WSD Board Meeting 5-11-21

001order for the may 11th of 2021 school board meeting and asked that she would stand and continue i pledge allegiance to the pride of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice okay so first on our agenda this evening is the consent agenda which consists of the minutes from the uh april 27th regular meeting april 29th special meeting the may 3rd workshop vouchers and payroll personnel report land sale proposal uh collective bargaining agreement and contracts is there a motion to approve the consent agenda we would hold the consent any discussion could you please clarify the um and just like for the sake of the public to know what the land sale is about um yeah i'll ask mark two yes mark

002could you give mark helm could you give a quick overview of a very very tiny piece of land that's being sold uh really for the sole purpose to make sure that we have better bus turnaround access but mark would you add context to that sure uh i'm unable to share my screen uh the system's not letting me but uh basically the city wants to create a roundabout at that intersection and so uh in order to make it passable for our buses they they needed to purchase that little corner section so our buses had the right turnaround radius um to make it safe for our drivers so uh we put together that contract and that's basically it and this is at the corner of crawford and netapp streets correct a lot of ours yep thank you

003any further discussion all those in favor opposed great motion carries thank you now we come to the portion of our meeting where we have uh citizen comments are there any folks signing up for citizens comments to see me get online or in person um i think they're all in person except for one so which order do you want to go in for um i don't have any of the names so you are driving this bus we will we'll start with online we'll start with uh shannon morgan who's in our online queue here if you can hear us yes sorry computer problems hi my name is shayna and i'm a current high school senior at wenatchee high school there is no doubt that this last year has been unexpected and difficult but one thing it has

004made apparent is that we need a better way for student voices to be heard in previous years the wenatchee school board has considered having a non-voting student representative on the board this is exactly what our district needs and it should be included in the topics the board aims to address this next year in my work over the past several months i've spoken with students school counselors teachers parents and administrators about the prospect of having a student representative on the school board through my conversations with people on all sides of the educational table i have learned not only how this proposal can be viable but how it must be drafted in order to accommodate all parties needs students want an avenue for direct communication with the people who decide many factors of their educational layout parents

005and teachers want their students to feel empowered to shape their own educational experiences and believe that direct conversation with school board members could inspire students to be active rather than passive learners administrators seek to give students more representation in crucial crucial educational decisions and believe that through having a student on the school board's table we could better understand and respond to students needs our district wouldn't be the first in the state to do this other cities such as olympia tacoma spokane north thurston and many others already have a student representative program lastly i spoke about this idea to the broader student body in response to learning about it one of my peers started to petition in order to gain an understanding of how many people supported martian representation across all sections of the student body

006we received 69 signatures on that petition which was created within the last month and the number is climbing by the day students in our district not only deserve to be treated with the same respect you would give any other person but deeply desire to be included in conversations about educational priorities that primarily concern them i strongly suggest you include the consideration of a non-voting student representative on the board amongst your topics of discussion in the next year thank you thank thank you he just came in and we may have to translate well that would be a fantastic idea but our translator cannot find the links during the meeting so i'm communicating with her perfect i'm here and i just want to apologize that we didn't have the stopwatch running uh for the last public comments

007or our comments versus comment are limited to three minutes and kim is typically the time keeper for that and as soon as we have our translator ready i believe our next speaker's commenter is spanish speaking although i'm not sure where he went he's back here but i don't believe i don't think we have our translator able to connect so let's just um if we could move to our next um item on the agenda give you time to line that up and then we'll come back to our public home can we ask if he needs a transporter our translator is here asking to be led into the meeting she said he's in the chat she said that hola she said oh i'm sorry i didn't see you back there please come forward so how would you

008like to facilitate this translator [Music] hello yes i mean i'm available there we go i just need to press on spanish yes okay so would you please give manuel the instructions for how to best facilitate this translation that was to you anna are you there [Music] is the problem yep hey anna can you switch to the english channel and do the translation for our live in-person room in the future maybe we need two transfers yeah we had she had some difficulties last time she's i think she's actually trying to talk that's why it's highlighted now what yes hi uh hello my name is manuel valencia um i have four children um who are in arunachal schools also i am the president for united neighborhood association of san bernardino and i'm back to say thank you

009for the new uh will personal legal is already in the war and we are happy so and i want to say thank you the mr socorro or another person i don't remember the name but uh we wanted to make the motivation the summer um and i still i still are looking for leaders good leaders willing to help the district with the board it's cool and also i think that the paper you can see that our priorities in the in our organization and i understand about this pandemic situation but uh but thank you for continues to help our students and um buddhism like wants to it is possible finish this pandemic to continuous normal policies you know we like it so let me try in spanish um [Music] thank you i think that's it for republicans

010manuel i appreciate your bravery and coming forward it's difficult i know to speak to a bilingual uh group of people and you did a beautiful job so thank you very much thank you thank you okay so next on the agenda we have special presentations and we have our national board certified teachers recognition yeah first off i just want to let everybody know this is our first board meeting with multiple people multiple situations going on so hopefully a lot of grace is given as we continue to work through this hybrid board meeting scenario so thank you for that i'm going to hand this off uh to kelly lopez and then mark woolsey but i would just first want to say um just so grateful for our educators who are willing to put themselves out there for

011this national board certified i know mark will explain it in detail but this is not easy it is not an easy process to go through and i just have such admiration for each of our educators who really commit themselves to their profession to continue to grow and get better for the betterment of our students and their colleagues uh throughout our school district and quite honestly throughout the region so with that kelly i'll hand it over to you yeah i apologize i am not able to turn my camera on so um i just want to acknowledge uh that board certified teachers are a huge benefit to our students and the learning community board certification allows teachers to hone their practice showcase their talents in the classroom and demonstrate their dedication to their students and profession the

012process to become a board certified teacher takes anywhere from three to four hundred hours to complete and up to four years which is clearly a huge commitment um made by our teachers i just want to honor and showcase our eight newly certified teachers um i'm i know some are in attendance uh some are also online and probably cannot turn their cameras on but if you can please do so we have rhonda brender from orchard middle school sarah lafave from sunny slope elementary erin mckenzie from washington elementary kara melton from wenatchee high school sharon osbourne from lincoln elementary kelly otley from pioneer middle school kim rumley wells from lewis and clark elementary and kelly sims from wenatchee high school i just want to thank you guys all for your commitment to your profession and on a

013job well done congratulations mark and the work that educators go through i would like to oh there oh there we go there we got a camera now great uh yeah i'm mark woolsey i teach fifth grade at mission view elementary and uh have been kind of leading this little merry band of facilitators for the last 13 or 14 years to do this to get national board certification is similar to becoming a professional engineer or a certified public accountant you really have to step up and prove yourself to do this to some very strict standards most of us have standards that run about 75 pages long uh that we need to meet there's four areas that they have to do in this 350 to 400 hours that kelly said um one of them is showing your

014content knowledge to an assessment center it's a three-hour test and it's worth 40 percent of the score and the other big piece is worth 30 percent and that's video of your teaching practice in your learning environment they really want to see what you know and what you look like in the classroom can you really do actually do what you know the other two pieces you have to prove that you can differentiate instruction and that you're an effective and a reflective practitioner so those those are the four pieces and like kelly said it is a a one to four or five year process uh hopefully one to three would be the hope um nationwide about 45 to 50 of the people that started certify in their first go-around without having to retake anything washington state's a

