December 8, 2020 Newberg School Board Meeting

001no not yet don't worry we still have another minute and it looks like we are missing uh Dave still so we'll wait a couple more minutes and Ron we've got I think um four public comments tonight would you feel comfortable doing the being the time person again okay we'll do three minutes I'll get my signs they're downstairs I'll be back in a minute all right Inez and Bob if you're there come back there she is I must have stepped away there he is perfect all right well let's go ahead and get started I'm gonna call to order this meeting of the Newberg School District Board of edu Board of Education Newburgh School District Board of Directors all right let's go and start with the flag salute and Brian has graciously uh volunteered it's a glad

002I pledge allegiance to the pledge One Nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay thank you all right so tonight's agenda we've got a couple of things we'll have public comments and we'll go into board and superintendent comments our consent agenda we've got three reports and presentations tonight one is our school in person update from Dr Morlock our monthly financial report from Nikki um and an update from our two ad hoc committees and then we'll go into new business um we'll we'll be looking at approving the resolution for authorizing the sale of the bonds prove the budget calendar and um discuss Spanish translation um for our future meetings and then we've got a couple of policies to look over tonight first is ACB all students belong and the other one is ikar which is

003actually for information because it's an AR it's about academic achievement and Dr Morlock will tell us more about them all right well let's get started so for public comments what I'll do is um call a person's name and then the person kind of in line as the next just so you can get ready um comments will be limited to three minutes and director mock will have signs that will tell you when you've hit the one minute Mark the 30 second Mark and then your time um like always we are excited that you're here and offering um insight and comments on your experience within the district we do ask that you refrain from speaking about any Personnel issues and also any sort of personnel or personal attacks on the characters of any board members so with

004that let's get started first up we'll have Espin Bach and after Aspen will have Carolyn excuse me Brandi did you say three minutes or five minutes three okay thanks hi Aspen can you hear us hello good hi go ahead whenever you're ready hi my name is Essen Bach I'm an eighth grader from Mountain View Middle School and I'm here in support of the all students blog policy I was raised to be kind to everyone and everything I was raised in a safe environment where I could learn and experience without being worried about my mental and physical safety I had a good experience at school being a carefree and ready to learn child for many years eventually I found out about all the people who were not as lucky as me people who were bullied or

005not encouraged to learn for baseless reasons like the color of their skin I can only imagine what that must be like so even if this policy does not have any large effect on me it has to do with the community it is our job as as human beings to be supportive of each other and help each other grow we all have our own thoughts feelings experiences and lives and lives hate symbols tell groups of groups of people I don't think of you as human the Hate's almost listed as examples make groups of people feel uneasy and threatened even though we have we have a right to free speech there's a certain point where what we say or do makes others feel like their rights are being taken away which is restricting others Freedom the fact

006that students are reaching out about this problem makes me happy that there's a group of kind people who want to help the community it also makes me hopeful that I and everybody else will have a good experience going to school here since the school board passed the anti-racism policy approving the all students belonging policy seems like a clear choice to me because it is clarifying a key point of what has already been decided thank you for your time thank you that's been for joining us tonight okay next we have Carolyn and after Carolyn we'll have Matthew hi Carolyn go ahead good evening members of the board my name is Carolyn Davidson I'm a fifth grade teacher from Joanne Austin Elementary School tonight I'm here to tell you about a project that a group of teachers

007in our Newburgh School District are undertaking this year in the hopes of improving engagement and quality of education for the students in Newburgh School District especially during comprehensive distance learning myself along with Marianne Hyatt a counselor at Joanne Austin Stacy Dalton third grade teacher at Joanne Austin and coaches Mona Khalil and Stephanie Nally third grade teachers at Edwards elementary and Joanne Austin respectively are working together to improve distance learning for students not only in our own classrooms and school but for students across the district as a team we decided to tackle the issue described by the following statement elementary students are not equitably equipped complete to complete independent work and or attend live sessions we are working as a team through the educator empowerment at Academy and partner with the oea to tackle this issue

008and to strive to make distance learning more Equitable and accessible for all students and elementary students in particular at this point we have put in over a dozen volunteer voluntary hours towards this project so far our work has consisted a first understanding The Guiding principles and Equity lens that guides the work of the educator empowerment Academy with that understanding in mind we have developed our problem statement an issue that we all feel passionate about analyze the problem with multiple approaches and perspectives to develop a deeper understanding of it and discussed how to approach solving it additionally we have created a set of questions to guide human-centered empathy interviews with members of the community in order to truly understand how this issue affects community members individually and eventually when we begin our analysis of gathered information

009from the interviews as a whole moving forward we plan to begin developing and implementing Solutions and supports that benefit community members during this challenging time supported by funding from the oea we will continue to get feedback from community members and revise and revisit our work to maximize the benefit for the community we plan on updating the board in the spring about our work and the progress we have made please reach out to any of us with any questions that come up we can be reached through our school email or by contacting the school at which we work we hope you feel excited about our work and support our team and its plan as we move forward to support and take care of our community thank you great Carolyn thank you for the update also our

010interpreter Karina let us know that we need to slow down our speech a little bit and I know that it's kind of counter to me saying you only have three minutes but if you go over by just a little bit it'll be okay foreign okay so next we have Matthew and after Matthew we will have Midas hi Matthew go ahead uh good evening my name is Matt Miller I'm a shop teacher at Newburgh high school and this is my fourth year in the district I'm also a member of the Newberg School District anti-racist Collective the Grassroots organization of District employees committed to educating our members and organizing action in support of the school board's anti-racist resolution it came to my attention last week that the new policy all students belong is up for review and

011that the board's full of support full support of the policy is unclear I'm here tonight tonight to express my support for the policy and to provide evidence for its need in our district I reviewed the footage from the last board meeting and I wish to directly address one particular point around the two hour and 39 minute Mark director mock referring to footnote number two asks for documentation as to how these symbols the schwastica The Noose and the Confederate flag might disrupt learning the footnote itself calls for examples of previous incidents and current conditions it also takes learning disruption one step further to include quote the rights of other students to be secure and be led alone before I continue I want to give folks listening a heads up that the story I'm about to tell

012describes in detail a racist event on October 5th 2020 an intruder entered a virtual session of my geometry and construction class using a Google link we shared with our students with their camera off the Intruder interrupted our lesson and began yelling profanities the anti-black islamophobic hatred spewed forth in those seconds seemed to last forever and was unparalleled to anything I've experienced in any context let alone my own classroom the final and most heinous barrage was aimed directly at two black students in my class how much rope does it take to hang an n-word let me be clear I believe this is nothing short of a death threat the image Raven news unequivocally calls to mind the lynching of African Americans in this country imagine for a second as a student hearing that kind of hate

