page uh one e um i was looking at these states that uh the interim is expected to be at leadership events at the esd um august 25th was of a concern to me because that

011is our pd day um on this calendar and that is the day after principal's day i think it's going to be important for the interim to be visible especially as staff returned into the buildings um so that date is a concern of mine okay i agree that there were some potential conflicts that we discussed and i think the idea is that if um a particular date like you just mentioned ends up being a priority for the district that that would take precedence over whatever the esd obligation was so we did discuss that and it says in here that um something about approval by the board permission of the board or something of that nature it does say prior permission it does say expected yeah the expected was what threw me off and it fits into

012working out mutual benefit which is another way of looking at that yeah okay so i would like to see this day i mean maybe not in this contract but like i said the visibility uh we need to have staff you know buy in having that visibility in our buildings as staff return have those pd days is i think it's going to be crucial i agree the other question i have is on number five um in regards to the evaluation it says uh 2023-24 annual goals for the monetary school district shall be established jointly by the board and the interim superintendent prior to the 22-23 school year i'm a little confused why we're going to be setting goals for the incoming superintendent yeah i can explain that uh we every year we're on an annual cycle

013of goals uh and they're set in february march in the spring if it's a continuing superintendent those goals become the superintendent's evaluation um as we see that calendar any time there's a change of superintendent whether it be by term end of contract or any other reason there's going to be this bridge where everybody has to team up and try and anticipate and look ahead try the exiting superintendent if you call it that we'll be writing goals with everybody else's input for the next 12 months there'll be a new superintendent on july the 1st who will settle in at a varying pace may be involved with the border the one that will bridge both dates and so their their their willness of necessity be working together and bridging that gap at that point so it is

014the 23 24 goals um and it is because of the nature of the calendar of planning looks like julie you had a question no okay i thought you were saying you okay i cut you off okay i i get it i guess i'm just you know i i know their district goals um and to have them set with an interim and us um a whole year in advance it's just with the new superintendent it just kind of doesn't seem fitting well actually the first quarter of those are completed before june the 30th so the goal year does is not the same as the school year so we started february similar to the situation we're in now you know the board has already met with our existing superintendent we have established goals and we anticipate that

015our interim superintendent is going to follow up with those goals that we have created i i think that the board should probably not be completely closed-minded you know to a conversation with our new permanent you know superintendent and you know if there needs to be adjustments or tweaks you know because of an emerging vision then i think the board could probably be open to that but we have to look forward if we if we don't then we're just going to be stalling and no no no when i get it um i just it it's just you know you have an incoming superintendent and you have an interim setting those those district goals that was that's but no i also get the idea of you know moving the district forward um and i agree we have

016to be open-minded um that new person might not agree with what we have been playing in place um and then lastly okay what are these indirect fees i know they're an overhead cost i guess is that kind of what we're looking at here you know i i kind of like to pick that up because i think it's not a bad idea to go over the whole you know what does the cost look like um so if we just compare the salary which is in the bear in mind this is a contracted services so the fixed number is the bottom line the 303 okay so if we compare salaries this notion of salary in terms of the way paying the total is actually a little less than uh wenatchee school district would have had with the

017increase at the 30th of june it's less than what eastmond just negotiated with their superintendents so but it's very much in in the same uh costs structure as far as the um benefits are concerned this contract locks into a fixed amount for benefits so we have a fixed contract if you actually have an employee the benefits are actually arranged and they'll vary according to discretion discretionary choices during the year of the employee and in this particular case um the existing benefits my guess would be of an employee superintendent would cost more than the contract we have from fixed amount from the ncst and what that pays for is vacation healthcare pension payroll taxes and things like that so it is kind of nice to have a lot of some and you know what it is

018and then we don't have this we not have an employee who can elect different patents so the first two items on that list um come in not materially but somewhat lower than our standard cost and then the nine percent comes in and i um i i will give my version of it and it can be repeated um uh by other more knowledgeable people the educational service district is a service provider to school districts all around the region this is their standard contract form where they bill their clients as the school districts the direct cost of the employee services that they provide and then they add nine percent fee and that pays for all the supporting overhead that keeps them in business everything from people to their facilities and technology and to things like insurance and

019other things like that and that's the way they do a business this is a standard format of how they do it um when you add these items all together um given the fact that the school district's a bit of a range they end up being essentially the same and um including the nine percent from the uh ncesd but i would say that i think that's good we know that this is a good economics but i want to talk a little bit more about the unpriced benefits of working with the ncst which i think are very very real um in their contract when the board authorized two of us to initiate um searching for a superintendent with the ncst for help their networking knowledge within days gave us an idea of the probable availability of qualified

020people who would be immediately available within the next few weeks if we'd had to go to a search firm which would have been for a substantial fee we would have had to wait i believe about a month before anybody even lifted anything to do it so there's one immediate benefit that we've already received from the ncasd and then i think it's important that matter we discussed of assigning an alternate interim superintendent if we need to so we have backup it's not a single shot no reserves no alternative plan deal so i think there are a lot of unpriced benefits as well in the cost but i think the answer to my question for everybody on the cost is this is a good economic deal for the school district when you pencil things out it's very

021much similar to what we would be paying anyway and it's got other unpriced benefits yeah i'll just echo your your discussion of the indirect fees or what we'd see in like an engineering contract or anyone else in contract with it's their fully burdened costs it'll cover their administrative fees and things so we see those in the seven to 12 percent range so this is pretty reasonable as far as i'm concerned okay any further discussion i just want to go back because i left you hanging in the air on your question on termination i think um we can jointly see whether we missed anything but i would like to go forward on the basis that we believe it is satisfactory um and um present it that way call the question okay uh in that point then

022i would um ask for a vote on the interim services contract presented to us by the ncesd and posted in the board packet all those in favor please indicate by saying aye aye thank you very much that is i think a very good accomplishment that will do a great deal of good and provide a lot of very important power and help to the school district so thank everybody at this point we moved to presentations and i would invite michelle price dr michelle price is superintendent of north central educational service district to give us her announcement well thank you uh first thank you for the faith in north central esd and um our our goal and our our drive is to serve you and to make sure that you're served well so as a as a

023district as a team you have some incredible people here and we hope to maintain that momentum so i'd just like to say thank you we have provided uh superintendent services before to staheken palisades or rondo never to the level of a size of wenatchee school district so it's something new but we were really in a unique position with a rarity with four staff members with superintendent certification um and so i think that um the faith you have in our agency and our commitment to you and having that um breadth of experience with uh superintendent credentials is going to be a blessing while you're working towards finding a permanent replacement and working with your community and your staff here so the primary reason we offered to provide this option to the wenatchee school district is that

024it was late in the hiring season for a superintendent the superintendent job seekers at this time have a lack of depth of experience with large districts we can support the momentum on current financial school district initiatives without causing a domino effect creating gaps in the team that is doing great work here in wenatchee school district we have familiarity with the district the staff the community and the initiatives we have a willing qualified candidate that would not be interested in position permanently so i want to repeat that the person i'm signing is not interested in the position permanently so you don't get to keep them no matter what this allows the board to focus your time and your energy engaging the staff in the community in the search process for a permanent replacement for paul gordon

025so tonight i'd like to announce that i'm assigning bill eagle to serve as the north central esd interim superintendent in the wenatchee school district bill has 26 years of educational experience he's demonstrated highly effective educational leadership and program management skills he has experience working with all grade levels k through 12 as well as state and federal programs that's a very unique trait bill promotes a positive culture and is an excellent communicator he also has proven skills in consensus building which i think will be very beneficial in your interim time he is currently the associate director of student success and learning at north central esd he has a bachelor's degree in mathematics a master's in mathematics both from central washington university and he's both the principal and superintendent credentials from washington state university bill has a

