Regular School Board Meeting - April 21, 2025 - 6:00 p.m. (Edited audio)

001Thank you. Are we okay with video? Dave, we good with audio or Give me just one second. Do you have a C charger? A USBC charger? Yes. I'm going to take it, you know. What we're doing is probably better than just doing it. Absolutely. Okay. But Just wait for it to start. You good? Okay, we're going to call the meeting into order. It's 6:12. Uh, first up, pledge of allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. I apologize. I starting late. We're having some technical difficulties. Uh we're going to be able to have it on video, but we're having a hard time with the audio. The audio is being recorded. So, live you're going

002to be able to see video uh after the meeting. We will match up the audio to the video and post it again. We have talked to our legal counsel on the idea of can we do this or do we have to have it live being presented? That's not an issue. What the issue is is someone has to be able to go back and be able to listen to and record and again so we're doing that now. Um approval of agenda motion as presented Mr. Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Okay. Public comment topic specific. Members of the public can provide public comment related to integrated guidance prior to action taken by the board. I see one person on here, Mr. Cordier. Tom Cordier. I I'm a resident living in North Albany. Um I have

003a question. Um h how did the um who formulated the questions in the questionnaire? Uh the state those are those are questions that are posed by the state. Okay. So scan read portions of the 15 pages and um it seems like most of that was a cut and paste deal. Um, but um I I when I scan through this thing, I'm I'm going to refer to this book called The Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. He spends a a lot of time, there's one whole chapter on so-called, he titles it the magic third where um a small group maybe a group of u of executives would have an executive council and they're all male except for one female. And is she effective? The answer is no. and and he does a whole bunch

004of experiments in this chapter and and relates to uh other authors who who study uh uh group dynamics and um and it's interesting he they they so they developed the the term called the magic third and he says I think we can go one step further I think we can call the magic Third, a universal law. And there's just one quote of of of a female uh executive who was on a on a number of corporate boards. And um she, this is her quote, I'll be honest, I really didn't understand the impact it was going to have. meaning having a third of women on the executive board three or three people close for small groups and uh it's she says it made sense that it would make it easier for me but I don't think

005I had understood the level to which it made a difference to have other female females on that board. And so he goes through um uh even even education issues and um and he gives some stats here where there's like 4700 kids in in a fall kindergarten class of which uh 5% or less of the student body was black. And by the by the time spring came around in kindergarten, um they had 6% failure rates. First grade they had 8% failure rates. First grade 9% up to the fifth grade 20% failure rate. And so he points out what that backstory that I just told you um is comes out of the book where he recommends that schools look at the distribution of their minority populations. And if if you he recommends that you look at classes

006and if there's only one minority there but you have other minorities in the school that you need to be sensitive to move those people to ga to make a critical cluster so that they feel that they can make an impact in the class. And I saw nothing like that in this uh question and answer uh uh booklet. Yeah. Okay. Um so so that's my my input. I I I wish that there was something in that program that in in this uh plan that's going to be maybe voted on tonight. I wish that there was something in there about making that effort because there's nothing in there that I found. [Music] And if everyone's got a chance to look at that, do I hear a motion? Yeah, I'd move we approve the process as presented. Do

007I hear a second? I'll second it. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Okay. Next up, district leadership team superintendent report. Thank you, Chairman Morse. Uh quite a few things to work through tonight. uh want to start with legislative updates uh and then that'll move through the through this meeting and uh we'll end towards uh the end on budget. So um tracking some of the bills related to special education and importantly special education funding. Um these are bills that are still moving in the house and the senate. These are in the house. um increased sped funding cap 11% of total enrollment. Um we have talked several times about possibly seeing that move to 14 or 15%. There is growing concern about uh how the state would fund that but at the same time they are still

008moving forward. I believe it will um it is sit sitting with the house revenue committee. A lot of times these end up going to the joint ways and means committee uh when significant funding is attached to them and that um could be where this will end up. We also have high high-cost disability students in our district. We are refunded or reimbursed for some of those costs. Right now we only receive a portion of the outlay. Uh there is work through HB2448 to increase that reimbursement amount um which would help districts from a fiscal standpoint. Anyway, so they are going to end up at the joint ways and means committee and we will then wait to see funding. If we go down this, this is the legislative calendar for the state of Oregon. And if you

009look at April 9th, April 9th, which happened a week and a half ago, is a very important date. Bills that are introduced in the House must pass out of the House before April 9th. Bills that started in the Senate must pass out of the Senate by that same day. It is called the first chamber deadline. Bills that die because they do not get a vote and pass through to the other house. So that's a a way that many of the bills that go uh that are initially read into the leg legislature end up uh not becoming law. They die at the first chamber deadline. So we are now in between April 9th and May 9th and bills that have passed one house are now being worked on in the second chamber. We are waiting for

010the May 14th revenue forecast uh to see um what the economy is doing and what revenue we can project in the next two years. Many things will begin to move once we see that or conversely they will not. And so that's where we are in the legislative session. We'll talk about some more bills on the funding side. You will recall we've had this discussion that PERS has found about 160 $170 million um that's kind of left over and the law 8 House bill 849A proposes that that pays for a portion of K12's liability for PERS over the next two years. This would change our payroll rate that we have to assess on payroll and it is slightly different for each district. everybody. Some districts entered PERS way back. Some districts did not enter PERS until

011the and so different districts have a different footprint and affects districts a little bit differently. I think Jane can talk a little bit more about that. So that bill is still alive. Had a hearing the other day. Um it is um you know alive and kicking and could in fact end up being passed by both houses. summer learning both um bills right there you can see HB5047 and 2007 one is for summer school this year which was not funded in the last bienium so it's a oneoff the second is for summer school next summer and the summer beyond so there's three years we have been pressing them hard to move these quickly it does no good to find out we have a bunch of money for summer school on June 13th. It's very difficult to

012turn a program around. So, we have pressed them to move as quickly as possible. What's great is that both bills for the next three summers of summer school are moving. House Bill 304A sets requirements for early literacy grants. Currently, we have about $700,000 in an early literacy grant. this current bienium, the governor's recommended budget sits at about twice that amount of money. It has not yet been moved um beyond just the governor's recommended budget. U so we're watching that really closely, but all of those could be uh good things for the district. We talked the other day about the changes to school district accountability and these two bills sit if you look up those two bills, you'll find that they're blank. There's no real language built into them yet, but they sit ready to have

013whatever they build for a new accountability plan uh to be moved there and then and then passed into law. You will see that a few things have been fleshed out. You'll recall that there's if you don't meet your metrics, then you have uh coaching support and then you end up if you don't make it for like three years in a row, you end up with 25% of your district's budget being directed by the state of Oregon. It does allow us to adopt five choose from among five local metrics. The state board of education would define what they are. The current things that schools are held accountable for will be in place. Anything new we talked about like kindergarten and first grade attendance. Any target that would be new will be added in the 2627 year,

014not this year. It does call for us to have an interim assessment for math and language arts. You will recall every meeting we go to, we do hear about I Ready math, I Ready reading. That's an interim assessment. Um, and it does say that um, it needs to be administered and reviewed by the board at least three times per year. I think our current operations would meet that test because you guys see a lot of I Ready results as we go through the year, but we could in fact put a whole district uh, summary in front of you as well. And then finally, OD support shall be provided on-site and in person if practicable. Must be led by a person with experience in at least one of the following: systems change, curriculum, instruction, leadership, finance,

015human resources, board governance, continuous improvement plans, labor relations, community engagement, and that has broadened a lot. Now they just need a person with experience in any one of those things because one of the things that KO has really pushed back on is how do how do you have enough people at OD to provide resource to help districts and so that is a lower threshold than it was before labor initiatives right now Senate Bill 916 unemployment pay for striking workers it passed the Senate with 16 votes barely enough to that was just the majority it sits uh currently in a house subcommittee on labor and workplace standards. No work sessions have been scheduled or held. Um it is difficult to know they have until May 9th before a bill has to be voted out of the

016house. Class size is a mandatory subject to bargaining. It remains in the House. It's been referred to the House Education Committee on February 21. Recommended to rules committee without a recommendation to pass it. made no recommendation but referred it to another committee um and on April 11th was referred to rules committee by the speaker. Uh no work is being done on it currently but again they have until May 9th. So um again we wait for the quarterly revenue forecast. It's available to the public through the office of economic analysis and they publish it. Generally you'll see something in the Oregonian about this when it comes out. There is concern about Oregon's economic levels and because we're a huge import export state to Pacific Rim company countries including China, there's a concern right now that we

017could begin to see some decline in revenue and it may be visible on the May revenue forecast which I think um really holds back uh any passing of bills with funding for education. Um so we'll have to just wait and watch that. The federal grants on the other hand, um you guys just saw that the state of Oregon had a pretty clear calendar for when things would pass out or die. The federal government is much harder to understand the timing of when things may come out. um our budget process has largely devolved over the last two decades to um continuing resolutions and so it's it's a little more difficult to really put a get a handle on when the federal government may uh make an action. You will see title one is our reading program.

018Uh we have about eight schools in this district that are title schools. Uh maybe a few more in the elementary. possible reductions are being compl contemplated and we're talking about how we're going to handle any cut that does occur within the budget. Um we have heard nothing other than that title 2A which we pay for some teacher training with title three which are English language services may not be funded. We have not heard any other than that they are not going to be funded and as we sit and there will probably be no change for the next month. The K12 budget is the governor's recommended budget. The GRP stays at 11.36, which was what we opened the session at. So, several inputs um affect us right now as we are looking at the budget. You

019will note here this is a graph of the last year before COVID in the blue when this district had 9,350 kids ADMR that is not total bodies. I believe the total bodies were 9,550 at that time. And you can see that coming out of COVID, we have um we held roughly level and have been in decline over the last three or four two or three years. That level is not as severe as it looks. There you can see that the range on the graph is only from 9,400 to 8,200. If the whole number was set up on a line graph, they would be of course much closer together, but certainly still in decline. This is the number of students that we are looking at. Again, ADMR, the total number of kids in the district is

020probably 150 students, 200 students more than that. So, if you look at the 2425 number, 8,600, we're probably closer to 8,750 total kids enrolled. How you get to a smaller number is if a high school student has is only taking five out of eight classes, then they're diminished by that much. Those things add up to a lower number, ADMR, and that's what we're funded on. So that's our student count and this is our licensed FTE. So as we look at the budget, uh I'll I'll want to point out a couple things. Many districts right now are engaging in postcoid right sizing of their district. You can see that 2223 the district had in terms of certified this includes nurses um and other extraneous personnel but in 2223 we had approximately teachers total. In 201920 we

021had approximately. If you go back and look, let's go back one slide, Chris. We had 9350 t students at that time. This district had a population of students. Let's go back one more or forward one more. And yet we only had about 535 teachers. This this was a rough certified staffing ratio. And it was true in our classified as well. We had a inverse ratio. If we look at 2223 with 610 teachers, how many t how go back one slide we had 8, 50 8,870 students. So over the course of this time frame particularly 2122 and 2223 this was the time when we had federal ESSER funds when we had the SIA as brand new and we had funding that grew and we added staff. Now we are having to think more about how do