013speech and being asked to carry on with a lesson or go to your next class or focus on your geometry homework that week when you say your learning has been disrupted how long will it take you to feel safe in school again were your grades separate because of it your attendance my students were targeted for the color of their skin and their lives threatened for simply coming to school for living in Newburgh this happened in our schools it happened in my classroom perhaps you're thinking this Intruder could have come from outside the school Community maybe even outside of Newburgh yet there's ample evidence to suggest this was a student in the class within a span of 10 minutes I changed the Google meet link three times sharing it only with my students in the hopes

014of removing the threat each time however the Intruder reappeared disguised as a different student and each time the violence intensified so the board members who may still be skeptical how many incidents like this will it take before you get that racism is real in Newburgh your job is to enact policy so that we can have the hard conversations with students so that we can interrupt racism when we see it or hear about it so that we can work toward changing the culture of our schools to be more empathic more Equitable and more just I strongly encourage you to affirm the all students belong policy and to continue the work both personally and collectively that you began this summer with your anti-racist resolution thank you for sharing Matt Craig next we have um actually Greg do

015you know if Midas is joining us or Ruth yes I see right great great come on in Midas who are ready when you are hello my name is Midas I'm a student at Catalyst High School a group of students from Catalyst met through Google meets to go over the all students belong policy and write a response what I'm going to read was a collaborative effort and somehow I got nominated to read it we would like to share our support of the all students belong policy as we got to talking um okay as we got to talking we realized that all of us have stories about discrimination and harassment it was sad but all of us ended up feeling supported by talking about it with each other we too recognize that all students are entitled to

016a high quality educational experience free from discrimination or harassment based on perceived race color religion gender identity sexual orientation disability or natural origin unfortunately this has not been our experience in the past students have sometimes felt put down because of their gender identity race or disability we have personally witnessed and or experienced harassment in all of these areas in one instance a group of white students was a group of white students were calling a black student the n-word they sounded like they were joking and the student being targeted Shrugged it off because they didn't want to make a scene or be disliked last school year we had a student at Catalyst who regularly wore a Confederate flag in their uh back pocket of bandana they also had the Confederate flag as their phone wallpaper and

017laptop wallpaper one time they were studying with a black student who was very uncomfortable with the wallpaper but did not feel able to confront the student the study session was unsuccessful and it definitely interrupted learning in another example a student was walking home from school with a friend of latinx descent a group of students approached them telling the latinx student to go back to where they came from when the student said that they were from Chicago the approaching students insisted that they meant where they were really from another one of us had an experience of talking to a volunteer at the school about another student who was transgender the volunteer continually referred to the student by the wrong pronouns when corrected the volunteer defended themselves by invalidating the student further saying that it was easier

018for them to use the wrong pronouns because the student's appearance nearly every student writing this letter has heard slurs used in the school environment and that's so gay is commonly heard in the day-to-day school life another one of us has heard students calling them the F slur behind their back every student in this letter that is a member of one of these minority groups has had slurs directed at them there are even multiple students who are afraid to attend GSA because they don't want to be targeted as a group we discussed the tension between freedom of speech and freedom from discrimination or harassment we recognize that the Confederate flag in particular can be displayed not as a way to support slavery but as a way to show belonging one student who used to live in

019the south said Confederate flags were common there and a way of displaying Southern Pride um another student pointed out that the history of the symbol should be taken into consideration in the case of the Confederate flag it being a symbol of a failed country that wanted to keep the institution of slavery is very important for someone to have empathy for a black person seeing that symbol displayed they would need to know that history that history and how that history could make somebody feel we're glad that the policy says the district will use non-discipline non-disciplinary remedial action whenever appropriate we believe that most incidences of discrimination or harassment are best dealt with by sitting down and having a conversation instead of punishment this provides an opportunity for empathy and mutual understanding on behalf of Keelan Sam

020Jeremy Ruth um Lily and Kaylee we thank you for giving us the opportunity to share with you and we hope that you pass this policy thank you Midas for joining us and please send our um gratitude to the other people in the group as well okay with that we will move into board comments uh Rebecca do you have any comments this evening oh you're muted okay I want to thank all those who spoke tonight I know uh for the students it's it's a big thing for them to speak in front of such in in Zoom meetings and I appreciate all the input um this last Monday I had an opportunity to attend a webinars sponsored through Oregon school boards associations called dealing with conflict on the school board and I would just recommend that to

021the rest of my uh members of the school board as a it's a webinar that you can listen to to help us navigate um our roles on the school board mem as a school board and as we go through these difficult discussions we've had in the past it gives a good springboard for that and I want to wish everyone a a good holiday season I know we're getting um close to the end of the year and hope 2021 is going to be a better one thank you Brian do you have any comments this evening yeah I'd like to also thank everyone who took the time other evenings to come and speak to us these are very complicated and complex issues uh and they deserve our full attention and thought and hopefully we will do that

022this evening Dave do you have any comments this evening uh yeah I Echo uh Brian I you know thanks for especially young people calling in to speak to a group it's tough appreciate you guys uh I'm not sure who that first young man was that called in but he needs to be uh doing speeches out there he was pretty darn good so uh thanks again you guys for calling or talking tonight thank you yeah uh Ron do you have any comments this evening no I don't have any thanks do you have any comments yeah um I just want to take uh some time to thank everybody working really hard the teachers Administration um during this distance learning time um as somebody who did test positive for covid it impacts people on a large level not

023just the people who get coveted but the whole family and extended family um so thank you for everybody trying their best to make education as valuable and important as as possible during these difficult times thank you and I'm really glad that you're here tonight um Bob do you have any questions do you have any questions no do you have any comments tonight uh yes first of all just kind of a housekeeping thing I'm on my phone tonight the internet is out of my house so uh when I Disappeared earlier if I disappear if I switch screens to look at the agenda it looks the way this setup is my camera disappears so I apologize for that and I just kind of want to use that as a small window into the challenges that many of

024our students families teachers are facing on a daily basis trying to navigate education today you know I'm lucky that I've got uh a backup way that I can connect tonight but not everybody has that resource and even if you do it can be really stressful in the moment you know for my girls this morning they had the chance they could go over to Grandma and Grandpa's and use their internet um but it was really stressful for a while there and so I just want to say that my thoughts are with all the folks at every level of the of the district that are negotiating those new challenges that are out there and I also want to uh thank folks who shared uh tonight um particularly when folks share something that's really hard to share that's