015little higher than that we have good support through wea through ospi and through the center for strengthening the teaching profession and in wenatchee we're probably a little bit higher than that all i don't have the exact numbers and i think that's because wenatchee's kind of a small town and when you start it you really don't want to leave because you you kind of become a little group a cohort and i think that's a big piece of what we have going here in wenatchee um just a quick history and then i'll uh i'll let you get on with your meeting um patty conan and i went to the hr director in 2007 after i had certified in 2006 and patty was before me and said we wanted to start facilitation here because patty didn't have facilitation

016at all it hadn't been invented yet and i had to go to university of washington for it once a month and we took facilitator training in 2007 and we started this in 2008 and right now i'd like to recognize the group that we have there's myself there's patty cohn um allison hurt from lincoln sandy schmidt from lincoln sally knipfer from pioneer and desley valeri from sunny slope we all facilitate different pieces of this and are helping out people here in wenatchee i think we've probably had a hundred and twenty kelly you might know a little better i know it's over a hundred um go through our program here so anyway thank you for your time thank you mark appreciate that history and acknowledge all the teachers who have become nationally board service certified we congratulate

017you on your hard work and thank you for all the skills that you're bringing to our district and what are we doing we're going to do a quick picture on the screen [Laughter] [Music] okay thank you so much this this group here and i know we get classified as uh teachers very often this is a group of school counselors and our program is similar but yet stretched out because not everyone gets great instruction on being in the classroom and getting videotaped and doing that so i just want to make sure that the team sees that quite a few of our school counselors and these two guys run me along on this way more than 400 hours it was a long trip but i just want you guys to see that we're not all just classroom

018teachers you know i'm k5 my friends over here are middle school counselors and i think that our team has a lot of dynamic resources to offer and like you said we're really pushing forward but it's also in the realm of school counseling and differentiating what we have to offer on tier one and tier two which here through services for the kids who are crying out for that i just want to make sure this whole counselor gets in there somewhere doesn't get a contract his teachers so just uh lots of hard work enslavements for getting there that was good thank you that's an important distinction i appreciate that thank you okay so next we have individual teacher recognition yes uh we have tina and nick pam brown you want to come board and your beautiful daughter

019is more than welcome to join so i know it is a family it's a team experience um and i know a few months ago we took a moment at a virtual board meeting to recognize tina but the board really felt like it was super important to have a moment in person to recognize you to recognize the work to recognize that you've been one of the three elementary state finalist for the national 2020 presidential award for excellence in mathematics and science teaching just the presidential award that's all it is just some little silly little award um i got to know tina over my year and eight nine months now and i have to tell you this is a person who goes you've heard the phrase above and beyond she doesn't even do that justice um from

020the cascade mountains taking kids out into the middle of winter and literally i was out there i mean it is four to five feet of snow and kids for many of their students have never had that experience and to don't think you're out there in these luxury uh suites these are these are some pretty rustic and rustic and very kind uh two cabins but she has students out there engaging in real world experiences hands-on experiences uh about science technology but integrating all of that work um in the areas of social studies and literacy as well so from the cascade mountains to uh bridge main island this just yesterday she takes her students around the world and again we we've all talked a little bit about some silver linings through covenant and online learning this is

021an incredible silver lining because what she's done is transform learning and brought learning she's taking learning everywhere literally everywhere she can go she's bringing her students her classmates her students with her to these real world experiences and i've asked her just for a moment to explain where she was at yesterday and the power in reaching students and giving them these again true experiences first person experiences that they never would have gotten if she wasn't willing to kind of think outside the box of what education can be so with a lot of gratitude a lot of pride uh tina nippan brown makes a joke um jennifer devereaux as i am a teacher at wia this year she um listened to my craziness and said yeah go for it and has encouraged me from since december to

022go about this crazy vision i had and it all started off in actually after winter break i wanted to go to portland for a little bit and my students were asking why i wanted to go there and i told them i just love the food trucks i really do i love the food trucks and for my students um that meant the taco trucks that we have here in town and they could not wrap their head around other food coming out of the vehicle and so um having that in mind studying area perimeter we went to portland my family and i my husband and my daughter who's a fourth grader at washington she comes along too and um we spent an afternoon being food truck workers we went and talked to the food drug workers we

023measured um the area of the perimeter of their food trucks and did all kinds of math the best part though is taking my kids through paddle books for those of you who are not familiar it's huge and for students and when actually the concept of going somewhere to purchase a book is that blew their mind and so um uh finding out that there are over 200 genres of books as well was also pretty overwhelming um from there i thought well i gotta i gotta keep going i wanna go a little bit bigger so we went to um with the island and we studied the structures of fort casey um also at this time we were working with the different spheres of our earth so we went to fort casey to study how the hydrosphere um

024interacted with the land um during world war ii well from there working with the rangers and we found out well there's this big triangle of forts and so we made our way to astoria and oregon and visited fort stevens and every time i go to these places i ask volunteers i ask the park rangers and they're all more than willing to say yes including every locked door i'm a big fan of getting behind the lock doors and my kids they know that but in turn they have earned their junior ranger badges for both washington state parks oregon state parks and so i said well i gotta go bigger right so i actually took my family to new orleans where there is the national world war ii museum where i have been for about three years

025ago for training and spent three days teaching directly from the world war ii museum where i worked with the stem educator there and we did all things stem we talked about components of the blood how new materials had to be created what it was like for those on the home front and how that affected the materials that needed to be used and how did you come up with those new materials and how does the boats float and how does an airplane fly but physically being in that space it was there that my students saw an exhibit as we were walking through the museum about the japanese american internal dance and um i unaware did not realize here on in our state we had the first group of japanese americans who were taken from their homes

026so i looked it up i was on van gaalin i contacted the museum but then two days a woman full itinerary she had my weekend and we spent saturday and sunday researching and taking pictures um in my little cricket trailer at a campground using my hot spot i created a 40 40 slides of a slide deck to include videos and images of everything that we have learned to share with students and yesterday i had the privilege of introducing 60 students to miss lilly who is 88 years old and uh she was seven when her family were taken from bainbridge island and she met us at the memorial and the kids were asking her questions her experience and miss lilly um spent almost an hour and a half with us answering questions for kids pointing out

027importances of the memorial she even made connections to current day and she told me she's she's done this only for about five years and she always gets angry when she's talking um to kids about it because it brings up feelings not only of the past and how shameful she felt as a child to not know the impact but it also constantly reminds her that in some in some ways it hasn't changed our world is still full of hate but she said it was the first time after speaking with us and seeing students and seeing them attentive and asking questions and personal questions how do you how did you spend holidays how come you didn't know anything about japan and she said it was the first time she left there happy that that was her purpose

028that it wasn't about her and um that one has so much energy so much and we left as a family um good just full of gratitude right and my students and families being remote many of the families join us on these um experiences as well and i spent a good portion of my instructional time today having those deep conversations and comparing and contrasting miss lily's response and her feelings and how she was able to overcome all that hate and turn it around into something good so of course they earn or are in the process of earning their national park badge now as junior rangers so they will have that and they want to know where we're going next and other than west side for promotion i'm not sure but it has been an amazing opportunity

