June 20, 2020 Newberg School Board Retreat

001all right well let's get started hope Ron can join in I didn't see I'll check my email again I didn't see anything about him not being able to make it did somebody already text him I can do that I'll text him right now all right we'll call it to order simply Ron will be here any minute um so since we only have three hours today I really wanted to try to utilize this time as concisely as we could and I think with all of the changes in Society the world our community in the last what is it's like three months four months uh I think that it it could really behoove us as a board to ensure that this coming year we have some really specific goals and that we're very intentional with how we're

002moving forward um in the coming year because it's I think going to be another year full of a lot of change and uncertainty um so that's kind of why I thought we needed to revisit the Strategic plan anyway but then once I kind of started digging and recognized on the website our district goals have not been updated since 2016. um Greg has some knowledge of goals in 2018. I fixed that okay but I still kind of felt like even 2018 I mean it feels like September was a lifetime ago 2018. we really need to to decide as a board how um how we want to move forward so that's why I did that but I hope everybody got my email um regarding the BCC and sharing of Articles and things like that and then also

003really quickly I had an idea for the Boneyard pile because that's been kind of the thing that's been going on I think a really simple fix that we could at least start with right now would be to have a shared Google Document just so in that way if things come on there all of us as board members have an ability to add to it and then we can edit it as we go through them it's probably not an ideal situation or set up but at least it's somewhere that we can all access and all see what we have if there's any thoughts about that what do you mean Boneyard I'm yeah so it was kind of this idea of if board members or if community members bring forward topics or ideas that they want to

004kind of dig deeper into um how do we keep track of that how do we ensure that we're you know addressing these things as much as we possibly can we haven't really had a way of keeping track of them and also keeping track of if we're addressing them or not so I'm not sure if anybody has any other ideas or thoughts about simple Google sheet that shares I think this answers your question but um kind of on the side of that would be it's going to bring up work sessions we talked earlier this year about doing a lot more of those you know like every other meeting even and uh that would be a good time to talk about those things you know if we schedule those like every other meeting we did have a

005work session and a board meeting all right let's do that I think whoever since we're so close to electing the chair for next year I think whoever the chair is for next year needs to figure out the schedule of when we can have those work sessions um and get it a little more part of our normal practice I think to have them [Music] I know the city of Newburgh has a Tracker that when public comments are made and suggestions are made it's added to the tracker and it's um it's it's reviewed at meetings how are we doing on the tracker okay something like that okay I I don't know what what they use I I could find out for us that would be great you've got the easiest connection to a city city counselor yeah

006yeah I'll check with them yeah that'd be awesome thanks Rebecca I I think it also is available to the public so the public knows what's going on that would be ideal yeah I'll I'll find that out and get back to you cool thank you okay they're already ready to jump in to gold all right let's review um let's review the goals really quick here let's see can everybody see the board packet foreign packet okay um So currently we have seven goals continuously support Improvement in student achievement I'll just do a little quick blurbs on them um enhanced student learning and development through Arts CTE extracurricular activities Implement strategies that promote safe respectful and responsible students support the overall well-being of students um support District goals through the alignment of resources protect the community's investment facilities

007fostering Partnerships and communicating regularly so how do we feel about those do we feel like is it a comprehensive list do we want to go one by one do we want to just start all over how's everybody feeling about our current goals I'll start calling on you all one by one foreign how do you feel about the current goals uh it seems like a fine list of generic goals Bob what are your thoughts yeah the first thing that jumps out to me is wanting to and some goals a goal at least if not a couple to address what we want to see around distance and hybrid learning with school being different currently and most likely for a while I think we should address that in our goals I think so too these are and I'm

008mentioning us having school year so not you know long term long range so I agree yeah thank you Rebecca do you have thoughts around the current seven goals I like them I I'm thinking that I wish we had a measurable ways to to track if we're meeting the goals or or you know how how do we know that that what we're what we say is our goal we've actually done something towards that and um I don't know if if um one of the goals should be also um um in light of the um racial racial um situation if we should make mention of to trying to become more anti-racist or um aware of the inequity of the situation somehow all right or make sure there's equality for all welcome Ron I'm glad you're here we're

009just kind of quickly going through the seven current board goals and getting members take on it uh Dave do you have thoughts about the current set of goals yeah I mean I think there I kind of agree with Brian I think they're kind of what we do as a board you know they're kind of they're there I agree with Rebecca too you know I think we need to have ways where we're we're tracking these so we can really feel like throughout the year that we're we're really making progress and you know I'm not saying this to to you know we've talked about this brand it's like just having a district person come in and give us a uh a briefing update to me is not enough I mean I think we need to have you

010know some some way to track that through uh parents you know students um firsthand you know throw us out there and and we actually get our hands a little bit more dirty and find out if we're really making progress in those areas uh you know I guess that would be mine I think again they sound good you know but I think we have some big ones to go on like Bob said you know the whole um How's that gonna you know look I guess I just like to be a little bit more like Rebecca said get some some direct uh tracking rather than just listening to a long presentation by a board member I like those sessions I mean I always get something out of them they always you know are good but I'd rather

011have those be shorter and then find some other ways to track them he knows you have thoughts on the current goals I mean I think that they're good goals I do think that we need to improve um or improve our goals given our current situation um yeah I also think that part of the reports that we're receiving are to see how we are meeting them at a district level um in the different areas so I don't think that the reports are I mean maybe they can be shorter but I don't know if we still want to receive all the information how we condense that so maybe we can talk about doing that any thoughts are on on the goals yeah first let me apologize my daughter and her family and my grandsons are here and

012we were playing a game and I lost track of time um the uh I I like the goals as stated I don't think I want to take anything out of the goals I would uh kind of in line with lines just said uh I think that the goals should say more about uh uh diminishing the uh the achievement gaps as a to me it's one of the ways to measure whether we're serving everybody equitably it's not the only way but certainly an important one and uh so the first one about continuous Improvement I I think would we could add something in there about while reducing continuously reducing or significantly reducing achievement gaps and notice how I struggled with the continuous or whatever I don't know how to frame it I think what needs to happen

013is under these goals some operationalizations should occur as we say in you know Academia is you put you describe what it is you mean by this goal how would you know this goal was was being met which we haven't done we haven't said we know what we mean this goal when X occurs and that would help us I think have more focused reports because we were looking at Hallmarks and standards for being the goals I don't think we can make them all numerical you know you know that you know scores of eight moving to nine or whatever some of them are easily numerical but some of them would not be but still it's I think it's still possible to get which would be relative to find him in some way was sort of inner subjective

014as they say which is that everybody could understand what that standard means somebody else could come to it later and still understand what we were shooting for and be able to recognize that we got it or not um I agree that also something needs to be done uh about yeah I'm the anti-racism I know what that word is trying to get at it that doesn't seem to me to capture the breadth of what we're trying to accomplish um but I mean as a start just for our conversation now I think it's good to call it anti-racism uh because we needed we still need to identify the system parts that we're not paying attention to that make equal opportunity unavailable to everybody um you know I like to be more positive and talk about as truly

015equal opportunity but I don't know if that really captures it either because it's easy to forget some Dimensions so somewhere in there there's a term or a collection of terms will help us Define what we're trying to accomplish um and I think that again uh tracing where we're doing an achievement gaps is part of what we're thinking about there it's not the whole picture but it's still an important part so um I guess I would ask for some implementation some additions probably to the number one about human gas maybe an eighth standard relating to the anti-racism otherwise and then an effort probably led by staff making proposals to us about uh how we could operationalize the goals as we do as we redefine them to give us you know Milestones to see how we're seeing

016whether we're making progress or not I'll say one more thing about this the last meeting when we uh I think it was the last meeting when we talked about the Middle School transition again that's something where we just don't I don't feel like we know how we'll know when we're succeeding entirely that we're looking at test scores and that's important but it's not everything uh and we don't I don't want to ever drop the test scores from what we're looking at but it's possible that uh we could understand what's happening better if we had other standards clearly in mind as to how do we know a kid has successfully managing sixth grade for example so the idea of operationalizing our goals is one I want to emphasize okay that's enough I agree with what you're

017saying but I also feel like I feel like seven goals is a lot like these are seven large kind of umbrella statements and I I worry that seven is too much you know do we is this the year that we really focus in on say four and really kind of develop those measurements and our Focus uh I don't know if you invited me to respond particularly anybody yeah yeah I'll let somebody else respond firstly I think so I'll go ahead and share real quick I do think that maybe we need to think of something uh smaller sometimes obviously we're doing a lot um in a district um and not everything will be necessarily in our goals but there's some things that are going to be in policies some things that are going to be an

018operational I do think that if we have seven I'm thinking in terms of my experience with a non-profit organization if you have seven programs your organization is spread thin versus if you're focusing on core I don't know three four five whatever smaller or not not smaller a smaller amount of goals maybe you can be successful and you can measure the success easier rather than measuring a larger quantity one of the suggestions I have going forward regarding our goals and sort of tracking something very simple I think we can do is that when we look at the agenda of a board meeting we can look at each item and see if they fall under any of the board goals and put that on the agenda so you know if we're having a report on teaching and

019learning well that's goal number one you know or goal number one or whatever so that way we're just constantly reminded that we have goals that were looking at things that fit under them and if we start seeing agendas that don't have a lot of attached goals on them then that's an issue right so that's just one thing I was thinking of yeah it kind of is helpful to see um with our policies at least what laws they apply to um so I I think that that's a good good idea to have what goals are agenda items go with hey Brandi um you know if all you guys said you know earlier um in this kind of made a point of um how to condense or whatever I'm not get your exact words in this but

020like one thing we could do with our presentations from The District staff which would help them a little bit is it's kind of like when you're at the school a lot of the meetings could be shortened up quite a bit if the information was put out ahead of time and an email format or something like that and then the presentation can be shorter um I mean I can give you specific examples but there's no reason to do that now and then we could take that and uh and you know talk about that more in a meeting because sometimes the presentations get pretty long a lot of that information we could just get on our own from that District staff person be prepared going into the meeting as a board member with that information that'll give

021us a little bit more time to to dive into those yeah I mean I I I it feels like some of these current goals are more like value statements than they are actual concrete measurable goals like number two is enhanced Student Learning and Development through Arts professional and Technical opportunity extracurricular activities enrichment experiences yeah of course we want to do that and of course I think the board would support that but I don't know how um I don't feel passionate about that goal you know so that's why my my thoughts are around do we pair down to some very specific measurable goals that set the direction of us as a board for the coming year I agree because that's kind of like saying well we just want to be awesomer of course yeah what's that

022mean I mean you know by maybe taking those seven and putting a board member next to each one of them and say um then we could give some feedback at a work session on let's say you take goal number one or whatever goal number two like you just mentioned but then some of your smart goals you're talking about would be product Rebecca said a little bit easier to measure because we could come back and then if we have questions that we don't think we're doing well or if we're doing great then that's better feedback for for the for Dr Jonah's staff who is anyone opposed at simplifying or clarifying the goals you're muted Ron yeah hit it twice sorry I'm sorry I hit it twice um I don't know that I'm posed there's nothing here

023I want to lose track of um and I understand the need to focus effort and I don't think that we having seven or even turn out to be eight goals means we have to be focused together on all eight this year might be the year to focus on two or three I don't know that we have to eliminate them uh just cutting them down doesn't help us with the problem of tracking real progress that's why everything that we have as a goal needs to be operationalized so that we know what we're working on now in that area and and that applies to number two and applies to all of them uh so my preference I think right now I'm is for me speaking just for me is that we don't eliminate anything we might reorganize