022we make schools happen and this is fundamental to the budget process. How will we make great schools as we have to cut back a little bit? Esser funds are gone and we now have to get ourselves into a sustainable um ratio as we go forward. So, we're right sizing a little bit. Most districts in the state are doing that a little bit that because they've had some slight declines in enrollment factors that are doing this declining enrollment. Our COVID funds called ESSER have been expended. We are still needing to make sure that our district's budget has room for curriculum purchases and we are working towards math in this current budget. We have also worked through staff compensation for all classifications. We two years ago made moves to increase the uh classified staff. First through picking

023up their PERS. They did not have PERS picked up. Second, through doing moves over a two-year period to the top end of their scale, which we thought was well, which we knew obviously we were all in agreement that the top of the scale was really low. Almost a similar um situation happened here as well for teachers. The top of the scale was low. Those who followed the bargaining will know that we did offer more at the top. Um those the teachers were the one group in this district that already had PERS, but we have worked to make sure that we have more competitive salaries compared to other districts. Mr. Nyquist has constantly reminded us that the legislature has not always provided the funding increases to account for the losses to inflation that occurred. So, we

024feel like we can do this, particularly if you look back at what the staff level was compared to the number of kids in 2019. We know we can build a budget that will work for kids and allow the district to move forward. Let's go to the next one. do want to address um one concern class size. This has been uh something that we debated in the bargaining and uh we are obviously going to be mindful of this as we go forward. Want to cite a book visible learning by John Hattie. Uh Mr. Hattie has a group of people that have worked for him. He has two versions of this book, first and second editions. And he spends a lot of time looking at different things that relate to education. Uh whether whether it's accelerated learning,

025other things. He gathers all the research available and then he conducts an analysis of whether that practice has an impact, an effect on student outcomes. He assigns an effect size. And when he did his work on class size, he pulled together 96 different studies dealing with class size. In his rating system, a positive effect of 0.4 or greater are called desired effects. Class size as a result of putting all 96 studies together has an effect of 0.21. And in his first edition, class sizes an impact on student achievement ranks 106th of 138 areas studied. Regardless, the district will continue to work within contract language. And obviously, it is not something we want to do, but we will definitely. So, we're not going to say because it isn't super effective that we're just going to have

026huge classes. Obviously, we have a class size limitation. Obviously, it's hard work for a teacher, but we believe that there are of those 138 areas that he did study, there are many things that greatly improve student learning. And of course, it's easier the smaller the classes are. But if we go back and we look at that big blue 2019, 535 staff, 9,300 teachers, we know that we can accomplish great successes with kids with a slightly different makeup of this district. And so that's really what we're trying to do in this budget process. the priorities student or administrator staff and student learning are going to be the focus that we really want to support through this process. Uh and I I put administrator in there but we are asking our administrators to really focus on their

027practice of working collaboratively and to create reflection in staff about their practice so that we see changes that help kids. We want a very focused and clear system that supports changes in teaching practice. Uh and that's being led by our collaborative steering committee which is administrators and teachers. And we want to make sure that they have a very clear understanding among the teachers for example of what administrators are trying to learn. I've had some good comments that have come back to me about teachers who feel like they can see what administrators are trying to do and they appreciate that. We have had an MTSS system that has been built into this district over the last few years and we want to continue to improve that. Um, try to make it as efficient as we can.

028The I Ready tests that you see at the board meetings are one example of the way we continue to monitor students. MTSS stands for multi-tered systems of support. We want to continue to do that, but we truly want to focus on the best practices that teachers can deliver in their classrooms so that green zone kids, those students that are at grade level, that they're accelerated as well. And we're not just only focused on uh intervening with students who are below grade level. We have to make sure that our public schools are a place where a green zone high performing kid can also be challenged. And that's a really important thing uh as we look at a full public education system. So as we continue to right size this is some of the points that we

029made increase in in our certified staff we added about 80 certified staff. We are still above the number then enrollment of students decreased. Uh, another point I would make classified when I got here there we had some severe shortages of custodial and the facility director at the time came over and showed me his sheet. We had increased our square footage from 1.5 million square feet in 2016 to 1.8 8 million square feet by the time we had built out Oak Grove, the new square footage at West Albany. There's one more, Meadow Ridge. We did not take, for example, Clover Ridge off. We didn't we quit serving it, but now the ESD uses it. But in adding that much square footage, we had added no custodians. and that had put a severe u stress onto our

030custodians. So even as we look to rightsize, we are once again going to have to hold harmless and not cut everyone across the board if we have to lay off because we know we are at the bone with custodial. And so we are going to have to work to make sure that we are right sizing even in given categories where we may be a little bit short because even as we were adding teachers, we had added zero custodians. And so we have to look at all of these uh from a fair perspective and from a perspective of what do we need in order to make our schools work. So it's a continual adjustment. Go ahead, Jane. Thank you. So, I don't have a lot to add because Andy did a great job of just kind

031of giving you where we are in our financial picture. So, I made updates after this updated, but um the funding challenges, as Andy talked about, are declining enrollment. For every student, we're paid in 25 26 11,000. And so, it definitely has an impact on us. and our total resources projected for 2526 because uh our beginning fund balance is decreasing and that was planned you know all that was a part of all of our budget planning is really just right under a 2% increase for all the resources and so that um definitely is a piece of our challenge and also then um some of our grants could be decreasing. A lot of our grants are based on our student counts. So, we'll be looking at that piece. As the grants decrease, sometimes those FTE end up

032moving to the general fund. And so, um, some of our expenditures on the other hand are much more than 2%. our liability insurance. And this is not just based on Albany, of course, it's based on fires, it's based on the national insurance across our state. And so it's going up projected 18%. So that's a $200,000 increase for us. Payroll expenses and just the payroll cost, the benefit cost is 5.6. And I corrected this, the salary expenditures also are 6%, not 4%. So when you add in the steps, it's 6%. And unemployment costs, we're kind of just taking a guess. This year we are projected to expend about 200,000. Next year we're budgeting 450,000. So, those are just some of the expenditure pieces that we're looking at as we try to put all the pieces together.

033And so, um, next steps for us, we're watching OD is behind their schedule. Normally, we have a lot more funding information from them. So, we're waiting for the 2425 May adjustment amount. We did receive 232 24 and it was right in line with our projections. So, um that's good. 2425. There's lots of questions because at this point it based on what the other school districts did. Did they budget their taxes low or high? Did they project their ADM low or high that uh the state will put all of that together. So, um, you know, it could be good or bad. And then for Andy said, you know, we're looking at the state. The 11.36 is where we're planning. If they were to give us more, every 100 million at the state level equals about 720,000

034for us. And then Andy also mentioned the PERS rate credit, that legislation. So remember this year our pers rates increased 4% for the tier 2 and the observe each each of those rates increased 4%. And that was almost 3 million. So in visiting with Carol Samuel she's a PERS expert that helps me a lot. She said if I wanted to guess conservatively what that legislation might mean it might be half a percent on each of those. So, you know, that would equal about 750,000. So, um that, you know, all of those pieces definitely would help us and we're just watching all those pieces. In the meantime, we're working hard to have our ending fund balance for 24 25 be as high as possible. So, we're looking at all expenditures. We're looking at our grants, moving

035FTE into the grants where we can and um watching the expenditures from the schools. We've kind of watching also our hires, our new hires and trying to hold back from hiring. And so all of those are in an effort to increase the ending fund balance. And that is all that I have. Thank you. Any questions? No. Statement? Sure. Statement. Thank you. Um I I'm about I'm about done with this. Not that I'm counting the meetings or the months or the days, but it um it strikes me that um the state controls the amount of money we get. The state dictates the labor relations and environment that we operate in. The state dictates a long list of requirements we're to meet and what we're supposed to teach. Um, and they've done it for quite some time.

036And in much of that, um, the conversation about constitutional unfunded mandates has been absent. It's article 11, section 15. U I know it well. A simple AI Google search will in in a couple paragraphs tell you about it. But um until uh the education community in its totality calls the legislature on that, calls the state of Oregon on that. This will be an annual reshuffleling of of how we do more with many more requirements with increased costs and re and school districts reinventing themselves as something less than they were the year before that. And that's just the bold reality based on my knowledge and my understanding of of just about every school district in this state. So, um I know there's a um a reluctance to push back um when there's this other body in

037charge and not wanting to poke the bear, if you will. But I can tell you in my personal experience uh at the county, there was a program that that they gave us additional requirements. uh they provided some money to do those things. Um but there was a point in time shortly into the program that the county opted out of it and it was community corrections and and when they became the state's employees again and it became the state's responsibility again magically they came up with the money to to adequately fund the program. And so those those are hard conversations. Um, I think that legislators um sign up and run for office and get elected in good faith to do good things for their community and for the state, but they they really are their decisions

038are only as good as the information that they have in front of them. So, um, I would call on those in our district who engage the legislature to to have those honest conversations and would call on uh the K through2 community statewide to do the same. Still to this day, um, the governor's office and the legislature and their budget, uh, does not make up for the $500 million error they made in our view last session when when they projected for and gave 6.5% increases to state employees, their employees, when they calculated the funding that school districts are going to that that number all of a sudden became a 5% over a two-year period. A and over time, the math just doesn't work. It won't work. And um I I thought that the effort to hold

039the school board accountable and responsible for this entire fact set and the circumstances last November during a strike uh was interesting, but it completely sidestepped the real issue that K through2 has in Oregon and the very challenging future we've got and and we've just got to have honest conversations about that going forward. I I appreciate your optimism and all that you do, all all that the entire team does with the resources they have, the requirements they get, with the funding available. Um, but I just don't see how this continues with this model long term for education in Oregon. Thank you. Okay, board reports. Sean, anything? Roger, you got any more to talk about? I I do. Uh, look, I um I want to acknowledge the South Albany uh percussion team. Uh they placed, and I

040hope I'm not stealing your Can I cover this? You yield. Okay. Uh they placed highly in a number of regional events this year. Uh they earned the right to go to nationals in Dayton, Ohio. Uh and they did that. Um while they were there, uh one of the one of the members, Alyssa Austin, was the single scholarship winner out of hundreds of participants. Uh congrats to Alyssa and congrats to Colorado and the rest of the team. Uh you had a great season and and and I personally and hope we as a community uh look forward to your attempt to get back there next year and support you in doing that. Thank you. I don't have anything. Okay. Uh, couple things. I I agree with Roger on the funding thing. I mean, it's just plain fact

041of numbers, you know. I mean, the state gives themselves 6% a year and they give the school districts two and a half. You know, uh, it's kind of hard to do what we need to do in education when we get that kind of funding. Um, so hopefully, uh, you know, we need to hold them accountable for that. Um, want to talk about, and I, maybe this is on one of your guys's, so I'm stealing it, but the more we hit it, the better. Robotics did really good this last weekend. Uh, they, I think they were second in the state, if I have, you know, somewhere like uh, 90th or something out of the Pacific Northwest. I mean, they did great. They did really, really good. Um, I know I'm going to try to get down

042there this week and and see it. Um, I I've certainly watched some things on YouTube because of course that's how the world works right now. You you look at that, right? And it impressive stuff and one of the, you know, the best we've done ever. I mean, by leaps and bounds. So, very cool. Um, middle school activities. Uh, it's kind of a hot button for me for sure. Um, this is the fourth year that we have put extra funding to that. You know, in those four years, we've added cross country. That's that's just piss poor, you know. We need to do better than that, you know. So, uh, looking to add a couple things to that for next year because I think, uh, one of the things we really can do is get our kids