029to um road school if you will with my students and have the support of not only jennifer but of paul as well who gets photos along the way to prove that i really am just in a different format so um with the opportunity of having um being a finalist for this award and finally being able to take all my experiences over the years of people that i've met so it's just been a great opportunity for me on my students now you are an absolutely exceptional human being and a teacher and i'm so proud of you for getting the recognition that you very richly deserve and you deserve a bigger platform because you have so much to teach the world i think and we are blessed and grateful to have you in our district thank you

030so much cross your fingers because in august we'll find out if i get that big platform in dc [Music] all right next we are moving along to our strategic planning media update yeah it's just a uh big night of celebration quite honestly i am super excited to introduce the team uh members of our strategic planning team who will be presenting tonight um the work that we've been working on since way back in december and they're going to walk you through the process and they're going to come up to the podium and they've got a presentation that they're going to be delivering to the board uh lisbeth rivera estrada sheena zachary denali rojas estrada and arya romelli wells come on up and let's take the podium you gotta look a little more excited now there we

031go aria i appreciate it um we have presentation gina are you taking lead first no yeah all right it's yours team hi everybody uh my name is arya ramos and usually i'm here as the asb report for website but today we have something a little bit bigger uh so we have been working for several months now on our strategic plan for the district um we have a committee that uh that we've put that has been put together that we've all been working together to kind of find it find a good future for our district and i have a little overview of what we'll be touching on tonight um and so first of all we want to introduce our team who we are um and what we've been doing with our time um so here are

032the names of all of the people that we have working on the on this uh committee coming together every other thursday and meeting and debating and just collaborating on something really great and i'll have denali kind of introduce some people hello thank you for being here my name is dimely roblas and i'm a senior at the wenatchee high school um so just as arya was saying our community is very diverse as you can see um we have parents community members district staff and staff from different schools we have four students um so i'm going to say some of the artists in spanish [Music] so talking about our process uh we've definitely we've put a lot of time into this obviously uh been working on this for multiple months and not quite an end in sight

033yet is it and again as denali said we're a diverse group we have people from steve who's our oldest i believe to one of us a lot of the students is the youngest and we've had we have we have different people who just bring so many new perspectives and visions to this table and everyone is everyone is coming from something that they feel strongly about and they are putting this they're putting this effort and this kind of just like into what we're talking about people are really passionate about about one thing or another and you can tell when we're in these meetings that these are these are very strong personal things and later on in this presentation we will demonstrate how some of these things are so personal to many of the people on this

034committee um and so we're we're just looking for we're just looking for some a way to bring everyone's voice to the table to kind of provide that space to to however to have everyone involved and listen to the voices that are speaking not just not just a select you i want to kind of shine light on the importance of our team because we are so differently in our cultures in our backgrounds and coming together to be concise and specific and for everyone to have a certain level of comprehension is very very hard because we all come with different agendas different vocabulary different backgrounds and when you have to get together to form a promise that's equitable and diverse and inclusive for everyone you're gonna have some debate going on so i just want to appreciate

035the team that gets together to want to do this to shine light on what's going on in the district and to want to actively do something to fix it [Music] um [Music] foreign um this is only my only section this whole presentation so because [Music] i would say you can go to the next one yeah our promise statement is different than what was brought to you previously if you can see it now and our new promise statement is we promise to build the foundation of diversity equity and inclusion from which each student emerges future ready and if you recall the one that we had brought to you previously was pretty lengthy um i went back actually today and re-read it and i was like wow that was really long i don't even know what was

036going on in it um so we did change it to make it more concise to make it so that people could find it really easy to memorize it to understand it and really we went back to discussing like why i promise and not a vision and i don't think there was anybody on our committee who was against keeping a promise more or less because a vision is something that i think you like strive for you put out there it's a it's a goal you want to you know go towards it's what you you view you want to get at um but a promise is a a definite accountability it's you have to do it there's no if ands or buts around it if you say it you promise it you have to deliver it and

037for us that was way more important and in a sense of holding not only ourselves but the district and everybody included accountable for making it actually happen um so there's that you guys can go to the next slide so what we're bringing here is something that when we bring it up it can be a touchy subject it can be difficult to admit when uh you have to say that we're not doing things the way we should be uh it can be hard to hear that if you're not doing things the way you should be sometimes i feel like it's hard for us even as adults to accept especially when we look at it from different perspectives different lenses sometimes it's hard enough to take offense or to get defensive and i think sometimes and i've

038done definitely through the committee sometimes as adults we always feel like we know what's best for our students we know what they need we know what they should do we know what we should provide them but that isn't always the case as a lot of times if i have learned that they're the ones who are experiencing it now they're the ones who are living it they're the ones who you know have to deal with it and so ultimately they're the ones who drive our decision-making and should drive our decision-making not so much what we envisioned for them but what they envision for themselves you can go to the next slide so i'm basically asking you oh you might not just click okay so what does students want uh the school district to promise i asked

039my students this and i asked students from other schools and i asked them through wia as well um and my my initial response from students was uh you can click it stop pretending all of them and i said okay so what do you mean by stop pretending like what do you explain this to me if you want to the next one there's like a whole you might want to click it again there's like two sides oh is this going to be like a clicker clicker i'm so sorry i don't know what happened so um if you look at it's a pretty lengthy list i was like let me write these down guys um their biggest thing and it is kind of a shocker to me and it was kind of i'll tell you the one

040thing i appreciate about students is they never have a lack of honesty and they will just tell you it was stop pretending that you care stop pretending that you'll change or that you're fixed things or that everything is fine uh stop pretending that you treat us fairly stop pretending that you listen to us that there's no racism or biases that doesn't exist stop pretending that you care about our well-being uh that everybody has the same opportunities that students feel safe at school uh that we are a community of acceptance that favoritism doesn't exist that schools really do something about bullying uh that we all um are really doing is teaching to a test that everything is fine when it's not you are doing what's really best for students or that i matter they're not pleasant

041to hear by any means or any stretch of the imagination um so i will give you that one you can go next slide um and so that is why i think our driving force for the strategic planning committee was the diversity equity and inclusion um because when you look at those statements those are really the driving statements of what this what students and i think some people really do believe if you're a student and that's your opinion and you're living it and that is their truth and that of the lens they look through then we have a problem um because they're obviously experiencing those things uh just because we might not like it doesn't mean it's not happening and i think for a long time who wants to admit i will tell you like no

042school board no superintendent wants to stand up and say guys um fyi we're really sucking it up over here um at you know doing these things i don't think that that is a statement anybody really wants to have to admit especially to a whole community to a whole student body um but it's something that i think the committee has decided that can't be something that we slay behind anymore so it's become our main priority and everything pretty much is basis around it so uh really you can't accomplish anything else without having this in place we can't increase any any rates we can't increase scores we can't you know close that gap if we don't take care of the systematic problem first and let's face it when the education system was built you know centuries ago

