001okay it is um tuesday the 22nd of february at 5 30 p.m and i am called to order the wenatchee school district regular board meeting the first item is an executive session school board will now recess to executive session for a period of 20 minutes to discuss with legal counsel representing the district matters relating to district enforcement actions or litigation or potential litigation to which the district the board or remember acting in an official capacity is or is likely to become a party when public knowledge regarding the discussion is likely to result in adverse legal or financial consequence to the district pursuant to district policy number 1410 and rcw 42.30 this discussion will be closed to the public the school board is not expected to take final action following the executive session i am told
002we're good on the broadcast so it being six o'clock i ask everybody to please stand as we continue the meeting with the pledge of allegiance one nation with liberty and justice for all i welcome everyone to this board meeting and thank you for joining us 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 i will quickly describe this in spanish the next item is the consent agenda before i go there are there any requests to modify the consent agenda from the board okay the consent agenda includes the minutes from the workshop on the 7th of february and the regular meeting on the 8th vouchers and payroll the personnel report the surplus report contracts field trips policies for their
003second read and the enrollment and financial report do i have a proposal for the consent agenda i motion that we approve the agenda as presented the consent agenda thank you maria do we have a second uh i second all right thank you catherine laura oh laura said sorry thank you laura i will all those in favor please say indicate by saying i and for confirmation raise their hand the consent agenda is approved i want to do a little education item on the consent agenda and i hope that it'll be uh kind of uplifting for everybody today as usual we start it's a very matter-of-fact way and we approve the consent agenda quite briefly but what is the significance of what has just happened i want to sort of pay tribute to a classic song and
004a classic book and tv series by saying we signed off on keeping the wheels on the school bus you're quite safe nobody's going to sing to you let's talk about what they're in the vouchers student eat meals so we approve food purchases schools need light and heat so utilities fuel for buses the district needs and uses highly skilled specialist technical services which we could not afford to provide on our own as a stand-alone basis the north central washington educational services district acquires these skills and then provides them to us and other districts in contract packages skill source is a partner for career-oriented students and we borrow and we have ban bonds to pay for across the spectrum of work loyal employees work for decades and then retire at the other end we will hire new
005employees many of whom will provide that same dedicated service the personnel report approves the people who supply our extracurricular opportunities mentoring and tutoring extensions the contract section from our last meeting is what got me to do this and set me off partnerships and our dependency on them is central to the strategic plan there were two grants funded by north central washington community foundation one was helping hands for youth at orchard which helps students their families at orchard school middle school work to alleviate the exceptional hurts caused by the pandemic at west side a grant for pandemic related academic mental emotional and physical health of students was another one thank you the wenatchee community for your generosity and philanthropy and finally a good place to find unique offerings of the wenatchee school district and celebrate your
006students outstanding successes is the field trip section you'll find examples from technology music and many more activities so we do that very quickly but it's not unimportant at this point uh we move on to citizen comment i believe we have two people um stephanie bradshaw is the first one okay thank you stephanie you have uh three minutes and um go ahead time's yours okay never before in the history of washington has your job been so difficult i extend my gratitude for your service since the national school board association has attempted to weaponize the fbi against concerned parents i am unfortunately compelled to state this disclaimer this letter and the enclosed documents are in no way meant to cause you to feel threatened in any way i hope that you see these documents as an opportunity
007to receive support enclosed public disclosure requests have been served to all directors of the wenatchee school district many districts across the state including seattle school district and several more through king county will be or already have been served the same documents over the next 30 days by thousands of parents statewide who have come together as a unified voice to ensure that this effort is recognized as a demonstration of support the chilean county sheriff has also been given a copy of these documents and informed of our peaceful intent we recognize that there is a fundamental conflict of interest between school government and parents school government has a vested interest in the system as a whole while parents have a vested interest in our children we have identified that the source of this conflict may stem from
008the fact that our local school boards have been forced to give away increasingly more decision-making authority to the washington state school directors association and other state agencies the superintendent of public instruction chris ragdal has clearly threatened to withhold taxpayer funds that rightfully belong to our school district based on whether or not we comply with health policies we may or may not agree with nowhere in the revised code of washington is power granted to mr ragdoll or ospi to withhold or bribe the funds they are tasked to dispense to local districts we the people founded this country with a structure that was designed to keep the greatest authority at the local level of government yet our governor and state agencies have made in unilateral decisions for the whole population while ignoring the voices of local school
009boards and parents perhaps we lost sight of that original vision of strong local authority when we let the state and federal agencies like wazda ospi and the national school board association gain enough control 73 minutes to withhold our state funding over matters that we should be that should be made personal choice for every citizen all of us share the responsibility of getting ourselves into this dangerous predicament of a few people dictating to the masses we also share the responsibility of getting ourselves out of this predicament there is a solution and a path forward the documents enclosed are our first act of helping you our local school board to take back your rightful authority to determine how best to represent the parents of this district please use these public disclosure requests as an opportunity to educate
010yourselves and us so we can better understand the entanglement we find ourselves in with ospi wazda and other state agencies who are overstepping their lawful boundaries thank you stephanie for coming in person to deliver your message and don you're welcome to the podium thank you sorry so am i picking up right here according to okay thank you according to rcw 28a all washington state school boards are required to be members of the wssda most other states do not have laws that compel membership their school board still have the authority to choose whether or not they want to take guidance from the various state agencies but not here in washington in rcw 28a 343 100 school board members are again compelled by law starting in 2022 to take governance training and cultural competency diversity equity and
011inclusion standards those words are referring to critical race theory sexual education for children as young as five years of age and curriculums that promote transgenderism these are just two examples of how our state legislature has taken away your authority to choose what you're taught and what you will be compelled to promote to our children representative joel mcintyre attempted to introduce a bill in the current legislative session that proposed that local school board members in the wssda be optional rather than mandatory making membership optional would return decision-making authority back to the local level and send a clear message to wssda that we erroneously let power become too centralized wssda has been treating washington students and parents as if they belong to one large district rather than respecting the authority of the 295 elected school boards in