043involved, uh, better and have those coaches or guidance counselors or club organizers there in their lives, both in that way and then at school, you know, and you can say, "Hey, you know what, Billy, you really need to come to practice and you really need to do well at math." And you know that that's one of the things that we should be trying to utilize to have a better connection with our kids and get a better response and uh we should do that. Uh I I feel very good about the fact that uh I believe uh GAPS is in a better place financially than many districts around us. Um that doesn't mean we aren't dealing with the same issues that Roger and we talk about, you know, when we get two and a half percent

044and we're giving a lot more to our employees, which they deserve, 100% deserve, but if we don't get that money, how do we pass it on, right? So, I think we're going to be in a better spot than many districts close to us, but the reality is, you know, uh public education in Oregon period this year is going to kind of be in lean times, you know, and the idea that, you know, you look at the numbers that, uh, the superintendent uh, shared with us, you know, we, you know, we had 9,350 students, you know, just a few years ago. Now we have 8,600. You know, that's a big change. You know, and one of the things that's kind of scary to me because I really do believe public education is extremely important to our

045country, to our kids, to our societies. You know, we are losing a lot of kids are not coming to public education. Our capture rate of those kids from K to 12 age has decreased a lot, you know, and why is that? There's all different kinds of things you could look into. There's a lot of articles out there. It's unfortunate, but something that we need to address because we want our society to continue to improve and be better, right? Um, that's it for me. Ladies, who's up first? I am. Uh, so for South Albany upcoming, we have prom this Saturday. Our prerequisite is highly to be track on track to graduate. There will be no tickets at the door, which means if you're not on track, you won't go. And if you're at the door and

046you didn't have a ticket beforehand, you'll not go in. Um, we also have a swarm who just came back from Texas. We're really proud of them as well as percussion just came from Idaho. Um, I feel bad for them because their grades might be lacking. So, I feel like we should give them a little highlight to prom. Anyways, for academic all state we have baseball in second place with a 3.74. Boys golf ninth place 3.52. Boys track and field 9th 3.48. Choir sixth and 3.47. And girls tennis fifth place 3.81. And I also want to highlight thank you for considering cross country students as a crossc country student. I really use that time for sixth grade. So that helped me throughout my classes and getting to know people. So thank you for that. Thank you.

047Thank you. So for Westn, I'd like to highlight some underrepresented sports. Um so girls lacrosse has a game this Thursday um at home and boys lacrosse has a game Saturday at Burns. Um and uh girls tennis is going to be going against McKay on Tuesday. Um so some certain events that are going on um we have our eighth grade presentation night on Tuesday where um clubs and activities at West Alm can really try to um you know get eighth graders interested in joining these events and you know hopefully just being interested in going to high school and really succeeding there. Um and we have academic awards on the 29th and prom on May 10th. Thank you, ladies. Okay. Um next up, committee, community, and school presentations. Bruce, uh to start us off tonight, uh we

048have Tabitha Cornell from Waverly Elementary. She's going to give us a fantastic presentation and share all the amazing things that are happening at Waverly. Thanks for being here, T. Welcome. Thank you. All right, let's see if I can work this thing. Look like a charm. Is it? Yes. It's working great. Oh, well, now we went too far. There we go. All right. Again, I'm Tabitha Cornelson, principal at Waverly, and our mission is we will work to develop critical thinking skills and focus on the values of respect, perseverance, and compassion. Our vision is everyone at Waverly Elementary School will contribute to a safe environment and an academic learning community. So, our first goal is working on improving uh climate and culture. And um we're using our DESA scores um to see how we're doing, to see

049where our students are socially and emotionally. Um our goal is to increase it by 2% um this year. And we want them to be in typical or strength. And our um at the beginning of the year we were at 82% in typical and strength. And um already at mid um year in January we went up 4% to 86%. So we've already bypassed our goal and we just continue want to continue that. Um we're really doing that. My counselor is amazing and has been doing a lot of social groups and classroom lessons. um really focusing on the areas of needs that we see the students uh lagging in. Um and then we're using curriculum schoolwide zones of regulation, Kelso's choice and second step. So our teachers have really been um doing a lot of in our

050classrooms and we're seeing a a change because of it. Um we're monitoring and adjusting school systems based on the our trackers and synergy data and just um trying to get more family involved so that we can build our community up at Waverly. Goal two is focused on ELA and increasing our scores um by 5% in the um we went um grade level obviously or above and um at the beginning of the year we were at 18% at grade level or above and now at um when we just tested in January we increased 12% to 30 um%. Um so we still have a lot of uh work to do obviously but we're working hard. Um, we are doing our princip myself, coach and dean are conducting walkthroughs just like last year when I talked about our

051data snaps. We're going into classrooms um with our QTEL rubrics. We're giving feedback based on quality interactions and academic rigor um and really just writing down what our students are saying and giving feedback to our teachers so that we can keep growing. We um set up learning walks so teachers and seas can observe best practices from one another. Um, we've been, our teachers do a really great job of letting or opening their classroom doors and going and seeing each other. Um, but this year we've also added that into our seas. They're going and seeing each other and learning from each other, which I think is really great. Um, and we're developing and using a sustainable MTSS system to respond to students individual needs in all areas. So, we're meeting like every six weeks um and

052discussing where our students are, moving around groups, just really hitting in on what they need and figuring out how we can support them. Um and then we're ensuring that tier 2 interventions are be being delivered with fidelity. My um instructional coach is going and giving like watching reading groups, giving feedback. Um are students getting opportunities to respond? are we are we using the curric um the curriculum well um and so that's been great to see as well and then we're u my ILT is providing PD on QTEL task and small reading groups so we've really been supporting our um teachers with that our goal three is um we want to increase by 5% in math and this is all based on the I ready as well and at the beginning of the year we had

0536% of our students at grade level or above. And now um we went up 16% we're at 22% at grade level or above. And so we're still continuing to work on that area as well with the data snaps like I just discussed. Learning walks again and um providing professional development for our teachers. Our early literacy, we have ECRE and he do core review meetings three times per year. We do intervention review meetings every six weeks. We have smart readers that come and we have fifth grade leaders that also read with our K2 students. We have small reading groups focused on those targeted skills that we've been narrowing down to what it's seeing what our students really need and intervention reading groups based on student need as well. Um, and our instructional coach has been supporting

054and providing feedback to staff, um, teaching interventions, and just providing feedback to anybody going in, supporting our teachers, our seas, really just helping them make sure they're using that curriculum well and and focusing on supporting our students. Um, other key priorities, we're attendance pilot program. Um, and we meet every other week to review attendance data and tiered levels of support for students. um we got to get our kids to school so we can teach them. Um clear behavior expectations are taught by teachers and seas depending on location. We found that our students were we were having um a lot of behavior challenges outside and we learned that our um it's because our teachers were teaching what the expectations are for like outside but when we we made it so our seas who are the ones

055watching them outside are the ones teaching that and now the students are listening to them more and we've actually decreased our um trackers by a ton like we have barely any trackers outside for behavior. Um, behavior MTSS includes weekly meetings focused on students on tier 2 or tier three intervention plans and behavior intervention meetings every six weeks. So, we have a lot of meetings to figure out how to support our students. And we are seeing a change at Waverly. Um, community outreach including family nights, parent meetings to support individual students, and positive office referrals. Any staff member can write a positive office referral about a student. I've also done two for staff. Um but it was interesting. But um so we've had 165 phone calls home to kids or to families about how well their

056kid is doing in a in an area. Um and so those are always fun to to make especially after a challenging day. Um staff collaborates through committees to make schoolwide decisions. I have committees for ILT and ground crew which is like working on the behavior systems and social committees for everything because more minds the better. Um and mine's tired. Um and then we're learning the cell 5D plus curriculum and continuing to grow in that. our next steps. Um right now we've been really working on our attendance um program on tier um one and tier 2 and then fact and um LBLESD support us with tier three which is like students that are really chronically absent and so um they're our next steps is to work with them so that we can take that on in-house

057as well and um because we just want to support all of our kids um but we really appreciate their help can we're going to um continue to promote parental involvement through a PTC. We didn't have one last year. Um we haven't had one really, but we are starting to get a couple parents that are coming and joining us and helping us out with things and that's exciting. Um we're increasing opportunities for engaging family events. Um so we're like sending out a survey in May that we have all set up so we can get um feedback from our families. What would they like to do at our school? because that's one thing that I really want to strengthen at our school is that community involvement. Um and then increase schoolwide behavior incentives. We're always increasing those.

058Um so we can see a decrease in the behaviors. our points in pride. Um, so safe and civil schools came to our school. Um, and this this was earlier in the year and they walked around and they looked at all our systems and they just kind of watched what we were doing and they said that our school was not the same school that they had gone to a couple years ago and that it felt totally different. It was positive. It felt great. The systems are solid. They they were having trouble finding us areas to improve in and that felt really good. My staff really needed to hear that. I needed to hear that. And so it was it was exciting news that we've made a big difference. And they were going on about our champs

059for all the areas. So kids knew. They could ask a kid um what what the expectations are in this area and all the kids were able to tell them. They um they were making a big deal about how every staff member was greeting kids and greeting people who came in and how welcoming Waverly felt. And that that's what I live for. Um, our preschool program is doing amazing work. They're really helping our students um, develop skills so they'll be prepared for kinder. Um, like I mentioned before, our attendance pilot programs going well. We're really working on that. We have mentors for attendance and students who need daily check-ins. So, um, we're checking in with our kids that miss a lot of school, getting them at school as me the best we can and just supporting

060them. Um, Spirit of Giving. If you ever want to see a magical event, come around. Um, right before winter break, we do Spirit of Giving where every kid gets to take home a present for every single person that lives in their house and they um they pick it out of our gym and it's it's it really is magical. You should come see it. Susie can tell you about it. Um, Smart Readers, I talked about how amazing they are reading with our kids. Um, we have gotten some community support for Joathon. uh QTEL lessons taught by ILt um is huge. Like our just watching my staff teach each other and and come up with ideas on how to um better improve math and reading and share sharing those ideas have made a huge difference. We love

061having Boys and Girls Club on site. Um we're work really working with them. We're going to do movie night and try to get more community involvement that way with them. Um and then we're talking about doing a tutoring thing with them as well next year. So, we really enjoy having the Boys and Girls Club on site. Um, we have great MTSS systems for both behavior and academic. Um, shout out to my dean and coach. They're amazing. And, um, my staff goes above and beyond all the time. They're always just doing they see something that needs to be washed, the sweatshirts are dirty, they're washing them for the kids. They're they're doing whatever they can. And, um, our learning walks and data snaps are going well. We're closing the gap with our subgroups with the focus

062on quality interactions and academic rigor. So, I'm very proud of uh Waverly and our staff and um that's some my points of pride. I mean, there's so many more. [Applause] Any questions? Uh you mentioned, so you didn't mention, maybe I missed it. Um, there was quite a bit of growth in math, but I didn't hear anything specifically that y'all did to achieve that growth. Was there anything because you mentioned a lot of things for like the reading and the literacy, but I didn't hear anything about the math. So, was there something specific about that? Yeah, in math we're we're doing the data snaps just like we're doing in reading. Okay. So, we're going through and giving that feedback on how that's going. Um, we're also doing math. We're working on math review, seeing where they're

063struggling and then giving um showing teachers how to really run a solid math review for the students so that they're miss they're catching up on those skills that they're lagging in. Um, as we stay on the projection map as well. And then um just honestly just learning walks just going and seeing each other. the teachers are learning like, oh, like my um fourth grade and fifth grade teachers are now starting to do a lot of math in small groups so that they can really see in the moment what that that um student is struggling with in that small group and catch it quickly um why they work on different things like independently or what or on my path um as well. We have my path which is great too. So that is an area that