043uh it wasn't built for an equitable system and we're still functioning on the same system so therefore still can be equitable no matter how many times we try to add things and it isn't going to work until we tear it down first um that's why i pretty much after this i let the students speak because they are the ones who pretty much have the insight view on it um you know it's something that we've decided must be taught in early learning it must be taught between k-12 you know we had a debate about the words themselves and uh and i think it was recorded who made a great point about stating that we should be teaching these words starting in kindergarten these students should know what these words are lots of students experience them and

044know what they are and then i it was really funny i added the indifference in because today we were doing a job or we're doing interviews for uh english position and uh part of my job and that is i have student groups and then after they do the interview i bring the students in and they teach a lesson to the students and then the students give them a tour and they come back to me and they were teaching them a lesson out of a memoir called night by i believe it's like eli yeah yeah he's got it and hey that anyways they were talking about one of the one of the teachers was given their presentation their lesson and they were talking about full fit extent and i was like that is so true and

045uh they were talking about the quote has to do with that it's not hate that like let me find that i have it right now [Music] i don't wanna miss it wrong it says that the opposite of love is not hate it's indifference the opposite uh so it's and they he had a talk with over where he talks about how like it's not hate hate is evil but what breeds the evil like what makes that strong that power is indifference which is not taking one side or the other you know and i feel like i don't want to i don't want to continue to be a school that's just indifferent that just keeps kind of riding in the midline but we're not going to like jump to one side or the other and so i

046think for us as a like as a committee for me personally um dr pogba and i'll probably tell you i fight a lot with them you know like i'm not quiet about it um because i i feel like it's very very personal to me that we need to finally just make the jump and just say like look it's not going low we know it's not going well and we need to fix it and we are going to fix it and then the next one is that i get to be done for today hello everyone my name is [Music] i also attended and was a part of the school district um from kindergarten to my graduation that's a senior at the high school at wenatchee high school um so i entered and signed up to move

047a part of the community because of my experience and like just really knowing that there are other students who are experiencing similar things as myself and who will continue to unless we really as community members come together and try to make a change [Music] um [Music] so i'm here to talk about the values and the way that we kind of shifted some of them and changed them and rewarded them they're still mainly the same which are excellence of learning accountability and equity and you can read those changes and i'm going to read them as well um so joey is [Music] so the first one excellence for learning um building the knowledge and deciding and skills of all to achieve at the highest levels the second one accountability setting expectations and holding ourselves to the highest

048standards of charity learning fiscal transparency the third one is equity which is a dismantling practices policies and procedures that create barriers and rebuild the system that means the divisional needs of students and staff [Music] um [Music] um and i want to talk a little bit more about equity because it is such a big part of what we've discussed in the strategic planning community and i think for a long time we kept going back and forth and having these conversations of like what do these words change having these words in place means and how do we change words so that they can be active and really reflect change and not just be word changes right um because we know that it's easy to say you're going to do something but how are we going to hold

049ourselves accountable at the school district as community members and not just those who have family members that are in the school system but those beyond that um so the next slide we talked about what how do we define equity and these different rules which are very generic the quality of being very impartial um yes [Music] so this is the definition that we really used to base ourselves off of which is i'm sure you've already right now hopefully um it's really basing ourselves on the fact that equity does not just mean it's always fair and not increasing equity to equality looking at the individual students and the ways in which our systems have failed some and don't provide opportunities to everyone at the same rate next slide so we wanted to i'm sure you all know

050this data but we wanted to bring it forward because it really really really drives home what we have been talking about in distributed panic committee i think each person who is a part of the community has someone who is a part of the school district and they're the person that we're here advocating for um [Music] this is the student demographic as you all know um we are a majority serving hispanic subscribing well full district with 53 of students [Music] um [Music] we have the [Music] so here we see the first really drastic percentage change where 85.2 percent of teachers are white and only 12.2 percent are hispanic um [Music] and next we have the spartan balance assessment results [Music] grade um outages where we see a big change between the blue lines and the white

051yellow red you can't even see any colors the red lines which are identifying [Music] is [Music] um the differences between students and their reading and math scores in third eighth and tenth grade and i know that by the tenth grade our reading levels for white students aren't that great but they're even worse for a lot of my students and it's something that we need to address where equity doesn't just say oh we only need to bring up a lot of next students it says we need to bring up those white students because they deserve to be at a higher standard and all of this is something that we need to address right like i think often times we think that we're only talking about bringing up the percentage per 11 students because they're a lower

052percentage but it's not about that it's also about bringing you know white students because they need higher reading scores and they deserve to have that accomplishment um next we have um so so this is um the gifted and talented percentage and i believe this is like looking at the school district as a whole um where 78.5 of white students have been identified as given intelligent which was gifted and talented um and only 15.3 percent have been recognized abducting those hispanics have been recognized as kids and talented students um is [Music] is [Music] so i also know that um a lot of these like gifted and talented courses are for the k to fifth grade students and these are kind of like the math is cool like the high enrichment all those other extracurriculars kind of

053but i wanted to address that because it comes into play if children at this age are being told they're more talented at all um so next slide this is now talking about high school students who are talking critiquing calculus um 72 of white students or of those who are taking calculus 17 are white and 17.1 are hispanic um with other percentages [Music] um so this graphic obviously demonstrates our graduation rates um and these different labels that we have for some students in particular but i really want to focus on the next slide which shows our dropout rates and again we can really see those drastic changes where um the yellow bars our students who are aligned next or we'll identify as english language learners who some people that have to learn english in the school

054system students are homeless students who are low income students who are migrant students or students with the seven police and we see that the school district has a really large dropout rate among those especially who are english language learners and homeless [Music] um [Music] so i also shared that i am a student who is an english language learner i am a migrant student i am low-income um and i been under many of these statistics and it's a reality that many of my peers and those around my neighborhood also my hands invited so on the next slide um this i want to see the rate before saying this is why we must promise and this is why we changed our statement and our values um i wanted to bring a little bit of my personal testimony

055and as well let's give arya and zenati the opportunity to share theirs in terms of the equity or inequity that we face as students in the school district i know for myself this is a really important value because i going through the school district i faced a lot of inequities but i didn't always have a language for them um these inequities started when i was in kindergarten in first grade in elementary school and i obviously didn't have the language for all of this i barely spoke english it was difficult communicating with my teachers or my english speaking peers um i still have a lot of memories of asking questions and being given answers that are very harsh and i know that we still have a lot of my guest students and especially those who are

056not refugees because of the unfortunate circumstances in their homelands and i know that there are also a lot of questions in that children are inquisitive and curious and they ask questions and they aren't always doing the support that they need i also know that as i grew up and i proceeded there was a lot of times where being an undocumented student i faced adversities and didn't really understand my family my mom when we graduated only got up to a third grade education level and so beyond that i was like all on my own my sister and i were like trying to figure out what this what middle school was what high school was going to be like what kind of opportunities there was there and what it meant to be a student in those places

057um and i wasn't always met with in fact mostly it was not met with that support that was needed as a first reputation student and then we're not going to study um there's a lot of questions and alternatives i had and when i tried to address them i just oftentimes met with statements that were like punching me or telling me like you didn't worry about that like you just need to focus on passing this grade level and pushing me down to not pursuing much beyond hopefully graduating high school so i also know that when i was in high school it was a really rough time i had a lot of [Music] mental health struggles and in that time i think when i most needed someone that i could resort to a counselor a trusted staff