012the state unfortunately joel mcintyre was recently strong-armed into dropping this bill under pressure from the wssda we the parents of washington finally comprehend how little authority you have left to represent us it is time that we come together to restore your authority and ours in addition to providing the information requested in these documents we ask that the wenatchee school board do all of the following number one reach out to representative joel mcintyre to give him your support of the bill the proposed wssda membership be optional whether it's this year or next year that bill must get passed for future for the future of our children number two strongly urge wssda to withdraw membership from the nsba currently almost 20 other states have left the nsba and washington parents are very disappointed to see that the
013wssda's silence on this matter number three please pass a resolution acknowledging and affirming that parents are the primary stakeholders in their student children's future several other districts in washington have passed this resolution as we finish the 2122 school year we envision our harmonious partnership between parents school district leadership and legislators to restore the freedom of personal choice over what our teachers and students wear on their faces and put in their bodies as well as restore authority to the local level of government however if these freedoms are ignored by the wenatchee school board we will take our children out of the public school system by the fall of 2022. how many beeps were oh i've got like a quarter half an inch as you were well aware over 55 000 children have been withdrawn from the
014washington state public school system over this year and that number will more than likely triple if mass mandates are upheld and a covet vaccine is made a requirement of attendance as a body of parents across washington state we have heard your collective plea for cooperation and help you have been sincerely telling us that your hands are tied by the wssda and ospi we understand you now and so together please let's untie your hands and restore your authority to represent us the parents of the wenatchee school district i'm sure i went over a little bit so thank you but that's okay thank you both for coming and appreciate the citizen comments the next item on the agenda is i bet can we can we bring these to you guys these are the said documents you get
015right yeah okay thank you the next item is asb reports and i'm just looking around online um i think maybe that's avery but my eyes aren't very good or is it sariah avery it's avery hello go ahead okay hello my name is avery miller and i'm the asb president at wenatchee high school um at whs we have recently wrapped up our week of valentine's activities which consisted of fundraising for different clubs and organizations through the sales of roses and valentines along with other activities such as photo booths and spirit dress-up days through february our diversity team has also been working to increase student awareness of black history month with spring coming two of our biggest events prom and the janus france talent show on the horizon asb is actively preparing for those um univa unified
016basketball is also taking place this thursday february 24th with springtime elections approaching we are solidifying the things that have worked and also the items that we can improve upon for next year's upcoming group thank you thank you very much and congratulations to you and all your fellow students thank you welcome soraya you have the podium hello my name is soraya and i am president of the leadership club at westside high school and i am here to tell you about what's been happening so in leadership club news we received our donation of 3 000 pairs of socks from bombas and with our partnership in the community we so far have donated roughly 2 700 pairs we just filled our out our reorder form for this year and we are hoping to be one of the groups
017selected to also receive t-shirts and underwear with our socks we also just completed our valentine's day cookie fundraiser which we estimated would bring us about 200 but surprisingly enough we made 432 dollars and baked and bagged and handed out over 200 cookies as you know every year we do our big dinner feed and silent auction we are hoping to kick off soon and start preparing for it but we could use some help we are still looking for a recipient this year so if anybody knows of a family with a child battling cancer who is in a financial need please let us know for west side school news the senior mentors program who meet twice monthly with community mentors who support seniors as they complete their high school and beyond plan as well as help them
018make connections in the community board president martin barron we thank you for being part of our mentor program it's a rebuilding year after cobit huge thank you to hillary martinez at wenatchee valley college for her support and organization with this program tomorrow wenatchee valley college will speak to our juniors and seniors about a few of their career technical programs industrial technology business computer technology pharmacy tech and early childhood education also workforce grants will be at the school to help explain how they can help students pay for these programs thank you very much for allowing me to share about all the exciting things happening at our school thank you very much sarah do any board members want to give any feedback anything nope those cookies were i think an excellent project and you were working really
019hard thanks a lot special presentation will be the update on the equity program review i'll turn it over to paul first yeah tonight we have uh education northwest with us uh via zoom um i will hand it over to shannon davidson um well i'm seeing mary but i'm not seeing do i both run hi i'm here doesn't seem like uh it doesn't seem like i can turn my camera on though [Music] okay ron we'll see if he can oh there we go there you go hi everyone presentation yes uh we are really excited to share our progress with the district-wide comprehensive equity program review for those who may be new to this the idea of our equity program review and also just as a refresher for those of you who have been engaged with our
020process so far we are working with the district as consultants to support a comprehensive review of practices policies preliminary data outcomes perspectives from families students educators and the community as they relate to equity and inclusion in the district so we are hoping that through this equity program review we can uncover opportunities to ensure that each student in the wenatchee school district is able to succeed and achieve so we are proceeding with our equity program review in five focus areas curriculum policies materials and resources discipline policies materials and resources instructional policies and teaching practices hiring and recruitment policies and practices and access to learning opportunities which includes both access to grade level education and participation in highly capable and advanced programming so those are an overview and a refresher of our five focus areas for the
021equity program review and here is a reminder of where we are in our timeline we are wrapping up february and heading into march which is a really exciting turning point for us as we're moving into our kind of active collecting of data and stories phase so i'll be able to give you a little bit more details about what we're looking forward to coming up in march we wanted to share some of what we've done since the last time we met with you and gave an update to the board uh are a big deal and one that was extremely impactful personally for me and i think really impactful on our work and our ability to move forward with this as a collaborative process was convening and meeting with the equity review working group which we did
022for the first time on the 27th to finalize our plan and we're going to be meeting again with them this week we've also been continuing to gather documents starting to gather data as well for our document review we've got a data sharing agreement in process so that we can access student level data we have been working hard on our communications tools we now have a one-page informational handout in english and spanish which should be ready to share now we were just waiting on the final approval of the translation and we also have some opportunities for the community to suggest thoughts concerns questions input on the process via a digital suggestion box and i can put that link in the chat for everyone that's up and running now and diana's team with the district communication office
023has also created a website that describes our equity review process that is i believe up and running and live now one thing we've been really busy with in recent weeks is drafting our instruments so these are going to be our surveys our focus groups that we'll be doing with students families teachers uh hopefully a listening session with the community and we're drafting those up so that we can share them this week with our working group and get input to finalize those and get them ready and we're very excited to announce that we've decided on our site visit dates so we will be coming to wenatchee on april 12th for four days uh as sort of a subgroup of our team from education northwest and we are working with the district and the working group to