024them a little bit for our help uh clarify things we want to say make sure we get the anti-racist thing in there and then um and we certainly can say that this year we see goals number two five and seven or whatever they are as the ones that we need to work on most is we're focus on this year the board can help the district by helping their be focus on the things that from the big picture need to be worked on and that's what we should be helping to do and uh and in our conversation with the senior staff with the superintendent helping us figure out which things are the ones that are most workable and the most doable for us and also to help us measure what can we do in the next

025stated period the next two three or four years what can we look for and try to help people move that direction that's that's important I don't think it means that any of this should be dropped off a simple way to help with the simplifying it I think well I don't know if it's simple but it's an idea numbers four five and six are all about kind of the same thing they could all be part of a single goal if we wanted to uh me sorry guys and uh he's still there and uh so that might be a step too yeah to consolidate some things but no matter what we do we still have to operationalize them yeah and four really isn't even a goal you know this is that's what I feel like they're like

026sort of value statements I mean we we want to do these things right what are our actual goals as a board for the coming school year yeah Ron I understand what you're saying about not wanting to lose Focus or thought on the things that are listed in these seven but you know someone's just thinking about well how do we use these goals how do we use these goals over the past year and I don't recall when we've really talked about the these seven goals you know we said them last year and it hasn't been something we've Revisited which to me in my mind lends a lot of weight to the idea of you know reducing them down to just a couple things that are a little more short-term and concrete you know I I like

027a lot what you're talking about operationalizing like really explaining and saying what that each one means like just kind of randomly one another goal that popped in my head uh you know we're looking at going out for a bond in November passing a bond in November would be a good goal to set for ourselves um and so when I think of when I think of the these goals to me it lends itself more to more short-term concrete things like this year we really want to focus on XY um rather than the whole breadth of things that we are keeping track of how do you guys think it would be beneficial at this point to kind of do some brainstorming regarding what goals each member kind of thinks we should focus on and then we can

028start to sort of pare it down a little and then see kind of what we currently have is everybody comfortable with that Brandon can I offer one thing yeah before you get to that so just a reminder that these seven goals are the goals that are in the Strategic plan so you could even I'm not suggesting that you talk about it this way but you could even eliminate them as far as having this list of seven because you've already got the Strategic plan so those seven goals are in there so it's not like you're losing any of them you may want to consider looking at a goal or two or three or whatever that might be a smaller subset of goals that you want to develop that fit within one of the places in seven

029but as an area of focus so I will use the anti-racism as an example that might fit under um the under um it might be under the support and continuous Improvement because that's really about rigorous relevant learning aligned to academic content standards but you may want to talk about what those content standards are so are we you know working on the systemic uh parts of those the you know the passing and bottom November is another example of um it's sorry I'm doing two things at once it's under the facilities and investment right and so you know those those all still fit those goals you have are the seven that are Institute plans so you don't have to have those seven separately you can say we have the Strategic plan and here are our two or

030three goals for this coming school year things we really want to focus in on and then that way the seven aren't being lost because they're still part of the Strategic plan there's still the stuff we're going to do in operationalize you know we spent all that time with a huge amount of people putting together the plan that's what they came up with okay so you're not losing those but maybe there are you know two or three things that are really uh at top of mind for all of you um or for some of you that you want to talk about and then make those your your goals without making a list of 21. you know let's focus on those you still have your seven because they're in this strategic plan so you don't you're not

031really losing anything by leaving those more generic kind of goals in place because that's about that's that's the operation of the district and those are our general long-term goals but there may be something very specific that you want to focus on for 2021 and then that would kind of let you not have to feel like you have to choose one of those over the other because those seven are already in so maybe you find a way to add in a couple that you're really interested in for this year for a focus area so just a just an example that's what I was thinking that it that hearing the goals it sounded like it was a strategic plan in in um numeric um spelling out and that I I I I support Joe's idea about choosing

032through two or three goals that that are um detailed out or materialized out whatever however Ron put it I would go for that foreign yeah you know just as I think about again how we how we want to use these goals you know kind of building on these ideas you know one thought is yeah we put a lot of time and effort into getting input from the community from stakeholders developing that strategic plan which includes these seven goals the board goals that we set could be just you know drilling down on a few high priority areas of that wider strategic plan that'll still exist still be a guiding document for the the district but there are just a few things that we really want to drill down on and you know would help us Focus

033through the the coming year I'm seeing this is sort of the direction the board's going but I'm waiting for a dissenting View if anybody's uncomfortable with go with kind of building on this direction okay Ron's still muted so I think it's all right it's kind of be random you can't judge about whether I'm muted or not sorry okay well then how about this is everyone comfortable with sharing maybe their top two or three sort of directions that they would like the board to focus on just to start kind of brainstorming and seeing where we all are yes yes you want to start us off Dave well I guess my first challenge to all of us would be you know what are we hearing out there sometimes I think when you're in the schools you don't

034always hear what's going on I mean we're in the community what are we hearing you know from our individual districts and uh the people we know you know our neighbors everything like that so I think that's that's one thing that sometimes I think it's missed out on um I'm trying to think Brandy I'd like a couple more minutes to yeah no problem no problem I would like uh the board to try and minimize the impact of budget cuts to the student experience Brian do you have any suggestions how to measure that and how to go about doing that well I mean how you go about doing is a matter of where you're cutting um as far as measuring it not off the top of my head it's a start though yeah we can kind of

035I am thinking we're probably going to start seeing some similar threads here so maybe we can build off of that one yeah do you have any others that come to mind right now Brian uh ensuring that we are um being safe with our kids safe like uh in regards to like covid like health safety okay we're prioritizing student health and safety okay so Bob I know you said the distance learning hybrid do you have other thoughts yeah really the two that come to mind first you know like I said earlier the one goal would be to pass a bond in November and the other would be to you know increase reinvigorate start using uh citizen advisory committees ad hoc committees to help uh inform the work of the board which is something we've talked about

036but um haven't done all right I'm just writing these all down so sorry there's a pause we don't have the big white sheet that we can scribble on uh well Rebecca do you have any thoughts on where you'd like to see some goals I would like to make sure that um through the distant learning that we inch um are aware of the um the equity gaps and um to to ensure that all the all students have access and um I think that goes along with the food and beans are keeping our kids safe and the distant learning that that could be part of it [Music] and that each child is respected for who they are thinking of the the racial situation that we that we um are aware of things that um that we we

037look at the curriculum and we look at situ the systemic situations and hear from our students what they're experiencing mm-hmm you know it's Ron Dave I think one for one for me would definitely be investing energy time and attention in imagining a new education system um so going along with what Bob said about a hybrid model um I think it's time for change um so I'm excited for us to focus our efforts on reimagining education um as well as with safety um and health of our students you know it's important to have a learning safety and that's where I would focus the equity piece and um and talk more about this anti-racist environment which we should I think dive deeper in as well could you expand on what you mean by learning safety yeah I

038mean I think that if there's systemic racism happening it creates for a not safe learning environment um and that it exists so how can we work together to bring ideas and dismantle some of that um in this reimagining of Education I like this this side this larger sort of umbrella idea of reimagining Education because it feels like it fits with the calendar re-look that we're looking at and kind of yeah this hybrid model and then of course or you know picking back up the start times what that looks like Ron do you have thoughts where what are you feeling passionate about well um uh I think the reimagining is going to be forced upon us so I want us to do the best we can at it I think it's a good idea in general

039but it's the kind of thing that's so big we tend to put it off but with the covet virus and even with the way of rethinking how our system works for everybody and whether it works for everybody these are two things that are on our agenda no matter what and we cannot ignore them or we're not even being Timely with the needs of our our district so um and my concern about it is that that in the re-configuration the restructuring our response to both of these Environmental requirements um that that we can maintain uh academic rigor and that we can improve how our system works for everybody and so those are if you ask me what the top two things those are the top two things uh I think we can afford to postpone the

040bond more than we can afford to postpone this other work not that the bond isn't important but the bond isn't going to be one of my top two or maybe top three in priorities this year you know for me personally because I think the other per this is the moment in which we've got to work on on how we do different kinds of education and not lead people out so what Rebecca said and what Vanessa I think both feet into that so the notes I've been taking it's kind of this heading of new education system and under it is learning which would be like calendar start times the hybrid model equity which would be our work around the anti-racism and safety which is our work around health and I think that we should I agree

041Brian of course health and safety for the kids but of course and you gotta I think include staff in that as well um and then the bond so that's four but I don't know if that's if I've captured what everybody was feeling so I can decide with Ron on the bond I think um you know first the bond package that was built was built for the old world and I don't know how much it applies to the new world that we're in um on that I think politically the chances of passing 140 million dollar bond in this environment um seems low to me and I think and I think you're right the Brian's right about this in the sense that if we are really looking at we want to have the most flexibility to make

042the kinds of changes that we might need to make get given how education is going to be differently delivered and whether we find and when we can identify places at which so we've been put at a disadvantage I want I would like to bond to be built out to be finalized our proposal for that bond be finalized after that because I want to have that all in place and this is not something I would say every year but this year we have there's a Confluence of events that it seems like this is the year we have to make those other fundamental decisions before we design the buildings around them hey Brandi yeah go ahead um Ron were you finished there yes I was okay um I think uh I agree with what Brian Rhonda said

043too and I think the educational model has to change and uh you know a lot some ways we're doing stuff the way we did it even when I was there let me holy cow we're talking a different world ago and then uh it seemed like every three years we get a new superintendent of principals and they're changing up the new educational thing and and that's not a knock on Joe or anything it's just I'm just saying we tend to about every three years that's how that's how teachers feel we change everything up and I think now in this changing world looking at educational modeling what we expect from Dr Joe and his staff should be a top party I also want to just challenge everybody um when we say rate you know we talk about

044you know we want to have all of our students Challenge and we want to have all of our kids you know get a great experience right well one thing I'd like to have this discussion with you guys because I really want to hear your points of view on it and get deep on this one subject is I want to see every single kid have an amazing experience in Newberg schools just bottom line and uh that ties into a lot of the things we've already talked about no matter how you float that you guys you're going to have gaps they're just going to be there that doesn't mean we don't try to take every single kid no matter who they are and give them their best shot in Newburgh School District from the from the first

045minute they get there but uh when we say like you know we really want to make school better A lot of these goals here and everything we have to look at every single kid and if we have a kid now who could go from going to PCC to to George Fox or or we could have him going from George Fox to Princeton um we need to we need to challenge every single kid and to me when you raise the bar to every single kid it raises the bar for every single kid and I've seen it work my entire coaching career nobody gets left behind nobody gets a short end of the stick and I think that's my big deal is we I guess I don't feel safe talking about this on this board because sometimes

046I feel like when I do you guys think I'm trying to be mean to to low-end kids or something I'm not matter of fact it's almost the opposite if we really raise a bar truly to every single kid at Newburgh High School everything gets better and they get there there always will be gaps so certain words we have to be careful how we use those um but I think every single kid in our schools at the end of the day after it's all said and done Ron's kids just graduated we got to get them ready for that point when the dinner plates broken and they're ready to be on their own and the best way to do that is not to sit back and make this easy on them it's to it's to raise the

047bar with our teachers our Ed assistants our District staff the school board every single kid in that school wants his best shot to get his best education at Newburgh so when they're out there when they turn 18 they're ready to go whatever they choose to do and that's my my thing is is uh there's gonna be gaps you guys I don't know it it it's if we just challenge every single kid and every single teacher and every single person the best we can um we we did the best we can for that kid in Newburgh you know Dave I'm I'm right with you on the rigor part I would say that my boys did not get the rigorous education they could have gotten but I also don't and I also think there will be gaps

