School Board Work Session 4.15.21

001welcome everyone we are waiting for one more school board member to have quorum so we are going to go ahead and start with information items while we wait so our first presentation is from hall elementary oh okay so we'll have a video presentation and questions after the video yep yep i'll go ahead and introduce heidi lasher from hall she'll come one up tonight her video is first and uh it schools and i'll read the explanation like i should myra um schools in the district of manasseh share information about their school improvement plan plans and share highlights of ongoing instruction happening in their building time has been set aside on the news agenda for hall elementary school to provide their instruction highlight and first up is paul and heidi lasher is here to write as principal

002to represent her school good evening chair peterson school board and dr perra i am heidi lasha principal at hall elementary school and i'm going to share with you the hall elementary school improvement plan hall elementary is an amazing community we are a title 1 school with 380 students 12 spoken languages and 25 language learners about 23 percent of our students are mobile moving in and out of the school community we are a diverse learning community at hall we celebrate our brand hall together all students and families who walk through the doors at hall become a unique member of our community from the moment they arrive we begin to foster caring relationships supports academic social and emotional are in place so all students have equitable access to academic rigor together we build character strength knowledge and

003memories that last well after a student leaves the hall family in addition our grade level teams and staff engage in purposeful collaboration every day hall is celebrating diversity and teaching anti-bias education in every classroom teachers are leading lessons on identity diversity justice and action using the race racial literacy standards from learning for justice many of the learning for justice racial literacy standards have been embedded in the oregon state 2021-2022 school social studies standards hall students are engaging in these lessons through critical discussion and reflective writing based on their own identities and diversity within their community this work has been led by our kindergarten teachers samantha fowler cassandra holliday and abby newcomer and our third grade teachers jennifer ganowski anna martin and jessica mim we have purchased diver diverse books written by bypoc authors for classrooms

004book sets for small group instruction and have added to our school library attendance has been a relentless focus at hall through attendance initiatives and interventions hall has made progress on the number of regular attenders in february of 2020 81 of hall students were regular attenders before closing our doors due to the pandemic our work has moved from attendance to engagement which i will share more with you in an upcoming slide the number of office discipline referrals has reduced over the years we have incorporated restorative justice practices school-wide social emotional learning including most recently ruler recognizing understanding labeling expressing and regulating emotions this is a look at our i ready data for reading and math our reading trend lines show an overall growth across years we see urgency in our fifth grade growth as we can

005see a widening in the gap we have analyzed our dibels data and our responding the data slide on the right shows overall growth in math over time with a narrowing of the gap between hall third graders and gresham borough school district third graders indicating a slight acceleration our previous school improvement plans have included mtss supports mathematical discourse school line vocabulary routines data driven instruction and teacher collaboration our first school improvement goal is accessible and intentional instruction teachers record and discuss learning intentions in their professional learning teams they record clarity in weekly learning plans and communicate learning intentions with students in meets and in their digital platforms our second school improvement goal is social emotional learning we are in year two of our focus on ruler all staff have been trained and we have started implementation

006of rules ruler strategies in some classrooms including developing classroom charters classroom charters are classroom norms developed as a community based on needs and billings hall focus on racial literacy standards have also contributed greatly to our school and classroom communities this focus is evident in most things that we do our third school improvement goal is attendance and mobility this is a continuation of our work on attendance and last year due to our mobile student population we added a focus of leveraging evidence-based practices to improve students success when they moved to hall after the pandemic this work pivoted to engagement we worked with all hands raised and quickly developed a metric and tiered process for student engagement of the students that attended hall last year 57 percent of the students who struggled to engage in distance learning

007were regular attenders last year our accomplishments at hall are a result of the constant and continuous collaboration amongst teachers and staff the collaboration at hall has led to school-wide rollout of anti-bias education the relentless focus on engagement and our sense of community i leave you with a quote from marley a third grade student in mrs min's classroom a charter is making a choice together to affect the community thank you for your time do we have any questions at the moment i do thank you for your presentation i'm wondering if you can share some of the pd or trainings that teachers have had around the implementation of anti-bias education so we've been using the standards from learning for justice formerly known as teaching tolerance so they've had a name change a good name change and um

008they have a self-led training on in that website as well as um most of our teams have the work has come from the book unpack your impact which has made a lot of um influence on the rollout of the standards and then collaboration and also as a group teachers doing their own work reading um ibra mex candy bettina love and other um sources for their own personal work does that answer your question yeah it does um i just want to make sure that i'm paying attention to our board member who's logged on and amanda who just got here bro do you have any questions or comments i i just want to say how i really appreciate the focus on anti-bias uh education and thank you so much and also the emphasis on social emotional this

009was a great presentation um my one comment is why would you say anti-bias and not anti-racist um that's a good question i think that language comes from the learning for justice website and standards so i um i'm not quite sure how to answer that but that's a good question thank you thank you i i would encourage you to lead it to anti-racism because when we talk about equity we're really talking about the intersectionality and what we really need to be careful a lot of times within our systems is when we talk about bias as a whole a lot of times we talk about disability and we talk about um income and other forms of prejudice and oppression but a lot of times when we we do that we do leave out race and so it's

010really important that when we are talk having these discussions that we're talking about you know being not just disabled white and disabled but being black and disabled being uh black and low income or not black but bipac look at the diversity but you lead with race because within the intersectionality of the bias one factor and common denominator that you can't change um is ethnicity and so i would just encourage you to really lean into anti-racist and anti-racism education but thank you very much thank you for your feedback any other questions or comments though um i have one more can you describe a little bit of the work that um your school has taken part of with all hands raised and the impact that that work has had with students for the engagement yeah so we

011quickly realized we needed to make some metrics and a tiered system of supports for our students who are struggling to engage and our metric was less than 50 assignment completion and so the uh intervention started the classroom teacher level where classroom teachers did interventions and keep having students stay after class with assignment completion sending families lists of assignments helping coach families to understand the google classroom the list goes on and then teachers referred students to our intervention team were we able to make home visits and coach parents on using incentive kits and just establish a systematic plan for that because we have a lot of our work was focusing on engagement so we made sure it was systematic and that we were recording what we were doing any other questions or comments before we conclude

012thank you so much for your presentation thank you okay robin you're still there correct yes okay so now we're gonna circle back so that we can approve of our agenda now that we have quorum so i'll call to order our meeting at 6 23. uh present we have director howard director stowers virtually and director orozco beach um and myra gomez so moving to the agenda approval so i would move to approve the meeting agenda and because we are a limited group tonight i would ask that we pull the policy review first reading item off the agenda i i disagree but we can vote okay so we'll move to vote on from today's agenda so we'll vote we'll vote on that yeah because we don't have uh we need a four vote in any action items

013today and there are only four of us so um knowing uh director styles towers um vote already or we can't remove the agenda so our motion is uh dies for lack of a second [Music] so so are we voting on anything today then if that's okay i'm gonna make a motion uh to approve the meeting agenda is presented a second okay moved uh the agenda has been moved for approval by director howard second by director stowers any discussion so everyone almost in favor any opposed okay so our agenda has been approved um so we're gonna continue with clear creek middle school i'll introduce for you tonight uh dave atherton principal clear creek middle school for questions and to represent quick creek good evening cher peterson dr pereira members of the board and directors i'm dave

014atherton principal at clear creek middle school home of the wildcats in my ninth year as principal at clear creek there's been a lot of changes the five-year demographic averages show an increase in students of color outnumbering students identifying their ethnicity as white clear creek has the second highest population of english language learners in the district now our special education students access core classes and electives throughout the day with inclusive support from our amazing educational assistants and resource teachers our free and reduced number is likely over 90 percent if all applications were submitted by families currently all students have access to free breakfast lunch and supper if in the sun program clears creek students have a high mobility rate averaging 31 percent from june to june our staff contributed this list of what makes clear creek

015unique our award-winning steam program instructional technology verizon innovative learning school and lab programs and innovative staff provides students with access to 21st century tools and skills to explore career pathways and a supporting environment our diversity teamwork and commitment to students and colleagues are hallmarks of the school grounded in the four r's respect responsibility relationship and results was a challenge at clear creek prior to distance learning this year our attendance team increased individual communication and support to students and families in distance learning as we transition towards hybrid and full in person the importance of sustained staffing will enhance relationships between students families and staff we continue to seek opportunities but need more to increase our academic intervention and support to help students succeed our team identified interpersonal relationships incidents between students and students and students and

016staff targeted interventions focused on social emotional learning and relational aggression and advisory lessons health classes and the creation of a student affinity and focus groups to discuss issues staff explored issues of disrespect and disruption through an equity lens promoting cultural responsiveness and restorative practices as evidenced in the data we were on track to reducing these issues before beginning distance learning academically the majority of clear creek students are one or more grade levels behind in math and reading teacher leaders are discussing the differences in grades and performance in these areas to communicate students actual knowledge and skills instead of academic behaviors such as work completion in 2122 we will offer four academic support classes in math and reading we hope to further our work with the grade and performance discrepancies exploring improvements and changing practices the

017school improvement team set this goal to increase student engagement and promote a positive teaching and learning environment and the relationships students learn about positive interpersonal relationships in the advisory lessons created by our pbs team during distance learning staff created virtual socials innovative family outreach increasing conference attendance by over 25 in the fall and collected student survey data on a variety of topics to make choices to support high school graduation rates our team chose to set a goal for 8th graders to accelerate their math growth and achievement through a variety of instructional and resource trainings and efforts to reinforce math skills and concepts across the curriculum we hope to improve high school math readiness chronic absenteeism has challenged the students education and culture and climate in the building through a variety of efforts we hope to

018increase attendance when we return to in-person learning due the impact of cover 19 on schools the 1921 data and trends cannot easily be quantified or representative of the available actions which are challenged by distance learning as staff returns and systems begins to rebuild the team will revisit the goals and plans updating with new baseline data and activities clearcrete continues to be a student-focused and collaborative workplace our licensed and classified teams strive to close achievement gaps and performance gaps while providing college and career pathway experiences our award-winning steam program kickstarted instructional technologies but our recent verizon grants and projects exhibit sustained innovation our active equity team ensures multiple perspectives and decision-making in the school as students experience a variety of career pathways cultural relevant teaching and learning and welcoming inclusive environment and supports development as a

019whole child thank you thank you any uh comments or questions from our board members all right so you need to turn yourself off there we go um i just have one question about uh the slide that has behavior trends um what sorts of things are in incident reports because you have other things that are down below so are those included in the incident reports are there other things that are part of that yeah great question uh incident report is really where we start out um with students identifying what they perceive as a problem so it could be relational it could be um something that they saw that they want to report so it's really just that that first step of um identifying a challenge or a problem that they're having with another student and seeking

020resolution so not all of them are directly related to something that that could result in some sort of um disciplinary action or referral um sometimes they're they we have instant reports that just say hey i'm having this problem with the student and i would like some peer mediation or i need a counselor support i have a question about uh your stem program so will how many students english language learners are taking advantage of your grade stem program and with academic support courses will that also interfere in more students having access to stem classes i cannot hear is there sorry was my mic not on no it wasn't okay my fault oh let me start again uh so yeah we have two elective classes um for each grade level if uh one of those is an