024decide on a schedule for visiting schools getting to know students during focus groups and families as well and we hope it may also be an opportunity to meet um you on the board so i'm eager to hear some impressions of our first equity review working group meeting mary from our team is here and may have some insights and thoughts to share and also would really love to hear from maria and julie who are the board members who are represented in the equity working group so any just initial kind of impressions reactions to the process kind of key takeaways for our work i i can write a little bit of the details of what happened at that meeting um which a good chunk of that meeting was actually spent on introductions which i thought was fabulous
025um everybody went in the group uh identified themselves the language spoke why their their why why they wanted to participate and it was very very eye-opening and a reminder as to why we're doing what we're doing it was a good mix of it's a good mix of people students parents um educators julie and i um and it was it was just it was very um it was it was just a really welcoming space i really appreciated that um you know the norms for the group um were focusing on centering the voices of um people of color people in the lgbt lgbt community um so just you know based on everybody's experiences the background they're gonna that they bring to the group was very it was very neat for me to to be part of that
026group yeah i don't have a whole lot to add i think uh she hit it right it was primarily um introductions but a good way to get to know people quite a bit quite a bit closer in in a community like that um or a committee like that sorry um you know i was laying out a lot of the process for what will be coming and so i'm looking forward especially to the next meetings where it's really going to be um kind of hitting the floor running on on some of it substantively i would like to see and i know there was a survey kind of came out afterwards you know how how can we help make sure the voices in this committee are even heard and i thought that was a good kind of
027checkup because i would like to hear you know from the students on the on the committee and i think they're probably a little more intimidated to speak in front of a group of adults so it'll be nice to see as this progresses um the voices come out a little bit more but it was primarily setting it up getting to know each other and i thought it was a really neat way to do that so looking forward to thursday mary oh yeah i would just add that you know uh the working group is methodologically part of our approach as researchers and evaluators who employ culturally responsive and equitable approaches so by design this equity review is very much in partnership and we're doing it together and just really grateful for all of the energy and passion
028that all the working group members have brought to the space we know that our work is much more meaningful when it's contextualized to the local community and it's really nice to have this group that represents current students former students parents educators and people were really open and vulnerable about um not just their language background their race and ethnicity but also their class background so i just feel like we're off to a very strong start with people um being open and thoughtful and um we'll really get to work on thursday because we have a ton of activities and we'll be in breakout groups so there will be a lot more engagement and participation from all of the group members great thank you um wanted to do you want other board members to ask questions now we'll
029do that later we could do it either way i have two more slides and then we could open it up for discussion okay um this is just a quick check in on how we're doing with our monthly deliverables we were able to submit our review plan that was we had some input from the working group members on that and they are invited to continue offering feedback on that it's a google doc that working group members have access to a commenting feature so that as things come up as the process evolves there will still be an opportunity to revisit this and adapt our own plan as needed we have the one page handout ready in english and spanish so that will be on track to turn in this week and once we have a chance to
030incorporate all the input and feedback from the working group on the data collection instruments that we'll be looking at on thursday we'll be able to to submit those as well and these are our most immediate next steps we're excited to meet with the group again on thursday to review the instruments and as mary mentioned we'll be working in small groups so i think it will be a a space where hopefully students and and we're going to have a spanish-speaking only group we're trying to create an atmosphere where people feel like they are most encouraged and welcome to participate we're going to continue with our document review we're taking good steps towards being able to access the student level data and we'll now that we have our communications tools we'll be distributing those more widely trying
031to raise more awareness of of what we're doing and to have opportunities for feedback and we'll start planning our trip that's going to be really exciting to come up with an itinerary make sure that we're meeting with representative groups and and getting to know people up in wenatchee and we certainly welcome questions if nobody else i have a quick couple of comments actually um i was glad to hear how your committee group uh you're trying to make people comfortable and open up i think that's really really critical i was really glad to hear that and you know as the other thing i wanted to do is thank julie and maria for their dedication in participating uh i think i feel very strongly this is such an important project that we really need needed two uh
032board members on that um committee and the feedback so the whole board knows what's going on and i i want to thank you for that and then as you move into your next phases let's work to get the greatest possible widest deepest representation in what we all learn so those are my cheerleading kind of comments but also serious about you know make people comfortable so they actually tell you something thank you for those comments hi mary and shannon thank you so much uh we look forward to thursday evening for uh another uh really busy night i know they're going to be looking at mainly survey information and reviewing that with the team so those will be the documents and also the focus group type of questions as well so it's going to be a really
033busy evening spent in small groups with different team members but shannon and mary thank you so much for the presentation tonight thank you thank you the there are two discussion items on the agenda the first one is director districts where i will turn over to paul and to our distinguished legal counsel who's coming forward there's danielle marchand daniel's with us tonight um as she has supported the previous board um and now this board and the director district conversation um danielle was going to give us an overview of the the law and the process we're going through tonight we also have uh from smash data two different director district versions that we will also discuss but i'll hand it over to you thank you as um paul said we're going to kind of tag team it
034i'm going to give the overview of the law and then paul's going to give you an overview of the proposed uh districts so so we're going to give a high level overview we're not going to get into the weeds on establishing voter districts so the first step we're going to look at is we're going to look at the law of the district and the law of the district is located in its policies and procedures and the policy 1105 is the one that deals with voter districts and if you notice there is a section in this policy that has an affirmative action upon the board which is that once it attains the census data from the redistricting mission it will prepare for the division of districts so i'm not quite sure when the district received the
035census data it was to be provided to the redistricting commission by the federal government in august of 2021 and then there's a statute that says it within 45 days of the redistricting commission receiving that data has to be provided to the local governments but there is a time frame that's why i'm talking about these these dates here there's a time frame that the board has to act which is within eight months after receipt of that data so what we're going to be talking today is the voluntary process that's laid out in the voter rights act that washington state has adopted and there's a prerequisite to that process which is that the district must determine that the current system may be applied in a matter that impairs the ability of a protected class to have a