026long-term passion and commitment to the wenatchee school district as a matter of fact he's one of your own in wenatchee he was a teacher an instructional coach an assistant principal a principal and before i stole him a director of state and federal programs in 2018 i was blessed to be able to hire bill as part of my team as the associate director of student learning he facilitates marzano instructional framework training for principals and teachers school improvement principal mentoring and field supervisors for our eastern washington university grow our own teaching program at the end of the contact term june 2030 2023 bill returned to his position and his roles and responsibilities at north central esd when you are placing a permanent person in that place so again thank you for the opportunity and entertain any questions

027that you have thank you very much michelle i see you offered to answer some questions so open up for that well thank you very much we are looking very forward to working with you and hate to see paul go but what an incredible team i walked in i'm like this is the power team over here and i promise you that we're going to come alongside them and support your work so thank you and i just want to thank you and everybody who's participated in this last month of work i think we have the ability to move ahead together very well and appreciate it thank you michelle thanks michelle martin and our executive team here [Laughter] thank you appreciate that thank you okay uh the next presentation paul you're going to introduce shannon okay tonight we

028have shannon davidson with us uh from education northwest to give us um our update on the progress of our equity program review shannon great thank you paul and thank you to the board as always for making time for our update uh my teammate manuel vasquez is also here with me manuel would you like to introduce yourself yeah hi my name is i'm a researcher at education northwest and i've been involved in the process of the equity review um from going to collect data and also and doing some of the data analysis so um really happy and excited to be part of this work and um thank you for having us so um if it's all right i will go ahead and share some slides and i definitely want to make room for discussion at the

029end this has been a really rich and fascinating period of learning for us both what we're starting to learn from our data collection and also what we're learning from community feedback and so i want to make sure we do have time at the end to discuss some of that because it's all been extremely valuable and i think we're going to have some very important findings and synthesizing of this learning to report back to all of you so as always we just like to give an overview of the five focus areas that guide our equity program review and those are curriculum policies materials and resources discipline policies materials and resources instructional policies and teaching practices hiring and recruitment policies in practice and access to learning opportunities and these um just as a reminder our five focus

030areas were really guided by the mission and the action steps in the strategic plan so this is you know what we hoped to come and learn about and be able to share back to the district to help guide those next steps of implementing the strategic plan and i understand that's going to be the next topic on the agenda so um really looking forward to understanding how uh how this will contribute to those next steps that you're taking as a district and i think manuel is going to give an overview of our timeline yeah so just to uh kind of review what the plan was um in the different phases of our work so for the first couple of months of the year we spent on planning and so this was gearing up for the equity

031review developing a touchdown plan as well as working with the equity working group to um finalize some data collection protocols um from there we um [Music] uh conducted our data collection so we had a week and we're not actually talking with the community collecting data from community members as well as um setting up data sharing agreements with the district and right now we're in kind of the middle of this like third phase we are analyzing the data making sense of it and from there we'll transition to reporting putting together a report and presentation and sharing it back with the community and we've been very busy since our last update to you last month we worked with our working group to gather input and feedback on our data collection instruments and we actually had added an

032extra round of feedback with our working group and felt that we had a good sense of the feedback and the direction that we were going to be able to finalize our last instruments so we we thank the working group very much for their time and they're going to have a very important role coming up in helping us make meaning of our preliminary findings so it's been great to engage with them from the beginning we did visit wenatchee from april 12 to 15. it coincided with some pretty crazy weather but we were able to move forward with a lot of great data collection including focus groups and a community engagement event on the evening of april 13th and um we have now begun analyzing our student level data that we are gathering from ospi through our

033formal data sharing agreement with the district and we have launched our surveys and actually have completed administering our surveys for students families and educators we have been working with the human resources department at the district to obtain data on staffing and applicants and hiring which we are combining with our analysis of s275 data from from the state so that we'll be able to address some of our research questions around staffing and hiring we've been continuing to monitor and respond to the digital suggestion box entries and as we have begun analyzing our survey and intergroup in interview and focus group data we've been fielding a lot of calls and emails from the community to share feedback on surveys and we have been listening to all of it with great interest and i'm just really commend the

034community for taking those steps to reach out to us from whatever perspective that may be we've heard a wide range of feedback ranging from just you know delight and emphasizing the importance of this work to some family members who have some real concerns about the data collection and about the kind of general direction of the equity review and so all of that has been valuable and we are really trying to take a listening stance and a learning stance so that we can incorporate what we're learning into our analysis and our reporting so this is just a little uh view of all the different types of data that we've collected so far it's a huge range of different types of data that we're hoping to combine in our final report so in terms of qualitative data

035in combining the in-person groups and the virtual follow-ups we will have 17 focus groups with between five and eight students each uh three family groups uh two educator groups plus interviews with administrators we had a great turnout at our community event on april 13th so we have notes from that and then moving into our surveys we've had very strong response rates for our surveys with 1825 complete student surveys 823 complete family member surveys and 446 complete educator surveys and that includes both english and spanish for students and family members we just closed those surveys today so i'll be able to break down those response rates a little bit more with uh with a little bit of time our secondary data as i mentioned we're looking at student level data from ospi as well as our

036hr data and our workforce data and we've been busy reviewing documents from curricula shared with the learning and teaching team and a selection of ela and social studies texts so we have a lot of different data we're really excited now to be in this phase where we are pulling the data together to tell what we hope will be a very comprehensive and interesting and nuanced story and narrative about what we're learning and share back with all of you so we are on track with our deliverables we have just submitted our progress memo number two which was our deliverable for the end of april and the next deliverables are our big ones first we'll be sharing our final report outline with our working group along with preliminary findings and uh engaging in some meaning making there

037and uh by the end of june we'll be ready to submit our final report and present it to you all at the board uh so this is just what's coming up for the next couple of months so like shannon said we're in the very deep uh stage of data analysis um um personally in that phase as well um looking at a lot of rows and a lot of spreadsheets so um this is some of the exciting time um so we'll continue to do that we are also at the same time dropping our report outline um and um adding in some preliminary findings so that we can share with our equity review working group during our next meeting and so we'll get some feedback from the group to help us uh kind of make meaning of

038the data and um that'll just overall help us get a more nuanced picture and i think a better better story from that once we get some feedback from the equity review working group we'll take that feedback and use it to finalize our report and once we're done with that at the end of june we'll plan to present to the school board and submit the the final reporting finance so now i would love to open this up for discussion uh and i've included my email address again there as well as the link to our digital suggestion box so um both board members and any members of the public who may be watching i we really do encourage you to continue reaching out uh it's been really encouraging and invigorating to see this community's willingness to engage

039in this process and we we're we're here and we're listening and we encourage you to keep doing so and at this point we would be happy to answer any questions i wondered whether our members on the working group would have added insights that can teach us something i don't necessarily have any insights but i do have a question for shannon because i think the board got an update email that said uh feedback was coming back through surveys and emails to uh to equity northwest and i'm just curious how those feedbacks how that feedback that maybe isn't part of the survey is or can be incorporated in any of this yes um thank you that is a great question and i have been taking notes during my conversations with permission from people that i'm speaking with