021eld class or a special ed class then uh that would mean that they they have one less opportunity there uh one of the things we we put into place this last year is um students who are on track and doing well on their eld were able to remove them and from an elv pull out and they're receiving support from uh licensed eob teachers in social studies and language arts um so they're getting that eld support still and and working on that which opens up that elected period and same thing with the special education population then with that inclusion they're getting a lot of that sdi in the core class now so we have more students accessing stem as well as art music so so that means that teachers are uh fully licensed so their social

022studies and eld and then so would that be an option for students who are newcomers or early intermediates to be able to have access to stem courses are there stem teachers who are eld endorsed uh all newcomers within the middle school in our district uh they go to the newcomer program at dexter so i'm not sure how they have their electives set up there uh but as any student comes back to us in their second year once they exit that newcomer program then they would they would be right into kind of the regular scheduled programming any other questions or comments from board members my last one uh you mentioned that one of the goals is your climate and culture with with students um have you is that based on student survey or what what role

023has student voice played in that goal and in the improvement of of that goal again uh great question in terms of uh in the distance learning how are you getting the students involved uh we we use a variety of things uh we've we've had several surveys um some of those are district as we work through panorama with the survey earlier this fall we have done additional uh surveys that our counselors have pushed out or uh we've done you know shorter surveys in terms of um perception checks on what students feel that they might need that information goes directly to our counselors and they identify students or families to follow up with the other piece to that the beginning of this year we contacted every family through our bilingual staff or through other staff or as

024needed interpreted students to gather that information and then as we found out what the needs were or what the interests were then we bring that in and try to incorporate that into uh our communication our planning our decision making or our additional options and i just had a couple comments can you guys hear me yeah go ahead yeah um you know and this is more about you know for the board how we want to you know move forward with tracking these it would be really i think nice to have a template of how our middle schools elementary schools high schools are presenting back to us and have more of a consistent formula so we can see how people are doing and ensure that there's information consistent information in these updates something that i believe is

025really important is to always be tracking engaging our academic achievement gaps and our disciplinary gaps within our students and so moving forward you know just looking at our templates making sure that we're including those target areas that we are really focusing on and we want to uh make those improvements on but thank you for the presentation it was really great thank you thank you we have um gordon russell presenting this uh director gomez uh roland had a calendar confusion he's on his way now so if we could move deep creek up that would be helpful and he'll be here soon okay deep creek well as i say that i should introduce principal here as well barb keaton is here to represent her school so thank you very much good evening chair peterson grisham brothers school

026board and dr pereira i'm barb keaton the principal at deep creek damascus k-8 school and i'm excited to share a bit about our school improvement plan with you at dcd we currently have 433 students across nine grade levels while most of our subgroups have remained relatively constant over the last four years our spread population has grown by just over three percentage points and our overall racial diversity has improved slightly while it still remains significantly lower than most schools in the gresham borough district we are unique because we are the only 38 school in our district and we're located in new orleans county we also have a school-wide health system where all of our students and staff are divided into four different houses that we use for school-wide competitions celebrations and to help us build a

027stronger community across the k-8 spectrum at dcd we continue to celebrate strong participation from our students and also our families we're fortunate to have a very active parent-teacher organization that supports our students and staff in many different ways we're also focused on building strong personal leadership skills for each of our students with a school-wide focus on modeling and teaching the seven habits of highly effective people based on the work of stephen covey as i mentioned in the last slide generally our students have high attendance rates you can see the percentage of students who are attending at at least 90 percent of the time in the green column because of the low number of students in each grade level each student's journal strongly impacts their overall percentages so it's helpful to see exactly how many students

028we're talking about so in the yellow column you will see the actual number of students who are attending 80 to 90 of the time and then the red column the actual number of students who are attending less than 80 of the time our team works very closely to support individual students who are not reaching that 90 percent attendance rate to show how our students are doing academically we'll start with a table that shows bcd's data from the state testing in 2019 when last year we did that compares that to the state averages and you can see we generally perform higher than the state this slide is to show our trends in our i ready reading data the goal is to grow the green bar which indicates the students at or above grade level and to

029shrink the size of the yellow and red bar which are the students just below or significantly below grade level our students made growth this year even in the comprehensive distance learning the top white box is data from this school year comparing the fall diagnostic scores which is the smaller kind of shaded outline to the january february scores in the top line the lower boxes the same data from last year so that you can compare how we did in distance learning to how we were doing when we were in person this is the same data but for middle school i ready reading and you can see that we grew the green bar in both years but not as significantly as at the elementary level and this data is for i ready math at the elementary level

030where the green zone is also growing and we see reduction in the red zone and the last one of these charts is for irate math at the middle school level it's important to note that about half of our eighth graders are taking the high school integrated one math class so they do not do ready math and they're not always included in data these next two graphs were added after i submitted my presentation because i just received them yesterday and this one shows the trend across the last three years in grades three five and seven and it compares how we are doing across how our school is doing compared to the school students across the gresham school district on the i ready reading assessment this is that same trend data for grades three five and seven

031but it's for already math assessment and again the black lines are progression barlow and the colored lines of the concealer our first is it frozen for everyone or just me did we lose are there people on here like what's going on hi marjorie hi jacia i think we're just going to have to hang out for a bit i don't even have permissions to allow people to talk so um everyone fell off but the audience is here hey eddie all right i'll see if we can get us back on hey i'm allowing you guys to talk i'm seeing what's going on hello hey hey no i'm good i'm really hungry we're trying to get back on ah can you hear me yeah i can hear you it seems like it's just us and all of a

032sudden i made those aob you called what's up can you still see i can't see anything it's just me and robin and all the panelists there's 30 panelists on here that's so funny is this so loud this is robin's board meeting now right i will give access to everyone who wants to speak now is it it's still recording oh my goodness this is so bad all right they said that everyone is recessing right now and fixing the technology so they are working on it thank you i'll be resuming in about a minute so start taking your places please so we are going to continue with questions um for deep creek damascus and um director howard had a question so i had one back on your slide that was talking about attendance um let me get

033back to that one real quick um attendance trends and uh eighth grade seemed to have the slip just a little bit that's a little bit concerning to me as kids are moving into high school so um and that's cool for that yeah concerning to us as well and it is not a normal trend for us i think it is reflective of the virtual environment and i think it's twofold one the age of kids and they're just so socially motivated to not be with their friends they're not as interested and willing i also think they are more likely to be home without a parent telling them right now it's time to get online so um we're working hard to get those other kids back up but you mentioned that the school offers an advanced math class

034or high school level math class i'm wondering how students are selected for that course what's the makeup of the students in the course racially socioeconomically and how do you prevent tracking the students are selected based on test scores and teacher recommendations that middle school math teacher has those students all three years in middle school this year's a little different because we have the four period schedule but um so he he works with uh the kids in sixth grade seventh grade and into eighth grade so he he does most of the identification for that class but it's also based on parents and students as far as the racial makeup of it we have such small groups that it the numbers percentages don't even make sense to look at so um for instance last year we had

035nine students in our whole school k-8 across nine grade levels where spanish was their first language right so it's just really about which kid is in that grade that year if there's not a subgroup that is big enough to talk about statistically so on the on the math then is this the math where the students at other middle schools as well eighth grade they can take uh ninth grade math it counts towards their high school credit right is that okay because you have such a small number of english language learners how is uh their parent voice incorporated into the pta or parent-teacher organization how is their input taken into the school um they're certainly welcome and we reach out but again the numbers are small and the the for instance i said we had nine

036students who spanish was their first language four of them were siblings right so that's one family which means i have three families whose students are second language learners and we reach out to them and actively try to engage them because i know culturally from the hispanic families the personal invite is more meaningful than an electronic one or a paper one but we have not been successful at that we have we have people of color in there but not people whose students are second language learners any other questions comments sorry um i just wanted to finish the presentation on um student improvement oh no what was it what part of it so the school improvement plan um i was hoping to hear more of that and just speak to that i'm sorry oh um sorry your

037school improvement plan you didn't finish the presentation because of the the internet and all that um i'd like to hear it i could or can you listen to the rest of what what i said on the recording i couldn't hear anything to the restroom or oh okay oh all right sorry my bad i thought you were still answering questions and all that okay yeah okay okay um awesome so how many students collectively do you have in this school this year 433 we should have just over 500 but with the distance learning shift we lost a chunk okay 433 right now alrighty and so um after deep creek damascus students go to gresham barlow okay um i was just curious because i'm looking at your student improvement plan um where is it sorry i should have

038written this down be more organized um what uh kind of culturally responsive teaching strategies are you implementing um we spent a lot of time working on the culturally responsive teaching um strategies a handful of years back and it's about creating that safer environment and recognizing that we're we're different culturally and and it is difficult for my staff sometimes because all the iceberg tips look the same and they forget that underneath even though all the kids in that particular room sorry maybe caucasian doesn't mean their culture was the same so a lot of mind shift in that area to start with just thinking about the fact that what we bring to the table is different even when our skin is the same color and then we shifted from that to the the conversation about the fact

039that racism is actually a white person's problem and that because you don't have kids of color in your room right now means you need to talk about it maybe more not less right and that's that's been a mind shift for the staff as well that um i i use the um analogy of sexism and the fact that if you think about when women couldn't vote and women didn't have rights women could never change that they needed men to step up to the table and change that because women weren't making laws women weren't holding people accountable for following laws women weren't the one in places of power so they couldn't make any of those changes and so they needed men to join that fight right so racism is the same way that as people of white

040skin color we are the ones that need to own the problem and we are the ones that need to take the reins and because we're in more situations where we hold the power and um so our work at dcd has been a lot more about that part of the mind shift and why it's important that we're still talking about race and racism so that we're not raising more students of white privilege you don't understand their role in all of that all righty and then one more question um how many uh bipac staff or teachers do you have on campus i'm sorry i couldn't understand how many by poc teachers and staff do you have on campus um i don't have any staff of color i do have some with um their their sexual orientation is

041different um but i don't have any um staff of color alrighty um are you gonna are you do you have any plans in the future to hire more bipolar absolutely make every effort to do so i need to recruit as well thank you i just want to say uh can i speak for somebody else speaking i just want to say thank you for saying that you know racism you know the burden of that should be on on white people as well and for acknowledging um whiteness as for its own uniqueness right whiteness isn't a norm that if there's a diversity within that that we need to acknowledge when we're talking about our european ancestry what that means and what that privilege is and so thank you very much any other questions or comments thank you

042thank you um we're gonna uh move to gordon russell as roland approaches uh his podium i'll introduce principal roland hayden representing gordon russell middle school this evening this is roland hayden principal of gordon russell middle school here to talk to you about our school improvement plan for the 2021 school year so first off it started off by going beyond it's going beyond for our students and that is uh kim barker our assistant principal and a paper mache astronaut hat uh getting excited to welcome teachers back um so that was our theme and that theme was given to our teachers who then uh was excited to welcome about 738 students this year uh um uh the course of the last five years our enrollment's kind of gone up about 100 students from that number and then