048but as long as the gaps are so reliably along the lines of ethnicity and race and income that's not assistance it's not like it's not like ability is determined by those factors so if the gaps are still following those factors there's a problem with the system okay so but that's why we have to keep talking about the gaps because we're not talking about the gaps of a normally distributed population where everybody had the same opportunity and had different outcomes we thought that was the case and there wouldn't be if that was the case then there wouldn't be distribution differences between different kinds of population something in our system isn't serving some parts of the population the same as others unless we're assuming something else about the distribution of ability and as you know from from

049coaching the ability is not distributed about in an ethnic lines and coaching and it should be the same in the classroom and we're not getting that result so there's something wrong with the system so we I agree we need to work on rigor that rigor always should be pushed up but it's got to be pushed when we're pushing it up we want to make sure that everybody's getting advantage of that record right now they're not look to me [Music] um they improved the rigor uh across the board I want to see every kid do the best they can I don't care exactly uh and if we got cash and our teachers because we're not doing our job as a school board to get them ready then let's that should be our number one priority above

050bonds and everything else like right now why aren't we getting that done we should our principles need to be held accountable to that you can't imagine that's not their goal right now it just blows me away that that wouldn't be their goal like right now so to me that would be party number one Dave if I put down professional development will that sum up what you're saying about in regards to getting teachers ready or is it something more than that well I mean I think that's a that's a tough question pretty I think you know Joe can answer to that too but I think sometimes I've told you this I think we get polished reports from the schools I don't want polish reports I don't care who that kid is I want them to look

051at if they would if they came to a board meeting and sat down and said I'm getting challenged in Newberg schools and people are helping me move forward every day and then I would I would say on this on on the on the races and the bias and that kind of stuff if I'd probably back up and say that's number one because if if if that's going on at all we got to get that that done right away I mean that's got to just go away from Newburgh completely if we have anybody related to working with our young people that are that way and then they gotta go I mean we gotta that it's not acceptable for a kid because work when you're a coach or a teacher or anything like that or we're even

052supposed to do as board members we have to report anything that's going wrong with that kid if we see it right we're we're supposed to be mandatory reporters and I always took that super serious because if anybody uh you know when you're in charge of young people you're in charge of their safety and what their well-being when it comes to their school experience I think then what you said earlier is bringing those kids into I think Bob said maybe bringing those kids into are are uh school board meetings and letting them talk to us and again this isn't a knock-on event but I don't want a Polish kid from the principal you know the captain of the baseball team I want just just a cross-section of kids so we're getting good solid just raw feedback

053well not like hearing what we hear but it'll sure be helpful I feel like it's a fair statement to say that as a board one of our if not if we're going to number our goals if we do or not but one of our top goals if not the top goal is going to be a focus on equity and anti-racism is that a fair statement we might disagree on wordage but I think so I think that's got to be sure we're not at wordings yet it's how they're going to get their best education in our school there's no way Brandi can I ask Joe a question yeah go for it Joe what is underpinning the achievement Gap in the Newberg school system right now in your opinion well it's interesting because we often talk about

054achievement Gap but the achievement is the outcome and what we actually need to focus on are the opportunity gaps because what we really are talking about and when you're talking about Equity Equity is an outcome um but when you are identifying systems that continue this status quo which actually most of you have talked about um what you have to look at then are working on the systems that continue to provide the same result we get over and over again so if you look at over the history of it we make some improvements here we do some things there um but the work of actually dismantling the systems that we have you know I think that you've talked about [Music] um I think you know as you called it reimagining the Ed system the educational system

055time for change and I'll tell you that what that means is that we're about to embark on uh and which I totally agree with uh but we're going to have to switch up the system to provide more for some people and less for other people because in order to provide an opportunity for kids who are behind they have to make abnormally Positive Growth meaning they have to make more growth than they normally would be on their trajectory so when you start looking at the groups that we can basically draw a circle around and say here are the groups who aren't achieving here are the groups that have historically underachieved it's really not about the achievement it's about how much opportunity we have given them and we have some supports in place you know we have

056some things for El and we have 504 plans and we have special education and we have some Support classes and things like that but when looking at this I mean we've even talked about this in this hybrid model that when if we were to propose that some students will be coming two days a week because that's what we can do for our cohort size and there will be other groups of kids who come four days a week we have to be prepared to say we believe it's important to provide more opportunity for some children because they are in need of more support and that is a statement that makes some people make a lot of people crazy it will make people upset um because you're going to talk about now providing additional things for some

057and not for others but if our if the true goal of the board and I think it really is is to provide is to see gaps uh being reduced that means we have to actually work on the system which is the opportunity Gap and not necessarily the achievement Gap the achievement Gap will eventually change by providing additional opportunity for those who need it and that you know we come back to talking about anti-racism that's about going after the systems that don't provide as much opportunity when you raise the rigor which I think we can all agree uh is not a bad thing to do but you also have to then raise the level of support because you can't just say now we've raised the bar everybody reached the bar we're still doing the same things

058we've always done right we've got this class we've got that class we're doing this now everybody can take AP but only certain kids are going to be able to make it because we're going to keep teaching it the same way and keep doing it the same we've always done which doesn't actually provide additional opportunity it just provides the shell of an opportunity but if we're ready to move into this next phase and and talk about what Equity actually means um then we're going to have to really consider um a full dismantling of the system that we have in place that don't provide additional opportunity for some and that means some less opportunity for others those who don't need as much support and so we have to find kind of the balance in between there but

059and what are what are those systems um here let's see can you give an example um okay so as a as a for instance we've got math classes at middle school and you have sixth grade math you have seventh grade math and you have eighth grade math now I know we have some kids we accelerate and do those other kind of things but if you were to look at that and go does every sixth grader need the same level of math and the same level of support I would say no same thing for seventh grader same thing for eighth graders and so when you look at diversifying those things can you find ways that you can provide additional support for some students in math which means they may have um you know smaller class size

060you might have a different teacher you might have additional adult support in those rooms which means that your other places might get larger size you know kids who are all achieving at very high rates you know if you're as a for instance if you're teaching AP Calculus you could probably do that with 40. but if you're doing um you know the basic math for uh trying to get kids up to the basic algebra too you might have to have much smaller classes you might have to have classes of 12 or you know I'm just making up numbers but those kinds of things so shifting from the egalitarian model of everybody kind of gets the same amount we try to balance everything out um you know I there always is some pushback about uh people call

061it tracking kids and I would say that working in groups with people who have similar abilities actually allows teachers and support assistance to focus in on the skill sets they have at the level they have um but that's you know those are if the board decides to move forward with um truly looking at all of our systems with Equity uh that's that is the journey we have to talk about reducing the opportunity to happen so I think that those are I mean there are all kinds of different examples of that and I think this hybrid model coming up with uh thing around covet will be one of those kinds of things that allow us to really look at how do we do the system differently Joe tough question hey Dave can you wait a second

062Bob has been trying to scooch in for a second go ahead Bob Dave you're next I was just gonna say you know and I think as we do this you know Brian what you just did is is going to be necessary to ask really tough questions about okay what what system are we talking about when we talk about systems um and there's going to be some big broad answers and there's going to be some more granular answers you know one of the challenges is that you know when we look at our system there are probably very few openly racist people operating within our system I I would be surprised if that was a real common thing but we have things that are much more subtle that do go on you know we've we've adopted ckla

063and we've had my understanding is uh quite a bit of success and it's been good for us but we also have in there units about kings and queens and the kings and queens are all stereotypical fairy tale European Kings and Queens so the kids who look like that feel comfortable you can see that you can look to that as a role model it doesn't doesn't show people from other cultures who had kings and queens or even question why kings and queens should be exalted and and stand as our examples um these are these are the kind of things that are going to have to have challenging conversations about and be aware of you know how hard we can push our system what constraints are outside of our control and how we can push against those

064and make Newburgh work the way we want it to work um yeah I I for one am very excited to take on this deeper broader view but a lot of folks get really stressed out by change it can be very difficult you know when we were at the the tail end of uh Kim's tenure one of the things which a lot of people came to us with was feeling like they were burned out on change there was initiative overload and that was valuable feedback we took that feedback we've worked with that but the amount of change the amount initiative that was going on within Newberg at that time just pales in comparison to what we're looking at right now so we need as a board if we're going to talk like this we need to

065be prepared for the stress that that's going to put on our system and the pushback that folks are going to have because if I've been using these handouts for 25 years and they just they work really well for me it's going to be really hard to be challenged that those are not necessarily inclusive if we're going to push our staff to say you know maybe some of the supports we give in the future look completely different than what we've done in the past you know maybe Catalyst has touched on it but if kids are home three days out of a school week maybe some of the supports we give are teachers reaching out calling them visiting them you know doing things that we haven't typically done as a system that can provide them supports in

066a whole new reimagined educational system Dave do you have thoughts about that yeah I do it um I mean if we're gonna talk like this I mean I'm hoping it's safe enough just to say whatever right are we there I mean are we in that spot where we can just say it I mean we've got to we want to get deeper right I mean yeah I mean Joe what you're just saying there is like it feels like when I hear you talk it feels like we're saying well who's going to get left behind and then are we teaching to the middle I go back to the thing where I have never done any way different where every single kid gets my best shot to give them their best shot and it's been amazing to see

067who comes from the bottom and passes up the so-called gifted at the you know at the top I've seen it a bazillion times and it's like coming from a low-income family coming in from a very dysfunctional family as a little kid going to our schools in Newburgh seen what other kids had in what we didn't have and then it always came back to the fundamentalness of we just had good teachers pushing us forward and then you end up passing people up because sometimes you know certain people just don't work that hard some people don't try that hard some people work their tails off and I just know coming from a low income situation um you strive for that because when my my educators put that up there we weren't teaching to the middle they were

068just teaching us the best they could and I know it's a different world today we look a little bit different but who's going to be the kids underserved now that if we don't serve everybody and I get it we might have to have smaller classes I understand that because I was you know I never got a good math teacher until College I never got one I mean got great history got great uh English teachers but not math so I get that so I get smaller classes whatever we have to do to make this thing work but I support every single kid getting our best shot at Newburgh not uh not underserving anybody I don't like that statement because well yeah go ahead what if that's your kid though Joe what's that your kid or my

069kid we're sitting there going well wait a minute just because they're talented uh just because they're whatever they are um you know when we were handing out those diplomas it was so much fun to stand up there with all you guys and do that well some of you guys and it was so cool to see some of those kids that I've seen all through the years come up and get those diplomas from Newburgh High School as a school board member I'd like nothing better than every kid coming across that stage to get that and they'd come back in three or four years from now and say awesome Newburg High School experience and this is why and every one of them is going to say it because I've heard it so many times I got pushed

070I got challenged the kids know who the good teachers are usually the good teachers or the tougher teachers that push them and that's not a brown black or white thing that is just a kid thing that is just that's not a poor kid that's not a rich kid anything they they just want to be pushed down the road and being around the real world do you have thoughts on this Joe oh sorry I I think yeah you know here's as an example and you brought up my kids I'll I'll bring them up too my kids are going to be just fine because they are um they're white uh they're male they have two parents who have advanced degrees who live in their home who make them actually do their homework who can help them with

071their homework who have a regularly kind of a scheduled time to do reading which they hate to do of course but we make them do it anyway and so my kids actually don't need as much support as maybe somebody else's situation where they might need it and I would Hazard a guess that when you were coaching I know it was true when I was coaching is that I had to coach each kid differently because each kid had different needs they had certain kind of talents they had certain kinds of supports but not every kid who came to me on my court had been to the three thousand dollar volleyball camp that they were that they were going to go to and I I had to treat each one of those players slightly differently to get