040and letting them know that if they're if they want us to consider you know what they're telling us as qualitative data then we will incorporate it into our the data that we're coding from our focus groups and our interviews and take it into account and if it's if it's more general feedback on the process then we will be sure to address it in our reporting in terms of acknowledging that you know some parents have shared feedback that they felt they were unable to answer certain survey questions in the way that they would have liked to uh so you know we we want to put that in the report and address that and acknowledge it you know every form of data collection has uh its potential sources of of error or you know that's why we

041use so many different kinds of data sources because certain types have pros and cons and are better at doing certain things than others so it's customary in a report to include things that we you know that may have gone differently to result in a different type of data so a few parents have shared that and we've taken that down and we'll include it in our report i just have a logistical question i see that the two dates on your last two dates on your timeline may 31st and june 3rd um it doesn't say that you're reporting to the board on may 31st but it does say so on june 30th and i don't believe we have a meeting on the calendar okay thank you that was my question yeah we'll report out i'm sorry it'll

042be out on the 28th the 30th i think is when our our the end of our engagement is officially but the 28th will be ready to uh present to you yeah correct me if i'm wrong i thought one of one of the items we discussed at the outset of the contract was we were worried about the product the quality of the product delivered in a such a strict time frame or it sounds like we're on target regardless but i thought we discussed maybe some flexibility if because ultimately it's getting it done and getting it done well so if it's not it's not completely ready june 28th do we see a sliding scale on that or is it we're done june 28th now we um i mean we don't turn into pumpkins and we want to

043make sure that you have something that you're happy with uh we are taking that that step at the end of this month to share those preliminary findings in part to do a check and make sure that we are on the right track to producing a report that's going to meet your needs but um you know with when we present it on the 28th if there are additional suggestions or edits that you'd like to request that we make you know we can we can discuss ways that we can you know make changes to ensure that you're happy with the end product so are we going to receive the preliminary findings on the 31st because we don't have another meeting until the 14th are we going to receive those is the board receiving those by email our

044plan was to share them with the working group but you know i'm open to process amendments if uh if it's something that board members might be interested in viewing [Music] so yeah what we're thinking is that in that may 26th uh working group session they'll will start diving into the data getting that wenatchee perspective on the data they would then go back to their teams finalize begin to finalize uh the final draft for the board but we definitely have it to the board prior to that 28 so you're not just seeing it firsthand on the 28th is that what you're asking laura well i was wondering you know if we were going to see it on the 31st of may oh inten to give comments prior to the june 28th we can talk about that

045more time to digest would be preferable to me yeah i i think how the feedback from the working group first on the 26th see what that does kind of putting it back into the hands of education northwest and their timeline turn around on that and then bring it back to the boards so you can't have plenty of time i agree making sure you have a significant amount of time to digest it understand it ask questions about it so we're ready for that 28th okay that's what i hear you i appreciate that yeah yeah i think that's very important because as a board member i don't think we want to get one report dried ink too late to think about it so i'm not quite sure how to do that i mean i think my workshop

046would be one way of doing it but that's burdensome yeah okay you're not in your head i'll leave it to you we i think the board needs needs to be able to look think look again yeah i think it'll be important for the working group to look at the report um maybe even before it's presented to the board um i think it's going to be valuable uh you know it was a very a very good what i felt was a very good connected working group um and so i think there's value added to have that presented to the working group and then to the board yeah i agree it probably should go working group and then and then to the board for something like a workshop or something so we can we can really get

047in and understand it because her and i will have seen it before but you all won't and so and it's completely unfair to you know present it on the spot and you've got questions later let us know so i would support doing some second level of meeting as well i'll work with education northwest to set a time and i like the idea around a draft workshop so we can work through it and then that potential final presentation on the 28th i have um i have a couple comments questions um thank you mary for taking the community comment oh shannon i've called you mary a few times sorry shannon um so thank you for taking the community comments uh for em from emails or calls that you have uh received um and incorporating them to the

048analysis however um how are you can we confirm that those are from family community members that are reciting within the winancy school district because of the way we set up our data collection to be collecting as minimal personally identifiable information as possible you know we want to protect protect privacy by not collecting names not conducting a sort of a verification process you know there there is a certain amount of trust that we have to give to the community when we put data out here uh and collect it back so i you know most of the the people that i've actually spoken with on the phone have been sharing you know personal stories about their students and about their experiences so uh it hasn't been brought to my attention that there is a a concern about

049sort of outside of wenatchee input until today um i spoke with that a little a little bit with paul i'd be curious to know if you have some insights on that that you'd like to share that might help me address the question better yeah so it leads to my next question in regards to the survey responses um you know the student response was great the family response would have liked to seen it higher but the educator response was also great my questions regarding these two comments are because there is a social media group that it encompasses the area not just wenatchee and there was a comment posted i don't know how much detail i should put but it's open anybody can go in and see it um and the links to all the surveys were

050put in the social media post so how valid is the data that we're looking at given that it went to a broad group of different community members and and i was extremely discouraged to see that um because it was a member from the working group and so you know we've invested so much time and money into this and how accurate is the data that we're going to receive and reflective of our true wenatchee community so we brought that up to shannon uh this afternoon in our our weekly meeting um just that question um we did look at when that was posted um to make sure education northwest is able to look at that and say was there a burst of rep responses um so it's piece that they're looking into shannon did you have anything

051else you want to add to that question from maria um it is you know it's just something that was brought to our attention today so i'm i'm going to be speaking with my team about what we can do in terms of kind of internal reliability and validity checks to minimize the impact of that on the integrity of the data and again you know as i mentioned it's it's customary in such reports to acknowledge potential sources of um of data error so it's something that now that we are aware of we will certainly need to address in our reporting uh and it's um yeah i i i feel like it's unfortunate if uh if if the data were compromised you know we are trying to keep in mind that this is for kids this is for

052students this is for moving being able to move the district forward in a productive way and have have conversations that ultimately help us help wenatchee students which is really the shared goal that i have been hearing over and over again from the parents and family members that have been calling me a lot of common ground in terms of just wanting the best for opportunities for wenatchee students so it's definitely something that we will take seriously and i'll need to discuss with my team about ways that we can minimize the impact of the data but we really appreciate you bringing that to our attention yeah and just for clarification it wasn't a post that said hey come take the survey yeah that's um and you know it i understand that it went out by a lot

053of different channels so you know when you we put a survey out there and we want a lot of responses we just there is a certain amount of trust that those responses are going to be true and um but with any self-reported data we always have to have that qualification that this is self-reported data and that's why we combine it with different data sources so that we can be sure we're telling a comprehensive story that's not just based on one data source i think you've given us good explanation again appreciate that shannon and manuel as one of the three who's not on the working group it's very valuable to learn a little bit more at these board meetings and appreciate that thank you thank you shane thank you manuel thank you the next item is

054the presentation on the strategic plan thank you martin board thank you um we're excited to formally present uh the strategic plan to the board to the community along with uh the rebranding so tonight um as we're putting up our presentation here really walk the board through um the work some of the inner workings of our strategic plan as the the board knows the plan overall but it was we felt like it was really important for to take a moment uh recognize the work that is that has happened and most importantly the work that's happening now and into the future in front of you as you're looking like good students or already touching the material so that was bad teaching on my part [Laughter] that was all mine that was my bad um you have a

055number of items in front of you uh i'm gonna borrow yours first one is more of a high level review of our plane that is in both english and spanish um it's one it's absolutely beautiful um but it really tells our story from a high level the next one is a much more technical comprehensive strategic plan this is the one the team uses this is the one that are building leaders teachers and others use uh it truly is a very technical plan and we'll get into that portion of it so it's our promise plan and this is about our brand i'm not clicking so that was a dramatic pause there's music supposed to come in there and as you all know uh very well bored we're made up of seven elementary schools three middle schools