064um we're continuing to grow in and I think our teachers are doing great by doing the learning and seeing each other. Appreciate it. Thank you. Any other questions? Yeah, it's not really a question. It's just your growth seems pretty phenomenal actually. You're been both reading and math. So, you know, I don't have I didn't cross reference you with all of your colleagues, but I'm not sure we've seen this level of growth out of any of your colleagues this year. So, that's pretty looks pretty dang good to me. So, good job. Well, thank you. We're working hard. Yeah. No, that's I mean that's Yeah, I'm it's really impressive. Yeah, congratulations. You're doing great. Uh, one question and just looking for numbers. Uh, attendance. You say you're in a pilot program. What What was it last year

065compared to this year? Well, so last year, the beginning of last year we started at 44% um regular attenders and we ended at 64% so we went up 20%. And this year we're right about the same target. Um, that's our goal. We've had a lot of sick kids but we're trying to get them there. And just so well, everyone probably in the room knows this, but I I didn't know this. Regular attendance mean you're there 90% of the time or more? Yes. Correct. That's fantastic. Any other questions? I just want to just add she was a little nervous coming in. She was a new principal, but um her presence dayto day in the halls, in classrooms, every kid known by name, just problems just dissolve around her. She's just absolutely fabulous. Thanks for all you

066do. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. [Applause] Okay, next up, Bruce. Next, we have the fantastic Breezika from North Albany Middle School. She's here to share the amazing things that are going on there. Um, and I think you'll be very impressed. Thank you so much. Good evening, board of directors, superintendent, and team. It's good to see you all. Welcome. Thank you. All right, Tabitha, how did you get this thing to work? Oh, there we go. All right. So, at NAMS, uh, we work in collaboration to ensure that all students have the skills necessary for successful academic achievement and to develop the whole child so they may be positive contributors to our community. And we always reread this at our core review meetings three times a year. And I ask teachers to reflect

067on why that all is bolded and underlined. Um, and this continues to be a really important central part of our mission, especially as our demographics change. and we welcome um students with IEPs and emergent bilingual. Um just the fact that our staff continues to be really centered on flexing and changing uh to meet the needs of all students is one of the things that I love most about working there. All right, our first goal this year was around literacy. like everybody we um at the end of last year score our students on the ESPback were scoring at approximately 53% proficient. And so what our instructional leadership team likes to do is set sort of three-year goals and then figure out the action steps for each particular year. And so our three-year goal um was 10%

068by 2027, which would put us at 63%. um and then incremental change each year to get to that point. Um how we arrived at this goal was um our instructional leadership team which has nine people sitting on it, someone from each grade level, an academic counselor, admin, our dean of students, um sped case managers and our ELD case manager. We looked at I Ready data and ESPback data. And ultimately what we identified is that our our our general ed students year by year are making steady growth in in ELA. Um but that the students that we're particularly concerned about are students with IEPs are sixth graders and our emerging bilingual. Um and so our instructional leadership team took a really close look at these three populations of focus this year. Um so some of the

069things that we tried on uh this year are priority actions. First is an inclusion co-eing model in both English language arts and math for students with IEPs. And I want to say a little bit about this because it's been magic. Um in the past at NAMS, our students with IEPs had to miss one of their electives in order to take an IEP support class. Um we called it, you know, foundations or or something like that. and if they needed support in both math and reading, they potentially missed both of their electives or PE or social studies. And so we had a real real equity issue on our hand on our hands. And then if you add on top of that kids who qualified for ELD, English language devel development, some of our kiddos were in

070support classes for half of their day. And so my team, I'm really proud of them, um did some really creative uh scheduling this year in order to push into our English language arts and math classes instead of pulling those kids out of their electives and PE for support classes. And so what we have um at each grade level are our um our LRC uh case managers are pushing into ELA and math. And so those classes are actually co-taught by the math core teacher at 6, seven, and 8 and the sped teacher at 6,7 and 8. And the same for ELA. And what we're seeing with the data with our students with IEPs is they're making way more growth than any other student population. Um, and they're a lot happier because they get to go to

071music and band and PE and all of the things that kids really love about school. So I'm really proud of my team for making that work. not only my sped case managers but also my core teachers for welcoming another adult into their room to literally teach alongside them. Um, another thing we did is we increased the scope of reading intervention to include students in the yellow zone. So not just our students who are two or more years below but also our students who are one year below are getting additional reading support particularly in sixth grade um which has been really helpful. And then we prioritize collaborative curric curriculum mapping days for ELA and social studies teachers following the feedback um following CEL feedback sessions. And I'll talk a little bit more about this later, but

072we knew going into this year that some of our teachers were going to need unit planning and curriculum mapping support in order to meet some of the domains of the CEL. And so we sort of preloaded some of that into our SIP this year. and we're seeing tier one instruction in ELA really grow um as a result. And then we added this year special ed team meetings weekly and um English learner consult meetings weekly. And these are essentially spaces for all of the adults in the building that serve these special populations to come together and collaborate with each other. What are you noticing? Um who's struggling? Who's benefiting? What's working for these groups? what parents need to be contacted and like um Tabitha was saying before the more committees and the more smart brains in

073the room working on something the better um and we're seeing um test scores really improve I think as a result of this professional collaboration okay um our next goal is around math math is not um our strength at NAMS and it's something that we are looking really closely at as you can tell there's a really big difference between our reading data and our math data from the past slide. Uh and so as a result, we had a more rigorous goal. So instead of a 10% growth from 24 to 27, we're hoping for a 15% growth in those in that three-year span. Same process. Um instructional leadership team looked at the data. Same focus groups of students that we're looking at. We did the same thing in terms of the inclusion co-eing model which I just

074described to you. And then we tried on something else. We tried on something called um which we piloted in the fall um that gave kids an opportunity to sort of fill some gaps that they had in math. Right? So what I is showing us is that some of our sixth graders are still missing second and third and fourth grade skills. And it's really hard for our sixth grade math teacher to teach both the sixth grade and the second grade at the same time. And so we tried on. We didn't love it. And then we gave each of my math teachers a collaborative planning day together with our assistant principal a few months ago and we said, "Go visit Calapouya. They're doing cool stuff. Go visit West and find out what our kids are stepping into

075um when they go to nth grade algebra." And so they went on a little like treasure hunt around the district and learned and they were really inspired by what they saw happening at these other schools. and they came back and they said, "Okay, you have to buy us My Path." And so we moved a ton of things around in the in the budget and made it happen. And so now kids in um home room once a week are getting access to my path, which again is like a whole filler for them. And then weekly in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade math, kids are uh doing my path and teachers and special ed teachers are pulling small groups of students to give them like an extra shot in the arm of of prioritized instruction. And so

076we're crossing our fingers and hoping that we see that 38% proficient this June and that those scores just continue to grow. Um yeah, so that's math. Oh, we're not there yet. All right. So, then our third goal this year is a school culture goal around um increasing a feeling of belonging and school connectedness. Our attendance from the last two years had actually increased so dramatically that we chose to shift our priority to kids really feeling like safe and like they belong at NAMS. And the way we landed on this was by looking at um safe and civil school survey data which was analyzed by our foundations team which we call our school culture team. And essentially what they found I don't have it on the slide but I can read it to you guys is

077that um the two categories on the safe and civil school survey that connect most to students feeling safe at school. So student connectedness to NAMS and studentto student interactions were the lowest of the six categories on that survey. and that that um felt important to us. And so we put a bunch of uh plans in action to try to uh work on that. And so one of them was a we piloted a cohort model for our sixth graders this fall to to support them in being part of like a community that traveled from one class to the next each period. I'm super proud of my team for trying this on at my urging. It has not been great and I'm happy to I'm happy to respond to any questions you guys have about that. But

078we've learned a lot from it and there are some pros and cons. We likely will not be doing that again next year. Um uh my teachers are just like they're sick of each other. They they need a break from each other, but there are elements of some things that are really good that we want to hang on to. Um, and then like I said before, another priority action is that we know that those electives are classes that build that sense of belonging and community and that excitement about coming to school. And so through this flexible scheduling with our bilingual program and our special education program, we were able to increase elective access for our English learners, our students in the bilingual program, and our students with IEPs. and we're seeing that have an in uh

079an increase in belonging as well. And then we also really focused on home room this year. Uh so each of our students has four four periods of home room per week. We just don't have it on that short Wednesday. And they start every Monday in circle. Um they read the announce or they listen to the announcements together. They share how their weekend went. They reflect on their grades together. They set goals together. They talk about what they want to be when they grow up. Right? So, it's that home room is really a family in a community that we're really proud of building. Um, and our admin team, so myself, our amazing assistant principal, Mrs. Dietrich, and our dean of students, who's also incredible, Cameron Thompson, meets with our counselors weekly to build those home room

080plans for the next week. So, we're not actually asking teachers to to plan them. They're just beautifully facilitating them. Um, and so having that having that thing that all students across NAMS get to collectively participate in weekly regardless of what your schedule looks like has been really important. Um, and then we've increased dances which is really fun. Mr. Schmidt came to one the other day and uh we've increased schoolwide assemblies and we've also increased attendance celebrations which has helped us towards this goal. Okay. And then secondary schools were asked to report out on how we're focusing in on college and career. And so this is uh basically our goal for this year is that students in all grades at NAS would have exposure to um and authentic opportunities to research colleges and careers. So, in

081the past, it was only eighth graders that got to participate in career day at NAMS. And it was an awesome celebration, and we always had our sixth and seventh graders like, "Oh, man, I want to do that, too." And so, they get to do that, too, this year. Uh, and so this um May 14th, we're going to have we're going to launch a career day with some really cool speakers that are going to come in. We got a firefighter, we've got some law enforcement, we've got a pop star, we got a pro basketball player coming. So, we're really excited about that. Um, and then seventh graders will spend a ton of time in May and June working on college exploration projects and eighth graders career day or career exploration projects. And then they'll present those

082um schoolwide right before promotion. Um, and then we've also made sure that our AVID elective students um well, one of our goals is to ensure that our AVID elective students participate in a college visit this year as well. Okay, other key priorities for NAMS. So, as I said before, the CEL um rubric is really important to our team. If you ask any teacher at NAMS, how is CEL going? They will say, it's really hard. We've been taking it really seriously. And I'm I'm really proud of the way my team has really rallied around this rubric and this process. They eat lunch together every day by choice and they talk about feedback from the cell which I think is really sweet and is a testament to the the culture that they have of always wanting to

083improve and do better. Um we've been focusing on curriculum mapping with support from myself and Mariah. Um and uh we continue to grapple uh with how to support our teachers with meeting the needs of our emerging bilingual. Right. So, we had the privilege of being able to hire a second SEA this year who is um fully bilingual in English and Spanish and we therefore were able to split one of our seas into ELA and social studies and one into math and science and the math scores of our emerging bilingual have increased rapidly as a result. So having that support has been really critical. And then um school culture continues to be a really important priority. Our behavior data is really strong. Um less than 6% of our students are in the red zone. So that