036say and the key word i want to point out is may it's not a shall it's not it is happening it's a may happen so the factors to consider when you're looking at that prerequisite are outlined in the statute and are stated here essentially what you want to do is make sure that there's not a class of people where their votes are diluted right now we're at an at-large system so all five board members can reside in one neighborhood currently and which would have the potential of diluting the votes of those other people in the other neighboring neighborhoods so once you have made that prerequisite finding then there's a five-step process that the board has to go under and that first step is to draft the plan and that's the spot we're gonna talk about
037a little bit more after i tag team it with paul but here's where outlines the types of things that the plan must consider these are also outlined in the procedure 1105 that the board has already previously adopted the second step that the district must follow once it has a plan that it it has determined it would like to adopt it has to give notice to the residents within the district because this is not just a plan of the board it's the plan of the community so they get to have their say in what the plan is going to look like so after you give notice to uh the residents then there's the public hearing which is where the residents get to have their say the fourth step that the district must do is that they
038have to then take action to adopt and approve that plan that plan is adopted by a board resolution and our office can assist with drafting that then the last thing that the board does is that they have to hold elections so um and it's elections for all board members so all board members would run at the same time by statute it there's a time frame listed out in the statute but when you break it down if the board adopts the plan between now and november 2012 wakes up between now and the end of this next year all board members have to run in november 2023 so so that's the high level overview that we're working under when we are looking at uh breaking up into voting districts there any questions before i hand it off
039to paul okay thank you all right so ron if you would click on those next two or the first one the three district one so we worked with mammoth data and they're working with the vast majority of school districts in the state um who are under the same um all the same rules that that danielle just reviewed the idea here is to make sure that um for our community uh we are uh fairly closely at 50 50 district in uh for latino hispanic or or non-hispanic uh so for for some mama's data what they needed to look at was how to create districts that could have a at least one hispanic district that was at least 51 percent or more uh with the population being hispanic um so we looked at two different ways of
040doing that the first one and it's harder to see up here but the first look at it this is through the colors the the larger yellow is the third district in between here yeah it's a it's a light shade of yeah thank you ron it's that yellow and then you have the first disc or i apologize the first district is the yellow the second district is the green and the third district is the tannish color so those are the three when they when he when the samamish data reviewed it allowed for uh the district one would be 7 754 hispanic versus 7 873 non-hispanic and director district 1 director district 2 3 34 hispanic 316 non-hispanic duress direct uh director district three 3211 versus 12 412 or non-hispanic so there's one district but it it
041is still about a forty forty nine point five percent uh hispanic versus non-hispanic and then the other one number four ron or the four district one yep thank you sir you'd do that oh yeah i spoke too soon and do that same thing we zoom in a little bit into the colors that helped a lot thank you so director district one is yellow two is green three is the beige color four is blue so you'll see um two districts in the center of the the city where there's a higher population of people living we don't have a huge population on either end so that's why you see a greater land mass and not as many people living in that area but the piece that we really had to look at from the number side of
042things is how they the district broke down again we're looking for a 51 percent at least in one district uh whether it's a majority hispanic district one it's 2171 hispanic non-hispanic district 2 2631 versus 9109 non-hispanic director district 3 3121 versus 8610 non-hispanic and then director district 4 is 6393 versus 5 322 non-hispanic the other piece to this that was really important it had to be a contiguous map uh we've all heard of gerrymandering and those they cannot have that it cannot have just crazy little loops throughout the city and going all over the place it had to be contiguous it had to have make some sense as to where the lines were drawn um we looked at it once you know we were working with some amish data and he showed us how he
043could do it and it literally was the definition of gerrymandering uh it would just had to go all over the place and it made no sense whatsoever uh these were the best these were the two options i mean we really pushed them kim and i met with the samamish dave uh dated bob five different times six different times just trying to make sure that we were getting the right information the right data working with danielle to make sure you know writing them by her to see where we're at she pushed back on a couple different pieces for us we really feel like we're close with these two so that from a high level again like danielle did that's what you're seeing in those two scenarios danielle anything you'd add before we i just wanted to
044make sure that people understood when you're talking about three districts that doesn't mean everybody comes you only have three board members that means three board members are elected or have to be assigned from those districts two will be at large so you still have a five member board and in a four district plan you have four people that have to be from that geographical designated area and then one person would be at large so you still have a five member board board members there's a lot of information we just threw at you any questions a couple questions um so this is primarily based on the census data but does it also incorporate that davis demographic um data that we did that because yes okay because yeah the 450 housing development that's coming in that's not
045going to be reflected in the census yet we we shared all that information uh with them as well okay and then take me back to the maze in the shells in this plan because it sounded a little bit more permissive than i remember that if we do this by november what if we don't or what are the requirements that we do this by november there isn't a requirement julie um the requirement is that you look at the census data that's the requirement and then to prepare a plan for uh dividing into districts so there's not a time frame because it would be a voluntary um and not a compulsory division um you can work at uh at your own time frame so how however if we if we don't develop a plan then there are
046consequences to that is that correct there there are consequences one of the consequences that you could have a petition from a citizen who forces the plan through and then you are at uh the mercy of that petitioner and the court system and then there are certain time frames that you must meet which is maybe what you're referring to julie i know that they stagger the elections for board members so that you don't have an entirely brand new board how is that going to work uh we just have to deal with it if we have a new brand new five person all new board members so it'd be part of your plan so you would have all the board members uh run for election and that's required by statute that's that's non-negotiable it's mandatory but then
047as part of your plan one district would be maybe going for two years then the next district would go for four years so you would set up your staggering within your plan but conceivably you are correct you could have a whole new five member board after the november 2023 election i'm just wondering if there was given that a third of the of the population in wenatchee is a hispanic latino identity um was there an attempt to look for just two different districts with the 50 or maybe a little bit below that yeah and then that's where danielle pushed us we we had three or four different versions um of this but they were they're they're it was really challenging to to be able to find multiple uh scenarios with this this was as close as
048we can come and why the four the the four director districts versus the the three worked better in that scenario to give it a much larger percentage i think it was right around 61 a little over 61 percent um so the the four by one actually supports the ability to have a larger population than any other but we looked at we looked at a large number of them and he kept pushing back and we and we kept sharing it with danielle trying to go back and forth with what would meet um the our obligation this has been a a months-long process so the first set of charts that i looked at it was actually there wasn't one full hispanic a majority district and that's because i think um they prioritized other factors above um maybe