072the mess the best out of them that I could um and when I'm talking about uh some kids getting more and some kids getting less it doesn't mean uh not giving every kid uh the most that you can but we cannot say that every kid who walks in my class of 30 that they all have the same level of support the same level of experience um because we could never apply the same amount of support to every child if I divided up my 60 minutes and I gave every kid two minutes of my time that day if I did that the gaps would continue to persist and so when um we look at systems of support we have to apply more support to some and less support to others if the goal is to reduce

073uh eventually the achievement Gap if it's not then we will continue to do exactly what we do now we can teach and teach and teach and yes good teachers make the difference that's I mean that's a really um um it's true and obvious statement we have to have the best teachers we can and yes we need to do um we need to do work with them under professional development but I think it's also um important to remember that every kid comes to us with a different set of circumstances and we have to at least acknowledge um if we want to make these if we want to reduce the gaps then we're going to have to find ways that we spend additional dollars on some and fewer dollars on others and that's I mean that's we

074have to apply things differently and we can't just say everybody's going to get something and everybody's going to have higher rigor because everybody is actually an individual and each individual has a different experience and so how do we how do we group people with similar experiences and then how do we give them more to get to that next place and so it's not really about reducing opportunity for others it's just the giving some others more so you started a place and then you add more some kids may get less additional support but uh you know that's that's the balance in all of this if you want to reduce the Gap then we have to apply um fuel to the place that needs the most on the in the engine at least that's that's kind of

075how we identify the systemic problems that we have um and look at those so I think that that's that's an important piece to remember so if we take on calling it anti-racism and Equity now just as a large umbrella term since we haven't sort of twiddled that down into a more specific thing I'm hearing uh probably board development I think it's a board we would have to do a lot of work looking within us as individuals I think we'd have to really take an equity lens to our policies um and and really having some big conversations with Joe around how do we support this system that will give some to extra to others unless too some um is there is there other is there other areas that you can see that as a board with

076concrete goals measurable goals in this area I I don't I just I'm not quite done processing the conversation that we've been having around Dave's comments and um as I said earlier I think bell curve distribution of achievement is true in every aspect of human endeavor which doesn't it's just the way it is and and if we I don't think that the fact that there is a bell curve is a problem that some people far out achieve others and so forth what bothers me is when that bell curve shifts based on what your background is every no kid deserves to be born behind they don't choose where they're born and if they end up behind as a group we're not doing it right that has to do with race for sure and ethnicity it has to

077do with income levels as well there's lots of reasons why people are born behind and no kid deserves to be born behind they don't have every kid has the same right so um while I'm not troubled I think Dave you're right in general there will be a distribution as long as that's not the same distribution for every kid based on their demographics we're not doing something right and it isn't the same uh opportunity for every case and even in athletics where it might be you might think it's even evener it doesn't necessarily as Joe points out most people many people can't afford the extra camps and things that some kids get and that gives them an advantage and they become the best play on your soccer team and they didn't start with any more ability

078they just got more training and if that's if that's racially or ethnically conditioned then that's wrong we got to fix it so the way you fix it is you help the others catch up who started behind because of things that they didn't control for now we are using race and ethnicity as a way of sort of short short-handing the conversation because we do see clear gaps based on those factors but it applies to all the kids any kid who starts behind should have a chance to catch up and uh and until the we see that the bell curves align for People based on where they're born rather than just then diverge we have to do something to catch up I don't think we want a society in which there are permanent underclasses and we still

079have one that's not fair my best player ever ever the Newburgh history tennis most decorated player ever poor family good she's outworked everybody he wasn't very big when we were athletic smart kid he outworked everybody and he had no opportunities to go to camps and everything like that and but I go I come back to well you guys just said I agree whatever we got to do in Newburgh is a school board to make sure that we're giving every single kid their best chance but maybe like say at the high school level Ron your kids just graduated right you said maybe they could have been a little bit more rigor and I think what Joe says too is like some kids are going to need more support I agree maybe by the time our kids

080get to their sophomore junior senior high at the high school if they are in a certain situation and the support is there uh just because people have money at home doesn't mean it's Sports there though but but if they have that that chance then we can still push those kids uh get them out to more internships and get them out into more opportunities out in our in our district and stuff like that if we don't have enough teachers to make sure they get challenged super hard because I don't want them to be the underserved but I want the kids at the same time who need that math class if we only can only put 10 or 12 kids in a math class that's what it's going to take to help that kid get his best

081shot and I support that too okay I just want to see that you know I don't want to see your kids or anybody else like that come out of Newberg High School going I wish it would have been a little bit better for me you know because you know as they move away from us that's the question they're going to ask you know where was I ready for the real world I'm willing to risk a little bit of some kids thinking that wasn't best for them outcome we have a better distribution of opportunity reflected in the outcome so sure they're going to be families who are grumpy that their kid has a bigger class size for example than somebody who we're trying to help catch up but that's part of the cost you can't catch

082them you can't make you can't make it not be permanent generation after generation repeated without somebody being given a a little bit of extra help and I don't want it to be repeated so that you can predict somebody's outcome in general by how they look you you cited an individual that's a great individual it'd be a somebody a great we should all know and I think they'd be example to all of us when those individuals are evenly distributed amongst the population based on their demographics then we'll there well they're not now certainly not academically I will say um it's it would be a much easier sale to tell the community that we're going to give group a less in order to give more to group b um if the quote unquote advantaged populations were performing

083better because I don't think even the you know the kids who are advantaged are where they should be in our school district so that that is one challenge I just need to say something um I will I'm going to use the board as an example of how the system impacts things differently we're talking about this we all came prepared we all got voted in equally but the experience on this board is not the same I'm struggling in this meeting because I feel that my lived experience is being negated yet I'm qualified to be a part of this I'm a Community member a former student and I don't know if any of you see that I mean I know that we're trying to do this but I'm using my experience and I quote I know that

084this is a privileged position being that I am a Latina of lighter complexion I don't get judged as much as others I don't suffer the same oppression as others but I'm here and just sitting through this conversation is painful could you speak to why you feel your experiences being negated by this conversation because I am a person of color a woman of color and the system is not in my favor and still I'm here having to listen to something over and over and how do we work together to understand or come to an understanding I applaud you Joe because I do you captured exactly what I wanted to say about we're reimagining education meant to me and I know it's going to be hard I know if sitting in this call is hard I know

085the community is going to struggle and I don't know if I'm answering your question of how this is painful or hard but hearing that you all are not understanding that having to offer more support for others in order to meet to have them meet the bare minimum that that's where the misunderstanding is and it's my comment to you is like I my whole comment wasn't had anything to do with race though my whole account was just about I'm just talking about kids in general I mean I wasn't talking about that I was just talking about every single kid we have needs our best shot I mean I saw I don't get down that that comes back to that I mean and this and correct me if I'm wrong on this you know I think that

086at this point with everything that's happening in our World in our country in our community there is undoubtedly a different experience for people of color and that goes to every single classroom I'm not faulting the teachers for that I'm faulting the system for that and involting history for that so I'm it's not about individual teachers who are good or bad it's about the system in which they're operating and it's the system in which we're perpetuating unless we take a very specific stance against this and say no we're reimagining this education system and we are going to do it with the knowledge that in order for all of our children to have an opportunity academic achievement or personal growth or social emotional learning or whatever it is we say we have got to put in our

087system supports specific to specific children I don't that's in my mind not up for debate I don't think I think we all have our personal Journeys and understanding what that means but I think that we have to move forward with this and we have to come to the basic agreement that the system is not serving students and we've known that for a long time you know another thing that I've said before is things are the way they are because everyone is doing exactly what it is that they're doing I could have easily continued muted through this next two hours and not said anything and moved on but speaking up about this is my contribution to shifting things I'm not saying change is going to happen overnight completely but even just a little shift if we

088can move a little bit just a tiny bit eventually maybe something will happen okay so I'd like to be fun to do it'd be good to do would be to take your experience as a Latino this is this is not fun and I'm not a case study I just wanted to bring this from my perspective into the situation to give a different understanding of what is going on at a systemic level using my personal experience on this board well you have to share your experience if you want us to benefit from that I don't have to and just calling it out is me telling you how this is different it might tell me that it's different but it doesn't inform me how I don't think getting specific examples of sort of the systematic racism that

089Inez personally has experienced is going to add to the conversation I think the conversation is around we know it's there so now what are we doing and I don't think hearing you know that she had a bad math teacher or that somebody said a racial slur to her once I don't know that that's going to add to this at all no I'm not asking for that I'm just I haven't been hearing a lot from Inez in this so I don't get the benefit of her perspective this is the first time that she's really spoken up about this and I appreciate that and I know it's I understand it's hard um but I don't think it's fair to Dave to to qualify what he said as negating your lived experience Dave this isn't about Dave this

090is about a system I guess my thought with you is like if you were on my team or I coached you I I would value your feedback immensely because of just what you just said and sometimes the the greatest way to change the past to move forward and I agree with you totally about our educational system is and I don't think this is just limited to one group of kids at our school I think it's a it's you know an overall change of shift in our stuff but I would want to know what you had to say because I always did it that way whether I had a Latino or I had a a black student I had uh a brand new student exchange student whatever somebody was coming to the this thing that was

091uh not typical Newberg type kid coming in there and and they were they wanted to be part of our whole system it was so fun to to add their experience to what we were doing and it always benefited us because it helped everybody learn I think that's what I'm trying to say I think that's what Brian is trying to say is you have a unique experience and a set of words that you can give us that that may help this thing move along in a real healthy way um I'm I'm gonna just step in quickly as um this is a an uncomfortable place for um a person of color to be in right now because um and it's not coming from a bad place from from the rest of us here because we do want

092to hear and understand the learned the the lived experience but um it's also challenging I'm going to guess and and you don't actually have to say anything but it is challenging for the only person of color to try to Define all of those things when we're talking about 400 years of kind of oppressive systems and so I I think as it's a really good conversations I don't really want to stop it in this way but I do want to posit that it might be really if you're if this is really important for all of us and I think it is and that's what I'm hearing from all of you is that we really do need to look at some very specific training workshops things like that that are around specifically around um Equity that come

093from outside trainers that know what they're doing I know there are lots of them out there but I think if we really want to learn about this we're going to not be able to only just take from someone who's already in that chair I think we need to really consider learning about this in a more systemic way because it does add a lot of pressure to our sole person of color and I think that that's um I think it's a lot of additional stress it's actually making it less safe to be part of the group and that's not because people are being um bad to people because I think when you have curiosity and each one of you have mentioned you know help me understand and so I and I I really honor that but

094I think also we have to to to be inclusive of all of our board members I think it would be important for us to think um you know what kinds of things can we learn from additional trainings and workshops and I think those are you know it's not kind of a one and done this is if this is a journey which we want to on upon which we want to Embark um I'd be more than willing to get us going this is something that we're going to be working on it fits in with the anti-racism focus which we're going to get to which is just one part of this larger system but um but I think it's going to be hard for us to try to tease out an entire um lived experience from someone

095from our community who is on part of this board and I think it would be I think we can get there by having these broader goals and then we can talk about how to operationalize developing an equity lens for the board and asking the really tough questions which I actually really appreciate because it gets us into a really a a more true conversation um but I don't think I don't think we can continue to ask uh Ines to explain uh her lived experience um in a meeting like this because I think it's very uncomfortable so I would just like to offer that and maybe we could um we might even need a quick Break um Brandi for a moment and then uh maybe come back and I know Greg you you had put something in

096the chat if there was something that you wanted to offer uh before but it might be the right time for us to to take a quick break and then come back and and put some some goals out or some things we'd like to talk about specifically for us to then work on operationalizing yeah I agree so let's do 10 minutes 3 35 everybody come on back and you can just stay on the call yeah let's take another five minutes it doesn't look like too many people are back at but let's essentially do seven minutes let's say 3 40. since you two are the only one that's on are you okay okay we're going to start up again Brian and Dave at 3 40. foreign when we come back together would you like to give us