058member a teacher that i could relate to i didn't have anyone because i think it's hard for me garland who is the um vice principal and one other teacher who taught spanish there weren't any teachers that looked like me and even less of those that were female and who maybe came from a minor background um and it really made i don't know but it really made being a student difficult um to the point where when i graduated high school i did not enroll in college and i wasn't planning on attending because i didn't think it would be possible for me to pursue that because i had been told that it was unrealistic and not something that i should pursue because it would be a lot of debt and like all these other challenges that are

059realistic but i was always told like you shouldn't in a negative manner right told that i shouldn't pursue them um but i i have and i am pursuing them and um it's been through the support of people that i've met afterwards like those teachers that i've been able to connect with outside of the school system without those social norms that have really created like disparities and self-segregation within the students and staff members that i've been able to find a community that really supports me encouraged me to pursue more this is all to say that i think our school district has a long way to go and it's been an amazing journey to be able to learn and grow from them and i've learned so much and i i definitely appreciate my time at the school

060district but i know that we can do so much better to serve our students adequately and it's not just the students who are like me it is other students who maybe their parents have phds but they still have really low like reading scores or um other circumstances of the sort whether they can feel like they belong and not feel like one difference within them should be hidden or minimized and that they can show up in any building in the school district and feel fully accepted and welcomed um so thank you for listening to me ramble i wanted to pass it to arya or denali as they wish um so i am here in front of in front of all of you and in front of all of you out there as a student who comes

061from a very different background than lisbon um my parents both have postgraduate degrees uh i i was i was raised i mean i here i was born here in wenatchee um but i still see every day the effects of these disparities between our communities um i actually spent seven years living in nicaragua and i came back here and during that time my perspective was broadened and i came back here to see that this the same the same issues the same issues that i saw when i left the same issues that i saw down there were were still plaguing our district so we have and i i can't i came from a place where there's a lot of there's a there's a lot of i mean there's a lot of people who came into the country

062um from the united states and have decided that they know they know the way to do things because they're used to they're used to being the voice that's hurt and thus i grew up looking at people that looked like me and thinking that this is the voice that should be heard but i realized that throughout throughout my education and throughout my time living both internationally and here in wenatchee that the more voices that we bring in the more we can actually make progress and i've had i've had i've had difficulties in school um i test well but i'm not i'm not necessarily the best student with deadlines um but i'm i'm able to i'm able to continue my studies in part because i had that support that elizabeth never had and though i did i

063did face struggles none of them were because of the color of my skin none of them were because i had a background that people just kind of looked at and reduced me to a statistic of oh you're just gonna end up as you're just gonna end up as something less than um and this equity piece in our statement is so is so important because we need we need every student to be supported in ways that only a small percentage of our current students are um and i yeah i'm again i'm i'm coming from a place of privilege where i am able to talk about these things and recognize these things but i have the luxury of not have not having to experience the other side of this every day and as we talked about earlier

064in bringing our bringing these uh bringing these words in from the kindergarten level these kids these kids even at that age they're experienced they're experiencing these things um and giving them the language that elizabeth and denali lacked as they were growing up can allow them to express themselves in ways that that people who are going through the district now maybe never got a chance to um and i want to pass this off to denali who has this experience firsthand because again our voices aren't the only ones that matter here in fact they're the ones that matter less because the the uh the perspective of first-hand experience of these things is really what we're what we're supposed to be listening to here i want to thank arya and lizbeth for sharing those stories because it takes

065a lot of bravery and courage to get up to a podium and see people that don't look like you and might not have the same experiences as you to like blatantly admit your experience um i attended lewis and clark central hills then the weather high school and for me it was walking into wilson clark was so comforting because there were teachers that looked like me that spoke the language that i did but i know that a lot of elementary students didn't have that privilege and still don't have that privilege where they're getting dropped off by their parents at a school where many students look like them yet they don't have the same language they don't have the same background that makes you feel like you don't fit in and as a little kid that can

066be very frustrating psychologically because you don't understand why you feel that way um for me it was a struggle of my brain actively filtering certain things out from my experiences and my background because not everyone might be able to resonate with them and when i started to actually notice that wait why am i blocking these things out it kind of devalued my experience as a student through the district so being able to recognize that my word had value as a student as a spanish speaker as a latina it was like a catalyst for me wanting to join the committee because i used to i always throw this phrase around like who would want to listen to a student and then we have dr gordon diana hagelin she and dr all of these adults and community

067members that give voices to the student it's very encouraging for us um and another thing was the struggle with my wording because i'm a native spanish figure so sometimes i might get an accent i might not pronounce things certainly and so you have teachers kind of actively call you out on that and kind of moves into microaggressions i didn't know what my impressions were i just knew that when people were discriminating against me or my language or how i look like didn't feel right but i didn't know that they were microaggressions because i didn't have the education or the resources to point that out so all i knew was that it felt wrong i just didn't know what it was and it wasn't until i actively started to do my research and talked to peers

068like our little kids um that we started to notice like these things are not right no student should have to feel unsafe because they don't know how to say learning english or because they don't know how to express themselves in a certain language so discrimination in classroom is a huge thing because as elementary students you cannot have those psychological capabilities to understand why someone is treating you the way that they're treating you in middle school you kind of notice it a little bit more like why am i the only latino woman in advanced classes or why do white teachers seek out to me but not the rest of my peers and my community members um and then finally in high school you kind of feel a little bit more dehumanized because you know you finally

069begin to understand why that is because these people don't have the resources to educate themselves on microaggressions to educate themselves on your culture because how are we going to have a 53 latino student body and not enough teachers and staff to represent those students and it makes you feel very unsafe so that kind of goes on next to the next slide this is our priorities is [Music] foreign [Music] so our main priorities are driving environment partnerships and opportunities a thriving environment is creating welcoming spaces where all individuals flourish are seen valued feel safe and they know that they belong so this is not just physically but emotionally and mentally being welcoming there's a lot of i've heard a lot of parents from my community say that they do not feel welcomed into the district of

070buildings because people are actively racist they discriminate against them they might not know how to say something and immediately they feel unwelcomed and i believe in my personal belief that it does not matter if you don't have the same language the same skin color you can still make someone feel welcomed disregarding all those other concepts um [Music] is [Music] and next we have partnerships which is trusting relationships between students staff schools families and the community that enhance student well-being and success so this is creating that connection with everyone and actively making our promises and our priorities resonate with everyone in the valley um [Music] and finally we have opportunities that is equitable access to high quality academic extracurricular and real real world experiences which is having everyone allowing everyone to join ap classes to join

071mathis school and for me it's a two-way learning it's not just our angle assassin or white community members learning how to deal with latin and culture it's also the latinae culture learning how to deal with the white and angle section culture it's a two-way learning um [Music] or kind of just talked about that it's not just elementary it's middle school i know that in our committee we had a big problem right in the beginning we focused high school high school and high school and because you know it's a large group of students coming together from different from different elementaries from different middle schools so kind of learning to deconstruct that and say wait this doesn't begin at the high school level it begins since kindergarten since preschool these problems do not arise by the time