043back down and uh current demographics have been kind of similar it's actually been quite of a similar trend over the last five years um what makes our school unique well we're spirit award winners and we're we do that because we're excited about kids we're excited about what we do and education and that's the climate and culture that we're excited to kind of to show off we're the largest middle school in the russian baller school district and we like to focus on kindness so kindness matters to us we participate in the great kindness challenge every year and then of course we have a diverse uh student population um and we have 16 different languages um spoken at different homes in our that's the of community that we serve and so um that's a pride point for

044us um what are we uh celebrating so celebration number one we're an envoy certified school we had an independent person come in to evaluate our program and uh they came a way and um went to every teacher's classroom and uh and they had to meet seven different criteria and we came away with the being a certified school which were pride a pride point for us um [Music] of course the bond work has been amazing we're celebrating that um really the excitement that we have in our school can really shine in the way our school looks now so we're i'm happy with our community and we're super excited that um that they've given us this gift and then of course school spirit is alive and well at gordon russell middle school attendance um attendance has been

045trending down a little bit of late i kind of think that that's going to trend up here once we start hybrid we attribute that to our yellow zone team that meets and our grade level teams so we have grade level teams that meet to identify kids then that is taken to our yellow zone team and then our yellow zone kind of delineates um which is the best connection to reach out to families and kind of remove barriers for kids um behavior we really haven't seen a lot of behavior this year so that's not uh something that's been on our radar [Music] academic trends 37 of our students have met their annual growth uh at the mid-year diagnostics so that was one taken at the beginning of the year and one taken in the middle of

046the year uh for for that's for math 46th for reading but the exceptional one of note is that for eighth grade we really had 104 of annual growth which is pretty exceptional in our eighth grade um school improvement plan if we focus on student engagement engagement then student attendance will improve and so um you know that's connections and outreach that's home visits that's um envoy and clarity that school climate spirit days uh yes that's me and my kids they're doing a tick-tock dance that i owed the school of the students if they brought in a certain amount of food so again that bringing that climate and culture and then creating that welcoming and school welcoming and inclusive environment is important to us if we collaborate in professional learning teams quality and clarity of instruction will

047improve so we focus on our plc's and we know that teacher collective efficacy has one of the highest effect rates so um strong professional learning teams guaranteed and viable curriculum meaning as my kids travel through the school it doesn't matter which teacher you have you will be exposed to the same content the same delivery of style and then data driven decision making for supporting students school-wide focus on clarity just to name a few things that we've been really focusing on school improvement plan goal number three if we provide strong standard-based instruction then student achievement will improve so talked a little bit about the i-ready assessment so rigorous based standards providing individual interventions that's what our ireti does supporting reading across the content areas including some math and providing student feedback and then we strive for

04845 is a big deal uh at our school this year closing thoughts some key areas uh remember about the presentation is our staff is going beyond for students this year our major goal is to is student engagement we want our students to thrive at our school from teachers to support staff and you know our students our school strives to deliver meaningful instruction to support all students every student every classroom every day which is our school motto so that's gordon russell middle school thank you for listening thank you uh questions or comments from the board um two on the attendance is that just grouped by the entire school do you have attendance by grade level okay there we go so yeah i've delineated down by grade level i also delineated down by demographics so when i

049talked at the slide deck talking about specifically teams so we have grade level teams that meet and they meet and talk about kids they let us know if kids are not engaging in those teams you have your grade level you have your student community liaison you have a student engagement specialist you have your counselor and you have an admin they meet they talk about kids and then we have a yellow zone meeting which is kind of that next level we bring kids from the teacher classroom level to the next level and then that's where we go to the kind of the red zone where we get the home visit so it's kind of like a tiered effect that you see so we really have systematized the process so yes i gave kind of general data

050but we drill down at the school level using panorama to specific kids as it goes through kind of the tiered systems of intervention okay because it might be i mean from our perspective um would be interesting to see if there's the same kind of what we saw at the other schools where sixth grade seventh grade was good eighth grade lost a little bit no um you uh i know what i would say is it's a similar trend um that the eighth grade year and in even in person that is a trend that um is always on my mind because i've always felt that the end of the second half of eighth grade year i tend to see a fall off it is it is a known it's a known trend that i have been aware

051i mean i've done this job for a long time it is a frustrating trend and i've tried to come at it in a lot of different ways so it is on my radar and i don't know what envoy is so envoy is um educational nonverbal yardsticks and what it really means is that in in a become more non-verbal in your classroom be less competitive be more inclusive of the students be more clear in presentation and so it is a set of tools um and in my mind it can help with classroom management it can help with engagement strategies in the classroom so it has a lot of different tool sets that go along with it and so for us some of some of the involvement in equity is how to deliver content in a way

052and engage students and re-engage students to get all students back in and um so there are different kind of sets of strategies and it's called envoy it is a system we studied it for two years we had an evaluator come in they um they had to go and it was by teacher invite so they invited them in and they went around and really it was kind of an interesting ordeal because as an administrator who was used to going in and evaluating i didn't do the evaluating they spent an entire day at our school going from teacher to teacher to teacher this is right before pandemic and evaluating their practice as it relates to these skills and over 90 percent of our teachers met those skills so we were it was a big pride point for

053us we're still implementing those tools in our classrooms but it's a little different right now but certainly we've modified them to make them applicable in this environment so i could talk about it a really long time but i'll so any other questions or comments hello um i just have one question it's the same one i asked principal keaton not too long ago um what does your inclusive school environment equity inclusion and welcoming environment what does that look like at gordon russell certainly um so you'll notice a few things one is for us we have a large latino population leukemia with latinx and what we do is we communicate in multiple languages everything i send it out multiple languages my community liaison um uh it reaches out um and and and you asked a question of

054about staff of color that has been a priority for years for us as well um i have been fortunate to be able to hire quite a few staff of color um including my entire front office so if someone calls and is spanish-speaking they the person that answers the phone no matter what is a spanish speaker uh and so uh for us a pride point is to make sure that people feel included in our building no matter what your background is so um i don't know how much in depth you want me to go and the exact numbers off the top of my head i didn't have them but um certainly there's quite a few staff of color in my school um if you wanted further numbers yeah um what about like what are you all

055teaching like your students to create welcoming environments for for bypass students and just make them feel included as well like what are the students learning yeah so certainly in advisory um we we have taken kind of a a shift in some thinking and um i kind of got this from a student long ago i used to be an administrator at a high school and i had a student of color leave a classroom pretty frustrated uh that the only thing that they tend to learn is about in their in their history everything is negative and uh that weighed heavy on my heart as an administrator was about 10 years ago so our focus has been in our advisory lessons teaching of color history of people that have done great things and not necessarily all the negative

056things that occurred in history so great adventures that um so for black history month it was all about the amazing accomplishments of black people in history um and and that's kind of how we kind of have shifted thinking about how we present uh different cultures in our building and we've kind of done that through our advisory lessons this year so that would be an example i guess yeah thank you for your presentation yeah um in our last uh presentation i just wanted to say um just just had a comment but but i just want to say thank you for not focusing on the trauma of diverse communities as as consistently as the history lesson and really focusing on strength-based uh practices and lessons that is really powerful for a student to go in and to

057hear about something great about something that happened in their community rather consistently being reinforced with the messages of trauma so i just want to encourage more of that thank you yeah and again i can't say enough about that particular scenario played pretty heavy on my heart it was about 10 years ago but something i haven't forgotten so thanks thank you director sowers and next we have hogan cedars elementary and i will take this opportunity to introduce principal elaine luckenbaugh representing her school today so thank you elaine good evening school board chair peterson school board members and superintendent pereira i'm elaine luckenbaugh i'm the principal here at hogan cedars and i'm proud to present our school improvement plan for the school year at hogan cedars we currently have 490 students which is about 100 less students

058than we have had in previous years um due to the school boundary changes um from last year we have 15 different languages spoken here at our school um for special education we have about almost 14 of our students economically disadvantaged we're at about 52 and i would suspect that that would be a little bit higher but this number really represents the students and families that have filled out the paperwork so i suspect we have a little bit more than that english language learners were about at when we look at our subgroups our highest subgroups are hispanic um students at almost 37 percent and white students at almost 50 excuse me 47 percent when i think about what makes us unique there's many things here at hogan cedars that make us unique but i think of

059our culture the collaboration that we have with students staff and families and the clarity and quality of our instruction our motto here at hogan cedars is engaging hearts and minds and we take that very um seriously that we really want to engage students with their hearts we want students to be kind and compassionate and caring individuals but we also want them to engage their minds with academics and reading and writing and math skills and really grow in that area as well and we are home of the hawks and we are proud of it what we're celebrating right now is just our incredible focus on student engagement as i think about this past year just how many different teams and individuals we have really had to really reach out to students to engage students and learning

060here at hogan cedars um the other thing we're really celebrating right now is we now have a combination of eg bsd online students and hybrid students and we have students back in the building and it has been a journey and it is joyous to have them back here at hogan cedars when you look at our attendance trends over the past few years there are slightly um lower percentages than we've had in the past when we look at this year due to just having kids online um and having cdl with the comprehensive distance learning when you look at our academic trends um both for third grade and fifth grade um in both i-ready reading and i-ready math they're just slightly below the district average but we are working hard in those areas to show growth in

061those and let me show you that on the next slide our goal number one for school improvement plan is in the area of math and looking at those statewide tests we really want to improve those as we look at our students in the area of math we have some key strategies and one of those key strategies both in math and ela is in the area of teacher clarity we really want students to know what they're learning why they're learning it and how they'll show that they've learned something we also have a strong multi-tiered system of supports where we really look um and analyze data through an equity lens and we really provide interventions to all students we also use kagan cooperative learning structures and all k through 5 classrooms to really increase student engagement and

062that's where we feel that we can really get the true learning to happen when students are engaged our second goal is in the area of ela or reading and math um we use those same strategies that i just talked about in the area of math but we also have specific programs that we look at for reading for phonemic awareness and also just core reading instruction the other thing i really want to share is that we i think one of our strengths is that we really implement consistent reading intervention strategies across the building and we continue to look at those as a staff when you look at behavior trends that's part of our climate um this is just looking at one year last year we had no referrals or this i should say this past school

063year be due to having students online but it's something that's really important to us so let me show you this next slide which is goal number three looking at our climate we continue to just want a really really positive school climate here at hogan cedars so there are several things to do with that we're really i'm known for a soft start here at hogan cedars so we really check in with students and really focus on their social emotional growth as students come into the building and then having community circles whether that be online or when students are back for hybrid and we continue to practice mindfulness in every single classroom every single day when some of my closing thoughts are we are just proud of our journey this past year we have worked incredibly hard

064to engage our students and we're really proud of it and you can see some pictures of some of our students and one of our teachers teaching here for hybrid last year i decided to retire in march and then april came and i changed my mind i wanted to bring kids back into the building and we've done that here at hogan cedars and we have done that across the district i i just want to say that i'm really proud to be a part of the gresham barlow school district and i just really want to thank you for your continued support to our schools and our community and with that have a great evening thank you do any of our board members have questions or comments i really am retiring this year um i did have a