097your comment or is it where are you on that yeah I can do that yeah okay Okay it's 3 40. so let's get restarted uh go ahead Greg I just wanted to reflect what I was hearing in the conversation um the combination of things I'm not I don't want to speak very Ness I want to speak for what I heard in the conversation um when part of the conversation is about not wanting um to continue to focus data looking at race and the achievement Gap and when there are comments that say it's about those who put the effort in and the time in and who work hard that draws an implication that the data we've looked at over and over again that show people of color performing at a lower weight at a lower rate

098are therefore the ones who are not trying as hard and I think I've heard several board members um address that differently and remind us that we're looking at groups of people not individuals and how the need is to remove um categories of ethnicity and economics from showing these kinds of disparities and achievement gaps that that's what we're talking about is how to not make who we are and what our background is be dependent on be what causes these gaps but instead actually get to the place where the things that were being described like how much effort you put in where you are those are the things that determine as opposed to assuming that's why a group of people is performing less thank you it's really clear that I'm going to just say personally I think

099the number one goal for the board should be around anti-racism and Equity work and I think that should mean some of the training that Joe was speaking to for us as a board I think that means looking at how can we adopt an equity lens and I'll really understand what that is so that we can now then look at our policies and our systems and I think that's a huge huge goal that's not going to be an easy lift and I think um it would be great if we we have to start it I don't know what the board feels like about what will fall under that goal or what we think the measurable outcomes will be but I think that that's where we need to move the discussion at this point foreign board training

100is measurable do we do it what type do we do that type of thing adopting an equity lens that's measurable are there other things under this that we need to think about or include in this goal I'm not sure how to answer that question um I've been hearing about Equity lens since I got on the board and I know in general what it's about I don't know that it's a specific as it in my mind it's not as specific as it might be in some others as to what it means I want to say a little bit broader Point first though and that is that uh the difficulty we're having in this conversation is partly because it's such a small group and that means for every person the burden Falls on one or two or

101three people and uh we can't get the big picture and what we do as a board is important to prepare ourselves to deal with these issues but I think we should remember that this in the context of the entire District having to do similar types of things and in the larger process it may be in a larger Center setting it may be that we can overcome some of the barrier that we have in this small group and that no one person would be asked to try to translate their individual experience into a group experience or to represent by themselves the experience of the entire group because of course they'll all have had somewhat different experiences and so I'm hoping that what we do as a board is integrated in some way with what the district

102as a whole will be doing to make sure that we also have access to the broader ex broader range of experience and communication and whatnot that the district as a whole will have and that doesn't help us with that question you asked us directly I don't think I think it does but I'm thinking that that just I want us to think remember that what we're doing needs to be in that larger context then we should find ways to take advantage of that larger context I think it does because when you were speaking it reminded me of listening listening sessions I think that we really need to be very specific and listen to specific groups on their experience uh within Newburgh so I think it does run so I mean in fact I don't know how

103much I haven't really thought this all the way through but but I'm thinking that if that's the case if we're going to do something that's that's sort of district-wide that that should be a major part of maybe not entirely of what the board does too I mean that should be our experience as well Rebecca I saw you shaking your head do you have thoughts or ideas on that oh you're muted still I'll get it Rebecca oh you got it there you go okay what I I was thinking that a listing we need to hear from people what what they are experiencing we need to hear from students uh in in um and and we need to hear firsthand you know to before we uh start adopting policy not policies but new systems we need to

104really understand that we we don't want to just put a Band-Aid over it we we want to get to the to what's really exp being experienced that's all I have to say so I've got four I'm just I'm thinking in the box of goals for the coming school year so not um any wider than that and I'm thinking if we have a goal that's you know something anti-racism Equity that kind of thing and under it we would have conduct listening sessions we would have forward development specific to this topic um oh shoot I had one more and then finding out more about what is an equity lens how do we use it I know Salem Kaiser School District did a lot of work around this so learning more about what they did and the outcome

105maybe who they got as training um in the osba board meeting this morning um the the topic of equity was anti-racism was huge and it was basically board members calling out the osba team saying this has to be something that ospa can offer to schools to districts I'm sorry I don't know that we'll get there in the coming year so we're really going to probably have to dig around and think outside the box to bring in some of this training but I think it's something that um needs to be done so poor training Equity lens listening sessions what do you guys think should we add more to that should we do people want time to think about it a little bit there's probably more we can add but that feels like a good starting point

106okay I know it doesn't sound like much right it's like three things but I think that they're big you know Brandy I think it's good that you're taking leadership on this but I also think this needs to be the whole board uh whole boards project you know what I'm saying so I think what could be useful is for uh one one way I don't know this is not the only way to do it but it might be useful if if you're uh got ideas or proposals for us for the board to be able to agree together to take each step I think would be useful um I'm conscious that Dave's not in the conversation right now and I would I would not want anybody be out of this conversation uh I think it's useful for

107you to produce along but I think it's also important that the board have ownership that the membership of the board have ownership of what we're doing we know Dave's coming back I've emailed him but there's no reason he would have seen it necessarily so I don't know I've asked him if he's coming back I just forgot to hit my video guys tomorrow I listened to everything you said I agree with you Ron here's what I'm wondering about for this sort of work session board retreat how all right how does the board feel about this let's just start there about what I've outlined like if we have this one goal in these three action items uh I for one would love to hear um the perspectives of other people um and what they've had in our

108district um I do think that you know it's this is a tough topic it's a painful topic it has a painful history in this country and we're that's the reality of it um I do think that there is also the you know the reality of uh the perception of people who aren't in these groups if they hear that uh the school board is you know wants to hear from these groups but not us um and how do we balance that um so yeah I I think you know what we call it uh is important on how we approach it is important as well I agree with Ron that we have to approach us to the board and everybody has to have see the importance and buy-in of it and I don't want to assume that

109we have that until I you know until we hear it certainly you have my support I think this is uh the right goal to to prioritize right now because it touches on everything um you know one of the things we need to be prepared for if we're really going to make this a priority if we're going to make this a discussion that we want to have throughout the district in the community is it is not going to be easy just as we're seeing today just Among Us it's it's not an easy conversation and so we are asking more of our district and all the folks within it than we ever have before and I'm personally more than okay with that I'm eager for that because I think it'll take us to a healthier place but

110we have to be aware and ready that it's going to be emotional it's going to be challenging we're going to have to work on creating structures that let folks have those emotions that full range of emotion that is productive and not just venting or feeling or you know bringing something to the surface without any purpose I don't think that serves anybody except to you know make somebody's personal emotions that much more raw finding a way to make that productive and move us forward is going to be important and that's a challenge to you know balance something that has a structure to it but also allows for those emotions to be there um but I think that's the right course for us foreign Direction I I wonder about um what the what this means to the

111district to Joe and Griggs and um to to coordinate this with us because it's something that we will need there so their help and their guidance through this and in this time of um dealing with a hybrid and and all the the situation there um but it but it it's good work I think it it's something we we we need to do and it will be good for us to do and I appreciate Bob and and Brian's comments about making sure we we don't um inadvertently cause a firestorm in the way we present it foreign a little bit differently I think I think and not digging in anybody just I think the Firestorm already exists what I don't want to do is tap into somebody's fire without giving them a path forward um so yeah

112just a little slight wording does anybody want actually two questions two-part question we could do this one of two ways we could sort of hash out the language as a group right now or we could all contribute some language or we could task it to a board member or a team of board members but I think this is just one of the goals right I think we need to keep going with the other goals that we want to talk about as well and I I worry that in the next hour we're not going to have time to come to the language for each and every goal I don't know how you all think about that or what you think about that I guess how would you all like to proceed on once we do kind

113of pick our goals the language of the goals it may be that we would want to have a one one solution for all the goals that we deal with so I don't know how to deal with it I mean we do need to know when we're ready to move on to the next goal in our discussion so but we might decide how to handle the wording with all three when we're done if we're doing three um I don't know if we have come to an agreement or if everybody's in agreement that what you've written down Brandy is what we want um I would hate to just move on the language piece without everybody being on board that these is this is what we want as our goals for moving forward are you I mean once

114he's written down you're referring to the the conversation three four the three four goals I mean I'm in agreeance but I don't know if anybody is not um okay I'm still not sure what do you mean like having three or four goals total or the three goals I put under this first goal um like I think the language can wait and I'm thinking of like how what things are going to be under this goal and then moving forward and then we'll figure out the language afterwards yeah I'm just getting the points down because otherwise we're going to run out of time and I don't know that we're gonna get further into are you writing this on the board agenda Retreat agenda someplace I may not be saying what everybody's seeing no I'm just writing it

115in my notebook I'm just taking notes as we go yeah I can't see your notebook okay so Brandy underneath the one you're talking about right now uh I think number two um uh you know getting to you know students parents you know community members you know getting a a broad stroke on this so we can get a feel for where a lot of people are really at to me would be the most effective one to me and then um after that the training would make probably be more clear okay good so Dave what I heard was that under our anti-racism goal which is a horrible title I'll have to figure out the wording you would like to start with listening sessions is that is that right yeah I'd like to yeah I think getting uh

116because sometimes we keep spinning this around within our group or teachers or you know within small groups of parents or I think hearing what's going on out there would be healthy for us because we're probably gonna hear stuff that's like Bob said it's gonna be tough and it can be hard to hear you know but then it'll be good to hear there'll be some good stuff out of it too so it'll hopefully we get a bit of a balance on that and uh but we'll have to be ready to saddle up and hear some here's some stuff is everybody as a board are we comfortable with that being our number one goal with those three points underneath it could you find me the three points yep no problem that's those three points in no particular

117order yet would be listening sessions or development and then trying to think of the right wording again but an equity lens how do we as a district after we've had these listening sessions and this to board development can this goal Canada's goal lead to us adopting an equity lens and each board member individually really feeling that and as a board us really understanding what that means for our work moving forward uh I don't have any problem with that but it just seems kind of short of actually accomplishing something in the district because things all seem preliminary to the ultimate goal which is to do to make the district be better tuned to serve everybody equitably uh and I don't see our that goal getting there unless I'm missing something seems to me that there's another

118the biggest step or the most important one is the one after that I don't I'm worried that we can't get to that next step unless we do this step but I'm just one person in other words you're saying we have to understand the problem before we can fix the problem or attempt okay well I think I understand that I'm not going to dispute that but it still sounds to me like the first three steps leading to the Big Goal which is to help the district be better and uh I don't know how to articulate that I mean sure it's good three goals but if we spend all year doing that we won't have done what we needed to do because we would have just gotten ourselves ready but not having done helped the district get

119anywhere I don't know maybe this actually might be a place where Joe can help us think about you know timelines and so forth but I don't know how long this all takes I don't know how to articulate the I don't know how to articulate what I want I just want something and Randy I don't want to Sidetrack us but something that kind of came up earlier that has a big impact on how we approach a lot of this stuff you know we had several board members Express uh hesitancy around going out for a bond and that is a huge uh that decision you know the go no-go decision on that has a big impact on what uh our district can do what our capacity is so you know just something to think about is that

120that's that's a a hesitancy that we hadn't expressed before and there's probably some urgent well there is urgency in resolving that yeah it's a good point Ron when you were saying you're concerned about like you know what is the sort of the action on this right like how do we use what do we how do we use this to move forward I think this is just one of our goals right we're still going to have we need to have a spawn discussion if that's a goal we need to have the learning discussion and the safety discussion if those are also goals um and I think I just want to make sure that these are obtainable they're realistic and they're measurable and that we can like you said all of us as board members know what