072you get to freshman year this has actively been happening since you entered the district so esther [Music] so we want to make sure that all students parents and staff feel safe so my staff i don't only need teachers i mean our bus drivers our kitchen staff our janitors that are let's be honest left out of these promises most of the time um disregarding no matter your race your ethnicity your socioeconomic status your background your skin color your sexual orientation or gender identity in all school district buildings not only physically but mentally and emotionally just as my peers was devastated we lack in the mental health area a lot because mental health issues are seen as a taboo or something that we shouldn't address especially in the hispanic and latino community it is a big big

073culture thing where you disregard it because you have to toughen i mean that brings you down because you'll have all of these responsibilities i know that as a first generation born child of mexican parents it has been love um so kind of making everyone feel safe and i just want to say i'm not like the fence that was put up i here's a cte this is for the high school the cte call the portals usually i would have to just walk through those doors and get to the portables well now i have to walk around the whole building so usually now this fence i could walk around the whole building to get to my class in under five minutes so i'm sweating by the time i get there and i have to take some deep

074breaths plus the double masking it's a tough it's tough stuff um so so creating those spaces where you get there and you feel welcome it's gratifying and i'm sure it's not just gratifying to the student but as a staff member saying like wow this student is actually excited to see me and i'm sure that's you know that's very [Music] gratifying [Music] is [Music] um is [Music] um [Music] i know that parents uh [Music] i asked my mom recently why she wasn't as involved in the district and she said that it was because she was embarrassed of how her english started and for me it was a little heartbreaking because it's for her it's exciting for me to come home and say oh my god like i talked about this and i talked about that and

075i never saw myself doing that and parents want to do that too it just it's this embarrassment of not being able to speak the language that really creates a barrier on top of all the other barriers um and i know that i personally face a lot of discrimination in some of my ap classes and i never speak of it because once again i have to toughen it up um especially this one class where i did not feel welcomed i was the only mexican spanish speaking student there and to sum it up i was a woman so it was very hard not to want to quit i didn't quit the class because i was like wait i can do this i can do this like i am capable of doing this and when i start to

076realize it wasn't just me i'm not only speaking for myself when i come up here to the board i'm speaking for all those 53 students because i know that maybe they don't have someone to encourage them to come and speak up because i can assure you that if other [Music] students had a activity or a doctor born or a martin barron or maria niges or brian higgins they would be up here talking about this so that's another part of a welcoming environment of actively not just saying we want our students to succeed because there's a spanish saying that says so that translates to [Music] from saying to doing something there's long ways and i know we have a lot of ways but the fact that we are actively speaking of this i would not imagine

077myself doing this three years ago coming up here and sharing the space with my peers to talk about what's going on in the district no but now that we have created somewhat of a welcoming environment we're more confident to come up here and speak our experiences so i think we move on to our next slide i just wanted to add that with partnerships we're not just talking about within the school but we're also talking about the community and as the nadi had shared there is a lot of mental health struggles and i know that you all have been doing a lot of work to provide mental health support or guidance to parents to students and i really appreciate it but as we know there's a lot of ways in which the school district doesn't have

078the capacity to always address these issues and so even as miss tina um with doing it's about in partnerships really reaching out to the rest of the community and finding ways in which we can expose the students to other activities to other resources to other information so that they can expand their rights and then understanding of themselves and also the community that they live within and realize that there's more than just the school district or their school that they are going to on a regular basis um this is also reaching out to families and asking them and having them be involved in the process in a manner where as denali also says they feel welcomed and are familiar and can really show up without barriers and without hesitation so that they can advocate for themselves

079and their students and their families so that they can be prosperous in their studies so the next slide is and so our final our final piece that we're talking about here is the opportunities that we have for our students and so we're saying we're having equitable access to high quality academic extracurricular and real world experiences and the this isn't this isn't just this isn't just in the classroom this isn't just the sports games this is all of the all of the pieces that we put that we put together and all of the all of the research opportunities all of the all of the robotics and [Music] drama we want to want to extend these we want to extend these opportunities to everyone not just a select few and we see we see in lots of

080our lots of our participation that it is only the students who have the luxury of being able to stay for these after school activities um at west side all almost all of our all of our extracurriculars are done during the school day done bell to bell because so many of our students have other have other things that they that they do for the rest of the day they're working they're taking care of younger siblings they're simply unable to extend the school day for multiple more hours um in order to prove in order to pursue these opportunities and this in turn hurts champ hurts chances of moving on further you get a lot of extra curriculars to look good on your resume i know i've applied i've been applying to school with you um and allowing

081and giving the opportunities for these students to participate in all that the district has to offer is the only way that we can be that we can be equitable both inside and outside of our classrooms um and so that i believe i realized like after i got done um number one i wanted to go back and address uh the reason why we changed the activity statement that you guys have created i don't know offense here and likely statement but um when it comes down to it when we're creating something vocabulary is a huge deal and the way we state things there was two words that we needed to fix mostly one of them was respecting diversity we felt like that wasn't a a good statement to make you more wanted to say honoring it you

082know that we should honor our diversity it's not something that you have to earn or you don't get like we do with respect the second one was the word them we you and you're going to statement there was a word then and uh it didn't sit well it didn't certainly didn't sell with me i'm going to brought it up i didn't say well with anybody because then we're putting people in a box we're saying there is a them and there is a us and that's not okay it needs to be all individuals um the moment we start saying that there is a they or them we are separating ourselves and so that is why we had to go back and we re-evaluated the statement and changed it in case you're wondering why um i would

083say the second thing is uh when we're talking and we're talking about you know specifically microaggressions or being not safe in schools or feeling uncomfortable um i think we need to point out that it's not in any it's you know it's no offense to anybody not the teachers not the staff not anybody when we speak about microaggressions typically it's they're done without malicious intent they're done um unconsciously it's you know it's done out of you know the way we raise our environment our system our cultures it's the way we live our society and so i want to just rephrase that we're not intending to bash anybody by any means we just want to bring awareness to the fact that there is an issue we need to address it um as being a white person clearly

084um i i have to work very hard every day to ensure that i keep my biases in check that i understand what my biases are that i understand what my progressions are that i teach myself these things that that i'm aware of these things so that i don't do them and so i think that's that's all we're asking for we're saying these obviously these trending education needs to happen because we're we understand and the students will even tell you they they tell me all the times they don't think it's ever done out of malicious intent it just is like it's almost like a normal thing somebody says something it doesn't realize it and i think in order to be equitable in order to understand diversity inclusion we have to be more aware of our ourselves

085and and understanding the education behind it and the training behind it so i just want to make sure that we pointed those things out that later people were like they were attacking us no no no no we just want to bring about that there obviously is and it's systemic it's it's not just one after school district it's a nationwide thing and systemic racism exists since it was built that way specifically a long long time ago to create these barriers and just continue to roll with it and so we're just saying that best we just need to bring awareness to that and and self-awareness for everybody here uh so we just want to make sure that was very clear i appreciate that so i'm going to resonate with what everybody was saying earlier um in our