025um that's very meaningful to me as a board member um to put yourself out there to to speak from your heart so I want to thank everybody who did that tonight thank you I'll Echo what everybody said I think I really appreciate Educators coming and telling us about their experiences um and the work that they're doing at the classroom and building level is so important and also for our students it takes a lot to come and talk to um people in a board meeting on a Tuesday night and what Midas didn't say was that also that was sent to the board in an email so um I really appreciate that group of students getting together collaborating and being very thoughtful on sharing their experiences tonight okay with that we will turn it over to superintendent

026Commons and Dr Morlock all right thank you chair Penner uh I will start off quickly by um just reminding everybody that this is National hand washing Awareness Week December 6-12 so I hope that you are paying attention to uh washing your hands not touching your face covering your cough and wearing your mask but for those who did not know it is National hand washing awareness week I also would like to thank all of our speakers tonight I really appreciate hearing from uh from everyone from employees from students and from the public so thank you all for for joining us for doing that um I also would like to thank uh our Newberg City councilors Elise Yarnell Holloman Julio Martinez plan carte Denise bacon and Stephanie Finley last night they voted and passed um a budget

027adjustment in a resolution authorizing sharing of uh some of the city's cares act dollars with the district we had put in a request at their request an opportunity to get some of those dollars if they were available to support our distance learning um you know back to the to Bob's comment actually talking about connectivity you know we've purchased about 750 hot spots so you think about it's not just serving one but serving multiple uh some people are able to work from home because they've got that connectivity as well so really um I just want to thank um those City councilors for supporting us on those those dollars are going directly to families here in Newburgh IN need Newburgh and actually on Dundee we did a few other things too of course computer devices and some

028instruct infrastructural updates but just wanted to give a shout out that was the last night at their city council meeting so thanks again for your support of our students and of our community and then finally it is uh the holiday season um it's not just one holiday there are many holidays and I think that it's important to remember that there's always room for another holiday as a side note for those of you who have been to Spain they actually have a holiday uh all 365 days of the year in different parts of the country so they have found ways to be able to celebrate all year long and so I just want to remind folks that there are lots of holidays that are that are celebrated during this time coming up in the next few

029weeks in fact in the next few days and so just you know enjoy the time with your family with your friends um doing most of that of course via your laptops your phones your iPads and anything else you're able to see each other so we can kind of get through this thing I know that we're we're seeing a light at the end of the tunnel I think that feels very good and then just during this time remember especially this year you know every year it's a challenge for folks who are less fortunate but I think even more so this year lots of months to people in need so if you can keep them in your thoughts any kind of support you can give for those who don't have or who have far less I just

030encourage you to to give what you can to those who who have less than you so thank you very much and I will turn it back over to you thank you great thank you and thank you for updating us on the city council meeting it's really good news yeah thank you to the city council okay next on our agenda is our consent agenda and I'd like to point out a couple of donations that we received um or the the district one is from the cvms parent leadership Council for two thousand fifty five dollars and 26 Cents for a cvms laminator and the other one is the from Oregon State Credit Union 300 to Joanna Austin classroom supplies thank you again all those Community Partnerships and with that I would recommend or I would recommend I

031would entertain a motion Randy I'm just now noticing something on on the jhh which is included here the copy we have here is the osba model policy and not the policy we adopted we were talking about last week last time with the second paragraph that should be out of there this paragraph is really not that important but we didn't last time not to have it and I do apologize that's my air I think when we do the the motion I think we'll have to say uh uh something about referring to the one that we worked up last week or at least this one without that paragraph noting that that was a narrative not not yeah sorry how about can we do this Greg can we pull it out and then um shoot I don't I

032it would be good to know to review last meetings packet to make sure it was the correct one last me the reason it's still in there is last meetings packet it was incorrect I sent the correct one out to you by email and then I just moved it over from last week so that was my error um the perhaps the motion could say something like approving the consent agenda um striking the second paragraph from policy jhh as the policy committee intended see Rana Rebecca policy committee members can you make that motion yeah I'll move that we uh accept the consent agenda uh with the Proviso that the policy OSB that the policy jhh should have reflected the one that we were discussing last week without that paragraph I'd second that yeah I hope that works

033I think it's clear okay the motion in second is there any discussion Ron I'm glad you caught that okay all those in favor please raise your hand and it passes unanimously well I think Greg for all the work he does I would be jumbling these things way worse if it was me so appreciate that right yes thank you okay let's move on to our reports and presentations the first one up is a report from Dr Morlock regarding uh update on in-person learning great thank you um well we are continuing our work on planning for bringing some students back into the building even during this time where we're seeing uh case counts leveled off a little bit uh we have been um we met again with our folks to High School uh we will uh be

034starting to wade into that after the break so we're going to be looking at two very small groups uh returning we have a teacher who's volunteered I'm in CTE to kind of help us work through the details and begin to do some work in Tiger manufacturing so it's a cohort of four students and a cohort of five students uh it would be happening again after the break we'll be they'll be meeting with parents to talk through the the process they've already contacted all of them to begin with to see what their comfort levels are so we have still quite a bit of work to get done that's why we're still waiting until that time period to work on that but as we move forward then we will continue to refine the protocols and the way

035that we have people coming in and then start to look at our students who are struggling we know we have to focus on we do have some things to work with on some seniors who are in danger of not graduating when we have further students who are struggling with internet connectivity or some kind of support so some people are finding some pods and so we're going to be figuring out how to kind of put that together it'll be a very slow and very methodical process but I did want to let the board know that we'll have about nine students we'll start off with and then we'll kind of move forward from there if things work out the way that we think they will so just wanted to give you an update that those plans are

036starting to kind of come together we've done a lot of discussion about them as we go forward from that then we would expand of course into other grade levels but we still have quite a bit of work to do on our transportation plan and cohorting of students and Staffing we're working with both of our associations to talk through all of those things because there's a lot of work to be done on the back end to make sure we can do this successfully but there is some light at the end of the tunnel I know that um there's some things happening out there in the world in terms of vaccines and what have you so we're trying to get ourselves um kind of back to thinking about bringing more students in and getting the especially the

037ones who are in critical need I get them the support they can they have right now uh later on I'll discuss some things some changes that we've made to the AR uh to support students as well as help our teachers navigate this process with students who are really struggling so I'll go over those details later but I just want to give you a heads up there'll be more information coming of course Communications with all that stuff will Loop you in as our plan solidify but I want to let you know that after the break we'll be starting to to bring a few a few kids in and begin that next process of of getting back to some kind of normalcy at least for a few students and that's what I have for you for tonight