049ethnicity so um because there's a whole list of factors that you have to consider um and so uh the superintendent did push back um got uh some additional uh feedback and additional plans and the plans that were just presented were the best plans to date that at least that i have seen that meet all the factors of the statute i think the the four-person plan uh four districts with one at large meets more of the statutory factors than a three-district plan with two at large in my opinion um i have two questions actually i think you just asked the second one in reading the procedure they should coincide with existing recognized natural boundaries and will to the extent possible preserve existing communities of a related and mutual interest this being a school district i realize
050you're working with census data and ethnic data primarily but to what extent did the boundaries for three middle schools and seven elementary schools how did they work with the two plants initially we looked at it but that we there was just no way uh they that he he tried to do it by the school boundaries but it just became it was a non-negotiable from him to be able to achieve the the greater outcomes that they needed to that's fair enough in my opinion you know the reality and we all know this um the hard part is you know people just don't move in perfect little batches all around each other and to make it a non-contiguous or to make it a contiguous it was incredibly challenging to use any other metrics between school boundary lines
051or anything else to put one more lever in there who made it literally impossible to do the work and then i think you answered my second question is from a compliance point of view having one district at 52 to 53 is significantly safer and better than than two at less than 50 that might get to be more than 50 is that correct that's your yes my opinion yes if i was going to go to court i'd be much more comfortable defending the four district plan sorry i i know that this is the law um as things often are with government i'm wondering about the efficacy of this um plan has it been successful in accomplishing the diversity of representation that you're aware of yes so i haven't really looked at school boards specifically and the
052districting but if you just look at our local community with what city of wenatchee did and breaking up into voting districts they have had they have more hispanic people on their board that are excuse me on their city council that have been elected than previous years danielle how long ago did the city do that do you remember i'm sorry no look pass it's pre-pandemic and i'm going to make a comment that i do think that both plans in a sense tracked what i saw as a fairly successful effort by the city and accomplishing things smoothly and i think with considerable community satisfaction yes yeah does the development of these districts take into account voter participation from those areas what concerns me is is we may have the perfect demographic rep in these districts but if
053we don't get participation we're going to have this isn't the city council this is the school board and sometimes there's no nobody runs for a spot so are we gonna have a vacant position three um because there's just not enough interest in in the area um i think there's a two-part question in that julie one is does it take into consideration voter participation that is not one of the statutory factors so the second issue that i saw on your question was what happens if nobody uh nobody decides to run well then there's the the vacancy statute which you're well aware of that will then go through an appointment process and if nobody gets appointed then the esd steps in so you're not going to have a vacant position for long because if nobody runs then
054the board can appoint they can appoint from just that district though correct yes okay so another question so if we discover after the fact that there's a fatal flaw in the plan that we adopted are we stuck with it for the next decade until the next census comes out no the um statute allows you to look at redistricting at any point but there are mandatory time frames in which you have to look at redistricting and one of those is the census data so you can look at your plan and update it or revise it but you have to go through those steps that we've outlined in the statute okay thank you if paul do you have any thank you very much danielle for coming and clarifying a difficult subject appreciate it and thank you everybody
055thank you the next discussion item is the first read for a number of policies and i will turn it over to the poll and the policy could be representatives i'll take first crack and then uh catherine and maria please jump in um a number of these uh are um exactly from uh lawsda um that needed to be adopted into our policies uh new one is 4311 the accommodating students with seizure disorders of absolute epilepsy which is an essential policy they're really making sure it's very clear around students with the seizure disorders also provide liability protection for our school districts the district employees our parents or the designated adult the bill is intended to help school staff act promptly knowledgeably and appropriately with a liability protection so there were obviously they felt like the legislators felt
056like that some staff members were maybe slow to react because of the liabilities that they may face if they were trying to do what was in the best interest of the young person that they were addressing there were no changes to that policy from the committee ethical conduct for school directors this is 1815. um this is broad policy around uh the the practices of the board and then if those practices don't meet the agreed-upon uh protocols and expectations for board how does the board work through those as a collective group there was a disagreement on that and like we do with any policy committee there's a disagreement with the two board members come to the full board for further conversation so i will pause that here uh that's 18 15 and 18 1825 from the
057policy in the procedure maria catherine uh on on specifically probably 1825 either one of you want to jump into this and a thousand series for policies are boards it's around board uh work so i will probably roll my chair back a little bit and allow the board to decide what they want uh with this policy okay uh just first and foremost um i requested that these policies be reviewed by our district legal counsel and they were uh we did make some changes to 1825 um that kind of made it a little bit um just a little bit friendlier i guess um lack of better terms but as you can imagine um i think these are i these are great policies to have um in the 1000 series uh there was pretty um broadcast discussion on
058why we need these policies and we actually currently have policies in the um in both the 5000 series and the 3000 series that hold staff um accountable like these policies hold the board accountable and in the 3000 series we have student um accountability as well so as the board who oversees the policies um including staff and students i just felt feel it's it's it's um why are we not holding ourselves to those standards that we're holding our staff and our students accountable by having such policy when we've already had policies for staff and students um it's you know if needed i know we are all adults however sometimes um things happen and it just provides accountability for to our to ourselves but also as a district again if we have it for staff and students
059why do we not have uh such policies for uh sas board members well and and i would answer that with that we are elected and we're responsible to our electorate not uh um to each other um students and staff are hired and students are attending our schools and they are they have policies for that reason but um i i think that we have our board norms that we're supposed to follow and i think that we can be relied upon to to follow those board norms i uh feel really strongly that this is superfluous we have board norms uh and i think that this is just adding a new policy that's that's unnecessary again we are not students in the district and we're not employees of the district we're hired and we answer to uh the
060electorate we answer to the people we answer to the people who elected us and putting additional policies in place that allow um a question of of judgment um so my my judgment can be questioned if i don't agree necessarily with with with a policy one of the things that it says therefore in the event of a board members willful and or continuing violation of law policy or judgment who is determining whether my judgment is sound or not if i if i am voting against something or if i feel strongly against something who gets to decide whether my judgment is sound i think that we really put ourselves in a position uh to be accountable or or answering to one another and um as board members that's not how it's set up you don't have to