084means they have six or more behavior referrals. Um over 90% of our kids have zero referrals. So most of our kids are doing the right thing most of the time. Um, and of the students who have the highest number of referrals, it's predominantly our are our sixth graders who are struggling. Um, and seven of those 28 students are students in our structured support class, which is one of our two, um, special education programs. And then um a final thing for school culture is we're working really hard to center student work and student voice in our building by showcasing student work through our hallways, investing in our musical theater, choir, and band programs and revital revitalizing our leadership elective. So two years ago, if you walked into the NAS hallway, you would have seen a bunch

085of posters created by our adults who use our poster maker, which is broken. And so we um instead we're filling our hallways with things that kids have generated and created. And it it makes um I really love w walking down the hall and having a kid go, "Oh, that's mine." Or, "I made that in science." Or, "Oh, I saw Joey working on that." It just makes the school feel like it's theirs, which is important. And then finally, just like Tabitha said, we launched an attendance team this year, and we are also part of that pilot with the ESD. In fact, points of pride and promise. Again, super proud of my teachers for wrapping their minds around the cell and really investing in that process. And um want to thank my two teacher leaders, Tish Petaro

086and Katie Kelly, for for really um walking handinhand with me and supporting that work. Student achievement, we're really proud of our three amazing students who just passed the ELPA after years of incredibly hard work. Um and their wonderful teacher, Mrs. Martial. Um, and then in just one semester, this is the this is the SPAD data I was raving about. So, in only four months, one of which was taken up by a strike, our students with IEPs made 140% of the projected annual growth in reading. And so, that's what they should have been making by June and they had made it by January um without an entire month of school. And so, there's something really right about this thing that we're trying on this year. Um, a point of pride for school culture. As I said,

087less than six% of our kids are in the red zone for behavior. And then for attendance, um, for the first time, we have an attendance team that's implementing interventions at all three tiers. I can't take any credit for this. This is a 100% Mariah and Cameron, our dean and AP. Um, but here's what they're doing. Tier one, there's a random drawing at lunch and the student has to be present to win. So, they use that big fun wheel and if if your name is called and you happen to be sitting there, you get a cool prize. Um, tier two, we reward students who have improved their attendance rate every two weeks. And so, if you're someone who was in the red or the yellow and you increase from an 80% attender to an 82% attender,

088you come to the office, you get a Dutch Bros card or something cool and then you go about your day. Um, and so we've gone from 43% 43 students to 70 receiving that award. And then tier three, kids who um are basically like uh really struggling to get to school. Uh we have individual incentive programs and we're working closely with our FACT team um who comes and meets with them weekly to support us with that. That's everything. What are your questions for me? I guess I'll start again. Um so for both goal one and two uh reading and math overall. Um it showed your goals on the slide, but it didn't show you where you're actually at. Yeah. Would you like to know? Roughly. I don't I I won't be able to remember all of

089the numbers exactly, but just a rough idea and my apologies for not including that. Okay. So, uh for I Ready, we started the year uh in September with math we were at 25% proficient and then by January we're at 31%. So about a 6% increase. And then um for ELA we started the year at 43% and then in January we're at 50% so about a 7% increase. And then this is the the whole school population. So that's not broken down by subgroups. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. Is there a reason that you wrote your goal towards the state test and not I ready scores? Um that's a really good question. Okay. He hasn't. Yeah. I I don't remember why we made that call potentially because we feel like I feel like the conversation went

090something to the tune of they they show the same information and so which is the one or they show very similar information and so which is the one that the public is going to view us by um and so we set that for the end year end goals and then we use I Ready throughout the year as sort of like an internal an internal interim assessment to see how close we're getting to that external goal. Does that make sense? Yeah. And they're highly correlary so I can see why. Yeah. Did it that way. Um more I have questions about the inclusion model or the pushin model. Yeah. So do you team teach every core subject in every grade level or do you concentrate the kids that need that service in a specific section? We only

091have 1.5 FTE in our um in our LRC program. And so we're only able to co-e uh two periods of six math, one period of six ELA, one period of seven math, one period of seven ELA, one period of eight math, one period of 8 ELA. So we concentrate basically our case managers at the beginning of the year work with the previous year's case managers to identify based on the number of minutes needed and the type of minutes needed does this student need um no support at all in those core classes and therefore they would go into a class that has basically 100% general ed um students in general ed or do they need the second tier up which is potentially just pushing support from an SEA right um and then the Next tier up

092would be push and support from the core teacher and the special ed teacher. And so they would be in a co-taught cohort, which each of those coh co-taught cohorts only have about seven kids with IEPs in them. And so seven out of 33. You're not looking at like a hugely um populated class of students with special needs. And then the fourth layer of service would be kota um in your core classes between general ed and special ed. And you might have an academic foundations class in lie of an elective um and so you would get supports in three different parts of your day and then the seas are also pushing into your science and your social studies and maybe even your electives to support you. Okay. Yep. It's a model that I I like. uh

093it usually only works if the staff believes in it and uh sometimes you have more concentrated classroom management problems in that model in that particular section but with only seven kids maybe not. So that's good and then the numbers speak of themselves. So good job. Thank you. Roger. So you talked a little bit about the development of a sense of community and belonging in the school. I I'm a North Albany Tiger. I think it was class of 75 but it was 7th 8th and 9th. You're laughing at me, but I have I have a question that relates to that. Um, right. Um, so when I was there, we did middle school sports. They weren't just middle school school sports, they were the North Albany Tiger sports. And so, what's happening now in that regard? And

094do you see that as a tool going forward to help to build that sense of community at your school? Yeah. Um, we know our kids want to play more sports. Um, and one of the things that we see in North Albany is that our families who have access to participate in club sports and things like that after school are participating and getting that sense of community with each other. Um, and our and our families that don't have access are missing out to an extent. And so I'm really excited that the board is grappling with this topic of how to how to increase sports programming at our schools. Um, Mr. Schmidt shared a survey that our staff and our kids took and I'm sure you guys have seen the the results of and it showed a

095a really big interest in soccer, basketball, volleyball. Um, and I believe there are some plans potentially on the horizon to to bring an additional sport next year. We're doing basketball for sure. Okay. I I knew that, but I don't know if they knew that. And I We're going to do wrestling, too. Okay. Oh, wow. All right. Um, we're going to do two. Okay. Um, and I know kids are really excited about the addition of basketball. I have a couple petitions sitting on my desk right now to add soccer. Um, and so, uh, it they're excited about it. They want to do it. I think for some families, it's going to be a question of transportation because quite a few of our kids rely on buses. Um, but we're ready to to work with families to

096make that happen because I know kids really want it. Okay. And and I do while you are here um want to commend the maintenance staff. That school looks as good as it looks as good today as it did back in 1975. It just it speaks very highly of the district's commitment to maintaining buildings over a long period of time. The other question I have is not sure who it's for, but the there's still the the the grove of trees behind. And so those trees must have been 40 or 50 years old when I was there. Okay. And so somebody ought to check the the health of those things. We wouldn't want them falling down. And I think it's they might be about at that level. I don't know. D executive director Bolan has a tree

097bore. He's going to check the age on those trees. And well, I'm not worried about the age. I'm worried about them in the arburst out there. They're they're very tall and they're in a very tight area and I wouldn't want them to fall on the building or kids or anything else. It's one of those things that they look beautiful until they don't. Right. So, uh acknowledge that I'm into the trees or into the weeds on that one. But, um thank you. Thanks for that idea. For uh Go ahead. Just a couple comments about Bria. I got to go out and watch her staff um learning from her with her um related to the cell. We have a staff member of hers on our collaborative committee. It's just really clear that Bri is really gifted in

098terms of supporting people um in their learning as professionals that they feel pretty um confident in her. How many years have you been a principal? Oh goodness. Um this is my fifth and then three years as an AP and that was in Oakland. Yeah. And so we feel really lucky to have Bri with her background knowledge and her leadership ability at North Albany. It's really clearly reflected in your staff. So thank you for all you do. Thank you. I got a couple things. First off, I I agree with Roger. I was I've last few days I've been driving around. I've seen your crew out there mowing lawns and making things look pretty and they they need to hear. Thank you for that. Yeah, because I think it's a big improvement. Bri, I think you and

099your staff have done a great job and thank you for that. You know, uh my my I have a couple comments. One from both my kids. So, attendance, what's attendance at right now? Is it going up? Is it going down? It must be going up. Yeah. So, we Where's my attendance data? 2223. So, two years ago, we ended the year at 72% regular attenders. And then last year we ended the year at 81% regular attenders. So made a ton of growth. And so that's why we sort of kicked to a different goal, right? And then this year we're we're looking lower than last year. So we're looking at 75% regular attenders. Um and we attribute some of that to sickness, this crazy flu that was going around. And then also we had a really hard

100time getting some kids back from the strike. Okay. But still stronger than we were two years ago. I think all your ideas here and how you're doing that worked really great. And I I just share with you a thing that both my kids brought to me at one point when they were in middle school and I thought it was really interesting. Uh and I could understand it. My son came to me and said, "Hey dad, you know, uh Mikey or whoever uh got a pizza or a Dutch Brother card and stuff and I'm like, "Okay." And he explained it to me. I go figure that out. Well, what it was is, you know, Mikey wasn't coming to school and he was, you know, and so my son said, "Hey, if I miss school next week

101and then I come the week after, I'll get Dutch Brothers." Yeah. You know, and it was kind of like, okay, that's not really what we want, you know. So, I I I guess what I would say is try to those kids that are showing up, make sure they understand that they're doing great, too, and throw them a bow every once in a while. Otherwise, kids like mine who normally go all the time start thinking about how they can work the system. Yeah, it's that's that struggle is real. It is 100%. My son was all upset when I tried to explain to him that he was winning by being there. He's like, "No, Dad. I didn't get Dutch Brother. I did not win." I will um give a shout out to Mariah and Cameron. They this

102year have started hosting a quarterly um we call it an honor roll celebration. Great. Um, but honor role is not just academic. It includes kids who have strong attendance, who um have fewer than two tardies to class, who have one or fewer behavior referral, and who have no D's or Fs, right? And so they come to the cafeteria, they're making caramel apples, they're playing video games, they're not going to class. And so we do host those this year to celebrate our kids who are doing the right thing. I I think that's awesome. I'm just telling, you know, and you sound like you hear it. Yeah. you know, those kids are like, "What? What about me?" You know, the other thing I would tell you, and having been to your school, I do feel like uh

103everyone feels community and they're excited and they enjoy being with one another. And I love the fact that you're getting things up in the hallways and stuff like that. I think that's really important. Just make sure we're watching what goes up, you know, because unfortunately we get to hear about that as well. But thank you very much. Your staff's doing a great job and and very much appreciate you. A followup. Oh, yeah. Sorry, Roger has another question. Uh so so tell me about the loss of students. Have we reached out to those kids? Uh the loss of students. Loss of students because of the strike. Oh, we didn't lose them. We had a hard time getting them to come to school. They're still with us. Okay. But their attendance lagged for a while. Um we

104I think after the strike, I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but if we lost any to online school, it was like four. Okay. Yeah. So, as more kids got used to hanging out at home and Yeah. Okay. All right. They liked they liked sleeping. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Thanks you guys. Are the focal groups for the district? Uh we don't necessarily move kids outside of a grade level or outside of a class. Um we do have opportunities for our students to participate in affinity groups throughout the district. Um so they do have the opportunity to um work with and socialize um and share experience um based on the affinity group of their choice. So that is part of our program as well. Thank you. You bet. Okay, we