038so we're still in the other process uh you know holding pattern for uh our other groups but we're making the plans and still developing them so um this is kind of a good news um small step but uh it'll be it'll be good for for our students at Newburgh High School to begin with thank you Joe Joe okay well we look forward to seeing what happens next month I realized one of the things we didn't do Joe maybe you could just in Spanish invite uh people who are listening how they can connect with the interpretation down below okay um [Music] thank you and Karina you can make sure that I did that incorrectly I'm sure thank you Karina I got the thumbs up from Karina so I didn't mess up too badly thank you perfect

039thank you for doing that okay see another no other questions regarding in-person learning let's move on to Nikki um she'll present our monthly financials good evening everybody um my report this this was fairly short we kind of put it out pretty quickly um I did update some of the numbers that um will probably be taking hits this year just due to the um CDL that we're in right now like our rental income you'll see that I reduce that miscellaneous Revenue which is just things that happen throughout the year that we get reimbursed for um that just are not happening like they typically would um investment uh interest uh the rate dropped right at the beginning of the year and is a state it has stayed very very low we're starting to get all of our

040tax money right now so you'll see that bump up over the next few months but I think it will come in a fair amount lower than it did last year so I'm trying to just zero in on some of those small things that we see uh will not be coming in this year as it has in the past um as far as a bottom line the ending fund balance we're pretty consistent right now um we have the Auditors wrapping up we're sending in a lot of our final information so they can pull together the financials so we'll have that to the state by the end of the month um so with that information and with their final adjustments at our January meeting I should be able to have an update of our 1920 ending on

041balance I've been projecting it at about 8 million but they do do property tax adjustments and things like that that can move that a little bit um so we should have that pretty nailed down by our next meeting which will be helpful um as far as expenses and stuff there weren't any major changes that to recognize there um I wanted to talk a little bit about the governor's proposed budget it's very very early I mean this is just the initial stage but I'm sure you've probably heard that there's not much movement with the state school fund currently it's at 9 billion she's projecting 9.1 that's not much for roll-up costs going into next year um but she did talk about the student the Sia funds coming in higher as a projection again it's really early

042to count from a lot of these things but that's good news if it does come in at the rate that she is talking about um outside of that I there wasn't really anything out there that really jumped out to me um our enrollment our in-house count that Tanya just updated looks pretty consistent from the last report it dropped just a few kids so hopefully we don't lose any more between now and the end of the year and maybe gain some back as we go into next semester um let's see about all I have right now Melissa or any questions I have a question I guess I got myself unmuted I didn't know it um the so that one from nine billion to 9.1 billion is a little over a one percent increase isn't it uh

043right about one percent I'm just doing this in my head I hope I get that right um so and I just looked looked it up a little bit ago the completion rate the projected for the year is less than one percent is so how are we worried about world costs that aren't responsive to the inflation or otherwise this would be a steady state pretty much a steady state budget wouldn't it well yeah but when we look at our roll-up costs we look at our contracts that we have I forgot all about that because the steps and our colas that are already built in and negotiated right off the top but yeah we can Wickers um we did get an update from from Purge there was another report put out that says next year yes the

044rates are down a little bit but after that they balloon back up so it might help us next year a bit survive um but we still need to be very aware of what's still down the road of the pers as well okay thank you I divided about one more minute I might not ask that question I like your quest request any other questions for Nikki okay well I will get back from the new year and relatively quickly get into budget season so we'll have lots of opportunities at that point especially yeah all right well thank you Nikki okay next we'll move into our ad hoc committee reports um would someone from the school start time committee please give us an update uh yes uh let's see it was today the survey went out that we

045had our last meeting we broke into some subgroups we had one subgroup that um started working on kind of gathering together both the research that's been done around the impact of changing start times as well as kind of looking at the landscape of the area what other districts are doing as far as start times and then we had another group who put together a survey that went out today so I encourage everybody who's listening tell everybody anybody you know who might be interested in the impact of uh possibly changing School times to take about 15 minutes and go through that survey to give feedback we've got a meeting scheduled for the 14th to um kind of review where we're at and then take our next steps I am going to meet tomorrow with the um

046the local manager for first student and kind of talk about their perspective on some of the logistics of possibly making this change and if there's anything I'm missing Rebecca and Brian just uh pipe up thanks I I'll say I took this survey three times for three students and I maybe five minutes each time so it's even quicker than 15 and um I I appreciate it it's very thorough talking um quite a bit about the impacts not only on students but families as well I appreciate that any questions for the start time committee hmm I have a question I guess um I like the survey too uh although I couldn't I don't have any students in the district right now so I had to lie on the first page um Cass donstead said I could but

047uh um so the so I could just see the rest of it and I didn't submit it so my thing is not in there but it did raise for me a little bit of a question uh it seems to me that it's good it's a good practice to start with a survey directed at the current population of people the students in the school well it seems to me there's at least one other group that really does need to be uh asked and these are parents or preschool students who may not be also represented because they don't have other supportive kids in the district and their interests are at least going forward and it's going to be equal to anybody else's so uh uh do you have plans on that with a group about talking to

048that to that group second question is for uh Uh current staff who don't have kids and their effect on them yeah the you know the reaching out to preschool families isn't something that actually came up in our discussions and I would be open to any suggest off the top of my head I don't know how best to reach out to those families um which would be kind of at this point the main hindrance um yeah other than just kind of word of mouth spreading that they they can take that um that survey and you know I would just tell them to you know put their child as a kindergartener at the school that they'll be attending um to get their feedback I don't know how best to to capture that um social media um as

049a link so I think you're right Bob just encouraging people to you know say if they know of incoming Kinders next year to encourage people to participate yeah and the question about staff foreign yeah you know um that's probably something we'll take up at the meeting on next Tuesday on the 14th is kind of the next step in this Outreach is how to do the Outreach to the the staff but that'll that'll be a topic that I'll bring up at the 14th that's great any other questions for Brian Bob or Rebecca all right well thanks for all your work on this um it's clear that you all have been putting in a lot of time and effort and the committee as a whole um we appreciate that oh wait uh Equity committee well Inez gave

050it last time I talk on these meetings all the time so I'm going to ask Ron to give the equity committee update and enes and I can jump in if needed well I I appreciate the chairs endorsement that I don't talk enough in the school board meeting people oh I didn't say that I didn't say that but since this is fine uh we had a good first meeting last week uh I think it's on Thursday evening or Wednesday I can't remember now um one of those even evenings I was there um and I think the whole committee was there I can't think of who wasn't if there was one and that's 12 people uh including two students uh I think four from the community three staff in our and the three board members but that's