065just clarification question what how do you define major referrals so at an elementary school there's yeah and you know what it's been a whole year since i've even had one um a major referral is when it is a major disruption to a classroom and learning it could be something that could be a physically that somebody kicked or hit it could be um disrespect to somebody um there's kind of guidelines for our pbis system that we have it all lined up yeah it's bigger than just crossing the line we also have what we call minor referrals where they just kind of cross the line it's like we just want a reminder to students and to families like hey let's really watch that so major referral is kind of a big deal and i'm guessing that doesn't

066include our special ed students for this year or do those include research yeah you know they are usually on a different system where we're looking at behaviors differently because they have specific learning goals and objectives in that area and certain strategies that we're using so yeah that really doesn't impact every once in a while if it really goes across that line and then it could be a referral but not often not often that's a great question yeah and um how regularly do staff analyze that data in a normal school year because we haven't had any referrals we have a pbis team meeting every month and we look at that and we look at that as far as equity just across all different subgroups and we really find that we're giving referrals for behaviors that need

067referrals and for me the biggest thing is making sure that we communicate to kids and families and we make changes so they don't happen again we're feeling with our really positive climate and our soft start that that's really changing across our building we're really proud of what we do thank you you're welcome um any other questions or comments yeah hi hello chris yes yes yes i'll believe it when i say it so when you are actually having your party we will have that so i've been to some of your cultural events when you've had them at the school how during the cdl the comprehensive distance learning have you maintained some of those cultural opportunities for families and for kids that is a great question i'd say that we're continue to work on it but it

068looks very different materials pick up then we have goodie bags and we invite all families amazing how all families come we've really done outreach to families um and kids but have we had any really cultural experiences not really during this time and i think for this spring as we talked about as a staff i think that's hard to do so i was about to say i can't wait till next year but maybe that's for different reasons but we will be able to do that next year when we come back yeah but thank you for noticing that we have done a lot in the past with that thank you well congratulations on your retirement thank you can i talk you can tell i'm a little bit excited i love the school district and i'm very proud

069to be a part of it well we appreciate your service thank you thank you any other questions or comments uh officer um director status yeah i as well want to say congratulations on you this is really exciting and um also you know this is more of a comment for the board of just making sure that when we set clear goals and we want to track certain things like um disparities within our disciplinary action and our academic achievement that we're tracking it and that's more accurately reflected consistently among all presentations so that's something that you know working on this in the future that hopefully that we can provide more support and what we're looking for and what we want to see but thank you so much for all your work this was a great presentation and

070i really appreciate you thank you all i just want to say congratulations on retiring too that's it and thank you it's been 39 years in education so yeah 15 years in gresham barlow and i'm proud of it that's amazing great job thank you so um i have kind of a general question it's shown up in seeing some of the graphs that we've seen on the academic trends and there's the black line that shows gresham barlow and then there are the individual lines that show by school and and i'm i'm not sure if i'm looking at it right or what i'm i'm looking at but it seems that if the gresham barlow line is larger than all of the other individual schools somebody out there is pushing the pushing the numbers up somebody else is doing

071better oh somebody just raised their hand and said it's their school um but just wondering you know if they're doing better can we copy that and use it someplace else um but just kind of if you could speak on that little bit is that you mr cook maybe here it's me for the evening yes and absolutely chris we share ideas all of the time between buildings and what can be replicated what should be replicated it also depends on the building and the makeup and demographics of kids too but absolutely we should we continue to look at each other and see what we're doing well and what we're not doing well also we can learn a lot from that i was just going to add to that chris you're absolutely right in the sense that when

072you look at data and see who's doing well and progressing you want to know hey what are they doing that we're not doing and i can promise you that our principals along with our instructional leadership team they do do that um the fortunate fact and i will say fortunate because all of our kids are not the same and the diversity of our students throughout the district is is is is definitely a treasure for us um and i'm not saying that it makes things harder but it does make they're not all the same so you have to meet kids where they are and i know that each of our staff members are trying to ensure that they do that to ensure that our students are are all succeeding um and i would actually challenge to look

073at the growth of an individual student as a and the cohort of them as opposed to the overall simply because of the fact that you know i may have finished last year at 38 but this year you know i'm at 61. now some may or may not see that as progress but i see it as great progress for an individual student um and so drilling down in that manner really does help see a larger picture and students who are excelling now will say this out loud too that students who are really excelling their growth is not as much from year to year as opposed to a student who is really struggling and so i really do applaud all of our faculty and staff regarding that um but i would encourage us to look at continue

074to look at growth of students other questions or comments well thank you to our five principals tonight i i thank you for your efforts to continue reaching out to our family especially our families who are not engaged at this time looking at differentiation of what works culturally for different families using our liaisons who are amazing i know they're working extra hard this year so remember to thank them appreciate them and thank you thank you for saying one more year too we're moving on to our discussion items do you does our board i know we only have four of us here tonight do we need a break or can we continue okay we'll continue then um yeah so our principles sorry yes um so those of you who presented thank you this evening and you are

075welcome to exit um with the exception of our garden russell principal i think he's part of the discussion okay so we're going to move on to our first discussion item um itemc1 um and that is mr cook also yes ma'am uh members of the board requested a review of the mascot and native american artwork in use at gordon russell middle school the principal roland hayden has begun a review process by connecting with previous staff members to discuss the history of the school in connection to the mascot artwork and culture he has also reached out to native american artists who specialize in local tribal art as well as the local tribal communities to evaluate the artwork and ask about appropriateness principal hayden will provide the board with an overview of the work that has been completed

076and we'll review what next steps are planned in this process yes purple head please yeah all right gotcha just gonna go ahead and say it honestly this desk is not tall enough okay i'm just gonna throw that out there that my knees keep running into this thing well um thank you for having me uh i will say that about um uh in the fall i was uh given a request um by uh lisa and john and jordan to kind of look into the appropriateness and the connection of the native american artwork to the gordon russell school community specifically the artwork that's up on the walls and its kind of heritage and where it came from honestly i in my mind you get you get stories along the year you get stories as you join into

077a building and i've kind of learned some things along the way going through the bond process actually added to that storage because stories because you end up looking at the walls and you're talking about painting and you're talking about should this stay or should this go and we kept intentionally all the native american artwork through the painting process but honestly anything that was a 70s motif i painted over so i apologize if i offend anyone with that so uh i went through this process and i would like to go through this document it shared with you it's the same but i also want to make reference to as i went through this this has not been a easy process so i have lots of documentation that's not represented on this sheet as how much research

078that i have done in this so my first uh inkling was to reach out to staff that have that opened the building gordon russell middle school is about 42 years old so i reached out to linda eby she did not open the building but she was there um i think the second or third year of its opening if i remember correctly and so i reached out to her and i wanted to know a little bit about how the native american artwork in the building was added to the building and so in your in your board docs you should have a link the hyperlink in the top has pictures and kind of explanations about where specific artwork and amanda is not in your head so you do have this okay so i wanted to know a

079little bit about you know how did the art originally get put up who originally put it up some of the artwork is is um signed i will tell you that so some of it in the very low right hand corner i could have offered a picture of it you get a small signature and some of it is not signed but um presumably put up at the same time so um so when i talked with her i talked with her about the totem poles i talked with her about how they originally came to the building i talked with her about the artwork i've talked with her about any kind of connections that we've had through the years through native american tribes coming through the building and certainly she recalls many assemblies that we haven't had some

080recently but we've had many assemblies where native american tribes are coming in they do friendship dances was the typical one that there was participation in and certainly tribal culture presentations in the building so that was not an uncommon thing i did ask it's anecdotal but i understand that do you reckon reckon in those interactions have you ever had anyone bring up any concerns and the answer was no so um i also reached out to ron hudson who is a legend in the community um who's also a retired pe teacher he opened the building he was there on the original opening he remember seeing um jenny starr who did most of the um motifs on the wall um and appears to be of native american descent and that's going to come up later when i have

081conversations about some next steps but um he he remembers um the totem pole that's in the picture that's not painted was carved by an individual with a chainsaw different times on site with pe students all just standing around watching so that's that's how this was so he tells this long story and i know i don't go into a major story here but i'm just telling you like this is what he is how is there a bunch of kids we're all around guy with the chainsaw did he was a native american didn't appear to be a native american um okay so i kind of made note of that then mike reed who also opened the school retired pe teacher and he remembers conversations about how the totem pole so again i'm trying to piece a history

082together for everyone how the totem poles ended up in the comments so there are two totem poles in the commons the one that was carved outside like i described actually used to be outside um it lived outside until someone stole it it was taken and this is a story that i got from mike reed and a police officer called him he went to pick it up he got it repaired they decided to install it in the comments so it wouldn't get taken again so of course that's a longer story but i'm giving you the you know the cliff notes version so that's how one of them got um installed in the um in the commons the other one was installed upon the death of a former superintendent which the school is named after so that

083is the one that is painted and that one was created by gordon russell himself so his connection to native american tribes or culture i did not inquire i'd have not called the gordon russell family but i know he has through dartmouth he has uh he has a native american studies uh program um and so i know he has there's a lot of connection there but i certainly have not reached directly out to the family about that particular poll so my outreach uh the first person i got a hold of was rose pixley of the uh tribe i i talked to her about multiple things i talked to her about the thunderbird and her uh and honestly i go into this conversation um i just you know wanted to it were the thunderbirds i was a

084little taken back by her response because i didn't know what honestly i didn't know what her response would be so i just said it and she responded oh how cool and i thought okay all right okay so then i just kind of walk through the conversation we have this artwork on the wall the appropriateness of it um i believe most of it if not all was originally put up by a native american it is based off of motifs that are either variations of a theme so i'd describe it as like music that has you know changed over time it's variations of a theme because even the artwork of the motifs can be traced back to uh originals which i think this is the book because we you know you when you have an old school

085you can kind of go through and you find weird things not that this is weird but you just find things that are kind of in closets and you're like what is this and then you and then you start to connect some dots so we were able to connect some dots through some of the history of just the building so talking with her um she connected me through the superintendent of schools um which to me seemed like a good connection since they are also a school sherman indian school it's just outside of salem and seemed like a good connection so the superintendent put me in connection with marshall burnett which is the cultural leader of the sherman indian school and a member of the northern uh plains lakota tribe so um i have been on the

086phone and and though there's kind of two separate bullets i've talked with them a half dozen times i've sent multiple texts i typically send him pictures i've recorded i've asked him to come into the building he's not comfortable yet with the kovid but he's certainly planning on bringing a class of students down and kind of partnering with us when i talked with him um he his i've shown him pictures um of the artwork and i've talked to him about the totem poles and and and i know that there's conversations about both things so i'm trying to keep them separate but when i talk with both of them they don't tend to separate them so it's very difficult me you know to well let's talk more specifically about this so when i talk with them about

087the artwork he certainly has expressed after viewing the artwork the importance of of keeping it that that seems to be really adamant even if it's a variation of a theme and i've talked with them about how do we appropriately have that up in a school and make a stronger connection of it to the school community um i talked with him about the i kept going back to the polls and i've done that a few times and even i talked with him maybe two weeks ago and um and he said that he would he wanted to go check in with some other elders at the school he got back to me sent me a text he said that he felt like the uh the elders are saying that it was appropriately and i kind of quoted