121these goals are and how we're achieving them so I I hesitate to get even more into the anti-racism and Equity because I want to ensure that we can look at other goals as well but I don't know how everyone else feels about it okay I understand that practical problem yeah let's think about that hey Brady one thing we could do within our own districts in the next you know couple of weeks though just go out and talk to 10 15 20 people get a flavor what people are thinking on this and then come back and each one of us report to you know the rest of the board I mean we could do it in short burst Five Minutes piece we'd be done in a little over a half hour I mean when once we

122like complete our goals once we agree on all the goals that we want for the year then taking it out to our zones to get feedback is that what you mean yeah I mean it'd just be kind of uh good to talk to people out there and try to do our best to get a balanced conversation on it and then we could uh come back and see how that kind of goes with all of us and see what we come back with because if we all talk to 10 that's 70 people that's not a bad uh sampling yeah I guess I mean I understand what you're driving at but a more open listening session I would rather hear directly from folks than have you listen to you know my summary of what 10 folks said

123um because it's still going to be filtered through me and the way I talk um as best as I try and you know Express that I'd rather hear from folks directly Bob I would too I just think I was just trying to make it go a little faster you know uh at least it would give us a starting point of data you know kind of what we're hearing out there um but I agree I mean I'd like to hear from people yeah if everybody's like let's keep the conversation going in regards to the next goal that we think we want to try to tackle is everyone okay with that and this is by no means you know official and the wording needs to be worked but I want us to leave the meeting with a

124sense of what our goals our direction is going to be for next year even if it's not yet polished into the writing is everyone comfortable with that I am okay so the other three that I wrote down were learning which is the calendar the hybrid system professional development safety around health and the bond who feels passionate about one of those to start with next Brady can you say this one more time real quick yep learning safety and the bond in the hybrid yeah the hybrid would be under the learning part yeah yeah but when we just call it hybrid that's fine too Bob do you want to do the bond conversation yeah you know I think that's I don't know elephant in the room that's a big topic that really shapes capacity on what we

125can do on everything else so it might be good to hear more about what the hesitancy is and I also want to hear board members and Joe who were at the committee meeting a couple of weeks ago too if you don't mind I was on the board the bond Planning Commission and um what what has happened is that we we're getting feedback um the the bond committee wanted to to see if if it's still a a possibility of being passed and so they were going to be auditing um or doing surveys and then coming back to us so that and and to see do we need to do do switches around or doing some changes to the bond to make it palatable or make it make it um possible and that we were going to

126become them making a final proposal to the board sometime in July to be able to get it onto the ballot in the August and Joe wasn't there um polling that was gonna be happening in July can you talk more about that sure yeah we uh we met I want to say it was last week Greg you can correct me I think I've lost track of time but last week we talked about uh uh preparing to do not a full poll but a poll to Gage um the appetite for um pricing levels and you know kind of the idea about um you know where people are to have an I you know just to have a concept of if we're really far out or if we're not uh so we're going to work on that I

127want to say it's in the first couple of weeks of July Greg what was the dream of the date yeah aiming for July 6th or at least that week to have it out so our next task was to kind of we're going to work Monday I believe on uh different rain like what the packages would look like at lower rates so that we can test those in polling right um so that would give us some you know within a couple of weeks here we'll have a good idea of where our public is and and you know the concepts around what could fit in within a bond package and so um you know that will give us that could give us some very clear Direction either either way uh and coming up pretty soon so that

128initial poll at least would be about about that and about funding levels um which I think is an important piece of information for us to have talk about them I'm sorry I say that again not not making sense at this point except for those board members with reservations regarding the bond oh okay okay would you share with us or any board member that has a reservation around the pond yeah uh well for me it's like I said earlier I just don't know if that bond package applies to the world that we live in now um and also I I my political gut tells me that it's going to be really hard to pass a bond of that size and scale in the current economic environment my concern is similar I think the uh uh we

129don't actually know yet how big of a trans permanent transformation the struggle with the coping virus is going to make on us we've identified some of the issues including Equity of access to electronic you know internet sources and remote education they're pretty significant um I don't know maybe maybe a case could be made that that the vision for the facilities we're looking at now are so far reaching that they've already taken into account all the variables that have now become obvious that weren't before but I kind of doubt that and I think it's good unless we have a really strong confidence if that's the case and that's a message we can give people I think that will compound the normal problem of of trying to pass the ball in a tough time if the constituents

130look at that and say well does this show any evidence of adapting to the new situation and I don't see that evidence right now maybe such evidence exists but I don't see that evidence right now and so I think we'd be trying to sell a poorly matched Bond into it in tough environment and I'm not making sure I want the month pass if it's poorly matched so uh I would like to have a bond I can believe in for sure um so that makes me hesitant I'm not saying I'm adamant against it but I'm very hesitant and I think that the evidence that I would need isn't going to come just from the from the surveys that'll be some of them be helpful but it's not I need to know more that yeah these facilities

131and the pricing that we use to the assumptions we use to price those facilities already take into account the kinds of new information we have about how education might look for the next 10 years this is a sort of a minor add to it but there was also discussion this morning regarding districts who are currently who have passed a bond in our the current work of of constructing and they're seeing that the contractors are passing on the corporate activity tax to them so you've got school districts who are now being expected to pay the corporate activity tax that funds the SSA which of course was not in the bond package of these districts past you know six months a year ago whenever it was um so he agree it's an always-changing environment right now and

132I assume construction costs will be affected by coveted restrictions although maybe by the time we get to building those will be gone who knows well you know I've shared a lot of the similar similar thoughts you know kind of where I've come around to is that at every juncture as we've been talking about a bond there's been there's there's always going to be a lot of X factors and unknowns the economy is going to do this you know where I've kind of Fallen to is that yeah we're at this huge inflection point change Point um but we know we've done this assessment we know that the deteriorating state of our buildings we know there are whatever happens or changes there are kind of immediate things that need done um we also know that you know

133when you pass a bond you don't have a building all drawn out every single little detail um that folks are saying you know this is where the chairs are going to go in that building uh you have a a general plan and then there's a process to help folks really help program out exactly what's going to go in that building how that's going to look you know that's where you know some of the challenges you always have we will we will always have on selling a bond that we've had all along is well what is a 21st Century Learning environment look like you know that's a that's a fairly vague term um part of it now you know is going to be that a 21st Century Learning environment has to be one that is prepared

134to serve our schools during a pandemic not necessarily covid-19 but you know perhaps the next pandemic if it comes around the corner um I think uh what where I've where I've come around to is that uh with the state of our buildings if we don't act now we really are going to get into a position where uh we start to have unsafe non-functioning sections if not whole buildings and I want to make sure that we don't get to that point we're not going to be able to answer all of the unknowns we're not going to know all of the the factors that are going to be into play two years from now three years from now when we start construction on some of these things but um we've because of you know the um change

135of leadership at the district level you know both on the board and changing superintendents we've lost a lot of time in moving forward with a bond um and I really am concerned about what would happen if we were to lose more time uh to the current buildings we have I think it's pretty clear that this is a huge thing on our plate right now um what are some I guess what how would people like to proceed with this in regards to it being a board goal I feel it shouldn't be a goal it should be something that we we continue to to look at and to um struggle with I think we owe it to the the the the large committee that um worked through this process and we owe it to the children of

136the future to to struggle with this I if if we in the end decide what we can't do it it's okay it's a it's it's a goal that we that we at least address Randy what's our deadline on getting this going again what was that date I feel like there was an important date in August August 15th okay my greatest Rebecca I think it's something we put out there and Bob said it too you know we we want people to put a lot of work into this um but then Ron's right too there's a lot changing but if August 15th today I say we pursue it pretty hard if it's a goal and uh then that time to have to sit down with with the board and Joe and say it's it's a good move

137to move forward or you know way to take a step backwards for contemporary but I think a lot of work's already gone into it we should at least pursue it until August 15th I think yeah I'm not proposing we dropped into Global road right now as I said I want more information but I think it might be it might be impossible for us to have the help from the bond committee uh to maybe help develop a second option for us to consider in August and that is a scaled back version of the bond that does address those maintenance issues that are so important but maybe uh doesn't commit ourselves to rebuilding the Dundee school yet or some of the other big ticket items that aren't as urgent and that we might have to come back

138for another bond in a year for the rest of a year and a half or whatever my point is that if I don't and unless the we get back data that says yes the designs the the the costs that we've developed are already take into account the kinds of variables that we'll need to deal with the future and unknown future uh it's going to be harder for I think for us to justify a big Bond based on an old model um but I mean that would be the option to say give us two options now and um so that the goal would be to make the proper decision about the bond um to one that's tailored to the needs and the and the realities of the to the immediate you know to our most urgent

139needs into the realities of our taxpayers great and I would agree I think that makes a lot of sense you know a professional polar might say that that's insane that you can't pass a bond this year and then go out for one and then in a year or two I don't know I'm like I said I've said before you know we are elected officials but I'm not a politician I don't know that calculus but I agree with you Ron I would much rather go out with a bond that was suited to what we need rather than what would be politically expedient and also what Brian said I mean it's got to be realistic of what friends of that monitor passing with all the current things going on you know we don't want to go you

140know Hail Mary on this thing we want to go out with a strong chance to pass it would you go for a screenplay Sports metaphors aren't included of the whole group okay so I don't feel okay I don't bowl so I don't know any of these that was baseball I thought gotcha so what do we want I'm just I'm going to bring us back to that sort of measurable goal what is our measurable goals under this Bond discussion or it's sounding like it's a goal of the board for the coming year am I correct on that in my mind we have to make a decision by August 15th I mean I would like us to take care of some of that deferred maintenance for sure even if we don't go for the big uh 140.

141but definitely take care of what needs to be taken care of [Music] yeah I would also be um I would like to see the the plan B um be a possibility maintenance so would I guess this is an action item one of the goals underscore be to continue to work with in the long range I'm sorry it's not called that anymore the bond Development Committee I think we need to continually on their work and their work going forward is everybody comfortable with that okay well I think that's that's a real important step because it was one of the things we helped influence me was you know uh not being on but attending that last meeting I kind of expected a lot of people to have similar thoughts to what I was having and Ron and

142Brian were and when folks didn't have that um reaction it it changed my view about the how high that that hurdle might be um so yeah their their work has been extremely helpful and it's sounding like the bond package the amount the scope of what's in it is is a little uncertain at this point we'll have to rely on pulling in the bond development committee and some other things so as a board what other what else can we put under this gold well I think that it's clear if it if we do decide to go for it we as a board have to support it and work toward for it to pass hmm so that means we want a bond package that the board in general is generally comfortable with I mean we may not

143agree with all details about it but we can support it right so that's that's what we're we're talking about some of the variables that are pertinent to various service about that I think that's good so yeah Joe is it possible to get um some questions added to the survey that they're going to do around doing uh just maintenance only Bond right uh so that that's actually that's what we were talking about when uh we looked at scale you know so the scaling of the bond of the kinds of things that you would do um and so that's that's how they'll probably form those questions so things like you know if you group them you've got generally safety security resiliency and systems was about 20 what 23 percent um if you look at uh the 21st

144century part that we were talking about earlier that's 20 that's 17 by 24 million um and so we're trying to look at you know like if you were going to do this all except uh maybe the new school that would be that could be a package or you might look at it for doing um the maintenance and the other things uh but not replace CTE as a for instance that might be another one we're trying to figure out what our packages would look like one of the things that we have been cautioned against multiple times is not to look at the numbers we have and then Whittle them down to something smaller than say that you can still do those things at a lower amount rather than just looking at the package and say you