051the right numbers something like that uh we spent most of the time uh sharing our some stuff about our own personal backgrounds uh and including things that didn't relate to the equity issue at all and then some things that did as a part of a team building exercise um and in my own impression that was that it was a fun discussion and from what I can tell in zoom and little tiny boxes looking at people's faces mostly I mean compared to students when I'm taught on to them they're way more engaged so I don't know what that says about who uh so uh I thought it went pretty well um I think Brandon you guys may not want to say something about that too our next meeting uh is going to be we haven't really

052set it up I don't think yet but we did set it up it's in January early in January uh we thought we'd decide not to try to fight through the currents of the week before Christmas for a meeting and just kind of going to early January and and taking advantage of the fact that uh you know we're on a little bit of a break there um and I think at that point we would get into more of the starting to figure out how to accumulate our our evidence of issues uh where people are experiencing barriers and stuff um I don't know what else to say is anything to add to that from an sop Brandy no I think you did a great job it was it was really interesting to get to know a little

053bit more about some familiar faces even and then of course there were people that I had never met and so that was good to hear more about their sort of life stories a little bit the only other thing I would say is the reason we did get to Know You activities is because we're intentional about this committee working together in good relationship and for that we need to build trust among among us as a committee so great any questions for the equity committee nope okay all right well let's move on then to new business um we've got uh first up is approve resolution authorizing sale of bonds and I believe that's Nikki okay um I I have not received any questions about this resolution um I'll speak to it a little bit it outlines the

054total of our bond um 141 million it also refers to the awesome grant that we'll be receiving and that's just over 5 million I believe 5 million 26 000. um we have and it also outlines the different limitations that we need to meet and So based on our discussions we should be able to meet the threshold of spending 85 percent within the three years that's a guideline we have kind of a draft kind of schedule about how we're going to do that and we feel like we could meet all those parameters with that plan um it's been review reviewed and approved by our bond Council um so it's pretty standard language can language that they put out there that and has all the um guidelines that we need to have in there saying that the

055types of Investments and what we need to do and everything we have already worked with um some folks around the Investments after we sell the bonds because we cannot put that amount of money in our pool account there's limits to it so we will have it all set up to invest that money in various different ways and various different time frames in order to draw it down for the different projects so we we've worked on all of those things as well which is a little bit outside this resolution but we've looked at all of those pieces to try to get everything lined up so are there any questions on it okay see no questions I would entertain a motion okay let's see I'll move that the Newburgh School District Board of Directors adopt resolution 2021.05

056a resolution of Newburgh School District 29j Yamhill Washington and Clackamas counties Oregon authorizing the issuance sale and delivery of General obligation bonds um designating an authority an authorized representative delegating the negotiation and approval of financial documents and related Matters by title only by second all right Bob Rebecca I can get an arm wrestle it uh let's go with Rebecca I think I heard her and thank you guys that's probably one of the longest uh emotions in Newberg School Board history so well done all right is there any discussion around this okay see none uh all those in favor please raise your hand and it passes unanimously and thank you Joe and Greg and other District staff working behind the scenes to get this all uh rolling you know it's from the 10 000 foot mark

057it seems like oh well it's all right but I know that you all have been working tirelessly so and Nikki I can't believe I forgot Nikki thank you okay uh next up we've got the budget calendar and nikkish you need to stay unmuted because I don't have to talk very much so it's just it's just my day my lucky day um again with this item uh there have not been any questions that have come to my office um that's pretty it's a standard schedule we'll leave it open for adjustments uh if the information changes we might need to just because the weird times right now we might not have a lot of information at different times but it's it's the best start that we can do right now so are there questions for Nikki regarding

058the budget calendar Nikki is there anything different about this calendar in general than the one we used last year that we seem to think that we should notice um no we left a couple extra training type meetings in there before we get into the little the more formal ones um I don't think we haven't had a lot of turnover with the group so we might do something a little bit different about what we cover in those meetings just based on the different information but as far as a structure it's it's the same thing foreign suggest all board members put these dates in their calendar now a lot of them coincide with board meeting so they'll be um before but some of them don't so it's a good reminder I would entertain a motion on this

059let's see I'll move that the Newberg School District Board of Directors approve the budget process calendar for 2021-22 as presented I seconded correct motion of the second Is there further discussion okay all those in favor please raise your hand okay it passes unanimously so we have scheduled a break but we're about 45 minutes ahead of schedule is the board comfortable with continuing or do we need a break let's go forward yeah keep going all right so next up is discussion around Spanish translation at future board meetings um so when we initially did this we kind of only approved it for a limited amount of time um and we need to kind of have the discussion and make the decision on if we want to continue with it um through the rest of this school year

060it has been a little bit more about roughly 50 more than expected because we had one board meeting go to three hours so it could be good for us to remain efficient in our board meetings if we know we're being charged by the minute no I'm not sure it's by the minute but um so what are some thoughts on this you know I saw that the cost difference you know fifty dollars seemed pretty minimal and pretty reasonable for the benefit that we're getting you know I think that I I'm very much in favor of sticking with uh keeping the translation and I think particularly if we keep with it we'll be able to promote it and get more folks engaged if they know they can count on that translation service being available so I'd very

061much like to see us keep that keep that service available to uh to folks who who wanted that translation what was the 50 dollars one of the meetings went um a little over the three hour mark so it was charged an additional amount then it was a rough estimate on how much it was going to be depending on the length of meetings so the monthly is like 570 570 a month uh in the packet it says the original estimate was for 261 dollars per three hour meeting for an average of 522 dollars per month uh the actual cost for the exact time of our two hour meeting covered by translation was 570 slightly higher this was due to one meeting going over three hours so the rate per hour has been exactly what was estimated

062the only reason the estimate was different was that the time was longer than we ran as an estimate I gathered from this that there's a flat fee up to three hours and then there's a extra fee of over was that not the case the way that they do it is they have a charge a minimum charge of two hours and then there it's kind of prorated on incrementals after that for what you actually do okay Joe do you know um has this been announced at the latinx parent group meeting yeah okay yes we've spoken go ahead no go ahead no just we've uh we've gotten the word out there to other folks about about them being available um but the interpretation being available so I think we'll we'll continue to push that we've got another

063meeting coming up Thursday evening if I'm not currently mistaken it's second Thursday of the month and uh so we'll do that for each one of the meetings to remind folks that it's available yep we received any correspondence to the effect of people saying yeah I used this service and it was great not to my knowledge because I I've noticed that the the sort of number of attendees hasn't really changed at all from what it used to be which makes me think that we're paying 500 a month for something that people aren't using and I understand that in the future people might show up and use it and that's great but at a time when we're facing you know potential budget cuts it seems like 500 that might be better spent on school supplies or books