088in there um that the that and and i just took it from what he sent me our trusted elders at shmaela feel that the pictures are representing the coastal tribes of washington northern oregon so i kind of i kind of took it a little bit further with him i said um and i appreciated that his elders are feeling that way but you know i um so i said who who could i connect with maybe specifically about uh the carbines you know i'd like to know more about the carvings as it relates to kind of the local the local artwork and the local artwork to be um to be honest with you is identified kind of on the first page of multiple different tribes so if you see on the first page that mostly around the

089haida nation is and the talinga tribes those are most of the artwork in the building which i believe is also kind of connected to the poles because both of those tribes tend to have poles in their history so his suggestion um last time i talked to him and i'm not done talking with him because our partnership is going to continue um he said that he thinks that a good connection will be to talk to bobby mercer at the grand round tribe i called and left a message for him i've not heard back i plan on sending an email i feel like um he hit the elders at chamow indian school and him felt like he knows a lot more about kind of that particular localized um culture and felt like that he would be a

090good connection for us to kind of kind of walk that path especially when talking about the polls in the school so our our equity team at our school has been meeting we've been talking about the the artwork in the building actually one of the one of the pieces of work was to uh put this together this this this sheet so we can start the identification process and then especially with senate bill 13. take take what we have and add it with the senate bill 13 and really make it a you know a school that embraces what we have been given from previous you know generations of people that that took to put the art up on the walls so um for us i think that's a that's a pride point and something i think we

091can move forward so as a conclusion kind of where i'm at in this process and certainly i'm on a path talking to you about this path and certainly um feedback's always important and you know and the superintendent uh i've shared this with her and i know she she has been supportive of this path of kind of continuing and if there's different directions i need to go i'm certainly here here to listen um but right now our our plan is to continue to work on identifying the appropriateness of the polls um and i think that's ultimately going to get down to specifically what tribes they specifically connect with and and kind of a reach out to those tribes that's my personal belief as i've gone through this journey as for the artwork the preservation status would

092be that we appropriately just like in an art museum be identifying so if someone walked up to it you could just like it kind of started on this piece that you see in front of you you'd say oh this this art piece would be called a grouse and i put my glasses on but they fog up with a mask and then you'd say uh you know it's from a region of the british columbia the original artist and kind of be able to connect the dots and and ultimately hopefully put some a little narrative about the specifics of the tribe so as you kind of go around the building would be the ultimate vision of the artwork in the building so lastly on the last is this is something that we give to every staff member

093as they become staff members it talks about the thunderbird now the thunderbird as um folklore connects to many tribes so it's not connected and that was explained to me when i talked to rose and it was explained to me when i talked to marshall is that um no no one tribe that's not a regional thing that's not a really specific that's a very broad a broad mythological animal that um that is embraced by lots of tribes and that it is appropriate to be using in a school setting and which is also enforced in the ors statute which was last assessed in february so um kind of connecting all those dots i guess the time now is for questions numbers questions comments oh we can go we can go down the road you robin and chris

094okay robin me all right well i would really recommend in this process um getting tribal government permission to utilize these symbols to utilize um this mascot i think when it comes down to individual and the way we're explaining it it's not really seen in a very holistic sense of of what this means because the imagery itself can be very beautiful and it can accurately represent a certain image or culture however it doesn't take into account the history of the american education system uh to the native indigenous people of the united states we place people in boarding schools we try to eradicate culture we you know perform genocide on entire communities and even today indigenous culture and heritage is not very well represented within our academic systems and moving forward what i would really like to

095see if we could get um whatever tribal government whatever tribal sovereignty jurisdiction that is that is in this area if we can get permission from those leaders um to utilize these symbols this mascot i would feel more comfortable with that i don't feel very comfortable going out and like asking individual what do you feel what do you feel what do you feel i think that this is more of a um of of a partnership opportunity that we can really build on and gain the respect of our tribal partners and really honor those those relationships um certainly in my conversa is this thing song i just think it's so long it's good yeah okay sorry uh certainly in my conversations um especially with the shimao indian school um uh the rep the repression of native americans

096over the course of history um we talked about the battle of wounded knee we talked about a lot of things as it relates to um the marginalization marginalization of native americans uh and so i definitely can empathize and appreciate that um i don't feel like this has been an individualized conversation because i'm talking with the shimano indian school they're a very large school that's not very far from us and so i don't know specifically about how that would be like getting government governmental uh you know a regional approval um we sit in kind of an you know we kind of try to define lines so so in the history of diving into this um the different motifs that we have in the building don't necessarily mean that they're specific to the area that we're currently

097in so we have motifs that fall all the way from the off the coast of british columbia all the way down to probably northern uh california and so none of the artwork that's in here kind of even is representative of just kind of the native lands that we're standing on right now so for us to for so my my pathway would be that we connect with the individual tribes of the artwork that is represented on our walls and that's really that's why i call out the specific tribes is my intent is to connect with those tribes because that is the artwork that is you know that we're housed in our buildings yeah i i think that's really interesting and potentially problematic as well right is this is this like in our institute and preservation of

098certain symbols and certain representations right or are we really looking at building strong relationships with indigenous communities and looking at those communities holistically and respecting their tribal sovereignty um that is a good question is this a representation of art right or is this an opportunity to build true collaborative partnership with our native partners and i would say the answer is both so as far as the you know the the latest oregon revised statute clearly says that housing native american artwork in a school is appropriate but i i'm suggesting we go a step further than that and connect with specific tribes to build those partnerships including the already partnership that i'm working on with shimao indian school another native american school that is uh close that we can partnership and kind of move back and forth

099with because we have already talked about having assemblies together so that is that is something post covid uh where we've already planned field trips so i i do think that that is what we're kind of describing right now thank you um and i think director howard had a question or a comment several thank you um i do appreciate that you have and actually is is mine going and kisses on does he need changes are we both on okay all right i'll keep going um i appreciate that you wrote down you know as much information because sooner or later the people that were involved will be gone and so documenting that is is the first thing um i'm also i may bounce a little bit making sure also that students are aware of the significance of

100this that they understand where why and how this came from i also um i think what we're looking at in some respects is there um and you kind of alluded to this that there are two separate issues going on um it started with the conversation about the carved wood statues and then you brought it in rightfully so into the rest of the mascot and the artwork that is on the building and um i think in the the conversation as i still have listened and heard what's being said is that um in the people that you've talked to and the way that you are bringing forward the information um and the information about what a totem pole is that the carved wooden statue from gordon russell doesn't fall within any of those guidelines um from the

101newspaper article it talks about him carving it from a tree in his backyard because he thought it would look pretty and the representation a totem pole is a monumental pole it represents a nation's family or individuals history displays their rights to certain territories or songs dances and other aspects of their culture i don't see the thing that uh the first superintendent gordon russell carved fitting any of those so to me it feels if we're going to honor what you're looking at doing with how the thunderbird came in how the thunderbird was designed the people that are saying yes this this is being respectful i don't see where the wooden statue falls into that category it's a pretty statue but it's not a totem pole and i i kind of like forced to stop calling it

102a totem pole because it's not a totem pole he's not native american he didn't do it with native american intent he carved a pretty statue and so from that i think we have some room still to go the other one the one that's not painted i don't know as much about that one it sounds like you know that one was um carved in front of the kids but who did it and how and why i don't have information on that one um so i i appreciate the work that's been done and i appreciate that in the ors it does talk about specific items and mascots that are not to be used and likewise it talks about others that are part of the northwest region which does include things like the the thunderbird and it talked

103about a couple of other um the buffalo the eagles that those were more available as mascots with that collaboration with the the local culture as well as the broader culture the final part of it um even in how we have our conversation about the native american studies and trying to bring that more forward the first thing that people say is we talk about the federally recognized tribes and we have tribes in oregon that are not federally recognized but they're still tribes they either were denied access have refused to do access or have been told that they don't count so i also get a little bit as you can tell i get a little bit concerned about saying we're doing this with the federally recognized tribes that's not the whole picture with it so again i'm

104i'm i am pleased that we brought this forward and um and i still would like for us to to continue and dig a little bit deeper and and put the wooden statue in storage and uh and then move on with the further conversation and as robin said the further collaboration with our local partners as well as as the ones that are farther out because people move throughout our region as well um and so we want to make sure that we are honoring a variety of our indigenous culture anything else from anyone else can i add a little bit to that yes and certainly certainly you know recognizing that uh the broader sense of borders and lines are something that um is definitely a kind of a uh a white culture putting it okay well these

105are the lines then we've defined them and that's certainly um one of uh rose brought me a connection actually to an app that it's called uh it's called native lands you can download on your phone you can pull it up it can tell you where you're at and kind of it also broadly draws lines and so if you're using that app which i have used and downloaded it it kind of puts us in a position where we're we're still not even trying to connect with a local tribe it doesn't really we're on a border of a couple and kind of overlapping because that whole definition of of lines is always blurred so uh of of native lands and so uh respecting that's important so i mean i appreciate hearing that and and talking about either

106federally recognized or not it's still a native land that we're talking about so i definitely appreciate that comment so um i'm just kind of curious about how these conversations looked like in the line of questioning when you were reaching out to these individuals um for example it says that um let me read this where's one of them um sorry uh like he didn't express concern about thunderbird being a mascot or anything uh i'm kind of curious like when you brought that up were you waiting for him are you waiting for these folks to say anything or like when you bring these subjects no and i i so uh connecting with marshall i think is what you're uh uh brunette and so when i talked with him uh i'm saying you know i'm generally describing our

107school um honestly i don't know how their reaction's going to be and i'm not gauging that i want a reaction i just want them to be honest with what their opinions are i'm not coming in with uh whether i want if it's if if someone can't if marshall said i really have some major concerns i would be echoing that in this moment so my typical line of questioning is our conversation is can i let me let me describe the school to you let me describe what is in the building so here are these paintings some were painted back 42 years ago i believe there's a few probably about three or four that were painted in the edition of 90 [Music] 96 94 somewhere in the mid 90s there were some motifs added i would i

108want to know your impression of is it appropriate to have these things up in a school um tell let me send you pictures and and tell me uh from your perspective as the cultural leader of chamow indian school um is this is this appropriate to be in a school setting and um uh the same thing with the totem poles even more specifically i kept kind of going so um tell me more about this and often our conversations would um encompass lots of things so when i describe the the battle wounded knee um that was a 20-minute conversation with him about the battle wounded knee when he described white man's repression and sterilization of native americans um yeah i i've been in all of those conversations um and and i didn't go into those great details

109here but i've certainly listened and learned from him and been open to any feedback um and his perspective and and i think in his his wisdom that he's kind of granted me and so when when i'm asking questions and when he's uh i'm kind of uh teaching me to be honest with you um i'm very transparent in what the school looks like i've offered for him to come i asked him very much i would like him to come tour the building even offered us like i'll pay for your gas i'll just drive you down here but i said currently with covid but he does want to bring one of his classes down and more specifically look at the building and that that is was important to him so um and and then even a broader