086committee we have a spanish-speaking parent um maria castro and she has been a huge part in how our verbiage plays out in english because we have to consider that we're translating this and we do not want the translation of this to be lost because it's very different like it's kind of almost backwards whatever you say in english and spanish it's backwards so um i wanted to thank her because without her we would not be as actively conscious about the way we were things [Music] uh [Music] i also wanted to point out uh an experience that kind of goes with our promises and values and priorities where i recently accidentally sent the wrong email to the board it was hilarious it was the most like freaking animal where i just started fading um i said my

087rough draft listen my rough draft my first united rough draft to the school board and it was hilarious because i thought in front of this welcoming thing where i i felt encouraged even to speak up and say listen people i made a mistake and so i didn't feel embarrassed about it because i know that i you guys you the support system that you've set up made me feel confident enough to say like oh i messed up and i'll kind of just delete everything and pretend it never which is what i wanted to do so even if i had even if i messed up i had the confidence and i had the right to feel safe acknowledging that i messed up and that i was not going to be judged for it was huge because i

088know that had it been another circumstance i would not have done what i did um so sending you know the wrong female but also feeling the power to own my mistake because of the support system that has been established and you know there's someone like me here there's marianne he is and then there's more baron who actively reaches out to my community so establishing that support system was huge for me um [Music] is so i just want to say thank you especially thanks to diana who like saved my anxiety and then michelle sandberg who also emailed me back so i just want to say thank you for that because you guys probably don't get enough credit for all of the work that you do you know these hour-long meetings must not be a nice thing

089to go through but we you guys still show up so that support system that you guys have been building throughout these couple of months have been extremely important to us so thank you okay bits and pieces done okay i was just gonna say thank you as well because i know i know about a little bit of mom different page and i forgot to assess the points that she no longer brought on um but i know that there is a lot of effort and a lot of what you all are doing and i know martin and maria and dr coleman diana have all been showing up outside of the school district buildings and they've gone to cafe a place where i've volunteered and helped organize for many years now um and they they've been actively pursuing

090conversations with the latinx community and i really appreciate it because i know that in those spaces our conversations definitely shift the environment just in the room and it's a place where parents can show up and really feel welcomed and i know that it takes a lot of courage as well and time and commitment um to really leave the buildings right and go to the community where they are at and meet them where they're at and have those conversations so i appreciate your time and all the dedication that you have demonstrated over these last two years so thank you for bringing change i know we're building towards something good thank you thank you all um and there's i'm gonna hand it over the board here but i just wanted to highlight for a second just seeing

091it together as one and seeing the elegance and the inner connectivity to me is one of the most powerful things about this they did a beautiful job of walking through the different aspects the parts but i really encourage everybody to look at as the whole and see how the flow and i use the word elegance very intentionally there's this incredible elegance about the words and how they flow and why it was so important for the committee to slow down and look at every word so intentionally the debate over each word was at times excruciating like okay it's 8 o'clock we've been on this call for two hours it's time to call it good and people are like okay we need 15 more minutes we need to settle this but i want you to know the

092thoughtfulness that went into it and i i i i'm blown away when i look at it because of the intentionality you flip to the second page you're starting to see the action steps starting to come alive these are those overarching action steps um a subgroup of other district personnel are going to be working to to flush these pieces out those will go back to this group um and then ultimately which seems like it's like right around the corner june 22nd we will be back here with the full strategic plan with metrics with the action steps and with the this front part of the the framework brought to the board um but i i really want to hand it over to the board now to to ask the committee questions um and i just got to

093say this the four here are like a beautiful representation of the 20 who show up every other week um and they truly are representative of that entire group because voice that's what that's what i'm so proud of is voice and that each person was able to and is able to as somebody articulated we're not done yet uh to have that voice and have that have that commitment to knowing you're going to be heard you're going to be seen and you know you belong so with that laura i'll head over to the board thank you so i just want to commend you all the four of you that presented tonight for the articulate manner in which you presented the content of your work i i was very impressed uh by how to you to view redundancy

094again um you were in both languages i really very much appreciated that and i have to say for me personally who has been on the board for 18 years finally finally i'm hearing voices that i always knew were there i always knew they were there i had this feeling that we weren't doing right but i could never really get our system to recognize that there were inequities there that needed to be addressed for me personally it's a great relief it's a great relief to hear your voices and i really really really look forward to hearing more from more parents in particular because i do understand that language is an obstacle and as you saw us fumbling with our translation earlier in the meeting tonight that is a stumbling block and it is a barrier for

095us and can't wait for that to go away so thank you so much i'll go next um you know thank you uh you the student voice is super powerful and to come up here and share your story with you know our whole community is just um you know it's just impressive um myself being somebody that's been in respect students or denali shoes um you know you kind of almost go back to that ptsd because this is something that's real and it's in wenatchee it's an inner power i was raised um it's it's happened it's real and it's not our community is not um you know we're not the only ones with these struggles um but the power uh of the student boys is just it's loud and we're we're here we're listening um so i

096really appreciate that and then to our board um you know i think we've all seen the data you know but i don't know whoever i haven't seen it all together being presented by students and that is very very powerful and if the data is not disturbing to you then we need to go back in and look at it again and with a deeper lens because um you know it's been going on for way too long um that paul at our last meeting mentioned um you know we we can do better and this is a huge leap in that direction um you know in my short time on the board um you know this i had several conversations with my colleagues dr um but i don't think they've been as impactful as having you guys here

097and the committee um and i know the committee goes beyond the four of you guys so you know they need to be recognized as well our community members as well um you know i don't have any questions other than just you know i couldn't help but get emotional and choked up listening to the whole presentation so thank you well i don't have any questions but i just want to say what an excellent presentation i mean i was just blown away by what the committee put together and and i will say that one thing that popped out very early on was that you had it in two languages and we don't do that here and uh you know that was really impressive so i i hope for anyone watching tonight who doesn't speak english but spanish

098is the language that they are most comfortable with that they were able to follow along just with everybody else and [Music] i don't speak spanish and i'm sorry that i don't but it was just such an excellent presentation i mean i i would i would go so far as to say this this could be shared it was a conference so um i would really love if you could share that with the board the slides that you had um just all the data that you had in addition to all the discussions uh the discussions that you've had we could not do this in 20 workshops frankly as a board you know we just couldn't so um you guys really have been the workhorses for our district in in doing the strategic plan i can't thank you

099enough as an individual board member it's it is daunting the task that you had really and um i i so appreciate all the time that every member of the committee has given and continues to give i know you guys aren't done yet but and sheena and each of you as students elizabeth denali aria i just i'm blown away just by everything that you shared and and additionally i want to thank you for sharing your personal stories because i know that's hard and um as a mental health person i know that um those stories uh [Music] they probably resonated with a lot of people okay so know that you probably just helped a lot of other people realize that they have a voice too whether they speak english well or not um i just i cannot

100thank you enough for sharing not just what you shared but in all the different ways that you share it that's important so um thank you and again i look forward to seeing your presentation in my email box so thank you so i also don't have any questions but i just wanted to reiterate that i really appreciate this presentation i thought you all did an amazing job i'm so proud of you all for having the courage and for for taking the time to do this um reading through the statement i think it makes a lot of great points a lot of sense it really brings a vision to the ideas we were throwing around so i appreciate all the refinement you've done on it the hours of going through every word um one of the the