145know what if you're not going to do Dundee school then just take that out or if you're not going to do CTE then you take the whole amount out that's how you would you know be able to structure your package into smaller numbers um so that's does that answer your question is that is that what you're thinking you're thinking about other kinds of questions to add to it uh no I mainly just want to have a sense of whether or not a maintenance only Bond would have a you know better chance of passing in the fall or not sure okay and that's sort of what we're gonna we'll have to we'll look at scaling the numbers to figure out where that that price point is um one of the challenges in a maintenance only bond

146is that you don't have much of a story to tell it's not very exciting for people to get behind and that's that's another thing we've talked about is there's no in that kind of a case there's no anchor project for people to really point at it's just like well you're fixing fascia boards and crack sidewalks and plumbing things that Mike is never going to see or whatever those things are so those those can be a bit challenging but but we are going to we are going to look at multiple price points because uh we have to be sensitive to that and it may end up being far more of the replacement modernization Safety and Security kind of stuff because you can at least talk about those things you want to make sure that every building

147gets uh something so um but yeah that's something that the work that we're going to put together this week I've written some of that down just hearing your all of your uh responses to that about how we would form the package that would go out and pull um so we could put that on not as a focus as a focus one of the um uh number um I'm not I'm losing my words too yeah we literally talked about developing three different packages at three different price points and one of them definitely would be kind of a bare bones like you talked about and so we'll be pulling those and we'll all go to the bottom development committee you'll all see that as well that's excellent and and I don't want to discuss it right now

148but an idea that it's occurred to me is I don't know if anybody's ever tried to do a bond that we that would say oh this is step one and in a couple years we'll be backwards step two that may be terrible idea it may be a good idea I don't know but it'd be interesting to hear about that I brought that exact thing up with um our consultant and he said no you don't ever want to do it that way you want to decide you know you can have all your internals of what you decide but you want to make a plan and go for it okay and if you do something else later you do something else later foreign that's why I'm not a good political consultant well I'm a political science professor

149and I'm apparently not a good political Sultan either so it's more embarrassing in my case so right now rough draft under Bond I have continued to work with the bond Development Committee ensure that the bond packages in an equity lens and like I said all rough and the third would be to support the bond package put forth to voters is there more we want to add to that or change or take out no okay I think it's a pretty good draft who you know we can work with it yeah yeah okay um do we want to move on to learning or safety we've got about 30 minutes left does anybody feel strongly about one or those other learning aspect or safety I think in the current environment safety has to come first okay Brian what

150are you thinking I don't see how we can safely put kids in classrooms in the fall in the current environment okay so where does that leave us well wouldn't I mean it's got to be an actionable measurable kind of goal so how are we how are we as a board helping drive that or drive the safety of students um I would say that we have to uh be clear to ourselves and to the superintendent that the safety of our students and our community is Paramount and we expect an educational model that reflects them I would uh I would speak up against that because it it's not our role to determine what I mean yes we are very concerned about the safety of our students and our community and our staff but we're not the ones

151when you say you don't see a POS that the the um children won't be in you don't see it being in the fall we're not the ones who who close schools down to begin with we're we're not the ones who make the decisions and it's not up to Joe to make the decisions he's following um the Oregon Health Association and the ode so I don't I don't see how that can be a goal for us as a board so I think we could probably say it's not a very useful standard but we could probably say that the board's goal is to make sure that students that this decisions about how to handle students are driven by safety the problem is what that doesn't decide to identify what the standard will be and um our our

152general approach so far has been to rely on the directions of the state and County as to what's safe it's in theory of possible for us to have a more demanding standard but probably not a less demanding standard um but I don't know how we would decide that we know better so that's an interesting problem for us uh saying that we're going to let our decisions be driven by safety is sort of a obvious idea it doesn't really tell us how to answer that question because it doesn't say what standard it would be but at least it's something um that we're not going to adopt the safety issue when we think about this but the safety issue is I mean it's kind of a it's it is the biggest issue I agree uh it's not

153an absolute issue I mean if it was absolute we wouldn't let our kids step outside the house uh so we are always training a little bit of safety off for something else like that they actually get an education or something so I don't know how I mean I think our goal is that we're fully elaborated which would Express that there is a balancing problem here well and I think as we talk about safety are we talking safety in general are we kind of focused more specifically now just on covid-19 and you know maybe one way to get at it is you know something along the lines of you know the board will actively assure that uh the district is meeting OD OHA guidelines and balancing those with local concerns um you know because one challenge

154we all have is to balance what what is my you know rational science-based following epidemiological experts uh view on this and was my emotional fear of this and um that that's a real challenge for everybody through covid-19 is striking that balance and you know whether we say it out loud or not but that's something we're going to have to do as a board is to strike that balance between you know what is scientific rational uh and what is what is emotional and um that's a tough balance to strike I agree Bob I think we need to safety is a big word right is it um safety in the context of our discussion around anti-racism and Equity is it safety in regards to physical health around covid um the big umbrella and I think the more

155we can Define it for a one-year School goal the more helpful it will be for us Dave you're muted we can't hear you sorry uh we have to remember like San Diego is offering three options which that's pretty difficult to do you know they're offering hybrid they're offering in school or online and um that was received pretty well by the public but even though we say we're going to be open there's going to be certain parents who are going to put their kids in our school um so far all this all the data shows that kids are not getting sick and a lot of parents are going to have their kitchen school for a lot of various reasons a lot of them have learned that teachers are pretty amazing and the kids want to go

156back to school and kids aren't getting sick but they're still going to be parents and aren't going to send their kids back to us they're just going to probably Opera online and if our online isn't kind of switching here if our online isn't super strong better than the springtime people are going to probably take their kids out homeschool or private school that's not everybody that's but as there will be that happen that might get more into uh if we we need to still talk about the learning the learning goal as well and I think that would be maybe where some of those things are addressed Dave do you think I'm sorry I didn't mean you off on that I I I Brian's saying but I think a lot of parents are going to want their

157kids back and then some parents aren't on the safety into that they're going to make that decision regardless of which way we go that's what I've heard out there University George Fox is preparing generally they're preparing for on-campus students but they don't think it'll be at the normal normal format not everybody may be able to be on campus so they are also planning three forms of delivery at once on face-to-face the synchronous online and the on synchronous asynchronous online so all that for one class it would be in three modes that would be the typical experience we're expecting so it's not unusual so what I've heard so far about safety is it's in regards to physical safety physical health safety with the virus so far and the two main points that I've heard were that

158one of them actively assure the district is in compliance with ode and OHA guidelines are being followed the second is balancing those guidelines with Community needs those are those are big there's lots of room for waffling in there that's not ideal well I wouldn't limit it to just physical safety like I mentioned before I think that the learning safety of can I express myself in the room or not but that's attached to everything else that we've been talking about isn't this going to come down to bop or uh sorry Joe me with ode and and they're gonna kind of have the big say on you know if we're in hybrid or not aren't they no we're supposed to develop our plans based on the OHA guidelines for each School individually than as a district and

159so you know the document essentially has two sides two columns one column is the or are the protocols for following the OHA guidelines and the other column is about what your you know your action steps that may be about teaching and learning could be about physical spaces um you know what we're trying to do now is figure out how we can do cohorts of students groups of students uh that allow for us to have the proper spacing um and also uh you know be able to bring some kids in and other kids not and then flip it around and you know whether we're doing alternating days or whatever but it's really up to the district to develop the plan whatever the plan is and then get the plan approved so you know we're looking at

160all the all the options um I can all but guarantee we will not be fully in person all the time we don't actually even we don't even have the physical space to do that if we were going to be cutting our cohorts in half not even talking about the number of Staff we have and you know while we do talk about uh kids a lot on this you have to also realize that we will have staff who will be at home and so we will actually have less capacity rather than more capacity to do all these things in person because we will have certain staff members who are at risk and will be put at risk because you know while children don't get sick the adults certainly do and if we start looking at the

161cross-section of adults that we have who work in our system and putting those people at risk um is a huge concern for me because they are you know the people who work for us and they're also the ones who do the teaching and so you know if you're down let's say 10 15 of your staff because they need to be home you know we have to have a model that is able to respond to that or we just double our employee cost for that 10 or 20 percent of people who are home because now you're paying for a substitute to be in person and so there are there are several other complicating factors well beyond uh kids and masks and all the other things that we hear people be upset about or I want my

162kid in school um we have to the broader system is is really about you know managing um your adults and also providing opportunity for kids so uh we're still in the middle of all of that kind of design um I think to Brian's Original Point um I am concerned about people's safety because I know that this is really hard and it's it's invisible you know it's not a it's not like people are walking around breathing red paint so you can tell you know who is um you know who's infected and who's not you know there's a lot of Challenge on that I know that people are also frankly think it's over and you know watch case counts go up and people are out enjoying themselves at restaurants and other things and I think we still

163have a couple of months to better understand where we're going to be so we're trying to also make plans that we can pivot either direction if we have to Pivot to go I don't think we're going to Pivot to folio in person I mean we can do that that's pretty easy for us because we know how to do that um but we have to be able to Pivot back to whatever the distance learning looks like um at the drop of a hat because we could get an executive order that says guess what not opening your buildings you're done so now you have to have that sort of thing and it can't be the distance learning that we had to Cobble together at the end of last year we also know that um we know also

164that people will are looking at um both our online school KOA and other online schools and frankly we have to be ready to to take on you know people who want to do that full-time for the folks who can do it and you also look at uh employees who have small kids and if our schedule doesn't match the schedule of their kids because let's say they live in Sherwood and their kids are going Tuesdays Thursdays but they have to work Monday Wednesday you know there's a whole other set of those things too so there are a lot of complicating factors around that um safety is a huge part of the plan and that has to get approved anyway so your plans have to be approved before you can even move forward on those and then

165you know you're working with humans and humans are always really great at following all the rules all the time and so how do you ensure that we after you put in some rules that we actually follow those rules and do those rules on every individual and group basis so there there are significant challenges in this from just a pure safety standpoint but then also just operationally you know how do we operate this with possibly fewer adults in the buildings based upon you know what we know about uh about risk factors and what have you so I think we're we're a ways away from knowing what we're actually going to look like we're going to do our best to create a model and then you know we've talked about doing a a community survey around here

166some of the models to think about and you know what do you think about this and would you send them with that you know Greg did a huge survey with uh kind of following up on what our distance learning experience was um and yeah we hear from lots of people who say I'm just going to send my you know we've we have lots of Demands have come in there so we'll just put it that way without calling out in specific demand but um but there are people all over the place so I think we we'll do our best to develop some plans and you of course as the board you'll be looking at all of those providing feedback asking hard questions about them it's the same thing with a communicable disease plan that includes covid

167we've got to get that in front of the board and you have to discuss that with us and have your questions and so there's a lot there's still a lot happening in all that it's a good goal because I think all of next year will be disrupted in some way whether we come back to all in person at some point in the in the year we're still going to be trying to catch up and work on all those things and so what does that look like from a learning standpoint an equity standpoint you know how do we do all those things so I think it's a good goal but for me the learning and the safety where we are right now they are inextricably intertwined for the coming several months uh and I don't know

168you know I don't have an end date for it nobody does so I see those two as as working hand in hand so could our goal in this area involve an expression or a commitment to supporting the staff and all this work I mean Joe's just described uh the worst summer planning job you've ever had in a time when we have maybe the least resources for it that we've ever had and so I think I don't know what we can do as a board but uh that's kind of too bad that I don't know and uh maybe that should be part of our focus on this goal I agree Ron I wrote down something like work closely with District staff to support plan we can move that around but it goes back to what we