110sense so i wanted to go a little bit further and that's why i said there are other people that you recommend or the elders that this mao indian school recommend and that's kind of how it the journey is still continuing i guess so alrighty i was just concerned how we were going about the questioning like can we keep this or is this responsible no no no i i describe it and uh i've described it and then also text i mean that's been our best way to communicate honestly i just text some images i've text and pictures of the totem poles i pictured um not every single art piece but like um i don't know pull out my phone and look but at least a half dozen of the same images that you're looking at and

111describe kind of where they're at and um i said you know what are you seeing do you have any concerns around this what should i be doing to make this appropriate his his reaction has been about a concern of preserving the art as he says he thinks it's important that we try to preserve it because it does represent uh native american heritage so um the the line that is interesting to talk with him about is whether the art was originally by someone who was native american or not and also that level of connection to a tribe it's not a it's not as binary as i would you know just it would make it easier if it was just as simple as oh yes you could that's appropriate or that's not appropriate you know and the

112line was clear especially when we're talking about someone who creates the art that's also not very clear and so a lot of our conversations were talking about connections to tribes the value of art within the native american community is that that the connection to creating art is so strong that and that is a value where people feel like that's how they make their their money or make you know a living at it so to make income so it's not unusual to have a lot of people kind of creating that art and then kind of evaluating the appropriateness of it it's just not it's not as clean as what you're describing as saying is this appropriate is this not appropriate it just i would that's not been how those conversations tend to go it's it's a

113lot of learning on my part and through stories that i just described um about a 45-minute conversation in a couple bullets um but i'm trying to distill it down to some kind of a few key points of but i'm not going into the all the other sides of the conversations so do i feel comfortable that 100 i'm like no that's not my journey and that's not where i'm intending to go but i want to make sure that what is there is appropriate and if it's not i'm not i'm not advocating to keep something that's not appropriate definitely that is not i i do not want that i do not want that for our community i do not know if that for the native americans thank you yeah let's see what robin you want to go

114first you want me to go first i was just going to ask is there a decision making component here from the board because i still feel very strongly that if we move forward with this we need the approval of some native authority whether that's to chemawa like the chemawa school board whether that is a tribal government whether that is the neya board of director nara board of directors that we need to go deeper that than just individual perspectives that this is really there's a lot of perspectives on these pieces and i would feel comfortable moving forward with uh keeping these symbolisms if that's what's um what is recommended um with the approval of some kind of authority authoritative board and especially a native government would really support me to move forward i really do appreciate

115the work that you're doing and the partnerships that you're you're forming with um these uh like the chamala school and other organizations i think that is beautiful i think field trips and connections and ways to partner is exactly what we need to do whether we keep the mascots or not and to keep the mascots i really for me i really think we need the support of some authoritative body discussion item he's not done with his research and i think chris has something else to um you just mentioned something a minute ago that i think is is again part of where um there are two distinct things that are going on i'm just going to go back to the carp wooden statue that there is an art component perhaps mr russell carved it as an art

116function in that case i would not ever call it a totem pole because it is not a totem pole it's a piece of art and that's part of making sure that students understand what's the difference between culture appropriation versus understanding respecting and honoring someone else's culture and reflecting that and and i think you kind of hit on that that might be something that could be further discussion further looking at um that's why i hope to talk with bobby mercer who um from the confederate grand run tribes and i haven't talked to them yet that i feel like based on uh both rose and marshall that they both felt like he would be kind of the regional expert on the topic so um that i mean i that's i mean that's really kind of i think

117because i i don't i definitely am not the resident expert no i'm learning along the way so i'm getting my guidance from people i connect with well thank you um as um director sauer said and everyone else has echoed thank you for the extra work especially this year um doing ex this extra research is highly appreciated and i mean continue continue the research and then maybe this will become an action item in the future as we learn more about the history of the school and how these items ended up in our school so uh and thank you for acknowledging that because of transitioning kids on monday uh that's how you know that's that's the priority right now this is important work so but yeah um my hope is and i'll i'll end with this my

118hope is that um no principal stays in school forever but my hope is that as as uh as final the final transition as i leave someday and that's this is not an announcement please don't take this as that but my the the goal would be that i leave and that whatever either action item or non-action item or wherever we land with this that future principles for rewards that everyone's comfortable with um the and the community that feel comfortable about what we're doing at gordon russell and what it's being represented as and uh that it's a positive thing so thank you for that and thank you for involving the equity team because i know i know this is extra work this year so thank you for that and also maybe um i would encourage the emperor

119team to start thinking of how as we implement the ethnic studies standards how we can incorporate that hit that true history our native american history into into our lessons and into our our classrooms okay we're moving on to um action items the first one is policy review sorry i sk i skipped a discussion item i skipped the return to learn update from mr cook i can't believe you would miss this yeah i would never do that on purpose mr cook i will go through this quickly uh because we all understand the format i have added a few slides this time as well uh and i don't know were you bringing that up sarah okay what you see here is that just that slide that we usually take from our web page this is the 14-day

120average that oregon uses to determine whether districts are ready for students to return the 14 day is key remember that for the next slides that i'm going to show you some slides about two slides away that i'm going to show you we are seeing an upward trend in the metrics as we are seeing nationwide across the state as well positivity rates are rising as well as case rates and you can advance that sarah please that still puts us in the return piece but i in red i put up there last time i gave the update we were 82 per 100 000 in multnomah county we're now 139.8 so that's a pretty steep climb in a short amount of time uh clackamas is at 108.2 and we're at 170 170.8 i believe it's a little blocked

121by that window up there uh and then multnomah county's positivity rate rose to 3.5 at clackamas's rose to six although today's rates they did drop again slightly uh both of them next slide please this is another uh non-profit website i use to do my daily measurements it gives me a lot of a lot more information that i can use on each day know that even today this is a slide i put in from tuesday even today it was a little bit better but we're still seeing a rise but you can see a summary of where the county is when you look at infection rate and you that's that second number over the infection rate's key we don't hear very often it's how many people are infected by an infected person going forward and when you

122get up into the 1.2 you start to be concerned and you can remember the november shutdown clackamas county in particular was about a 1.28 now that number looks high and it is uh and it did see some regression today which was very welcome and i'll get to a point at the end of this of why i'm showing all this to you but if we could advance to the next slides here please that is the daily trend since november so you can see that we are on a climb as we're seeing uh and at the 10.8 per 000 there's 87.7 cases were reported on monday and that's what took us to a 10.8 per 100 000 case um case rate pardon me next slide please the as i advanced my own slides uh the this slide

123for clackamas you can see they are much higher and they have been experiencing a high increase and because we are a district that has schools in both counties we have to keep track of both counties their infection rate today though did drop a bit and so did their positivity rate so i don't you can't call a one day drop a trend but it does make me happier every day when i get to see that and the next slide sarah is their case rising and you can see it is much steeper than multnomah counties is and they're 15 per 100 000 they had 82.9 cases that day on monday which this graph gets updated on that next day so that's tuesday uh so they are on a steep climb and it is concerned if you could

124advance to the next slide there's a couple other things out there right now too that i've started to dig into that i don't want rumors and inaccurate information to get in the way of discussions as we keep moving down our path to hybrid children do more easily contract that new variant uh what i did learn over the weekend as i read because i had nothing else to do is that the olfactory mechanisms inside of children are less developed and they don't develop fully until the teens and even into the 20s for some there's something called an h2 receptor that is what covid grabs onto in your nose and because of their underdeveloped base2 receptors that's why children don't get sick very often this new variant is pretty aggressive and how it grabs onto that receptor

125what i've heard and what i've heard people talking about even educators saying that because kids haven't been exposed their immune systems are weaker which is why they're getting this disease and that's not accurate it's really about physiology and that's why they're getting this the other pieces if you really dig into the information is aside from the new variant which is also attributed to a lot of this case rising we have the lessening of restrictions and people traveling people doing other things it's also contributing to this rise too so i want to be clear about that there's also a recent article they of the 160 363 breakthrough covent cases uh it alarmed people but really what it didn't do is it should reassure people if you have 163 breakthrough 163 breakthrough cases out of the 700

126000 oregonians that were fully vaccinated that's a .0023 failure rate for the vaccine which makes it the most effective vaccine in human history and we are seeing that across the nation so i don't want that statistic to be used inappropriately uh given that it really is a measure of success so the vaccine is if you get it is extremely effective as what that says last thing is i'll remind you on that last slide these are the things we've put in place to make sure that kids are safe and now i'll get to the point of the presentation we for the board's information not that you wouldn't have already uh deduced this we do expect that there will be cases amongst kids and there will be among staff and we will continue to diligently enforce these

127protections to make sure that those are minimized as much as possible and and with these in place i believe they will be minimized as much as possible but we're preparing ourselves for those and we will react accordingly and we will react quickly when it does happen okay all right questions or comments from mr cook um i know i think it's starting april 19th they're loosening who's going to be available who's eligible for vaccines are they do they have enough supply that that's actually going to start increasing the number of people who at least get one shot started i have not paid attention to the supply director howard so i can't answer that question for you today we appreciate the update mr clark thank you you're welcome oh superintendent yes thank you um i just wanted

128to make a um note here since i know that we have an audience as well of incorrect information that was reported in a newspaper regarding uh covet cases uh there was a report that we had two cases at north north gresham elementary school which is is not accurate um so i want to make sure that that is um you know noted in the minutes as well as the fact that it occurred when we were on cdl so and then the other was um there was a case that was they said it was reported from sam barlow of a student which is also inaccurate we had a student at gresham high school not barlow and in all instances we followed our communicable disease protocols and ensured that um you know everyone who had had exposure at

129whatever level was quarantined and taking the appropriate steps and we're communicating with i just want to make sure i correct that for the record dr prayer would you like me there's okay is are football russian flip was it gresham or barlow football that was postponed because of cases it was crash from high school director stowers it was gresham barlow okay are we back yes we're back but the season has uh concluded uh football season has concluded there's no makeup necessarily if the the season ends um and i think we'll experience this the remainder of the year where we'll have when there's a case on a team we have to uh by direction of our multnomah county health authority in conjunction with um oregon health authority follow those regulations uh they determine those things not not

130the school district but we definitely have to implement those so yes we are now in season three um and i i would like to tell you that we probably won't have cases but i i also know that um there's a lot of interaction with individuals in sports uh the students are still required to wear their mask um and again that's that's a requirement from uh that's beyond our control truly i would i know it's hard to run and play with the mask line however i'm finding it hard to talk right now so um but nonetheless i know that our student athletes they're also practicing with them so it kind of gives them a little bit of conditioning with that that doesn't necessarily make it easier but i do know that they're somewhat adjusting to those

131things thank you [Music] thanks for the updates and we're moving on to our action items tonight the first one is a policy review this is a first reading so there's no formal action required at this time and this is going to be presented by mr hughes thank you so tonight the administration is going to ask for input from the board at tonight's work session regarding the policies that the policy review committee had met on april 1st and is bringing forward uh for conversation and for first reading and those polls those three policies are in your packets policy ff naming of new facilities policies ffa on memorials and policy indb flag displays and so on salutes and so those packets uh policies are in your package we can start with the first one on naming new