064or any number of other things so I think we should suspend the service um when I first got on the board one of my goals was to have um the meetings be available in more than just English and here because of Zoom we've been able to do this translation service but I don't want to just check a box and say that we're providing the service and it's now accessible to everyone so I've listened during one meeting and I don't know if internet being spotty was an issue or what not but I don't know that the translation that people are getting the entire or most of what is being said in our meeting so that being said I would want more people to join listen give us feedback and see is this uh service we want

065to continue or do we look elsewhere to meet this need because I don't think we should be providing this can it not meet people's needs um saying we're doing something doesn't mean anything to me if the impact is not there well we've just had two comments about impact they both kind of they go different directions kind of but uh I think they're both right in the sense that we need to know what the impact is and try to improve it my own personal sense what I would probably think is worth it if it was just there as a backup emergency for the case in which we need to have 20 or 30 families who can't keep up with the English it would be worth the six thousand dollars if that happened once every year or

066whatever um 6 000 being a slight it's well over six thousand a year the way that this is not cramping up because it's important on basic Democratic principles that every constituent have access to the information they need to be able to hold us accountable as a school board and if there's a significant population that needs this uh not necessarily over school board I mean I went for four years when we maybe had 15 total members of the public come to Washington uh school board meeting when their kids weren't there presenting from their from their school I mean and we kept it open even though nobody was using it significantly more expense than this is I would say I I think that that that making it available is uh other people is essential and the 500

067a month or a little bit more it's it's worth it to me I also think that we do need to um make make sure we can enhance its impact so you know it'd be nice to know how many people are connecting through the Spanish Network every week every time we meet have a little report on that it's I don't know if it's hard to get that data but if it can be generated securely automatically we've got to have it um I don't know how to deal with the quality of the uh I think I think inez's idea about how to get feedback as to whether the quality of the of the translation is up to it up to what we're trying to accomplish I think that's part of what we got to do we need

068to have some sort of ongoing monitoring of that to make sure it does it's eight o'clock uh anyway so I I I'm at this at this cost I'm in favor of continuing uh even if people don't show up sometimes and uh and I do think that both for both the reasons that Brian's mentioned that in essence mentioned we need to to have figure out if there's some way we can monitor the effectiveness I think it's clear from the discussion that we need more outrage uh to that population and we can't rely on Dr Morlock to do that so um as a board how do we want to tackle that hey Brandi maybe um like everybody's bringing up the question of how many people are participating in this maybe the bigger question is is um you

069know if we can continue this on uh say for another month or two and and get some type of data on that but maybe the bigger question is is uh in general the school board how are we getting out there to the the entire you know City and how our people accessing this or are they not they just don't want to or they don't know about it I mean we've talked about this before where we even have staff members call in and don't really understand the role of the school board so maybe it's something we just have to discuss about how we get out there to to all our constituents um if we're going to do that then you know I think we should continue on uh with what we're doing you know for maybe

070not the whole school year but for another month or two to get some type of data point on this but I still think the bear question is how are we reaching the entire community and like Ron said 15 people forever covet has offered this Zoom thing you know that's different so it seems like that's increased our numbers but maybe we should try to figure out how we can Market out to more parents and stuff like that so they can understand what we're we're doing a bit more for their kids yeah big question yeah I think the general Community involvement is a big one um some of the things that came to mind in this discussion for the latinx parent population specifically at the latinx parent group obviously but also I know the Mountain View parent

071group has a large population they've got a good turnout in their parent group meetings of Spanish-speaking parents that could be another place to start I'm not sure how else to encourage people to attend a school board meeting well I think I mean please take this right way if we don't have anybody that that needs this service we shouldn't spend 6 800 on it but we do you know and if people are going to call in and our in our our uh looks like we're gonna be on Zoom for a while if our if our uh Hispanic numbers are up whether we need to continue this service um I would lean towards you know asking Inez you know being uh if it's not efficient though it's not efficient it's got to be efficient you know out

072there for how it's working I mean it's that's quite a bit of money we're spending it should be at least efficient but I I would vote to go a couple more months just to get some data on it to see you know who's participating but the bigger question I still think is getting out to more people uh any English and Spanish across the across the community I don't know how to do that but Luke neverwood he's a genius oh so that was a joke but you know I'm just like I'll meet it still got it Joe got it I saw it I think we should continue it though you guys just because even if one person calls in um if you've traveled at all in a foreign country and you are stuck you're stuck to

073not understanding what's being said on a sign compared to what's being said in in front of you um so I vote to keep it going but let's find out the real data but again I'd still like to get this out to more people are speak English or speak Spanish or whatever we'll all be more famous for it so there you go so Joe is there a way to get data on this because my understanding is there's just no way to to know how many people are using this service well why don't we uh have the number of views we have on our YouTube but I don't know if we can and I'll have to go back and see if we can actually figure out if they choose different audio channels within that so if they

074watch them I don't know if that's possible no Greg please stream to YouTube only the English Channel streams to YouTube okay the only way that we could measure would be either if people choose to give us feedback that they listened and this was helpful um or we can see the attendees who are there and I I mean I don't know how we would know if they're using Spanish or not like we would have to make educated guesses based on we know these we know specifically these people are and we don't know this many and perhaps they were using it that would be the only way yeah I think Joe is it something we can ask at the latinx parent meeting for feedback yes absolutely I think that would be a great place to at least

075start with to get information um there are two points also I was just looking at number view numbers um you know in one of our last meetings I think we had 88 views and in contrast the city council had six views so they were doing better than the city council to get out Dave I I will take a win on that one I'm not competitive in any way but if I were competitive I would say we're doing a better job um there's that the second part of that is that providing access is also about making a signal and making a statement and I think that's you know one of the things that we put into our bond was about around Ada not necessarily compliance but creating access so I've actually yet to receive an email

076thanking me for our opening door that we have at three of our buildings that allow people with a wheelchair to get in to have easy access so I don't get emails on that either I might get one if we don't have it available and that's you know usually if if there's not a problem you don't hear anything and if there's a problem you hear everything so I think it is important for us to remember that we're we're and I would like to and if we can figure out ways to do data I'm all for it because I actually like that too I do also agree with Dave that we're probably not doing as good a job and Outreach as we need to do to get people involved and listening because the decisions made here affect

077all the children in the district so I think that's really important um but but by providing access or by um having that you're also providing a signal that people belong and so for my money at the six thousand or seven thousand it's a really easy uh really easy expenditure to say uh we're signaling to you that we want you to be here if you're not coming I want to know why you're not coming I understand it's not the most exciting thing in the world um but there are some things that are that do truly affect your children and so even if we get a couple of people who then communicate to their friends this is what happened to morbid I know that's what we have going on now we don't have you know 300 parents