056a comprehensive high school an alternative high school one k eight alternative parent partnership school that a lot of parents don't know about but it's an amazing place we are the host to the regional technical skills center uh one online internet academy w-i-a um our students 53 of our students are latino hispanic 43 of our students are white four percent come from other cultures and racial backgrounds 55 percent of our students receive free and reduced lunch and here's one that i don't think a lot of people know about us over 500 students experience homelessness within our school district one of the things i tell people all the time this is one of the most urban rural school districts i've ever seen in my life because of all the different components that make up the wenatchee school

057district but that's who we are from our buildings to to our amazing young people who work with us but we also have these incredible 1 100 exceptional educators staff members full and part-time certified and classified staff members who literally are are making a difference in the lives of each of those students each and every day of our roughly 7 600 students our promise as you can see on the wall uh the brand and the promise we promise to build a foundation of diversity equity and inclusion from which each student emerges future ready so part of this is to fulfill our promise the work here is literally to fulfill that promise each and every day to fulfill that promise and again our students come to us with all the unique lived experiences that's what makes each

058one of our students so absolutely amazing and our promise acknowledges those realities and it's a strategic plan that provides a framework from which each of our students will emerge future ready the cornerstones of this plan are our promise in the big six student outcomes the academic and social emotional um along with the action steps to achieve those this is the work that happens this is really important this is a five-year plan this is not something that we're we're getting done uh on day one it's a thoughtful five-year plan that will take time and energy and we'll talk to you about how we do that and how the board or how cabinet members monitor it each year we're going to set goals and align our work plans to incrementally work toward delivering on our promise next

059up mike lane the executive director of learning and teaching he's going to talk to you about the big six something we've talked a little bit about but something that we really wanted to highlight here tonight uh mike thank you uh so as paul mentioned the big six can be thought of as cornerstones to the strategic plan i like to think of them also as vital signs that we could use to monitor the health of our pk 12 system these are data sources six data sources that will be uh publicly displayed on our website and the data is intended to be easy to use easy to get and easy to view on the website uh and the results would be indicative of larger system work so that as a leadership team we can dive into those

060results uh and much more detail to look at the the health of our system across it as you may have already uh ascertained there are six of these areas but the first two uh truly do uh set the stage those that come after it the first two truly are the heartbeat of the work that we do so the first one is experiencing high quality instructions students are participating in and receiving grade level standard or beyond instruction and assignments we relied on several research studies for this the one that became kind of the guidance for this came from a research group called tntp out of new york uh and they published a very uh comprehensive research study on what is effective in schools it was called the opportunity myth and for part of that they observed

061a thousand high school lessons so they're actually sitting in a thousand different high school classes observing the lessons and what they found was uh 88 of the time the lessons and the assignments related to the topic of the class and 71 of the time the students met the demands of the assignment but only 17 percent of the time did the students have demonstrate mastery of grade level standards and the reason for that discrepancy is that only 17 percent of the time are the students asked to demonstrate grade level standards so that underscores the importance of grade level and beyond instruction as well as engagement they go deeper into that research [Music] around classes for all students where online on grade level instruction and high levels of student engagement are present that is effective for all

062students but it's particularly effective for students who have ketchup to do and we do know within our system we have students who have ketchup to do so the second sort of foundational area that we'll talk about is really around belonging and connection that students know they belong they're seeing they're valued and heard and have healthy relationships with staff and peers this is about the human aspect of the work that we do it's about creating school and district environments that are built on respect inclusivity compassion and hope however there's also research proven links to academic success that go right along with us the mindset scholars network from stanford university does a wonderful job of very succinctly describing the connection between belonging and academic performance these are their words when students are uncertain about whether they belong

063they desperately they're desperately searching for clues about whether they belong or whether they don't belong am i safe in this environment am i not safe in this environment am i respected in this environment or am i not respected in this environment and that hyper vigilance and added stress use up cognitive demand that's essential for learning and the result is academic achievement is diminished as is the student's ability to persevere in the face of adversity the statement that's mounted on the wall right now it starts with our promise is to build foundation if you look at number one and number two of the big six that's how we build the foundation that's the work that we do number three reading on grade level students will read on grade level by third grade and beyond and will

064continue to grow their skills knowledge and abilities throughout their education the importance of reading on grade level and particularly that third grade benchmark really cannot be overstated the amount of research that is backing this up is somewhat overwhelming one of my favorites because it it gets right to the heart of this of this work come from the national research council and they assert that academic success is defined by high school graduation can be predicted with reasonable accuracy by knowing someone's reading skill up third grade a person who is not at least a moderately skilled reader by that time is unlikely to graduate from high school you read that again a student who is not at least a modestly skilled reader at third grade is unlikely to graduate from high school kofi annan has a great

065quote and it says literacy is the bridge from misery to hope and one of the things i love about that is you can take the word misery and you can replace a whole bunch of other things that we absolutely know are true as educators literacy is the bridge from poverty the hope literacy is the bridge from incarceration to hope our work about ensuring literacy is equity work number four ready for algebra students will be on grade level or beyond by eighth grade in algebra the the strands numeric and not number and operations excuse me in algebraic thinking uh like reading on grade level at third grade algebra represents a watershed moment in our students future ready path for many of our students it'll be the first time that they struggle with variables or abstract concepts

066or creating creative problem solving for many of our students it'll also be the first time they'll find out what it feels like to fail a class high school algebra being the most frequently failed class across the nation the gates foundation is digging into this and they describe a student failing algebra 1 as having the door of opportunity closed in their face the work that we need to do systemically is about shifting algebra from being a gatekeeper that limits students access to their future to being a gateway that we show students the pathway towards their future mike mattos is one of the gurus and sort of the plc work that we've been working on and sharing with the board he has a great saying that says if we can predict it we can prevent it if

067it's predictable it's preventable can we predict that students will struggle in algebra we absolutely can predict that can we do something about it you're darn right we can and the responsibility for doing that is shared across the system that is not just about algebra teachers reading on grade level and arming students for success in algebra that's how on a day-to-day basis in our classrooms we take the words from the wall and turn it into daily action number five track for graduation uh students are on track to graduate at the end of their freshman year and beyond this is a pretty simple measure essentially ninth grade students earn all attempted credits another way of saying that is ninth grade students don't fail any classes clearly uh item number four and item number five are closely linked

068to one another we're not gonna hit the mark on number five unless we hit the mark on number four uh the research uh on ninth grade is also clear uh university of chicago one f in a year-long course at ninth grade decreases the probability of eventually graduating by 30 percentage points two fs in ninth grade decreased the probability of graduating by over 50 percentage points and number six this is about real world and relevant learning students are engaged in a continuum of learning experiences that create awareness exploration preparation and work experience to be future ready our work is about uh ensuring our students are armed with the knowledge skills mindsets and experiences for success in whatever their desired future is it's about guaranteeing that each of our students are able to confidently follow a path

069that brings them to a sense of purpose and fulfillment and joy now my partner corey kalahar is going to talk about how these manifest themselves in the form of priorities and action plans thank you sir good evening i'm going to talk about our priorities tonight and so as mike described uh the big six are um how you know how we're going to be measured on our strategic plan um and the priorities are how each student achieves and realizes the big six um so through our priorities and the action steps and the practices and this group of people owning the process um that's how we're gonna get to that piece uh with the priorities so as the slide says in the next five years uh when each school district will focus on providing the opportunities and