132facilities and if you look at the policy in red the policy review committee had made some changes the first one noting around the board will use an equity framework and give preference given to names associated within the community and of course the other change in red that has to do with uh pursuant to oar zero zero 581.021004 seven facilities will not use names associated with or significant to uh american tribes unless the school district enters into an approved written agreement with the recognized native american tribe in oregon and so those are the uh two changes within policy ff naming of new facilities and i would ask uh director sauers director orozco beach and directors how it as they also serve on the policy review committee for their input i think this particular one was was

133relatively straightforward we did have a follow-up conversation about perhaps reviewing the names of some of our existing buildings and putting together committee and and comment about perhaps renaming some of our existing building as has been done in other school districts yes and i want to just echo this is tied back to the last conversation and i'm really reflecting and thinking that this is an appropriate language to use that um we need uh tribal what does this say facilities will not use names associated with significant or native american tribe unless the school district enters into an approved written agreement with that federally recognized native american tribe in oregon and i think that should be upheld for any negotiations and any work we do with um our tribal work i have a question for the policy committee

134so this is our first reading so there's no action tonight so when do we expect to i think this particular one can it go forward to our next uh business meeting consent agenda for approval so now and then um i would like maybe i don't know if i would talk to you superintendent pera or mr hugh or mr cook in terms of for displaying the flags i would like to hear from our teachers and how they feel about having new flags in their classroom do they feel prepared to have discussions about what the flags mean let's let's let's let's get to that like we've kind of jumped ahead yeah so we're talking about right now just ff yeah and so two more and two more myra so ff looks good move it on to consent

135although i do i know it's taken from statute but i don't like the word that says federally recognized because it would be any of the tribes that are in our area recognized or not i agree chris yeah i'm gonna put that on notice robin that you agreed with me i agree with you all the time dark chocolate or milk chocolate dark right well so the next one up is memorial so the next one is policy ffa and that has to do with memorials and as you can see the changes in red where it states that the board will use an equity framework when considering the acceptance of memorial uh well and then it gives the the different definitions the other change is a principal may receive items for the school as a memorial to the

136student or person so those are somewhat changes that i think the policy review committee wanted to have further conversation about and i will ask the board directors on the policy review committee to to share their perspectives so this policy seemed to have two separate things going on with them it had the memorials of uh typically it uses the word memorial scholarship for someone and then it also talks about a room or item or space in our buildings around our buildings near our buildings that have been named formally or informally for staff members or other important people in the community and i remember one of the conversations that we had about this was whether or not there was ever a time limit on it and was it in perpetuity for instance the stapleton field at gresham

137high school i don't i don't even know who that is but likewise when we redid uh north gresham elementary rebuilt it the old facility had the library name for judy dougherty and i think that went away so we're inconsistent in how we are tracking names of things and whether or not all of them that have come through the gym at barlow uh the secondary gyms that's still named for fred hilevis so um so some of them i know some of them i don't and so we talked about should there be a limit should there be a time limit we didn't know it was kind of a so you're looking like you're putting your button on there mister i was just going to help you out with stapleton field that's a former mayor i think he

138was the second or third mayor of gresham so did he have anything to do with the school district that i'm not sure but i know he was i believe he was mayor during the first big building the first two or three story building the brick won in 1915. i think i'd just like to have a little bit more um you know um maybe even just splitting out you know the paragraph that we're talking about it's memorial slash naming or memorials um naming within buildings because that was kind of a different um the memorial was naming someone who wasn't there anymore versus someone that and does the same thing apply i think i noticed at gordon russell that the counseling center is named for linda eby is she still she is not still employed but she

139i think she retired three years ago but she's still alive yes so we named a area after someone who was alive and yet our previous policy says we don't do that and so i'd like to have similar language that we don't do memorials for someone who's still alive so that might be an addition that we need to put into this policy then because i don't recall the one for linda eby coming to the board so and then um mr hugh the third one black displays yes thank you no does it work does it need minor work can we do can we agree that it needs to have language that says a memorial naming will not be a live person at least at the very so that it's consistent with our other and then the other

140part we can we can deal with in an ar but i'd like for this one to at least say we don't name a building or a space after a living person chris i'm supportive of that we didn't discuss that in the policy committee but i would be supportive of saying don't name something after a living person so if we want to take that back to um or if we have to like pull it off and and revise that to update that language and support it or yeah take it back before the meeting yeah i like that yeah so we're not taking an action tonight but it can go back to the committee robin and um yeah so that you can make those revisions i don't think we have to take it back to the committee

141the committee's here it's chris myself amanda if we're all supportive of just adding that language and moving forward i'm i'm supportive of leaving it on and just moving forward with what's the language not being named after a living person i will make the change as requested by the board and and so it will be changed for the uh the next board business meeting okay so it can be put on the consent agenda all right thank you and then the final um policy for review was policy indb and that was regarding flag displays and salutes and as you can see there's uh three different uh changes currently um there's the um oregon law requires uh allows for the united states flag the oregon flag and the national league of families which is the pow mia flag

142and then there's a request to add in the pride flag and the black lives matter flag um that's the first uh recommended change in the second paragraph the district shall obtain and display a united states flag an oregon flag a national league of pow mia flag a progressive pride flag and black lives matter flag of an appropriate size for classrooms and then the third recommended changes students shall receive instruction and respect for the the national flag and the provided and opportunity of the united states flag at least once a week by reciting the pledge of allegiance they will instruct on native land acknowledgements and have the opportunity to recite it at least one student shall learn the united states national anthem and the black national anthem lift every uh voice you may sing and i

143think there's also included in your packet the actual words to that as well so that's for discussion as well comments from the committee i'm very proud of this work we had a very in-depth conversation about black lives matter and the potential backlash that we could face from the community and what was decided at the policy committee is that we need to support our diverse communities and we need to make a stance regardless of of the anger that other people might feel black lives matter we believe is a human rights issue and that this is something that as a district if we're going to support that we need to make a strong statement okay um i know we had quite a conversation about this it came about because the policy used to just have the two

144the united states flag and the oregon flag and we realized that under statute it was missing the pow mia flag and then um and then we had the conversation about how do we show inclusiveness for our staff how do we show inclusiveness for our students and um and i do i'll just say i do have some um uh i hate to say issue because that makes it sound like it's a bigger thing than it is um typically i've thought a government flag poll a government facility flies a government flag however that was before we had in the space of two weeks from our last policy meeting um more young men more people um black shot killed and so i think i think my thoughts on this are changing that whether there are some people uncomfortable

145about it we need to have that conversation and need to have it be something that we provide support for the conversation what i don't want to have happen is drop the flag in the classroom whether it's the progressive pride flag or the black lives matter flag drop it in the classroom for the teacher who is not prepared to answer the questions to talk to students and be able to their equity training is moving along but i don't want it to be for them to do it incorrectly and make it not as effective as it could be um i'm not quite sure what an appropriate size is it says that the policy but it's um you know whether or not some are smaller some are bigger and i think it's it's something that that we need

146to address um so that's at least on the first two parts of that so i'm going to stop now for a second so i just want to clarify chris you have said that you're supportive of the black lives matter and the progressive pride flag to be flown outside of the facility but not inside the classroom that was that isn't what i said i said as far as inside the classroom i want to make sure that we provide additional support for our teachers okay so we you're thinking more support for the teachers but for outside there's no additional support you're supportive i just want to know how to move forward with this and where we need to work on it's it's sort of um it's a good question and i kind of wish we were all

147in person to be able to see it's hard i'm not even sure if you can see me i guess i'm here here i am um yes here i am it's uh i think without doing it it's harder to have the conversation does that make sense that if we put the flags up then we can have the conversation if we wait to have the conversation then we'll just keep waiting and i would like for us to be prepared as possible to have those conversations we have students that are impacted um by misunderstandings confusion not being treated equitably that um that we need to have have more of that conversation and if the flag assists that then we can i'm still i'm still a little bit stuck in the it's a government building it's a government flagpole

148but it's also our students that are here who need our support and our staff who need our support um so that's uh that's where i am and i i would like on this one i really would like for the other board members that aren't here to at least weigh in on this so that they can have their questions answered as well so this one may conceivably when we get to uh the business meeting with consent it may get pulled off and have conversation at that point but i would like to have at least those first two items um with the flag itself um move forward something something that was discussed is as a board we have certain values and as a board we need to make that statement do we support black lives matter do

149we support the progressive pride flag and we need to make sure that those values are amplified and clarified to the communities that we're in and i just think that we need to sit with that yep robin i agree with you i want to make sure that our staff and our administrators feel prepared to have those conversations with our community i wouldn't do that to my staff i wouldn't do that to my administrators so i'm not going to do it here either i can display those symbols in my office and i did in my classroom because i felt prepared to have those conversations with parents with kids with colleagues we don't know i don't know if our staff feels that they're ready for that so before i would tell them to do this i want to

150know how they feel about it and i want to know what resources they need and what preparation they need for it um just in terms of like this prepping teachers and everything um i don't think you would take too much work do you think because i feel like every single teacher would honor their black lgbtq transgender we have a very diverse community and if you haven't been in a classroom with 160 to 200 different families and parents you don't know how challenging those conversations can be so i that's why i'm trying to get teacher voice into uh for us to take into consideration when making a decision like this just like i like to take student voice when we're making decisions that affect them and i i understand that this affects them i understand what

151it means as a brown student to have these symbols in the classroom what it means for what it meant for me seeing them walking in but i also know as a teacher and as administrator what it means to have to confront and and have conversations with families that may not feel the same way i do i understand what our values are as a school board i just want to know what resources our teachers need before we do this yeah i know that's really cool um i asked if like uh how much time you think we would need before we can really do this that's why i said earlier when i when i jumped ahead that i wanted to hear from dr pereira and our leadership team like what they think what time frame they think

152they need to to get us back yeah well first um i i will say that i definitely applaud some bold moves but i what i want to know too i don't know what that would take so i think talking to staff of what they need because this is a new discussion um and i'm happy to provide them with whatever they need to do but i can't give you a time frame or what it would take because i don't know um i don't know what our staff mean we have 600 staff members and so i i would really like to chat with them first and find out what those needs are to feel supported in order to implement this because here's what i don't want to happen is that we have a policy or an ar

153or whatever it is and we ask people to do they're not ready to have those conversations it's a this it will be a disaster um and backlash and i haven't experienced that with these sort of scenarios but i've done it with technology where i've had to back up and start all over again because i did not provide staff with the appropriate training um great ideas are great ideas but they're only as good as the fidelity of those who are implementing them and if you really want something to have a little bit efficacy and fidel done with fidelity you really have to provide staff with opportunities to prepare to respond carry out conversations et cetera and i don't know where our staff as a whole is as with that so um i can't tell you how

154much time that would take um i can't imagine time being it being a lot of time however i just don't know i've never participated in a pd of such so i would have to find out what that is but for example staff training and board values right that these are really two different things and if the board wants to set a precedent on these are our values this is what we think is important as a board if amanda maida chris robin if we are all like hey black lives matter we want to support these communities lgbtq progressive pride indigenous land acknowledgement if we want to do this we put it in policy to let staff know that these are our values and we provide services to make sure that they are informed that make sure