061answer to me and i don't have to answer to you as a board member we answered to the people who elected us i think regarding the term judgment i think you bring up a really good point however having been through several years of very great board turmoil what i discovered is that when there is um evidence that a board member has violated the law um open public meetings act being one primary one that there is very limited or no recourse to hold board members accountable i believe that a policy such as this or something similar is necessary you know these are model policies and the boards can have discussion about what terminology we want to be in the um policy and what we do not it's not a requirement that we adopt the wording as
062it is and if judgment i because i agree with you my judgment is different than your judgment is different than anybody else at this table and we shouldn't be um held accountable for our judgment because that's a personal um thing and we were elected in part because of that but when there is a clear violation of something there ought to be some recourse because if somebody is in their first term let's say committing a violation of the law which we have taken an oath to uphold and the only recourse is through a public process that is ineffective and doesn't deal out any consequences in the end so i think we do need some kind of a policy whether this wording is appropriate probably not i think we should work on the wording and make something
063that fits our sensibilities and i'll just echo i didn't see the value in a policy that adds what we are already sworn to uphold i mean to the extent and i put out a comment so i won't belabor it too much um but to the extent that this just mirrors what we're already required to follow under state law i don't really have an interest in adopting something we're already required to follow i i'm fine with establishing a norm if we have concerns about a board member's activity but keeping it less formal in a policy because what i don't want to do is create a situation that imposes liability on a board member because one of the basis is for recall is violating your own policies and so now if we have this policy what if
064i don't want to follow this policy can somebody from the community or the procedure may be associated with it i don't want to sit down with so-and-so to discuss something um can somebody say well you're not following your policy by not sitting down with so-and-so and talking about especially if judgment was to be one of the criteria used so i'm i'm concerned about imposing liability on ourselves that isn't necessarily statutory required to the extent we've taken that oath i think we're bound by the laws and statutes and the only recourse against a board member really comes through that process to the extent we want to regulate have a means of regulating our ourselves um i think it would need to be based on objective violations of law not judgment because i think we're in politically
065charged times right now where disagreements should not form the basis of calling somebody out is bad judgment this um you know i know you took censure off what i meant was censorship in my comment is this going to be used as somebody going i don't like what she said i don't like what he said i don't like what um and just constantly in the principal's office because of things you don't like and to me that's too too discretionary who's making those calls um yes if it's an objective violation of the law a that triggers the recourse that the electors can trigger but i agree that's something that we should should discuss but that's also why we already have under the open meetings the ability to um address a complaint against a board member or public
066official in an executive session which is just duplicated in some of this process so if we're talking about truly objectives which is really the only thing i would support i think we already have those mechanisms if we want to write down an informal board norm i you know just so we know what the reporting structure is i i'm not opposed to that i just i don't feel the need for a policy that says we're going to do and hold ourselves accountable for the things we already took an oath for to do i i would like to have um further discussion um as board members and on what you feel those recourses are that are already in place because i can tell you from experience they were not effective and i i guess i'll push that
067back to you to say the only recourse a board member can have is to be removed by death resonation or recall or quaranto and i've i've been through them all with with the agencies i work with and yeah recall recalling florento you're you're almost never going to get but we as a board member can't vote somebody off and so that's the intended recourse that just can't happen we can't say it it's up to the public to remove a board member so all we can do is is talk about the problem and i guess remove people from committees or or something but again we can talk about the problem based on our based on the ability to have an executive session to discuss a complaint or through other less formal means of somebody's um and there
068is that censorship is allowed and i mean we could decide just randomly without having a step-by-step procedure to censor somebody who is censure somebody who is violating it but it still doesn't mean that they're removed from the board so so i guess i don't understand what recourse you think we need to have because we're limited by statute and what we can do just to clarify these are policies not procedures both of them they're both policies yes maybe i'll put in um my own words here we do have operating principles and we do have old norms that you can correct me laura i think they're about two years old right that they were rewritten as a result of some of the problems that you described yes but every board should adopt their own board yes right
069um so you know we i find them fairly informal and loose which in a way is a good thing because as a board we're trying to be collegial so that's the one thought the other thought i have is codes of conduct are expectations of people who hold public authority or who work with children and people that we function underneath the board do have obligations i find it a little difficult to say we don't have to have the same obligations i looked at policy 1815 and i'm not an attorney or an expert or a detailed bureaucrat kind of see where they were because i personally do not find them objectionable in any way a number of them are backed up in code and your i think laura is right sometimes it's very difficult when you have
070somebody who the code can be very slow and a person can be very strongly opinionated um i did find that nowhere did i find the stewardship one covered in the combination of code and our norms that's what i see is our fiduciary responsibilities um so i think it whoever wrote this did pick up on a couple of things that are a gap um and um so that was kind of where i was i personally did not like censure i think sencha is not a good action it actually makes conflict worse i think and it probably doesn't accomplish anything if we had a recall as judy talks about in a serious situation or if we had an actual follow-up and prosecution of a breach of the law that's appropriate in terms of uh policy 1825 um
071i know that was rewritten from the model policy and i know judgment is a squishy word um but if we're trying to be a collegiate team that has different opinions but behaves civilly with each other and works together the first thing that happens well i just want to read something by the way this is important the ninth of our board operating principles the board speaks with one voice directors who are in the minority agree to support poor decisions when action is taken so we debate we allow listening we make a decision we may not i may not agree with the decision but once that decision has been made collectively i am responsible as a board member to make that decision and that operation work as best as i can and i think that's an important
072foundation stone for any board so we can disagree we can debate we can discuss and then at the end we reached that point now let's get back to the um aspect of these two policies if one board member let's say is not adhering to something they disagree with and attempting to undo a board position that you could perhaps call not good judgment the first step is simply to talk to that board member privately with i any board member discreetly and listen that could be a message back to the board we understand and we change it's discretionary um the second item would be that if we can't work collegially and i hope that 99.9 of our differences can be resolved in that way we then have can have an executive session um with the full board