070support for each student to achieve the big six and keep our promise to build that strong foundation so the first slide um actually helps us use the technical document so if you want to get that out you can turn to page three four and five and you can look at basically the magnitude of each of these priorities and how they're how they're unpacked there's a lot of stuff here uh for us to unpack uh and the technical document does that for us um and as each of you know the the action steps have a district leadership perspective it also has a school leadership perspective and then it has a staff perspective as well and so under each of those items you can kind of follow along so look at the next slide here which talks

071about our first priority and that's thriving environment so these are the welcoming spaces where all individuals flourish are seen and valued feel safe and know they belong and so we have the action steps over here on the right side of the slide first one supporting the social and emotional well-being of people with healthy and supportive spaces so this is the first action step is where a lot of uh the work that i've been involved with this year lives um housing our social emotional learning as well as our pbis work um students belonging and connectedness as mike talked about with the big six um each and every day we want all of our students in our system to feel like they're part of something special and we want them uh to feel that in each of

072their buildings as well so if we look under that on the technical documents we can see that there are under the district leadership piece we have providing leaders with sel best practices under the school and leadership practices we have creating welcoming and inclusive spaces for all of our school community and then under the staff practices we have teaching modeling and practicing positive behaviors through planned social emotional learning so you can kind of see how all of the action step that first action step kind of plays out and there's many more obviously as well but those are kind of highlights we also have under the action steps developing facilities and operations that reinforce equitable learning uh and opportunities and then the final one for this priority hiring staff that reflect our student body all right the

073next priority is partnerships this is where our work together around plcs lives and the journey that we're on for the next couple years that we've been able to tackle one year of this three year journey with the professional learning communities which you are all able to see in the schools and witness that it's also the place where projects like the well-being uh project live the work that uh dr gordon and ron have been uh so intimately involved in with our community and gang awareness and understanding what the increase in in gangs and activity has for our community um we know that we can do a lot for our uh students in the school district but we also know that if we have really beneficial and influential partnerships with our community we can do even more

074so if we look uh look under the first one the first action step is how our staff and our leadership uh teaming and collaboration how how we all work together and so if you extrapolate that out a little bit the district leadership piece is ensuring a guaranteed and viable curriculum the building piece is monitoring collecting and sharing evidence of student learning and then the staff piece would be partnering in collaborative teams to take collective responsibility for student learning all right and the third priority opportunities equitable access to high quality academic extracurricular and real world experiences so building our collective knowledge and growth here the first action step is building the skills and knowledge of our staff in diversity equity and inclusion the next the next action step is building the skills and knowledge of our

075staff in math and literacy and if we were to unpack that if you look at the technical document from the district perspective we would have monitoring and teaching of standards-based high-quality literacy and math instruction from the building perspective would be gather instructional data and feedback and then from the staff perspective would be plan and implement grade level and beyond uh instruction i missed i messed that up didn't i oh no i got it okay um yeah so those those conclude the three priorities uh and our discussion of what is in the technical document in those three pages three four and five and uh the next slide kind of talks about the working of the plan so just a reminder that this is as paul stated a five-year plan starting this august um what is great

076about the plan is we're launching it this fall but a lot of this work is already in motion we're already passionately involved with the plan we all have pieces that we take care of individually but we're also working as a team on a lot of these pieces and then the school improvement plans will align with the strategic plan and the big sick student outcomes so we see that as kind of a top-down process where the strategic plan guides the work the school building plans then will relate to the strategic plan and then teachers student growth goals will relate to those building plans as well so it's a whole top-down down-up process yes and the sample work plans in motion diana so as you you saw the technical plan there's a lot in there there's a

077lot in that plan and one could assume that we're we're trying to accomplish all of it right now we're not so as a cabinet cabinet has a each cabinet member is a champion for different areas and what we worked on is each cabinet member has selected two areas that they're focused on they're highly focused on and then as cabinet on a regular basis we review those as a team where are we at where are we going how's the hiring process working and then kelly talks to us about what's happening with some of our classified staff members who are literally being hired into certified positions because we're putting them in good positions to do that work and making sure that it's a more diverse workforce for our students because there's research behind that when any student

078sees students who or staff adults who look like them sound like them they are more able to belong and be connected within their school environment um so we're working our plans all the time but from learning and teaching you heard the work we're doing there around the plc's the math work uh the math research that is coming to a head and that will be in full uh swing next year from our technology team continuing to make sure that we have uh just high functioning technology throughout this district so again our students are able to access but also our staff have that ability to utilize the technology in an effective way communications department you've seen this in action already where we're trying to ensure that all of our district communication is in english and spanish but

079also all signage is in english and spanish it goes back to those thriving environments and making sure our community our students our staff feel like they belong and and as mike read earlier people are always looking for cues they're always looking for signals to say do i belong here and then they're little things like our sign out here on this front door in english and spanish welcoming families in here by hiring a bilingual front office fidelina to seeing those pieces from one of our principals uh pete gelsinger over at the tech center recognizing when he hired a more diverse workforce in the front office it was interesting to see how many more people were starting to come into the main office how many more people were engaged in the registration process so we're seeing these

080these tangible pieces of our action plan of our strategic plan being implemented and impacting students throughout uh this district to our finance team again making sure what that we have we're spending the right dollars in the right area within the strategic plan that is huge because it as board members know yeah we could spend money on a lot of different things but what we're really trying to hone into and i know the board will hold everyone accountable to this how does it align to the strategic plan how does it align to the the promise statement jeanette's already picked up that mantra from you so she's already asking those questions and really pushing that work on a regular basis how are we going to get there how do we ensure this work happens on a regular

081basis so it's collectively the superintendent from the equity work that we're doing that's an area that i champion uh on a regular basis so all of us collectively have a stake in this but to be clear what we said were two items we're not doing everything but we're highly focused on the areas we're working it we always talk about this work the plan work the plan that's what we're doing we're working the plan each and every day we're staying in our lanes we're doing the good work we're seeing evidence already that this strategic plan will make a significant difference in the lives of our students with that i'm gonna pause here because i think it would be better to take the strategic plan questions and then break it from the the uh the branding questions

082so did we just wow you and you're like no we're good no questions there other than what an amazing team over here i'm in that paul's bait camp of yep you are amazing now we all need to help you do the work but other people may have something a lot more substantial to say we'll take those all the time i guess my only question is we talked a little bit at the outset about how do we fine-tune it as we go along and what do those timelines and things look like yeah it's right through the the cabinet work plans when we're seeing areas where where we're not making a huge dent that's where the team comes back to the board and saying here are the adjustments we're making when we're looking at data like mike's

083talking about the big six why aren't we seeing movement in these areas so it's going to be data focused it's in the buildings it's understanding the work and each cabinet member leading those areas to say superintendent this is where we're at here this is what we're doing so it's following again goofy's saying but we're working this plan so we know what's working and what's not and when there there are issues we bring those forward i'm i'm very impressed and happy that we have this plan in place and i think it sets us up for a success in our upcoming um transition and it also speaks back to the earlier question about why you know we have goals in place when we're changing over from an interim to a permanent you know superintendent because it's related

084to what we have at before us in the future and also the work that the team is doing and the results that we're achieving so that we do have a comprehensive you know step forward each each and every day and that has been missing in our district for a couple of years now and you know throw covered through us all for a loop so um i am just really pleased to have this quality work in writing before us and um good good work everyone thank you laura i appreciate it well it's no secret that i am a big supporter of this um and i will say it again you know i i feel like we have something that really addresses the needs of all of our students in our district regardless of their race demographic