078connected but I know we have a few parents connected who will talk to other parents and so how is it we can get a few people to come and so I just think I think by offering that service you're you're giving a signal that you want them to feel included and then you want to to get their feedback um so I think we've got a few things in play here and uh um and I would certainly support going forward um we take it out of my budget if we need to um because I usually just buy pens and stickies so uh I'd like to at least continue on for a while to see how we do it and then do a better job I actually I would agree that we need to do a better

079job getting out to people and getting them to be engaged at least just to put it on Let It stream while they're you know making dinner or something else so I've been missing my incredible amount of outrage that I did around the bond it feels like I have no uh evening meeting so I would love to do some Outreach on this um and just those two ideas but if they're if board members or staff or anyone in the public has ideas additional ideas on how to we could potentially do Outreach on this please reach out and let us know um in the meantime I think it's important to keep it because you know we've only had it for a couple of months and I don't think that's long enough to really get the information out

080and to get people potentially engaged um I agree with Joe and uh you know it's eliminating another barrier to access yep okay well I would entertain a motion on this if anybody would be in the mood to give one I recommend that I've moved at the Nuremberg School District Board of Directors approve hiring proprio propio to provide simultaneous Spanish translation board meetings through the end of the 2020 2021 school year work I'll second that beat me Bob you've been Fascinate too all right with a motion in second is there more discussion okay all those in favor please raise your hand thank you for somebody oh sorry Brian did you have something yeah so are we do we have a plan for collecting data because I understand it's only 6 000 a year but you run

081that out five years and we're talking thirty thousand dollars and it ends up being real taxpayer money and likeness said if we're not getting anything out of it I'll bet there's a lot of things we could do in our community that would be more helpful than this for thirty thousand dollars over the next five years so I want data at least and I don't want to move forward on continuing this unless we know we're going to get some sort of data that we can judge out of it do you have a suggestion for getting the data or anything you'd like to see specifically or how to get it no and that's the problem in my book is we have no way of getting data on if anyone's using it all the anecdotal evidence just based

082on meeting participation and feedback is that no one is currently getting any benefit out of this service that we're spending real money on well I I would disagree because I know at least my aunts and other relatives have used it maybe they're not on every week or every time that we meet but and that's where I got the information of like maybe you should listen in and see that what you all are saying is actually being the message is being heard because either there's a connectivity issue or something because a lot is missing and that's what I why I brought that up I don't think we should get rid of this axis I I certainly would like to I I'll vote to approve this eagerly you know I think pursuing you know how to make

083this more effective you know we haven't yet you know we got a a note at the beginning of the meeting from our translator asking us to slow down you know we haven't yet had a conversation even informally with our translation service on what's working for them what's not working for them how we can assist I think there there's a lot of growth that uh is yet to come for this service but uh absolutely I see it having a already a huge value in providing that um that welcoming for anybody who wants to come to our meetings uh you know we're not approving a five-year contract so if we got to thirty thousand dollars and we didn't have anything to show for it yeah that would be that would be um that would be legitimate to

084question that whether we were spending folks tax money correctly um we're not at that point we're not even close to that point and we have a lot of room for growth and it's something which I can tell you as just one board member not speaking for the board I will be active and engaged in making it as effective as we can possibly make it for all of our members of our community thank you Bob for bringing that up because I do want to highlight how difficult it is to translate simultaneously um or even after one is speaking I actually had to do that for our committee meeting um and I hadn't done it in a while so I was really rusty um so it takes a lot of skill to do this and I think

085it's important that we hear from our translating service what we can do better because it is important for people to talk slow in order for us to translate adequately I'm I'm wondering how we can administratively give this uh the the problem of Effectiveness give it somebody you know somebody responsible for it um we do have the equity committees and at Huck committee it's um it certainly could be arguably within its purview to do um to take take attention to this part of the equity uh of access to our District's business so that would be one option is to ask the equity committee sometime along here even come up with a plan at least for how to monitor this for effectiveness I don't know there might be better ideas but that's just one that has occurred

086to me this evening and I was going to say you know and if that's something that the committee wants to take on fantastic you know I certainly would volunteer to help be a liaison between you know the the board and our translation service to try and um you know Foster that discussion on how we could be more effective so you know we're getting down into the weeds of you know how we'll do this and the discussion tonight is whether we're going to do it and I would absolutely say that it's um it's something that's uh money well spent I feel that we need to continue for until the end of the twi the school year to give it a a good shot to be able to encourage the use from families to get it well

087known and then we can come to a better decision I don't feel I I don't feel it so uh would be a waste of money at all to encourage accessibility okay is there any concern is that we don't have a plan for evaluating this at the end of that period and we need that plan to be in place before I'm willing to spend taxpayer money on it because otherwise we're going to get to the end of this year and we will have the exact same discussion that we had here tonight with nothing to base a decision around that would be a that would be an unfortunate outcome uh we can't get to the New Year Without continuing it so I think we need to vote for continuing it tonight um and uh I'm willing to

088bring it up into the equity committee as to whether they would be willing to continue to put this into this part of their work because it is a district level it's our it's our it's our work it's not this is not something down at the level of staff so it's really in our in our lane to talk about this and that's where that Equity could be are the board's Equity committee is going to be focusing on sort of District level issues so um I you know we're gonna have to I think we're gonna go ahead and have a vote on this and Brian I'm sorry if you feel like we're premature but uh I think that the I think what you've asked for is you've gotten just about as much as you can have tonight

089which is to have people talking about how they're going to figure out a way to evaluate this and make sure it's effective so part of that could be just asking people too right guys through the equity committee or through each school just asking all of our or constituents or parents you know just a you know we do surveys it'd be nice to because they might have a great idea to do it better you know they might come up with something that we're not talking about here that we could be more effective so I mean Brian brings up good points um we we do need to know how effective it is so I think probably the easiest thing that would take a little bit of time though is asking people we won't be able to get

090to all every single household but um our whole communication is a board again it kind of comes that bigger question is maybe there's some people out there whether it's uh Spanish or English that might have a better way for us to do this let's ask them yeah I agree I think I think a more financially responsible approach to this problem and I agree that access is important is the same way we handle sign language if you request it we will pay for the service for the next meeting but to have it just Auto running on autopilot on us throwing away 260 dollars every meeting seems like a a waste of money when I actually think that if there are other languages that we need to have this available in period for Access I would support

091that on a as need basis absolutely well it's not 20 or so or 25 of our constituency that need sign language so I think it's pretty it's probably at least as efficient in in all the senses of efficiency not just Financial to have it as a as a standard offer for a population that big um and which we've documented we have groups already organized who are trying to uh you know latinx group for example so uh yeah that is an alternative model and at some point we'll have to make a decision as to whether the continuous operation is appropriate or not um it would be impossible to know that if we suspend it now so I think we need to keep it going okay well we do have a motion in a second is there