101things that has always started me is why do we need to teach diversity don't we just isn't it just something we do so i really like that you've changed it to a promise because i agree that i also appreciate you sharing your stories um i know that's hard it's hard to be so personal um i you know certainly don't have all the same experiences but there were things that i relate to in what you shared um when you say your your parents are reluctant to speak speak um you know concerned about their their accents or whatnot you know i speak a little spanish but i'm i'm also terrified to speak it as well so it it it's interesting having these conversations opens that two-way two-way street and and i'm encouraged to see this work that

102you've all done and i think it's great to hear it especially from students because you know i have three students in the district and as the parent i think i know what's best but i and i may think from my experience that i know it's best but that's not always the case so it is very very important that we get that reality check from from the community as a whole and from our students especially so i really do appreciate it thank you so much and i'm going to turn the tables and push you first and congratulate your second so one of the things i wrote down was what's not working needs solutions so i'm really glad to see our priority action steps coming next however i like the way he changed our words barriers and

103their action-related words uh this is a superb diagnosis and i thank you all for your encouragement that's what you thought it was just amazing um i do want to throw out a few things that i think are always there and we're looking at what you've been looking at and i might lose myself a little bit attitudes and expectations are formed at kindergarten and people are very very young and it was interesting that we heard a talk from about japanese people sensing shame um and this book listened to indigenous people saying they sensed guilt now the wrongs were done for the japanese people and the wrongs were done to the indigenous people but the result was that they felt downgraded that's it and so right there at kindergarten we we can form that attitude as we

104talked about what i can do what's expected of me and um so i think you talked about indifference and that's a very image of accepting that you take it up and that's it and you don't change it um one thing i appreciated is the way you dealt with what could be a very defensive subject by pointing out that most of what we're looking at is a failure to understand is what i would say and actually i quoted something recently where somebody said don't use judgment use curiosity and you lose curiosity and that's the way we're going to take it so get back to action um i think we're going to have a tough time with not being able to do everything immediately um and so let's figure out what we're going to do about that

105and um oh the other thing laura you and i got an education last night from high school students who wanted to learn how school boards worked and really to teach us what we should be doing right in a very nice way but uh again let me look at the note under i think this game machine students experience what it is and what it is not and it's very difficult for us to really get on the inside and i'll push back a little bit experience experience it is a good way of communicating what we need to wake up and look at but that's one step away from finding what's possible to change and what the solutions are but all of those linked together across multiple interfaces thank you everybody who isn't here as well as those

106of you who are and that was great thank you and i do have one more comment about redemption from denali i have always hated those fences i would never wipe them in the first place and talk really hard not to get them and i lost but i knew there were students that had actions about dispensaries uh i will tell you this because i have been told that the fences aren't going anywhere and yet um i think i bring it up every time every some point maybe they'll just come take them down because i don't know what's going to happen if we have a fire and i shouldn't get anybody out of this gate and the superintendent and somebody who's done this work before i've never and that's a lot of time um i have never

107been part of a group that was willing to share their honesty and their truth like you heard tonight 24 we we gave denali in our left 24 hours notice because we wanted them to present this information to our administrators thursday morning i love the fact that our board recognized how important the voices are of our students that that literally just gave me goosebumps but this team i can't say it enough how impactful they have been diane and i are like we we log in and we just hold on we hold on to the ride and see what's coming next uh because of the power the voices um and really honestly wanting to do better for every student each student and they heard your words when you when the board talked about individualized learning i hope

108you see that in there in the term each because they've been away from all we had all over the place early on and they were so purposeful about this is about each kid each student and they wanted that highlighted but i i just i could go on and on about this team and the work they did and the superintendent i could not be any more proud of the product that they brought forward to the board into our community and the work that they're going to be doing over these next 40 days and i've already recruited that whole team for another job as we as we move forward uh but i'm really excited and we promise you this the entire team will be here on june 22nd because it's important for that whole team you you've

109seen now two different presentations and two different groups of people come forward but on june 22nd we're going to have the entire uh team here with us to walk you through uh the wenatchee school district's strategic plan so with that incredible gratitude for the four of you but for the entire team huge gratitude thank you i'd like to say one thing so i would like to thank paul morgan mostly because it's tough what he does and having to sit through some of those meetings that can be rather tough as well and he has to take the brunt of it but it's been um refreshing to have somebody in a position who is willing to be vulnerable there have been a couple a couple situations in which he he has been one way and then in

110the end he's like look you know what i was wrong you guys were right you've actually changed my opinion let's go with that instead um or even vulnerable in admitting you know that he has to change his his standards when it comes to filtering people through a system you know how do we how do we filter qualifications or what qualifications look like in people um and being willing to admit that you know when we see things we see things solely through our lens solely through our perspective and that is our truth and that is their our world and that's how we see it and sometimes uh it's hard to go back and to admit that it maybe isn't the uh it's our truth that maybe isn't the truth um and so i just wanted to

111like just get that out there just as it's nice to finally have it it's refreshing um it's nice to have someone say like i'm wrong or you know you're a writer this isn't right and yeah you know we we aren't doing things but what we should be doing and so i just wanted to like throw that up to make sure that everybody understands that like that's been a huge proponent to why we've been so successful um and why i think that we keep progressing forward and and why i think this time hopefully that this time is gonna pretend that when we actually change things because we have all these components that finally have come together to make it happen thank you very much okay thank you and we are going to move on to our

112next section thank you go home board uh communication is the next segment and are there any board members that have communications they want to share with the rest of the world um talking about having [Music] you know there are many boards in our state on school boards that have a student wrap or two and you know having been on this board for a couple of years you know we have certainly looked at that i think we're making progress um i i think that our board will be going down that road at some point and figuring out what is what is an equitable way of having that along with these other conversations but um i i am impressed that you know that that student has reached out and gotten a petition to support that at the

113high school and um you know i think it's just something that a lot of boards around here don't have so a lot of students probably don't realize that but there are some really dynamic student reps when we go to mazda conference um the student represents section is well represented by many districts in our state so uh i i look forward to our district reaching that point where we can do that as well i don't quite think we're there yet but i think these conversations are good to have to get to there so i just wanted to um just address her comment because i feel like we haven't really discussed that as a board but that is that is my truth on that so thanks anyone else um [Music] for she's a senior and she's you

114know setting up the future for um for students that are coming after her but um i just wanted to say i attended the west side a fundraiser event last thursday um huge success from what i could tell we were there for a while um the tacos were delicious uh the tamale line was just you know out to the parking lot um but it you know it was a very um very well organized covered event-wise and it looks like they had a really good turnout so who knows what that's like i have a small degree of deals about that event as i intended i ordered tamales and then didn't go to pick them up so hopefully they went to boogie somewhere okay anybody else all right so now superintendent report just uh echo what maria said

115um unofficial count was over thousand dollars that the school raised when i spoke to corey that morning he was hoping somewhere between five and seven thousand dollars he's like covered who knows what's going to happen so to all of maria's point the entire team at west side truly making a difference in a family's life so big kudos okay now i have a statement to read the school board will now recess into executive session for a period of 30 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 42.30.110 this discussion will be closed to the public the school board is not expected to take final action following the executive session good night everybody and then we take

116a break and then we will we'll come back in here for it okay sounds good is