085the social economic status um [Music] their identity it this is it for our district and i'm really pleased to see that it has been elaborated into um in within our priorities there's more meat to it um so this is really exciting and um you know i'm looking forward i'm looking at you guys um you know as um we start up the the new school year uh the 22 23 school year you know to really put this out there and make it making these three priorities is the forefront of everything that we do thank you all right with no other comments then um i'll i'll finish with this um been doing this work for a long time i'm not i i am more proud of this work the team educators throughout this district community members students

086had a voice in this and who lifted this up who helped us with this promise statement i am incredibly proud of this work but i i'm even more not even hopeful i know this is going to change kids lives i know it is because it's founded in the research that mike talked about this is not just some this feels good this is not your this is not so a lot of flash this is not the flashiest plan ever this is about ensuring that each of our kids as you talked about maria this is about all of our kids each kid in this district for years to come will have even greater opportunities in success but i want to say thank you to this team as they put up with me throughout this entire process and

087diana and kim just being right alongside this whole journey which was incredibly challenging as you you pointed out trying to do this when we talked about this i had the great opportunity to present at a superintendent conference up in chelan as one of the area area get-togethers for superintendents we were blown away that we did this through that we did this through a pandemic let alone implement structured literacy and continuing to move the organization forward because it was the it was them who moved this forward so just super proud of the staff my team and others so with that with done gushing on my team i'll hand it over to the amazing diana haglin there we go thanks ron can you skip back a slide piece to the timeline so um first of all i

088want to thank paul for his leadership um through the strategic planning process which started in earnest on july 1 um when he was on the ground with listening and learning and spending a lot of time um just hearing people hearing folks uh talking with students community members parents that was really the beginning and really has um transitioned uh throughout his tenure with us and uh this plan wouldn't be possible without his leadership and drive to make it happen so i want to publicly acknowledge that um we're in what we would call a soft launch phase where we're sharing this um you know with the board here's our final plan but we're beginning to roll this out to our staff so later this week we'll be sending out a launch email and really meant to just

089give our staff a preview of what's ahead in the fall and you know they're looking to the end of the school year we're in the middle of state testing right now there's a lot going on on teacher's plates so we we acknowledge that and we honor that um but we want to make sure that that they know what's ahead and we give them an opportunity to to look through the book um and absorb a little bit of of the strategic plan that's ahead of us that will will kick off on july 24 excuse me july uh august 24th of 2022 which is our opening day um so we'll be sending that out later this week uh just to give them that preview and and get them excited about the path forward um but but soft

090touch so that's going to be happening here in the next couple of days um our opening day is august 24th this is uh hopefully if all things work out well a return to a wenatchee school district tradition of bringing all of our staff back to wenatchee high school for an opportunity not only to reconnect after summer and to recharge our energy but also to launch our new plan and to introduce that new plan what is that going to look like and also to launch our new brand which is the next part of our presentation um but this is going back to a time when uh we could get together and there's a lot of energy in the room and enthusiasm and momentum moving forward and it's the ideal time in which to officially start the

091clock and launch out that new plan uh as was alluded to throughout the presentation this is a five-year plan and we really want to emphasize that we don't want our staff or even ourselves to get too caught up in what needs to be done um knowing that if we establish a consistent cadence and set goals that we will achieve our promise we will make that happen we will keep our strategic planning website up to date it's posted there higher on the slide and we'll be continuing to direct people back to the strategic plan website not only for updates on how we're doing with our goal setting are we achieving what we set out to do but to also share areas where we're experiencing challenges we're going to run into challenges i would like to say

092that this is going to be easy but it's not and we commit to being transparent with our communication to our public to our staff and all of our different stakeholders about what that looks like and one of the new things that we'll begin to do is on an annual basis we will publish an annual report that will focus on the big six how are we doing what are we doing so it's an easy to follow uh like i said how are we doing with our vital signs um and really making sure that our community and stakeholders can follow along with our progress so that's something that would happen on a calendar year um so in january you would see that annual report come out and that's where the data is going to be and the

093report out of how we're doing um but that's the timeline so get ready for august it's going to be an exciting opportunity to come back together and really begin to live the plan but moving on to living the brand because these two things go um hand in hand if you want to transition to the next slide we were in a really unique space to be able to um excuse me not only do go through the process of strategic planning which is a really deep uh retrospective look at oneself to determine you know what our goals and objectives for the future are going to be begin visioning about that path forward but we were able to begin our process of evaluating ourselves and looking at ourselves from the lens of of a brand it's been over

094two decades since the wenatchee school district has had a new logo or had a brand um and it was an opportunity for us to demonstrate how we have grown and changed how our community has grown and changed and we set out on this process um really with the intent that we would develop a brand that reflected our promise so our promise that's on the wall and that really um represented the foundation that we were working to build and that it represented our students and their path to become future ready um and that people could see themselves in the brand that they could feel proud of that and that they could truly connect and see themselves in that brand or different aspects of it next slide so what's in a brand um most people when you

095think of a brand you think of the logo i'm sure there's a million logos you can think of the nike swoosh you know the pepsi coke those are uh typical ones that mcdonald's um but there's more to it than just a logo branding is about a core identity it's who you are how do you talk about yourselves what words you use um it there is a visual system that goes with that and of course there's a logo um but there's there's a color palette how does it make you feel um what are what are some of the key messages what is the the value proposition what do people feel and think about you are all mandatory aspects of a brand so this is our brand why it matters why does it matter that we have

096a brand we're a school district right so you know we're not a big fortune 500 company uh we're not selling a product um but we're impacting the lives of thousands of students and we are a central piece of this community um why it matters is that we believe every one of our students has limitless potential and they deserve an education that's going to help them achieve that potential whatever that academic or career goal may be that is our goal and that's what we believe and that's why we're working hard to make sure that wenatchee school district is a place where our students can see themselves they know they belong they're connected they're seen and they're valued so just like we have a promise um through our strategic plan our brand also makes a promise and

097our promise is that the wenatchee school district students teachers and staff reflect the diversity and richness of wenatchee through high quality instruction social emotional support and career connected learning we're helping each and every student achieve success and tap into their limitless potential this is the elevator speech this is the tweet so when someone says well what's wenatchee school district all about this is what wenatchee school district is all about so along with the brand comes the logo and this is the jiji exciting part that people like to um like to connect with uh and a visual identifier is powerful without the words your goal with a strong brand is that people can look at that icon or that symbol and know that that's you and that they evoke some feeling and emotion our logo is

098designed as a letter mark with the bold solid lines of a w providing a strong foundation for colorful lines to emerge so you can probably hear some aspects of our strategic plan in that wenatchee school district provides a strong foundation from which our students can emerge future ready each line like each wsd student follows its own unique path the lines have a common starting point which is our classrooms it's our teachers it's our staff but there's no fixed end it symbolizes limitless potential of each student and the unique path the undulating lines are a unique path that our students are going to take in their lives taken as a whole the lines are excuse me the lines resemble a flag in the breeze representing wenatchee school districts resolve and leadership in education and serving as

099a rallying point natchez school district has never been afraid to take risks we've always been a leader in this valley and we will always continue to be a leader in this community the warm and cool tones of the lines also recall our rolling foothills i keep saying in this building i wish we had larger windows over here because we have such an incredible view of wenatchee's foothills and the beauty that is uh our local community but it you can recall the rolling hill so you can see the topographic lines you can see the foothills in the wave uh in the movement of of that rallying point um of that flag of the w but it also represents the rivers which are key to us and then the sunsets i dare you tonight when you go