105have a motion. Do I have a second? I'll second. All in favor? I Any opposed? 10. Uh, next up, board policy, material distribution. Andy, this came uh after work put into it from our communications director, Beth Mallerie. This is just uh our policy around materials distribution to students within the schools. Um, that information. Uh, second reading here tonight. Um, recommend to approve. Any questions? I hear a motion. Yeah, I'll move to approve policy as presented. I'll second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Next up, uh J2B KJB signs and banners. Uh Andy, again, this was done through uh the work for our communications director. Um, if you looked at it, you'll just see that there are um, a couple of adjustments to this policy as well. QR codes are now allowed. They're very common place

106on posters. Um, and of course, signs and banners presenting false information shall be prohibited. Recommended we pass the policy. Do I hear a motion? I move to approve policy KJB is presented. I'll second. All in favor? I I Any opposed? All right, next up is report special programs. Bruce, I'd like to introduce uh director of special programs Christa Magguire and Ashley Pope. Uh they're going to be presenting um some key information. Ashley not getting up to the Oh my gosh. Here for moral support. Look at her face. You're right. Sorry about that. Ashley Christie, you're on your own. I know you can handle it. Uh Chris put together a fantastic presentation um that will give a comprehensive review um of our special programs in the district. Thanks Christa. All right. Good evening board of directors

107and district leadership. Thank you for having me this evening. My name is Christa Magcguire, director of special programs. And I'm going to maybe okay take you through a little bit about special programs in greater Albany. And so our vision is all staff are united to bring students with and without disabilities together in equal partnership to build a culture of acceptance and belonging. All staff will ensure that students are able to work collaboratively and our college career and community ready with high expectations unimpeded by bias or discrimination. All students will access the general education curriculum and environment where they will develop agency and voice. And our mission of special programs is to positively impact the quality of life of students with disabilities and their families by educating, affirming, and inspiring each student in an equity embedded

108school system. And so some of the things I'm going to talk to you about a little bit tonight include um as Bri mentioned in her report, opportunities for inclusion as well as some of what was mentioned in previous reports, our multi-tered system of supports and how that works um in conjunction with special education. Whoops. Oh, is this not the newest? Did this not get updated? Um, I think this is a older report and so I will uh let's see if we can can we let's see if we can fix that. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Um, sorry. Right after the deadline, I made some changes and sent that in. I I know we we worked on that together, so give me one second. Sean says they have um page to this page. Yes. Yeah. And then

109you should have Yeah, that's the one that we wanted. That's the one that should be the others. Yeah, you you actually have the one that Crystal wanted to present, which is great that it's in your board packet. Um Kathy, can I share this with you quick? Sorry about that. I just share it with you. Uh it's called special programs board presentation 202425. Yeah, that's it. Perfect. Oh, good questions. Yep. Thank you. Okay. So, I wanted to talk a little bit about the referral process to special education. And so it's been mentioned in a lot of the um building board reports as well as the superintendent mentioned it at the beginning of this um meeting tonight is that GAPS really embraces a multi-tered system of supports or an MTSS wherein students receive targeted intervention based on

110data that is at in the- moment data. So all of our students are screened three times a year and if a student is not meeting a skill area, they're automatically put into interventions and then we collect data and we we meet to review that data and determine if students are making progress and we work to increasing um to intensify the intervention if students are not making progress up until a point where potentially they may be referred to special education. So if they're not responding to those targeted interventions or if they're suspected of having a disability for other reasons, then they may be referred to special education. But we really do try and partner with general education to make sure students are receiving the interventions that they need prior to necessarily needing to be identified as

111a student with a disability um that requires special education services. And so then if a referral is made, we conduct evaluations to determine if a student qualifies in one or more of the 12 eligibility categories that are defined by the state of Oregon. And if so, if a student qualifies in one of those areas, then the team develops an IEP to provide specially designed instruction and related services in the least restrictive environment. We're going to talk a little bit more about what least restrictive environment means means. And then the IEPs are reviewed annually or more often if necessary. So we really do want to try and intervene early to make sure students are getting what they need and that looking at identification is um only after that process happens. So these are the 12 areas

112that students can qualify for special education in the state of Oregon. And so this also then shows you trends across time. And so one of the areas that I specifically want to highlight is um the area of specific learning disability. And so we've steadily decreased our eligibility of students um under the area of specific learning disability from 28% in 21 to um about 24% now. And that's the area that's the most linked to a high quality MTSS system. So we're really looking at those reading interventions, math interventions, and that's the area that students will typically qualify for specific learning disabilities. So our data shows that as we become more targeted in our MTSS and we provide more supports to students early on, we see fewer students than requiring um becoming eligible for special education. That's

113also the other area that potentially has an impact um with RTI is our behavior. We're we're really starting to hone in and doing um targeted behavior interventions. And so that qualifies typically students for um under an emotional behavior disability. And you can see there that we've also decreased from 5% to two a little over two, excuse me. And so those are the the areas that are most attributed to those interventions. The other areas are staying relatively stable as you would expect. some of the low incidents or or meaning not a lot of students qualify for them, we've been pretty stable. The areas where we are seeing an increase is autism. So, we are seeing more students identified as students with autism. Um, developmental delay, which I had talked to you about last year. In Oregon,

114we've only been qualifying students with developmental delay for the last, I think, four years now. Um, prior to that, uh, students with developmental delay only qualified through age of five and when they started school, they no longer were eligible. So, that's been expanded. So, we are seeing increases there. And then other health impairment and so that's oftentimes students with a medical disability or a medical diagnosis like a um ADHD or anxiety. And so, we are seeing some increase there. But the eligibilities that really respond to interventions, we're seeing a decrease, which is excellent. So this is our data around least restrictive environment, which is one of the cornerstones of special education law. We're required by law to consider providing supports in the least restrictive environment for that student. And so our goal is to have

115students in the general education classroom as much as possible. We are seeing a decrease in the number of students that are in their general education classroom for 80% or more of their day. So we've we've gone down from and that's the most least restrictive. Um we there's tiers. So, it's 80% or more of the day in regular ed, 40 to 79% of the day in regular ed, less than 40% of the day in regular ed, and then things like homeschooled or homebound or parentally placed private schools. Those numbers have stayed fairly consistent, but um unfortunately, we are seeing that more and more of our students are not in the regular education for the majority of their day. the the place where we're seeing that the increase is in that kind of middle group. Um students

116who are in their general education 40 to 79% of the day. And what that looks like in reality typically at the secondary level is students who are pulled out for two or more classes. So Bri just talked to you about the success they're seeing with their inclusion and their co-eing and um they're seeing they aren't pulling kids out for two or more support classes. And so that is the data that that you would see there is um kids that are pulled out more for two class periods or more. I had this broken down by grade level and we see our data shows us that by grade level. There's more opportunities for inclusion in the elementary and the lower elementary grades. And as each grade progresses, there's um the number of students that are spending the

117majority of their day decreases to by the time their senior year happens, that's our lowest rate of opportunities for students with disabilities to be taking majority general ed classes. And so I think it's really important as we consider the data um that NAM's piloted the inclusion model and they're seeing a lot of success with that both it's the academic support that teachers are providing but also the engagement and the opportunities for students to have more um enriching and fulfilling opportunities through elective classes that happens with a co-eing model. I think it's important to consider that within our high schools where we see that students are being removed more frequently and I'll show you our graduation data here in a little bit that you can see that that doesn't lead to great outcomes with graduation data.

118I wanted to talk to you a little bit about what sort of supports special education provides across the district. And so these supports are provided in every school. So every school has what we call learning resource centers or LRC's. Um these are typically uh pro the LRC typically addresses reading, writing, math, some organization and behavior. Um so it's kind of students that just need a little bit of extra support and this is sufficient our data shows to meet the needs of approximately 78% of the students in special education. So that means that we have a percentage of students for which the the resource centers are not meeting their needs. So roughly 22% of students are being um have needs that require a higher level of support which I'll talk to you about in a minute.

119All of our buildings also offer speech and language services which um provide communication support for social communication, receptive and expressive and also articulation. And then all of our buildings provide related services which are like occupational therapy, physical therapy, augmentative communication and so forth. So then I I said that roughly 22% of students um require more supports than what our resource rooms are able to provide. And so those students are referred to our specialized programs. So we basically have three tracks of specialized programs within the district. We have our foundational skills classrooms. And so these specialized programs are not available in every school. Meaning if a student needs this level of support then they are um placed in a program in another building potentially outside of their neighborhood school. And so for our um K through

120five, our foundational skills classrooms are located at Oak Lafayette, Sunrise, Timber has a 48 program. And then our middle schools, Memorial and Calapouya, both have a foundational skills classroom. And then both high schools, West and South, are both comprehensive high schools, have a foundational skills classroom. and foundational skills classrooms are really designed to provide smaller class sizes for students who need more intensive intervention around adaptive skills, communication skills. There are often students who have um lower cognitive abilities and really need daily living um and extra adult support with a focus on independence. And really within those we're we try and emphasize opportunities for students to have inclusion. And so that's kind of their home base and they're they're included as appropriate for their IEP. We have social learning centers which we have a K2 program

121at Tina at 35 at Liberty and then the 6th through 8th program is at Memorial and the 9th through 12th is at West. So, this program is more limited. There's only four across the district. And this is designed for students who really are impacted by their ability to communicate socially and functionally. And so, the focus in this classroom is to develop communication and social skills in a highly structured environment. And students access general education as their readiness and their skills develop. And then we have our structured support classrooms. Um, and so again, there's really one per level at Oak Grove has the K2 program. North Albany Elementary has our 35 program. NMS has our middle school program. And then both West and South have a high school structured support classroom. and then Fairmount which provides

122services K8 is an extension of the structured support classrooms. Um the the goal of the structured support classrooms is to um foster growth and learning through identifying what the function of a of a certain behavior is a disruptive and dangerous behavior and then teach positive replacement behaviors and really teach lagging skills. And so identifying what is the the barrier, what is the lagging skills, and how are we going to teach more pro-social behavior. And Fairmont is our only placement across the district that is truly 100% self-contained. It's removed completely from any other general education opportunities. And the goal of Fairmont is to provide intensive behavior support for students who require that high level of support and intervention. And it's really meant to be a temporary support to teach skills and get students back into their

123their neighborhood school. With our middle school program, currently we're doing a half day and so they're in their neighborhood school or another school for half a day and then come to Fairmont for intensive skill building um in the afternoon. We also have our community um transition program which is our program that supports our students that are 18 to 21 who have not graduated with a regular diploma. It's currently we have two locations. We got the new LBCC location going, which we're really excited about because that puts our students with same-aged peers in a setting with um similar um aged peers and more natural and authentic setting. And then it's also located at in the modular at West. And so the goal of this program is to provide transitional and vocational support to students um in

124both a community and a classroom setting. This is a look, this is just our students within special programs. And so I said about 22% of our students who are identified um for special education are in a specialized program, meaning they're they're not accessing potentially are not in their neighborhood school. And so you can see here the majority of students who are in a program are in a foundational skills program. um our our structured support and our social learning center are kind of fairly equal and even and then about 1% of our student population in special education requires um the intensive level of support provided at Fairmount. This shows where um referrals come from for for placements in specialized programs. The majority of referrals come from a resource level of support, our LRC classroom. So, they're