073where the agreed board member can talk to the rest of the board then we also talk about working together to do training the ultimate which is only to consider would be that if a board member is acting um contrary to the board norms then it's possible that that board member could not fulfill their board appointed not they're elected appointed they are elected and retain that power forever more until the voters take it away that should not be touched that's one of the reasons why i don't really don't approve of censure but i do think that this policy is an imposition that we i personally am very comfortable placing it on me um and then i'd allow like to allow this is a really important issue and i know we've got differences around the table let
074other board members speak a bit more and then we decide where to go from here i guess i'll um not to add on but laura you mentioned not having recourses i'm rereading policy 25 which i thought was more of a procedure um i still don't see recourse necessarily it's just a talking point which to me felt like the natural what we do anyway so again to me it didn't feel necessary i think i was a little frustrated to be honest in in using this time to discuss it because it sent a bad message that for some reason we're presuming we're not going to be able to get along or to carry out our our duties to the best of our abilities and so to me in some ways the messaging of this was was poor
075timing maybe um but again i it didn't feel like it adds anything i think all the duties that it's pointed to above we've already taken an oath it just consolidates them all but it's the oath that we're bound to follow anyway and so to the extent we want any kind of recourse um you know this doesn't seem to add a whole lot and to me it's just sort of in this process a distraction from talking about our students and their learning and what they're going through right now so um but you know if we are going to entertain this i think we absolutely need to remove the lapses in good judgment and cause have that to be something more objective to where it's an objective violation of law we we know that another meeting violation
076is an objective violation of law and you know martin i i think we all agree that when when the board speaks on something the board speaks and we hold that position and we follow that but i i don't want to be misconstrued that when things change and we want to revisit something suddenly that becomes a bad bored behavior we did that you know i did that with the the coveted situation last year things changed when we opened schools i said can we revisit this at another point i didn't feel like it was inappropriate or being a bad board member i thought it was there were good circumstances to do that so when we're talking in that context um i guess i started as just the question to learn there at that point i think the
077appropriate procedures any board member can request an item to be put on the agenda and that would be a way that you would review something and just making sure i wasn't taking it too literally then yeah what you were suggesting i guess i guess i'll clarify you know what i meant by no recourse and you're right that this doesn't have you know teeth and it's not punitive but i think it's okay to you know consider removing board appointed um positions on committees and so on um what i what i like about 1825 is at least there is a process in place because i did feel that was one thing that was missing that complaints complaints were made and um you know it falls on the board's chair board chairs discretion and to have a procedure
078in pla not a procedure but a policy in place that involves step-by-step process i think has some value and you're right it it doesn't have teeth in it because we're not going to remove an elected official that's up to the um the folks who elected us to do that but if there is a clear violation and the board sometimes are the people that are most likely to be intimately aware of what's going on and it's nice to have a step-by-step process of addressing it i guess one of the questions i had then is is the expectation then that this becomes a reporting requirement if i see something do i do i have to report so and so or do i have to um you know i kind of outlined just the the slippery slope i
079saw as as making it this formal like i said i don't have any particular problems saying if if we know from past experience that there's we don't always know how to address these just making it part of our old norm that hey if you if so and so board member has a issue with another board member take it to the chair and we'll discuss and figure out how to do it it's the formality of the policy that i kind of go do we really need this we took an oath it doesn't really add a whole lot just another thing to pad the policy manual and i agree with that i think your first question that you put to us in your email julia how does this promote or relate to the academic improvement of our
080students i feel like it for lack of a better this is fluff it's one more thing one more policy to adopt that's unnecessary and like you said it doesn't have any teeth it doesn't so it's kind of like i feel like it's just unnecessary and it says we'll be nice we'll be nice to each other and we'll have good manners i you know i'm sorry for my simplification of it but that's what i feel that it is and i just think it's unnecessary we go through five six policies every two weeks new policies to add and this just doesn't seem to add anything of benefit beneficial uh in my opinion well i'm gonna have to disagree on that um i think um so the policy neither catherine or i say here and say oh we're
081going to review the we're going to present these policies these are presented um i don't i don't know how they're chosen but um but um in regards to the timing we just had a work session with um trisha lubach from losta so um i saw it a little bit differently than you did julie i thought well you know makes sense we just had a train in regards to the roles of the school board we're a fairly new board um and you know just i guess my role on the policy committee is that i invest quite a bit of time reviewing policies and showing up to meetings and as a one of the main responsibilities of the board is to review and approve policy so and as we know now policies are related to academic to
082student tied to students and academics so i'm not sure why this is any different than the other ones that we've approved or reviewed that are not related to student and academics so i'd like to address that comment because you're right we we do need to spend the majority of our time and effort focusing on student learning it's the mission of the school district and it's what we should be doing and i think if you look back historically within the last four years what you found was that board behavior became a you know side bringing circus for the district and it distracted from the board's focus and ability to to do our job to be mission centered and so if we do not have a process of you know preventing um that from happening and again
083or you know at least curbing it in a little bit then um you know board behavior can become a distraction and we have seen that in the past i think that is a very good clarification of yours laura i've been thinking a little about where we go from here we could return it for rewording which might not be very helpful i do want to make a comment that our behavior and our efficiency directly improves education we can behave well and appropriately and do things that help we can use our time well and i think that is um [Music] a good use of our time and i think that we speak from experience at this point i think given that i would like to open this up to see if somebody proposes this moves to a
084second reading um and that would permit somebody to make an amendment or to push it back for re-rework because i don't think we have a consensus on this one does it require motion well we yeah yeah this i think we have to have an indication to uh given an instruction i don't know where the motion is the right word i'd look at the sergeant-at-arms tell me what to do yeah i literally just need direction from the board uh consensus from the board as to what you want this moving forward the second read does it need to have uh additional rework um so that that's what i would need to to bring it forward or or not we have a policy committee so i would propose that we send it back to the policy committee and
085you know have our two board members and staff review it and see if there can be some consensus about changes to the policies that might be more agreeable to the board as a whole we can do that my only concern is that we've already been here in there um and there wasn't a consensus in regards to that so that's why we're having this lengthy discussion i'm like i'm with martin i don't have i don't have a problem with this police these policies being imposed on the work that i do i would actually like to see it move forward to a second read i think um since this we aren't settled i would like to take the little bit of extra time and go back to the policy committee even if it's brief and it comes