100home or any day look at the sunset and you will see those colors the blue at the top represents the sky with the river down below kind of balancing out and then those beautiful sunset colors in the hills of wenatchee not only do they represent the land but they represent the culture and vibrancy of our community as well as the energy and our promise and that's what our logo is all about so just some sample variations we're going to get a little more into the technical stuff which is where i love to spend time but you can just see some examples of how our logo can be presented and used in different different ways but our color palette is very vibrant we have um you know key lime and we've got uh some kind of

101uh lighter sagey greens which recall a lot of the uh the plants and flora and fauna here in our community there's still a hint of purple in there which is familiar to people but differentiated from uh wennichy high school there's the richness of of wine in the colors so you'll see a lot of those things as you um kind of reflect on it and drive around our community and just live and be here you'll see those colors in lots of different areas so right now we're in the process of transitioning all of our existing brand collateral uh into our new brand so you can see some samples of our business cards and letterhead that will start to come out um as we need to order new things um they will all leverage the new brand

102we're working diligently with our tech department to make sure that we can transit transition quickly a lot of our digital resources desktop backgrounds zoom backgrounds those types of things and ron's been a great partner in in working to make that happen just some other examples of uh envelopes and backgrounds you can see some of the patterns and textures that come with the logo again those undulating lines those topographic lines represented there um you all have a lanyard that was given to you today we handed these out to our staff and we'll um also be providing a version of these to our staff on opening day so everybody gets a little bit of schwag so that they can really become brand ambassadors and truly live the brand and live the promise with us and you'll see

103on this screen just a snapshot of the website that's another piece we're doing on the back end is a complete overhaul of our website so we're cleaning things up simplifying things and so that it does carry in a lot of the textures and simplicity that is the new brand but but really is who we want to be so that we're communicating you know clearly with um our different audiences and they can easily find information so we're working to simplify our website and make it a little more of a user-friendly mobile experience so that's something that will also transition later this summer as we get closer to the start of school in august so our brand launch timeline i've talked a little bit about this but right now between may and august we're really in that

104collateral transition phase uh one significant change that you'll see here at the district office are actually several is um we will be removing our exterior sign and adding a street sign located and just on the the west side of the building so that it's easier to identify what this building is and who works here and what we do um that will be in dual language i'm so excited to have that out at the end of the month we'll also be um installing flag banners on all of our light poles that say welcome in english and spanish i'm using our brand colors and logos um we're also going to be doing some other interior work as well with some murals and different things that really truly represent the brand and that make people feel welcome in

105this space and that brings the beauty of outdoors in but people can feel welcome in the space and it feels a little less institutional um we'll be working on some staff swag so shirts uh the website i already touched on but i think exterior signage will be one of one of the big wows that you'll see here um later this month and you know our official launch for the new brand is gonna be august 24th so that's really a big day for us where we will officially introduce this to our staff and really help them get excited about about the new brand for wenatchee school district about who we are and how we are emerging not only uh with any plan but with a new identity and looking forward to um helping our staff become

106brand ambassadors for wenatchee school district and um that also means you board as well because this is your brand and i'm excited to introduce it to you officially at this point and again you're going to be seeing more and more of it so that's what we've got to you for you tonight any questions related to branding that i can answer i was just wondering laura i think laura and martin both served on the rapping group committee um what was the i mean what was the reception from the other people in the group i was surprised at the end at the near unanimity of where we got to and i want to actually be a little bit frivolous um balsam root behind everything we looked at rivers and mountains and rocks but nobody showed spring flowers

107to us [Laughter] where's the lupine which is close enough to the old purple that lots of people anyway but back to more seriously yes it was very interesting to see how people converged and the energy that that logo displays i think and kind of a hopeful um logo uh i think i don't know what you said i was surprised i think it was it was a good process it was an iterative process so that you know we didn't get um presented with these grand ideas that everybody jumped on all at once it was kind of like well i like this about it i like that about it you know so it evolved and i it changes hard for for everybody you know and even me was like i don't know i kind of like the

108pen and you know but in the end i i feel like um the presentation of the logo is really nice and professional and fresh and it matches up with the re the introduction of our strategic plan it makes sense um to go into this new phase with a new look and i think you know good job diana presenting this tonight thank you so much and yeah so it was an interesting process it just you know everyone wasn't rah-rah-rah the whole time but i think in the end um the product that evolved is as it should be and i think the new part that comes out today that was not that part of the logo was interpreting the logo related to the strategic plan and i think that's whoever contributed to that i think that's a

109good thing good thank you i guess i have one other thing that um as we and we see the variation in the colors and diana showed that at the end um there's a district there are different schools the schools have their emblems they have their colors uh one of the characteristics i think of the artwork which i think was superbly done by the firm in spokane is it is very adaptable to different colors for different institutions and even solid versus see-through so i think as we go in the future different parts of the district are going to be able to use this as well absolutely yeah that's correct so um we will have different word marks for our operational department so everyone will have the same symbol but they they will have it the word

110mark will say wenatchee school district nutritional services so we will be unified in that we have a district logo that can be used unilaterally by all departments so they have a strong identity there and not multiple logos for for different operational divisions and it is my long-term goal and i won't say when that will occur but um to work on rebranding with some of our schools starting with our elementary more of what i would call a facelift from for the sense that we have some artwork that needs to be refreshed um and just to you know help them kind of refresh that identity and have a working logo that can be used across multiple platforms whether that's t-shirts they're designing or other things so that'll be something in in the branding space that i'll begin

111to work on but that's a significant project but one i'll keep chipping away at because there's a significant need for that at the building level as well so a little nip and tuck and tuck there yeah uh you're just gonna lean on lean into it laura was saying to diana for championing this work we're lifting this work up from the the first time all the way through and it was a heavy lift to to do this work laura is also right on the iterative process this wasn't like oh wow we're good it really was uh but diana lifted this process all the way through kind of dragging me alongside but it really was her who lifted it up and made it uh what it is today and i'm incredibly proud of the logo of the

112promise statement uh of what it means and martin i agree with you the logo exemplifies the promise statement um in many ways so thank you thank you for everybody who participated martin laura thank you very much i just want to say diana that was an outstanding presentation and explanation of it because quite honestly when i first looked at this i thought shipping logistics company and i was confused as to how it really worked and wasn't sure i loved it i like some of the color schemes some of the others feel a little like brand identity crisis when i think of eastman across the river and we're using a lot of red but the explanation you just gave i i can see it i can get behind it and and i like it so much better

113so i really appreciate your work on that i think you did an outstanding job okay uh as i said that was excellent all round and glad with presentations the next item is an action item at our last meeting the board took two approvals one to take action move forward with the division of the school district into director districts and then to propose the districting plan which includes four director districts and one at large position so in front of us today right we would have resolution number 0422 which would be of the board of the district to direct the superintendent to advertise and communicate the proposed districting plan to the district residents and to schedule a public hearing regarding the proposed districting plan i briefly go through this is a process where that would be put

114out for public notice there would be an opportunity for public comment there would be subsequent meetings and a timetable to complete the redistricting in time for i believe was the eight about an eight-month requirement to complete this which uh was per our legal counsel's advice so that is the background to the motion we have in front of us do i have anyone who wishes to propose that motion move to approve resolution number 04-22 directing the superintendent to advertise and communicate the proposed district plan to the district residents and to schedule a public hearing regarding the proposed districting plan as set forth in the resolution thank you julie and do we have a second for that motion wait a second that thank you laura we have a proposal and a second and it is now open