125trying to provide the support that's needed and then they they realize that they need to access a higher level of support. Our second largest comes from our ECSC, um, which is our early childhood special education. And so students were identified prior to coming to school as having a an early childhood disability refers about 30% of students in our specialized placements. Um, we just got done kind of talking about our incoming, we're at that time of year where we're planning incoming um, ECSE meetings, transition meetings, and of we have about 96 students, I think, coming this year from early childhood special education. And so we've been meeting with those providers um over the last couple of months to have them help identify the needs of the students and those students who they think will need a

126higher level of support. And so they identified 31 students um that they feel will need a higher level of support um than potentially an LRC can provide. And so that's about 33% of the incoming kindergarteners are anticipated to um need the support of a specialized program. And so we've met and kind of figured out which ones we've done some observations um in the ECSE setting. And I think of that we're recommending that about 67% of those students start in a specialized program. And so really what that means and where we're at is that all of our specialized programs are full. Basically, they will be full. We're anticipating with the kindergarten students coming in. Plus, the need we've already identified is that those classrooms, even though we don't have a cap on them, and we can't

127truly say that they're full, they really are at our upper limits of where we hope those classrooms um are at in order to be able to provide that individualized support that they need. And so then we get every year about 5% of students moving in that have an IEP that has a similar level of support of what we would put in a specialized placement. And so we have to be able to absorb those students as well. And then we have a little bit of movement between programs where a student may be in one program but then we identify that that program isn't the best maybe meeting the needs the best. I mentioned a little bit about our graduation rate and so you can see that our graduation rate for students in special education is about

12860%. And so remember as I said we have as students progress through the grades and up through high school is where we see students in special education being in the least amount of general ed classes. And so if we want our graduation rates to improve, I think we really need to look at our opportunities for students in high school to be in general ed classes, credit bearing classes, um, where they're actually getting uh, targeted instruction, but also able to keep up with those credit bearing classes. And then our dropout rate is um, for students in special education is around 31%. Whoops. So, our points of pride and promise, um, we really do have very dedicated staff and we have a lot of staff with specialized training that work really hard to support our schools and

129our students. We do have, as I just explained, we do have comprehensive specialized programs that are designed to really meet the individual needs of students. Um, we've been really working on transparent reporting and accountability and removing barriers for students. We've, um, been increasing our opportunities for unified sports. So, for those of you that don't know, unified sports takes, um, students with and without disabilities and um, puts them on on sporting teams. So, I know South has a really great um, unified basketball team. many of our middle schools. It's been moving down into our middle schools and we're increasing the opportunities um for unified sports. That really increases positive relationships between students with and without disabilities and increases again students feeling of um well belonging and um being welcome in spaces. We've been embedding um mant

130training and providing more ongoing man training. And so I do our um restraint and seclusion reports um in the fall. And so if you remember, Mant is a system we use for training staff on how to verbally deescalate students and how to co-regulate and keep yourself calm in responding to students with crisis, moving up into physical intervention if necessary. And so we've been providing more opportunities where our Mant trainers are going to staff meetings to PLC meetings on Wednesdays um and doing retraining doing practicing doing um more indepth coaching as needed throughout the district. Um, and then also one of the things that I had a slide on it and then I took it out because it really is it doesn't show anything other than we're doing what we should be doing, which is that

131um each year we have to report to the state on our um our disproportionality data. And so that's looking at um identification and discipline processes for um ethnically and racially diverse students in special education. and continually year after year we've we are have not been flagged for disproportionality and so I think that is worth mentioning and celebrating. So our key priorities we've been talking a lot across the last two years is the capacity and program placement limitations. So as I mentioned almost a quarter of students in special education are placed in specialized programs. Our specialized programs are more cost intensive because they're smaller class sizes with more adult support. And so as we see the number of specializ requests for specialized placements increasing, there's a cost um related to that as well that we have

132to to balance the needs um of the schools and the students with the capacity and with also knowing that with that typically comes more removal. and more removal doesn't necessarily equate to better outcomes for students. And so that then leads to balancing student needs within classrooms. How do we provide the support that students need within the classrooms that they're in? And then we always have ongoing concerns with staffing and substitutes that that we are struggling with. What questions do you have? I've got a couple on just trends overall. just tell me if there's any correlation or if it means anything. Um, so the general trend over the last four years has been the specific learning disabilities going down, but then the percentage of 40 to 79% daily in the classroom has been going up, but

133then also over maybe you could tell me more about the graduation rates, but that over the last two years that's also been going down. Yep. So, is there kind of any you mentioned that as you get up into high school, there's less support for students with disabilities, but is there anything else? Do those tie together or is that just my brain seeing something that's not there? So, I wouldn't say there's less support for students with disabilities at high school. What I would say is that students with disabilities aren't in general education classrooms as much. So, typically that looks like they usually have two support classes. Your typical student with disabilities in high school will have like a a reading development class and maybe a study skills or an academic development or a math. And so

134the opportunities for them to be as time um progresses and as teams feel like students aren't being successful maybe in the general ed classroom without significant supports, then they they pull even more. So they add at the elementary level. What that typically looks like is like a reading group will be 30 minutes a day. So reading SDI will be 30 minutes a day of of SDI and reading and then in middle school that might be one class period and by the time they're in high school that might look like two class periods. And so that's where that increase comes from with the with having fewer um being pulled from general ed more often as the years progress. And I would say sometimes as the skill gap increases because oftentimes we're not closing skill gaps, we're

135we're increasing skill gaps. And so as that increases year to year to year, then the solution is to pull them more and more and more. But what that ends up looking like I think especially with like our dropout rates is students who are less engaged in school and students who are not maintaining by having access to general education. Even if you're maybe not reading at grade level, but if you're in a general education class, hearing concepts discussed at at a age appropriate level, you're still gaining information and you're still gaining knowledge that will help you toward meeting those graduation requirements. And so often if you're being removed, you may be getting more targeted instruction in one area, but you're also losing some of that higher level vocabulary, higher level engagement. um you know student talk

136all of those things and so it it is a balance. I would say as far as also with that the increase in um stu I think there could be a correlation that sometimes as we are seeing like the the students identified with autism increasing from year to year to year. Some of those students may require higher level of support classes, maybe a reading support class, but sometimes like a social skills class or something like that. And so that could account for some of that like middle group, the 40 to um 79%. Does that kind of answer your question? Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. What's the current child count and what is what is it as a percentage of the overall enrollment? Um we are currently about almost 15%. So we're definitely over the

13711% um that we get funding for. So if they could move the floor to or to 15 right underneath it. Yep. Okay. Uh and then I you know it's not really a question but I have some concerns about what you said about incoming ECSE placements. Uh but I don't know that this is really the right place to get into it. So I'll just I'll just leave it out there for you that I'm concerned about that. feel free to reach out to me. Yeah, I mean I would just tell you that making that decision is going to increase your amount of uh below 80% pretty significantly and yep uh you know those kids ECSE is not public school and that it doesn't give you a very good snapshot as to where that kid is or is

138not prepared for public school in my experience until placed in special programs right away is usually not the right thing to do. Actually, Director Mattingley, we we are working on a new program for the start of our kindergarteners. Um so um when we look at our kindergarten academy um we'll have all kindergarteners in a large group setting. So they won't necessarily be placed right away with a teacher. So we'll have all those students um in a situation where we're going to be able to observe them for the first month of school. So four to six weeks in we'll be seeing where all of our kids are and the supports that they're going to need. So while they may have been identified in the early childhood program, we will not be placing them directly um as

139they enter our schools. Oh, so those place decisions won't be made right away. So we'll have the ability to do some exact observation. We are making some of them and then reevaluating. Some are definitely going to need the support, right? We know that going in, but there are some that might be identified as, hey, they're going to need extra help. But when we get them in a classroom and do some observations um and see how they interact with other kids and in a classroom setting, we may not be elevating them to an intensive level of support right out of those early childhood programs. Yeah. I guess I would just leave it with you and you guys know this. I know Ashley knows it, but kids coming in from ECSE oftentimes that have bad executive poor

140executive functioning and low in, you know, communication, especially receptive, oftentimes can ramp look inappropriate for a classroom early on, but very quickly ramp up into understanding. Exactly. Be successful in regular kindergarten. Exactly. I'd hate to jump the gun on placing and and that and that's part of that's going to be part of the benefit of that new kindergarten um system that we're putting together and that's across every elementary school in the district. Um it'll help us balance class size. It'll help us identify students that need additional support or don't need as much support as early identified. Um, and to match them with peers in a balanced way, uh, because we're observing them in classrooms versus just saying, "Hey, teacher, here's your roster." And now we have weird mixes of students um, of kids we don't

141even know. So, we're really looking forward to that. Um, and we're going to start that work on Wednesday, uh, with kindergarten, a a committee of kindergarten teachers that are coming in to start designing the format of what that's going to look like. Okay, cool. Glad to hear. Thank you. Go ahead, Roger. I'm not comfortable that Director Mattingly is has concerns or is not completely comfortable because I my experience is all of these things when you have something to say about something going on here. I appreciate that. I'm happy with you know what you're talking about. So I I look I'm going to ask you to continue to stay engaged in this conversation with these two as just a fellow board member. It's not a fivem minute conversation at a board meeting and we check in

142next October to say to see how that went. Okay. So thank you. You're done. Yeah. Okay. Uh first off, thank you for all the work. I know uh you and your staff do have some of the most challenging work out there and uh it's very demanding and I think it takes the right attitude mentality and everything else and uh you know it's tough and and I think you know the percentages and how much we get funded for and all these are issues you know the idea that a lot of our programs are maxed out's an issue right so I I have a couple questions for you how many kids do we have at Fairmont right now currently we have three students Okay. And just because I don't know much about it, the transition program, do

143we have lots of kids in that or I I think we have about 38 students in the transition program. Okay. That's a lot more than I would guess. So 13, 18 to 21 year olds that we're helping launch to adulthood. That's all right. That's fantastic. Um for me, this is just a real tough balancing act. You know, I I I I've had a couple I have a couple kids that are here at GAPS. Uh, and I can tell you my experience through this has been I haven't always been happy how it's been handled, you know, because your kids lose academic loss because of what's going on in the classroom, right? But also, I really believe in the idea of having as involved as we can in the classroom as possible. You know, the hard part

144there is unfortunately the academic loss and also some of the staff and even other students that get can get injured from it. you know, so it's it's a really tough balancing act and it changes legally and every other way so many times it's kind of tough to keep up on, but uh thank you for all the work you're doing and uh you know, we're striving for the goal. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Kristen. All right. Thank you. Oh, yeah. Uh recess. sitt I know you think we're I just I Go ahead and get started again. So, next up is staffing report, Susie. So, I um put a copy of the staffing update at your um table and well, actually Chris ran it off and put it there for me. Um, and I inadvertently left off,

145if you look at transportation, I inadvertently left off um the trip drivers who fill in, they don't have a assigned route, but they're filling in every day. And then um the type 10 drivers. So there's trip drivers, there's 14, and type 10 drivers, there's 10. So 24 in transportation should be added to the 23. Okay. In transportation I see 108. You see down at the bottom in um transportation there's uh there is yes 108. Okay. That I'm sorry 24 should be added to that. I I looked at uh facilities. Um the other question um someone just asked me oh you did um was good question nutrition services down at the bottom it says one that's because anything that's in a building is up above and there's only one person that works at facilities in nutrition