155that they have the resources that they need but these are two processes that need to happen simultaneously with each other it's not we wait six months seven months for certain training or so forth this is a flag we did state our values and our beliefs in our anti-racism statement that was released about a year ago so our values were very clear in that and um our community knows what we believe in great and now we need to act there is perfect without hearing from our staff and our community what is it that they need and to be prepared to have those conversations i wouldn't throw a kid into a pool that they if they don't know how to swim and i'm not going to do that to our teachers i'm not saying to do anything

156like that to our teachers the conversation that you just started is very divisive and what i'm saying is that at the same time that we have made this statement that we are going to fly these flags we are also going to provide appropriate training support systems whatever teachers need to move forward with that yeah i didn't say i didn't agree with flying the flags i'm just saying i want more information before i vote on it or before i accept this policy that's all i'm saying i just want more information from the people who will have to handle those conversations you're not going to be in the classroom with them when they have to have these conversations so i just want to hear from them first that's all i'm asking so are are we providing an

157additional burden to pass this policy than we do for other policies yeah and i think i'm not i'm not looking for input from the teachers i'm looking for input from the superintendent on how this might roll out and as i'm i'm sitting here thinking about this as well we may already have staff in our buildings that have either wanted to or have put these up and this would show very strong validation for what they're trying to do and and it says that yes you are doing it before before you got ahead of us and um and it may be and and um robin you can weigh in on this one but it may be on that second paragraph the district should obtain display flag oregon flag and the pow flag um and i don't know

158why the pow one if if those have to be in the classroom um i think currently in the classroom the only one we have to have is the united states flag is that correct mr mr cook shaken his head and perhaps any of those others would it dilute or that they could have the choice or the flags would be available for them for their classroom or is that soft pedaling too much you want it well what we had discussed in the meeting was that this is going to be an evolving conversation right black lives matter is a very strong powerful movement that we have right now there is very strong symbolism connected with this um but it's not like this is it it's about inclusion and it's about including other student identity other community identities

159and making sure that we are keeping up with the times that we are not just stagnant and saying oh even if we choose these three flags or however many flags that this is it that this is an evolving conversation but we need to start somewhere and we need to act and i think you actually bring up a good point that i'm not sure as many people know the black lives matter conversation movement and effort is not recent um it started was it 10 years ago 11 years ago with trayvon martin and that was where it started so it's not anything that's been within the last couple of years it's been going on for a while and so for people who may not know that this isn't a recent thing it's at least a decade of

160trying to bring it to the forefront and make it be a bigger conversation a bigger piece um of of making sure that we have that conversation um so so i think um i know we're also looking at we have an executive session i believe that that we need to get to um can we since we have someone waiting should we do the executive session and then come back to this or does it uh we don't have any go ahead what do we need to come back to this one for um so the first two paragraphs do we feel like we can roll that forward to the business meeting as long as you add in there that teachers will have the option to fly these flags and that they will be provided the adequate resources to

161have those conversations we're good i think all of our teachers should have that training anyway so oh yeah they should all have a training yeah i feel like i'm not saying they should everyone should fly should have the symbols in their classroom if they don't feel prepared for it alrighty once they feel i mostly value it outside the building anyway so um but no that's fine i'm just saying that like i i feel like prepping our teachers to have these conversations it's very important i think it'll be very great for our culture for our school that you know uh black lives are valued brown lives transgender lives and um i feel like anybody that's opposed to it they are just honestly tattling on themselves that they don't value every single life of every single student

162in the building and then you want to do the last part you want to wait to after let's let's go to the next paragraph so the last paragraph um we are required by statute to do to offer an opportunity for students to do the pledge of allegiance and that opportunity can be in as it says in assemblies before after school i know at the high school they broadcast it over the the morning announcements once a week has to be available at sporting events wherever and we have the conversation um about the land acknowledgments which could very easily be part of the ethnic studies and then an opportunity to recite at least once a week the um lift every voice and sing and um and i worry sometimes when we put in too many and you

163get to do this you get to do this you'll get to do this two things happen i don't want it to be wrote which is what i feel the pledge of allegiance is for a lot of people and every time they put something in it's that much time then that's taken away from instruction um and can you use these in a way that's instruction without making it uh okay everybody put your pencil down we're gonna do the land acknowledgement okay now open up your book and we're gonna do something else i don't want it to be that and same with the lift every voice i would rather have more information and not have it be just during black history month but have it be part of the conversation of black history all history and so

164i'm not really sure on the the lift every voice and sing component i'd like more information about that i'm i'm a little bit disappointed chris that you haven't taken the opportunity to look up the history and the importance on this national anthem um and it says students shall learn the united states national anthem and the black national anthem lift every voice and sing and so it doesn't say that we're seeing this weekly we don't sing the national anthem weekly but the importance of diversifying the american history outside of white colonialist history is very important it does say that that weekly there will be an opportunity to say the pledge of allegiance and within that time to say an indigenous land acknowledgement so those two things are are different um the black national anthem is a

165beautiful song if you guys want i will find it right now on youtube and play it for you and this is all in an effort is with which we said with our ethnic studies is we don't want to silo this we want to make this part of integrated into our curriculum and when we integrate this into our curriculum we really want to connect these learnings connect these teachings into this is american history the black national anthem is american history our land acknowledgements are american history right um and really associating these values back into what it is to be american and i think that these things are really important and that we should really not um that that we shouldn't stray away from learning these things so i had i had read it wrong robin that

166i was looking at the once a week for all of the components i had not read it that it was they'll learn the national anthem and the black national anthem and i did do a little bit of research today i didn't realize that it was written in 1901 and it was put to music in 1905 and it is a very beautiful um piece and so if it's not something that's required once a week then learning about it i think is very appropriate especially if you learn about it in tandem with what the national anthem says and the comparison between the two so with that let's move forward thank you i i just wanted to say i'm so excited that we're finally going to bring land acknowledgments to our district amend us several classrooms do it

167already my niece does it so we're we're gonna do we're gonna move on to the um to the bond contract approvals um that's uh jordan where is it yeah i think it's jordan that is me thank you vice chair gomez sorry um work on the 2021 projects for our bond are now getting underway uh the first new contract staff intend to award are for the built-up roofing project at west orion middle school and the covered sports court project at spring water trail high school for both projects cornerstone management group invited contractors on our pre-qualified list to bid on the defined scopes of work both projects received four responsible bids the west orient roofing project the low bidder was arrow roofing at 347 860 dollars for the base bid and 422 703 if the district elects

168to upgrade the insulation staff request board approval to enter into a contract with arrow roofing in the amount of 422 703 for this project the increased contract value will allow for a more energy efficient final project and will ensure that there will not be later issues with code compliance for spring water trails covered sports court project the low bidder was perlo construction at 268 500 staff request board approval to enter into a contract with furlough construction in the amount of 268 thousand five hundred dollars in keeping with past practice the bid result summaries for both projects are attached to this agenda item the opportunity to inspect all bid documents is available to any community member upon request so these both part of the work that was originally intended to be done in the bond yes

169okay two recommended action items um chris here we uh so i moved to approve award of a contract in the amount of 422 703 to arrow roofing to the built for the built-up roofing project at west orient middle school is anyone second i second okay moved by chris second by robin to move to approve award of a contract in the amount of 422 703 to aero roofing for the build-up roofing project at west orient middle school i just got any discussions is this work expected to start fairly soon then both of these jobs will be done over the summer so we will finish off the school year without doing construction and then when we move into the summer programming that staff is currently planning these two facilities will not be utilized for summer programming okay

170thank you everyone in favor aye anyone opposed she said i okay so uh it passes and then we have a sec second recommended action all right so i'd move to approve a word of a contract in the amount of 268 500 to perlow construction for the assembly of the sports court cover at spring water trail high school anyone second okay moved by chris second by amanda moved to approve the award of the contract in the amount of 268 500 to parallel construction for the assembly of the sports court cover at spring water trail high school any discussion so is this also a summer project as well yes it is everyone in favor point of clarification sorry vice chair gomez um we will likely start um there are two components to this project it's not included

171in this contract so for this contract it is exclusively summer work um because of the the cover that we're installing it encroaches upon the current access to the buildings behind spring water trail and so we will be pouring a new road and path that goes to the to the facilities behind spring water trail that work may begin this spring to prepare a sequenced approach to the construction it's not a part of this contract but just ahead though any other questions any further discussion okay everyone in favor hi amanda hi thank you uh anyone a post okay so um passes so now we're going to move into executive session executive sessions are close to the public representatives of the news media shall not be allowed to attend as provided by statue only designated staff shall be

172allowed to attend during the discussion about negotiations all other members of the audience are asked to log off no decisions may be made in executive session uh the ors 192.660 2d okay following the executive session the board will now reconvene into the regular work session so this time has been set aside um for the board to discuss upcoming agenda items board operations and meeting needs anything coming up do we have things that are getting scheduled because i know we're kind of running out of what have we got about four meetings left this year we have okay okay um something else that the question came up that maybe this will be part of it too the um we were asking question about graduation ceremonies so getting that on the board's radar what we're going to do

173with graduation and participation in that um i know they're working on it but it was rambling what are we doing for graduation and i want to make sure i'm part of it this year we had our first meeting uh wednesday this week to get into the detailed planning each school has some ideas uh we are not we're not betting on the coliseum given the sector guidance we're experiencing we know it's going to be at home like the rest of the conference this year barlow is entertaining three different ideas and in the process of gathering student input and they're going to have parent meetings first week of may as well all three high schools will be doing that they're toying with a drive-through they're toying with a movie theater like thing at barlow because they have

174the big wall up on the gym that they could do that with but they're worried about parking and then uh the third idea is escaping me right now i apologize gresham high school is looking more toward a drive-through option and to my disbelief but in a positive way students and staff and some parents at this point really kind of want to return to kmart uh and caught me by surprise i still think we will have a drive-through on site at gresham high school and then uh spring water trails looking at using one of the football fields with an open area to be able to do that or an auditorium so we just started the detailed planning of that work they're going to reach out to students and parents expeditiously to get more input we're going

175to be careful about giving people the the impression that they have a choice and the reason for that is is we're looking at the metrics the metrics could force us to change some of our options so we're being careful about saying we're gathering your input your preferences knowing that we may not be able to honor that but we are working toward it do we by any chance updates we have dates it's that second week of june or third week of june the tuesday wednesday and thursday i will look that up right now what is it yeah 15th 16th and 17th and jade hasn't gotten to the point of updating this yet spring water trail is on the 16th i believe barlow i believe barlow is on the 15th and gresham high school is going to

176be on the 17th currently although this could change as well the two bigs barlow and gresham will start at five and spring water trails principal is preferring seven when they get organized so right now that's on the counter that could change as well so we have on may 6th a budget committee meeting um at 6 00 p.m and that will be a virtual meeting the zoom link will be provided and we also have a regular board meeting at 7 and that will be here in the council chambers in person any other announcements so our meeting is adjourned at 9 47.