115for discussion is there any discussion failing that either will then ask all board members who are in favor of this motion to signify by saying aye aye the uh resolution is passed unanimously thank you very much we will move to the next stage of redistricting and we now go to board communication i just want to say thank you to our teachers and staff it's sba testing week and thank you to all the parents that provide snacks for the week um let's see here oh um catherine and i had the pleasure of going to an entry high school to uh look at plc's in the algebra one team uh great work and i was very impressed um by the team um but i was very pleased to see that uh christa castillato was there who is

116a you know working with that partnership she is a math expert um and so the fact that we're able to contract through a grant to have her support our math teams um is is great so hopefully we can continue that partnership and find some money somewhere sorry um i will be attending the gang um awareness meeting tomorrow so i don't just putting it out there i mean i think that's one that we can all end up getting yeah yeah we can okay good i'm planning to go as well no i think uh as an aside i congratulate the people who've got together to try and and work for our whole community in this room and then lastly um i wanted to kind of just based on the diversity and inclusion training most of us went

117to last week um it was provided by foster hosted by the esd and that was in compliance to um senate bill 5044. um you know i thought it was it was good it was a good introduction um it was also um this week has kind of been a reminder why it's you know we're we can't just stop there um we need to continue growing in that respect um and the strategic plan seeing that presentation and the equity program review and how things have transpired um it's really made me think about you know where we are as a community how we're servicing our students and you know what was the intent between that social media post in regards to the the the equity survey right um i don't know i don't know but i can only

118assume that for my lens was it an attempt to sabotage the data was it something that this person doesn't believe in to um you know skew the data one way or another um and it was just a reminder that you know we need to have a lot of work to do we have a lot of work to do as a community as a school district um because again from my perspective that that that is from my lens that is what what i'm i'm seeing and um we have to just kind of remember this is whether we agree with it or not this is about students and it's not just about race it's there's so many other different factors um that go into this so again i just want to thank uh wasta for providing that

119training um i hope as a board and as a community and as a district we are just attending a training and saying okay we've comply for the next two years um i'll attend the second training and two more so um you know it's just been very eye-opening and again like we need to remember um we're here for our students to serve and and you know that promise statement says it all just really quickly want to remind us all that we got notice from lincoln elementary out there little carnival night fundraiser on uh on friday night so if anyone's wants to attend their first it's not like their first in-person event in two years that would be a good one uh echo maria's uh thoughts on our plc visit for algebra um it's interesting as we've

120gone along and we kind of talked about this for a few minutes after the different levels of um plcs that are going on in in our different schools and who's been doing them longer and and seeing you know a little more cohesiveness and success um but it's been very very good to go in and see uh these and i um appreciate that the staff and the teachers letting us come in and hear you know what would normally not be um we would not be privy to i have a few things coming up i'm going to the valley tech center on friday um to like my first visit i wasn't able to visit as many classrooms as i wanted to so i'll be going back to that then doing a um a visit with the wenatchee

121uh the internet academy and yeah i won't be visiting i'll be zooming in on that because that's in the internet academy so looking forward to that and seeing what they're doing because i haven't had an opportunity with that yet but um and then again the equity training we did that that was um it was enlightening and um just i'm i i'm sorry i did not comment on the presentation because i uh it was just overwhelming and i know that because i'm overwhelmed i was uh not uh expecting this uh and i'm kind of trying to really take it all in it's a lot to to um see in this presentation it's clearly something that you guys have been working on for a very long time and it's kind of uh you know i'm it's building

122in my mind kind of the the visual or the picture of the our mission statement our strategic plan um so i as as somebody who would be kind of a member of the public hearing all of this for the first time i wasn't involved in any part of of this it was before my time so um it's it's a lot to take in it's a lot to uh to kind of wrap your head around and and um i look forward to the public hearing about it and and getting their their input and i and i but i thank you i can see that it has been a lot of work um i i i it gives a an organized kind of um picture in my mind of how we'll move forward and um i i

123appreciate that i that's kind of how my brain works and so i appreciate i appreciate that thank you so i wanted to comment about the um equity training as well i wish i had my notes from that evening but i found it to be very enlightening was that it was an enjoyable experience i wasn't quite sure what to expect but i was pleasantly surprised and one of the things that sticking with my mind is that the components of diversity are not related only to race but also to you know social status social economic status and cultural differences and the presenters used um different uh a style of interacting with people at our tables and asking us to identify times when we personally felt a sense of belonging and then also to contrast that with with

124this time when we felt like we didn't belong and to help make those experiences or those feelings be more relatable um and i felt like that was really valuable because my belonging and not belonging you know there were several but one of them had nothing to do with race it had to do with bicycling which is just odd and weird but um you know the the feeling of being an outsider was truly there and looking for those opportunities to confirm whether or not i belonged and i certainly did not in one of the instances but in another i did so that is just a random thought from that as i said i wish i had my notes but i felt like um it was a good opportunity i would definitely go to the next one

125if there was an add-on to this one because um i think what if other people were involved in it what they discover is it's not what you might think it is thanks laura um i was sent to school on teacher appreciation week and the way i want to put it is they sent you to school and said it's not one week a year it's the whole year so thank you teachers for that lesson well on behalf of them um i was one of the most exhilarating things you can go to in the school district is go to that twice a year or if there's a summer one as well the parent advisory committees bilingual and migrant student events and they bring in all sorts of community organizations related to after school during school reinforcement of

126family life as well as having academic presentations uh and a theme and it's a lot of fun and to be there and of course you were there too um and i just want to say that was it was very rewarding to be there and the two school uh resource officers were there and were a major part of the presentation and it was very good to see them uh reaching out to a community and being accepted and being responsive and that was very good and on the kind of less comfortable side they uh put up a a room that was an exhibit of a troubled students bedroom mess with various drug and other addiction paraphernalia they're in it's an edu you know tough education lesson so a lot goes on put on by the school district

127to help the community and uh so that happened recently too related to that i'm sorry i can't go to lincoln i would love to go there but on also a first time ever since i've been on the state advisory committee for bilingual education they're going to have their conference in person in sunny and sunny side this weekend so i will be there for that and then i want to talk about student achievement and celebrate that a little bit and i want to begin by saying most students achieve remarkable things under the radar we don't even know about it and we've got to remember how excellent they are and these the last couple of weeks i've read several things that are a little bit out of the ordinary just they show how wide the range of

128wenatchee school district student achievements is from what from west side there was a wellness project of videos aimed to help fellow students to healthy outcomes from the tech center a future tech award finalist with superlative collision repair and personal achievements from high school the color guard attributing team bonding to the way they overcame obstacles to their best season and their highest ever score and also at the high school a presidential scholars program finalist i deliberately left all the names out because i want to say that there are lots and lots of students who don't get the names the names of these students were in the district publication so they got their credit but i think this is a celebration of the extremely wide range of not always noticed students we have in this district so

129that's my board communication or outstanding communications tonight wow mine will just be short and sweet as it's been highlighted a number of times tomorrow night we're going to have a community conversation around gang awareness he'll be here at the district office at 6 00 pm um so please come in um we're excited to to present this as uh corey spoke about a little bit earlier uh the partnership with ron and countless other community organizations have come together to to make tomorrow night a really important evening for us a first step to helping raise awareness within our community what's occurring on a day-to-day basis around gangs that's it for me thank you thanks paul that was a waiting meeting and we have a huge amount of work to do in front of us so i take

130a deep breath and i want to in advance express the board's appreciation of all of the multiple projects programs efforts that are going on in the wenatchee school district and at that point during the meeting thank you