146services and classified staffing. They're all counted in the building. Okay. Any other questions that you have for me? I don't believe so. Okay. Um but this is the report that you asked for um quarterly. Yeah. Thank you. It just really allows us to understand numbers and where they are. And then the second sheet you'll see broken down by school. I do have a question actually about transportation. So the 108 often times I hear that lack of drivers is a reason we can't do certain things like say middle school sports transportation. What what does that number need to be in order to alleviate that problem? Dave might be able to answer that question better. I don't know if it's a num it's the number, but it's also absences and things of that nature. Typically, we we

147have about eight reserve trips. That's what we'd like to have. I think currently we have about six. Okay. So, usually it's it's a staffing of eight subs um in that trip driver department. So, are you is that 108 that's fully staffed? You can that's what you're or do you have open positions? We do not have any open positions right now that I know of. Okay. And that is the first counting the relief drivers. Okay. And just so you know, if there was an open position in the in the building, they're counted in this. Oh, even the open positions are counted. Oh, okay. Yeah. And remember, FTE is an eight hour, right? Um so you'll see staffing is a 1.0 is a full-time person. And so h you'll see that the um staff numbers are always

148greater because that there's a lot of people that don't work an eight hour day and there's a lot of six and seven and and fourhour people in classified and then a lot of times um there is 083.5 in FTE at certified as well. Why do you do it that way? So that you can see both you can see the number number number of people and then the number of full FTE right but the FT is a bit misleading because so much of the cost is in like insurance so two six hour people are both going to have full insurance payments so it's not like you can do the math doesn't help right I mean that's correct but I just want you to see it both ways and and Ryan's right in a classified position um

149if they have six or more hours they get full um benefits So, that's a good point. Any other questions? Okay. Uh, next up, we're just talking and we've already done a lot of the talking about this new business, talking about um budgeting, right? You know, and the reality is there's too many unknowns for us to really understand what's going on because we don't know what we're getting from everybody. Andy, go ahead. Well, we have um a couple things after we uh spent time here um over the last couple of days looking um at what the potential changes could be. I want to take you through several opportunities remain that could change GAP's budget picture. Miss Knopsiger has said a couple times, the general fund is currently budgeted in the governor's recommended budget at 11.36. And

150roughly with what we know now, that is a $5 million shortfall within the district. If we were to go tonight, we would go on that knowledge and begin to work on 5 million. We believe though that there are impacts to that. We will get a May adjustment in our own funding which is completely outside the legislature. It's just the state reconciling as they move forward. Uh that could be a positive May adjustment. That's one. It's not even listed here. The early literacy grant that the governor has recommended but has not been finalized actually doubles the early literacy grant. So that could be 700,000 or so. the allocation of purse funds. Jane mentioned that tonight and we know that bill is still alive. So that could and obviously as it gets closer we'll be able to

151get some calculations probably out of the um Piper Jaffrey who who does our purge calculations for us. And so we have multiple things here which could diminish that total um cut that we have to make which I think it's better to rather than go out and go through a process and do more cutting than we need to or notify more people that we would want to wait and see some of those things come to fruition because if you look there at the last line the budget calendar begins on May 28th. So there's an opportunity for us to learn more. So that this can be a um a diminished reduction and also we don't know all the federal stuff right with title stuff. Yeah. I mean there's a lot of moving pieces. There are still some

152moving pieces. I'm not sure that any given period of time will take us out of a period where the federal government isn't going to do anything. Um it's very difficult to um plan for their actions at this time. So I recommend that we do not uh take any action tonight. Okay. Uh, lot to be considered there. Uh, next up, L2, school roof repair replacement. Uh, Dave. Yeah, I've been looking forward to this all day, so I know it's late, but I I I just uh I'd like to introduce Lauren Stanley, our director of facilities here. Um, I'm really proud of Lauren's work. He's been with us for just about two years, right? Coming up. and um him and his leadership team have completely uh revamped the services and supports we have for our schools and

153they've done an outstanding job with that. And I think if you did an analysis of his calendar, he's probably out building 75% of his day and he's probably in the office about 25%. So I don't see him around that much and that's probably a good thing. So he's out supporting working with our buildings, supporting teachers and making sure things are getting done. Um I asked him to come tonight to speak uh a little bit about our remaining bond funds. We've met our threshold of spending there and Lauren and I for the last almost year have really been analyzing the needs across our district and really have come down to the essential components and and he can speak to it better than I can. And so I've asked him to come tonight. But before I let

154him begin, I'd like to recognize a few individuals. We had a substantial um graffiti event at South Albony High School on Friday evening late and Saturday morning uh AJ our custodian specialist sent out a chat to custodians and we had McKenzie from Calapouya, Chris from West, Edy from Oak Grove, Ricardo from South and Susie from South and Lauren himself all respond and cleaned up. How many hours you spend there? All in it was about five and a half, six and a half, somewhere in there. Yeah, we had about 13 spots and they're just an outstanding effort of classified staff. So, I'd like to recognize them. I would tell you I talked to the principal from South Albany this morning and he was so thrilled about the work that you guys did this weekend. Well, and

155that's a credit of our custodial staff. They respond. they come running when we have a need and this was a big need um that we had students showing up to school and not having to see the things that were on the wall was a big deal and I I really want to thank them. Um but again I turn this over to Lauren. He'll take you through it and and answering your questions that you have. I just want to echo that also really quickly because it was absolutely amazing for people uh Easter weekend to drop the things that they were doing and come down and assist with this this major dilemma that we had down there at South. Um just absolutely amazing and and I was so proud to have a team that would come down

156and support us like that. So, okay. So, I'm here to talk to you about uh some of our uh critical facility needs here. uh remaining bond funds. Uh so we'll start out if I can. Okay. So uh we had the significant uh ice storm that occurred uh was a year ago January and we had a lot of significant repairs that that happened to our facilities because of that ice storm. Some of those were due due to freeze. Uh we had some internal fire sprinkler lines that froze. South Albany High School had very significant event in building 9. Uh I mean it was it was pretty bad. Uh we had several other fire sprinkler uh lines that froze. Fortunately, a lot of those were outside. Uh they were dry systems that had condensation in them and

157they ended up freezing and bursting. Um so fortunately we got a lot of that repaired. Um in addition we had a lot of school roofs that were affected. Oak Elementary School, Tequina Elementary School, Southshore Elementary School, and North Albany Middle School all had significant failures with their roof systems. Um, which we experienced a lot of leakage the interior of the building, a lot of ceiling damage. Um, so, uh, we basically contacted Summit Restoration. Uh, there it was there was an urgent need to try and get things dried out as quickly as possible. um they came in, did a lot of dry out work. However, some of the ceiling damage was so extensive in these in these buildings that we had to wait for a time when we could actually get in there and do the

158demolition and do some repairs to some of those ceilings. So, that kind of drew out the repairs a little bit and it it we had to wait for summer to get a lot of that stuff done. Uh so, we did file an insurance claim, worked with the insurance company on that. Um there's a little bit of difference in in what the cost that the insurance company is covering versus what um we paid summit. Um so they brought in a a consultant that did a review and they felt that the costs were excessive. We're in the process of working with them currently to try and see if we can get to the bottom of this and see if we can get some additional coverage. Um so that's kind of where that's at. Uh the bottom line

159is we did a bunch of really cheap repairs um in the winter Time. Hatch them. Bottom line is there's really no fixing that roof. We need to replace it um and replace all of the roof drains and drain pans on that roof. So that's what I'm recommending for that location. So, uh, our current estimate, we haven't received final cost for North Albany Middle School to replace that area 7, as well as doing repairs to the other area of the roof that needs it, uh, is approximately $800,000. Uh we have uh repair estimates for Oak Elementary about 138,000. Southshore Elementary approximately 122,000. Tequina Elementary approximately 140,000. And these these are more significant repairs. A lot of this involves um work around all the drains because we've experienced a lot of failures around the drains. And so

160this is basically redoing those drains and using a poured polyurethane product uh that will help to seal those and prevent future leaks. And it's it's not a guarantee uh but it's going to buy us some time. So So just to clarify process, we are right now going through the bid and we will begin to bring the bids above 150 for approval. Yes. But inform them of bids that are below. Correct. So once we have final costs and we get the bids in and we know what the final cost is, uh yeah, we'll come back to the board for approval. Absolutely. Um and and have more updated cost information. Okay. So currently uh we have estimated uh about 3.1 million uh left in the bond uh account. So we're looking at a recommendation to spend approximately

1611.2 million on roof repairs. We still have a solar requirement from that bond that we need to complete. Uh and that amount is approximately $900,000 that we need to spend. Um and then long range planning which is something that we're working on. We recently completed uh all of the uh facility assessments for the district. Uh bureau veritas uh actually performed all of those for us. Um they need a little bit of work, a little bit of tuning and and then we can look at a long range uh facility planning process. We'll have to hire a consultant of course for that. So that's a budget amount for that. We have a lot of fire alarm systems, eight different sites that are completely outdated. Um, they're proprietary. They're outdated. We're having problems getting parts. So, I'm recommending

162we we look at those sites and uh make, excuse me, replace those prior to having some type of catastrophic failure where we potentially don't have an active fire alarm in in the building. So, uh, also we have a project at Liberty when they did the mechanical upgrade at that site. They they left some of the rooms that do not have outdoor air intake. They have unit ventilators that are in there. Um, so it's a little bit better than Central was, but we really are not getting the outdoor air that we need into those spaces. This would basically uh put demand control ventilation unit ventilators that we would install in in that site. Um fortunately we have some that were purchased previously for NAMs that are that are extras. So but there will be some additional

163costs for that and then basically a $75,000 contingency for wherever these numbers move as we start performing these projects. So, thank you very much. Does anybody have any questions? So, you mentioned that the roofs are generally 23 to 25 and there would be repairs to Oak, Southshore, and Tequina. Are those at the point where they're close to being or is repairs going to add additional time or is that something where they're close to failing another ice storm and we're kind of at the limit already or what's that general look like? Well, there is no guarantee. Um but to replace all these roofs, we we need about $9 million. Um, and so, uh, my hope and intent is that by doing these more thorough repairs that, uh, it buys us time to get to a point

164where, you know, should the board decide at some point here, uh, to to go out for a bond, then, you know, hopefully, uh, we we could do that. So, that's a lot of money to come up with right now. Um, and I I have faith that we, you know, these repairs are going to make a bigger difference. Uh, and and hopefully like I said buy some time. Appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. When I look at the proposed projects that Lauren went through, I look at the roof repairs is is kind of a necessity because we don't have any insurance coverage on that. So, anything that happens there, we own and we'll have to pay for it. The bond, solar requirements is a requirement of the bond. Laundrying planning sets us up for the future.

165Fire alarms, got to have them and they're outdated. And then Liberty is the last building that we have that doesn't have fresh outside air intake into six classrooms. We have about another 1020 million of projects lined up, but we really picked out these these as the priorities moving forward. Where you going to get the money to do that? We hopefully in in a future bond. Good luck with that right now. the the needs are great. I mean, it's honestly, it comes down to a priority that we got to keep the water out of the buildings. Um, that's that's number one. Um, and u, I had several other projects on that list as contingency projects in case we got better fund or or or better pricing. But the reality is uh there's just not enough money

166for everything that needs to be done. Mr. Chairman, I move to authorize the bond spending plan as presented. Do I hear a second? Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Okay, we are complete. Unless someone else has something they want to Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Uh I do I hear a motion to adjurnn. I'll move to adjourn. Hear a second. I'll second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? All right. Thank you everybody. Have a good night. Thank you, gentlemen.