169kind of put in the bond of our continued work with the bond development committee I think we need to call out on the goal that we are working with District staff on this as needed that doesn't mean Joe that we're going to come in and do it don't worry about that but just you're more than welcome I don't want to I'll send you the framework I'm good okay can we move on to learning is there anything else about safety that somebody wants to really make sure we add in well Inez mentioned a different dimension of safety and we don't really have anything about that on there I don't know if it actually fits here perfectly or what because it's a different thing entirely well pretty much entirely so I don't want to drop it I

170just I don't know what to do with it okay I put it in here and we can work going forward on language and how we how that piece fits into it in the apartment yeah but we better move on to the last one because we only have 15 minutes so foreign I had calendar start times the hybrid learning model and professional development so let's start with the calendar can we can we put calendar and start time together or would people prefer to have that in two separate areas to me they're interrelated yeah me too okay so so if this is a a goal of the board what do we want our working goal around calendar and start time to be foreign I mean like I'm not separating them from the gold but they're they're a

171little bit different uh on the start time well actually they're not I mean both of them we need to hear from all the constituents because I'm not sure other we have to be careful to listen to everybody there are some good systems here in both that will not necessarily come forward but who will be affected and uh so I want to make sure that they are all listened to as we do decisions about this I think this would be the opportunity to have an advisory committee or an ad hoc committee to look at to um work on this I think so too I think we also have to build in some kind of flexibility in there because it could come down to the district saying we really think we should take the six-week break over

172the winter and that could be wildly unpopular with a committee I don't know but I think we do need to build in something within the goal in regards to um like this is the plan that the plan could change at any point oh I was going to say I think two it might be helpful to to look at this at two different time frames you know scheduling for this upcoming year is really going to be more covet driven than it is going to be um you know our decision and a committee so pulling together that committee looking more for the long term you know kind of this is a great time I think to embrace this view that we're going to reinvent our system we're going to really take a look top to bottom at

173what needs to be changed um it's a great time to draw in constituents in a really productive concrete way and it's a way that you know I think as we start to roll in using more of this sort of ad hoc advisory committee that it I really believe strongly they should always be chartered and have a definitive Charter what their purpose is what their timeline is and I think part of that Charter should include um you know equity and inclusion and making sure that we're hearing a broad range of voices um not just reaching out to the people who are you know easy to reach out to and often involved in community activity you know a lot of those folks because that's a big part of their their lives are going to be involved and

174that's a good and healthy thing um we need to make sure that we're looking beyond that but I think the big thing is having two different timelines the schedule that's coming here is a coveted schedule and beyond that is what we're looking at well I I don't believe we were ever planning on looking at changing the times for this year I just kind of made that decision last spring um to me um yeah I we it should be to examine the start times and see if there's a better way to do it based on community feedback and scientific research foreign like a number one thing under learning regarding the calendar would be create an ad hoc committee to conduct Outreach regarding start time and calendar and ensure that the ad hoc committee represents the community

175as a whole including a variety of populations we can word that to make it better but that's kind of the gist of that first one is that Encompass what people were thinking yeah Brandy I think you know those last two comments were really good because like Bob said we're we're probably looking at the following year but we also knew this was going to be a long-term uh thing to make sure we do get all that information to make sure this is a good transition so um like Joe just said though you know he's going to have to submit these plans based on right now nothing what we've even done close to what we were kind of starting about start times you know in traditional schools yeah I think there can be language in the beginning

176of that goal that we recognize that the 2021 calendar and schedule will be driven by Health needs I would I would like I would volunteer for that committee if you want some board members but I don't know what you're looking for I think it's a really important goal I mean everybody's made comments on it but then I'd always go back to Joe's comment that kind of cooled our jets in that one meeting when he said hey you know for every person who loves this model there's another person who's going whoa dude this is hard so it will be a hard change um but it it uh it's kind of exciting to think about you know if we do go back to any semblance of Traditional School so what about um I forget I think maybe

177it was Bob who brought up the hybrid model in regards to the a learning goal is it was it you Bob yeah you know I mentioned it and I think from the board level the main thing is going to be we need to figure out how we're going to monitor success you know I think it's been sort of a double-edged sword with the distance learning that we did this spring you know I think a lot of the uh success came from the fact that you know testing and a lot of the you know the things that were geared more towards traditional schooling those were rolled back but it also is going to make it real challenge for us to have any objective criteria about what did students get out of that experience and I just

178want to I don't know what the answer is but I want to make sure that we're looking at you know what objectively are we going to measure for success Bob I think we got to get to the the kids and the parents you know more often and find out where they're at because if they're really not liking it we need to hear that if they're really liking it we want to hear that yeah I'm for sure that's part of it but that's again that's subjective you know whether you know whether my kid likes or doesn't like math class is different from whether they're learning the material and that's what I'm getting at is you know I I always have always will really highly value and I think it's a big important part that subjective element

179but um the objective side is going to be something that's going to be harder to do in this whole new system that's never existed before so there's no structure for how you measure that system about asking the teachers the distance learning survey that Joe referred to we did ask all of these questions and the message loud and clear from parents staff and students is what they want is to come back full-time in person in the fall um so we know that that's the the want we know that's the desire we have these other constraints about whether that's possible um so I think you know we've asked a lot of the questions you're talking about already and I think the question Bob is asking is the right one is how do we if we are forced

180to do distance learning how do we do that better how do we evaluate how we're doing it that's what I'm hearing that and I think we also need to keep it in the lens too of how are we giving those kids extra help who need extra help and how are we making sure that those kids are supported and those families are supported be it with technology or extra time in school or that's a rambling on sort of sentence that isn't a stated goal but I'm that's where my head is Hey Joe um I know you've you know you have talked about how we you basically have these two tracks uh hybrid and distance learning and you know technically everyone in the classroom which we don't think is a realistic possibility when will we uh get

181to you know see some more meat on the bones of what those two tracks look like that's a great question um in the next few weeks anyway we're trying to put together our initial uh planning things so we're hoping by um I mean we have to actually have it approved by the ode I'm going to get this make sure I get this date correct we have to have that done by August 15th is the late the latest time that they could um accept those you know we'd have to have it far before then so uh in the next couple of weeks we should have some initial plans we have to have also and this is probably about scheduling another board meeting for all of us here uh because we'll also have to go through our

182um communicable disease plan that includes covid which is you know an additional step something that we pulled originally um out of policy but also we have to have a plan available to it so uh I don't I'm gonna I'm gonna find the right date for you in just a second but we have to have this uh at least some initial planning we're gonna have to have this all done in the next few weeks I know that the first week of July is going to be very quiet around here for anybody who wants to escape a little bit but we've got a lot of work to do um coming up to that so uh principles have kind of been uh playing around with some of the plans some of the stuff still up on my board

183as we were doing those things which looks like the final deadline for board to approve so probably end of July maybe that second meeting in July is where you would see here's here's kind of the plans at this point I had a date thing there it is and are you submitting both tracks for approval or is it just based on what the regulation is at that moment this is the one we will yeah we'll base upon that if I believe it'll be a a hybrid submission that also has other options for people because there will be some kids who are of course um immuno uh compromised and so we'll have to have it available for that so it has to include additional options but the primary model is most likely a hybrid model and then

184what the details of our of that will be you know further discussed I don't like I said I don't think we'll be any closer to being a fully in-person model um by the end of July so that's that's probably not likely so our plan is going to be uh some uh form of a hybrid model I think that's the the details working out I we looked at doing for a while I was doing half days and having two groups but that of course doubles your busing costs and is probably just financially not feasible for us so um we know there are some places out there you know way out uh in eastern Oregon that are doing that have more space or um have fewer kids and so they're able to do different kinds of models

185but ours is most like a hybrid model and and then with options for both staff and students to be fully online if necessary and um is that opt out to be online only going to be available to everyone or just to kids who can demonstrate some sort of medical need now we're not going to make people demonstrate that you know everybody has a different um you know everybody for their children has a different threshold and I think that that's important to keep in mind you know it may be that they want to do online school online school like through KOA but it also could be that they want to be part of the class that they would normally be part of in case we were to come back and so there would be some um

186you're doing both online and in person among a group of kids you know we we're thinking about let's say as a for instance somebody could not go to school for a while either they became uh sick or they became exposed and they were going to be home for two weeks um you wouldn't want to try to shift them over to a whole other program and then shift them back because then you're just losing you know all kinds of ground and so what does it look like to be able to provide sort of parallel experiences for kids who are home or in the class that also allows us to use some of our staff who are not going to be able to be in person they could manage some of those things we have to build

187in time for our teachers and assistants to plan and be prepared to to do those things during the week as well so if they're doing some kids in person and some online they'll need some time during the work day to do that as well so there's that's part of the plans of being built into them which is means most likely to be a shorter school day and fewer days a week and then that allows us to provide the time for people to do things asynchronously some people have asked for synchronous times as well so we have to work through the details of what that looks like but by and large it's going to be a hybrid system within caveats for people who are uncomfortable with putting their kids into school and then some people will

188choose to do KOA fully which is okay too I mean we're we have um then preparing to be ready for that because that is also a K-12 system we've done far fewer elementary school kids in the past but that doesn't mean we can't do it we have you know access to curricula and if we need to shift some teachers to that we could be able to do that as well since it's a it's a program and not really a separate School within the system thank you and thank you for all the work that you and the rest of the staff are doing on this side it's a lot in a short time yeah thank you it's Insanity um just because it you know keeps shifting but you know I do appreciate having some clear guidance

189as much as it feels onerous it is nice to have some clearer guidance coming um from the Department of Ed because I know they're working like crazy to get that out too okay it's five o'clock so I think we have taken a good swing at board goals I think we still have a ways to go we didn't get to I think there's probably more discussion around board goals specific to this hybrid model and also to the professional development that was mentioned so I would propose we pick a date in mid-july for our Juliet's house training and then leave some time into that day as well so we can really solidify these goals and in the meantime can work on some wordsmithing and polishing is everyone comfortable with that yeah okay Brandon do you know how

190long the Juliet's house training time is I believe they said two hours how does the 18th look July 18th it's a Saturday that will not work for me that's uh the date we've already invited people for a graduation party for my boys was that an invitation Ron I don't know did you get one uh no one took care of that oh I didn't get one that's so weird uh okay that puts me in a bad spot well I'm just kidding I'm just kidding it doesn't have to be a Saturday could it be a Sunday or is does anybody have a no a hard no on a Sunday I hate to be difficult but it's a pretty hard no for me okay what about I got my images um I could do the 11th but it

191would have to be again in the afternoon what does the 11th look like for people I'm available okay Rebecca Ron and Inez are all muted I can make it work 11. it would be around one I'm thinking maybe starting around one that could work for me how long how long I mean I'm thinking probably at least one to five because we would want two hours for the training and then a couple of hours to make sure that we're on track with the goals I'm I can make the 11th work too yeah okay so the 11th one to five [Music] what Dave you got a zoom meeting yeah okay um I'm I'm thinking maybe the first step and kind of getting the wording correct on these goals is to type up what I have and share

192it with you each individually and you can give me feedback uh or or ideas on wording um and then depending on if I get enough stuff maybe I can either then come to the media on the 11th with kind of what everybody said or maybe kind of my condensed version and we can talk about that point does anybody have ideas on how they'd like to really move forward and ensure that again these are the board goals yeah I mean I'm not opposed of you doing that I think that one way like we did in the past for um Joe's evaluation is if we're doing it on Zoom you can screen share and then we could look what you're typing or whatever modifications um for wording purposes I like that too foreign works for me so

193sort of following that model do you think it would be helpful if I put out what we have right now and then everybody kind of types in their individual thing and then we come back together and all sort of hash it out okay yes yes is there anything else oh thanks Brandi okay let's call us out of order thanks everybody and thanks AJ to our one audience participant all right have a good rest of your weekend thanks everybody thank you thanks everyone