086back and then we don't share an opinion and we have to make a decision but i would like to give an opportunity for that to be an improved pathway to that point so if the policy committee can take another look at it they've looked listened to us and then see whether there's something that um [Music] we can all work with better i think we've all said what we thought there may be some addazons okay other board members agree with that just need a little consensus sure yeah i i think what was disturbing too is that the examples that they used are the one and only example that they used when they presented this and and again this came from wazda also kim or okay it did come from the one and only example they used
087as as a board member uh violating policy or or um using poor judgment and it's under the using poor judgment category i think was not wearing a mask uh and you know at some point and i i found that kind of alarming initially that that was the only thing they could come up with that that was a problem um and it seems very specific uh and so i did it it makes the entire poly two policies little very questionable in my opinion yeah yeah so i have three board members who would like to push it back to the the committee for one more round so that's what we'll do we'll bring it back to policy committee for another conversation then moving on to 2161 and 3246 um both so special education and related services again
088really following [Music] the october 15 2021 rule proportionate rules and making sure that we're fully in compliance with the inclusionary practices the family engagement the effect of support for students receiving special education services we also ran this by uh our special ed director uh trisha craig and she was comfortable it as well the second policy there is 3246 it's restraint isolation and other use of reasonable force again really made sure that we we reviewed that with our special ed director and we're in compliance with all of these current uh house bills and other uh wax that are responsible for these so there were no changes by policy committee on either of these and then the last one is 50 for 10 discretionary holidays again just outlining the different holidays they've added juneteenth which is outside
089of our our school calendar year so it would impact uh those staff who who are pretty much year-round staff members so i don't know if there was any other comments on those yeah oh geez thank you thank you and i mean uh the schools this is a house bill uh 1356 which prohibits the inappropriate use of native american mascots in public schools without proper tribal consultation thank you i had a question on the juneteenth um are is that going to be a recognized holiday in terms of paying overtime if you work on it or staff then how to trade another holiday for it how is it being implemented if adopted or recognized so that that would be a recognized holiday uh for for staff uh that would be if you're in that category that would
090be paid holiday does that make sense it does but it doesn't have to be so i'm just wondering if if that was a conscious decision make as part of this policy also that this is the the paid time and a half and we're not working firing it to be a trade with another one potentially um [Music] because you can recognize the holiday you just don't necessarily have to pay for the holiday so so that's where i was trying your response was just so it'll be a financial issue so i kind of want to know what the financial issue is isn't that a contract issue are we going to have to revise contracts next time next go around to address that yeah it would have to be within that context of the contract that you would
091have to have those conversations about is that a paid is that a work day uh there are some you know not every day is a non-work day for those holidays as you said it couldn't be just a recognized holiday but yeah that would be a piece that we would have further conversations between kelly and the different uh groups so for example if we've named in our contracts i don't know how they're worded if we've named 10 paid holidays or something like that and now we have 11. so that will impact us financially if we call it if we use it as a um you are working or non-working but like you said it's out outside of the regular school year so the impact is going to be limited very limited okay very limited thank you
092so those are the the policies uh we'll move forward all of the ones except for 18 25 and 18 15. we'll move the other ones forward for second read i agree okay broad communication uh look left first and go around the table i don't really have anything today i'll update on the legislative happenings next next week on that note um i was contacted by tim garcott last week uh he's the executive director for the lost award and he um asked if i was interested in being the the wasa legislative committee representative for district area seven and the western board approved the appointment so i am the district seven um the district area seven legislative committee currently we are meeting once a week we are in full swing of the legislative session and um there are
093some really good bills out there um so um i'm just gonna give you kind of a heads up um we only have one bill with hawkins out with his name on it and um i'm not sure where it's going but it doesn't really impact us as a district but if we need people to testify at the hearings um i might be reaching out for her for support with those um but um one of the big ones is the enrollment stabilization the budget stability which is currently in the house and it's basically due to the decrease in state enrollment due to the pandemic and so they're looking for to stabilize some funding and so that we can keep some of the programs up and running um as you guys know we can't use us or funds
094um to um we can't use temporary dollars to staff fund um so that's a pretty big one they're actually testifying on that today at four o'clock and then one another another big one is the student support staffing that would increase funding so we can get more um counseling nurses increase their the the ratios of staffs in our building um and again that one was being testified on uh today up for so more to come thanks maria and it's good to have us have a representation on a regional group so congratulations congratulations yeah i do not have anything to add i think you've heard enough of me for today so let's move on to the superintendent's report um mine will be brief again did we are you sure you you threw me because i'm quite kind
095of off now um just really proud of the work that our schools are doing throughout um the board had a really great presentation put on by our learning teaching team uh headed by mike lane around our professional learning communities but seeing them in action and our board are actually going to be able to be out in this week and next week i think are the the scheduled dates for our board so our board members will be seeing the actual work of our educators talking through the data working uh talking through the instructional practices i i'm just really pleased uh that the that our schools have opened that up an opportunity to really see it in action because it's one thing to be in here and talking about it and seeing different videos but to actually
096live it with our our staff our teachers are our principals um super excited about that but some of the work that's coming out of our professional learning communities uh right now are are just fantastic uh mike and i a week or so ago were up at a pioneer middle school and really just being engaged in the conversations around student learning and then what how to continue to expand student learning um how to support our students who may be struggling and this team is literally coming together and knowing the students i was at another school foothills middle school where where the team it was just this an amazing opportunity to really see our staff knowing our students knowing their their strengths their challenges those opportunities for them and digging deep in and trying to figure out
097what are those next steps so i'm just really pleased that our board will be out seeing this work in person so i'm just very grateful for our educators and our staff members throughout this incredible district thank you paul um and thank you everybody who has sat with us through here we now move on to an executive session the school board will now recess into executive session for a period of 60 minutes to evaluate the qualifications of an applicant for public employment or to review the performance of a staff member pursuant to district policy number 1410 and rcw 423110 this discussion will be close to the public the school board is not expected to take final action following the executive session thank you so i just want to make a note that those packets are being
098delivered to to the board as we speak right now the school board is extending the executive session for a period of 20 minutes having completed the executive session the board meeting is now adjourned