092any other discussion that would further the conversation uh Brandi last thing is Greg can monitor how many people uh log in right yeah we you can see it too I think if you click down at participants it changes throughout the meeting it doesn't store that so I it's only when I look up and see it I have no way of accessing how many total people watched at the end but that's just going to be a general check-in it's not a by language stingering like that no no okay with a motion and a second all those in favor please raise your hand and opposed okay passes six to one with director Shannon in opposition and we've got some work to do around that outrage of sounds like which is exciting okay now we'll go ahead and

093move into our policies by the way does anybody need a break the green feeling okay okay let's go into policies policy ACB all students belong um and director mock is going to remind us what this is because he is a member of the policy committee uh yeah this is the one about uh that came that was originated for us by the uh Oregon Department of Education and um and has been referred to us for adoption um we are essentially required to adopt ACB by the state it's now a state rule we have the option of I think tweaking it to make it to to add things to it but there's a certain element that's in the rule from the state and that has to do with basically the I think the meat of that is

094in the definition of a bias incident and the symbol of hate and that these things would not be permitted on the school district ground we had a conversation last time about this so we including some constant question about the constitutionality of a speech-based rule that would prohibit some and encourage others um are not encourage others but I got distracted there prohibits prohibit some forms of speech including the three symbols that are listed on them on the policy right now the the news the uh swastika and the Confederate flag and we had some conversation last time about whether that list of symbols would tend to grow and become more controversial as time passes um maybe that's where we left it uh I'll say one thing um more last time I did raise the notion that this

095probably this kind of policy is the kind of thing that could get challenged in courts as free speech grounds um I want to make it clear that I said I was going to vote for this anyway benefit might be controversial because at least as it is now I think it is on Target and constitutional but it can't that question can can uh well it can come up people have legitimate arguments about free speech that um that impact is uh I think what we're talking about today I don't know for sure what everybody wants to talk about but at least whether we're ready to go ahead and improve around second reading that's officially what it's up for so Ron I have a question for you yeah [Music] um like I get the symbols one you know

096those are all pretty tough ones um working at the school you know seeing the the Confederate flag the most out of those three um what's the law say right now in Oregon I mean what's the law say what's the last thing about what about these type of symbols oh that's a yeah you're asking from a question you probably want to ask the uh the district council um a definitive legal uh decision ruling on that uh but the uh in general uh the general pattern has been that the in for the general population there are relatively very few restrictions on what people can say I mean the classics are you can't really yell fire at a crowded crowded theater because I would immediately endanger people so the kinds of speech that stimulate the immediate immediately dangerous

097actions are uh can be regulated within the Constitution so you can't Fame people uh there can be civil actions against defamation so if you defend me and told people things that weren't too about me and injured my reputation it's impossible uh then I could possibly sue you about that it wouldn't be an infringement either of your civil rights because you'd have used your speech to the first my civil rights um the and there are a few other examples like that um where there are limited for the general population the rules are a little different for schools because as the courts have established and it's already and it's actually mentioned in Tinker Des Moines which we talked about last year schools have a different setting because they've got to have a they've got to be able

098to maintain an education atmosphere that works and so they're already the courts have recognized rules that would be different in schools and they might be some other places based on that that is not real clear in every case and there are lots of lines that are still to be drawn uh so but the general principle is that while you don't give away your your first amendment rights when you enter the school either as a student or as a staff member or as a member of the public the school can regulate your speech in order to maintain an educational environment to effectively and so forth um so there are cases that use that rule to approve of school actions uh and cases that use that rule to say no you couldn't do that because it's gone

099too far the school couldn't make a rule but someone one way or another so the courts have tried to use that General principle and they've not decided every case in the favor of the school district sometimes they just decided in the favor of the generator student um so and it's not I don't know that there's anything or Oregon could have its own unique version of a First Amendment uh we do have our first amendment of our own parallel and the Oregon Constitution and sometimes it is used in Oregon courts to make a slightly different role in the federal courts more protective of speech we can't be less protective it has to be more protective of speech I don't know that there's anything I don't know that there is or is not anything in Oregon I

100don't know whether there's anything different an organized applies to the school districts generally this is all federal law so if a kid came to the high school um any work Confederate Flag t-shirt and we say can't he says he can not that any high school kid would ever disagree with an adult it never happens never happens but I mean can't can he can we discipline him any wins or does he lose or can his parents step in and say we're going to sue the Newberg School District I mean I don't want a kid to wear the Confederate Flag t-shirt to school but if he did and he says you know if he's defiant which no high school kid would ever be defiant but if he did where could that go to well they certainly could

101sue no matter what or we do it would be the kind of claim it's not going to get thrown out of the Court immediately it would be fact issues and so forth so yeah you could have lawsuits about it uh it and in this case you know they would be protesting the what's basically an Oregon state law that we would also have our own policy I don't know Joe has more experience probably as to what happens in those cases and what and what the reality is but in terms of in terms of whether he has the right assume sure it is right soon not that he has a right to win but he has a right to sue right and that's his go ahead would it be similar to just a dress code violation where

102you know when I was going to school and if I had spaghetti straps I was forced to wear my gym t-shirt instead of whatever shirt I was wearing that's correct but it would seem to me that we would just tell the student to change right and that's you know I think actually one of our speakers tonight one of our uh commenters tonight did talk about you know the the bigger about having a discussion about what it looks like let's say and and Dave is correct I'm sure it probably never happens but let's just say somebody's defiant students to find for toward an adult um you know you could get to a place where you then have to have them go home um but more often than not we have people who show up with um

103alcohol on their t-shirt or drugs or other vulgar or lewd or obscene or just plainly offensive speech on their clothing um we have them turned inside out we give them a different shirt here now you know you get your tiger shirt on today or whatever so this happens all the time in kind of different contexts and those are all um you know limitations that are have been supported by the Supreme Court for for years and years around student speech so certain things are are that way so we would probably approach it in the same way it's not like we're I'm gonna kick you out of school because you show up with a um you know when you show up with a patch we're going to take you through a conversation we're going to get you

104to change and do all the rest of those things but really you know I think there's also some learning some some empathy about what uh what it may not be your intent but what the impact is you know I think that we often forget that there is an impact it may not impact any of you um you know it might have been your favorite 70s TV show when you were a kid and they drove an orange car that had that on there and you didn't even track the fact that that symbol on that car was about something else it was really about you know two Knuckleheads who drove around and tried to escape from the law you enjoyed the TV show but it's it has a different impact if it's somebody else and so I

105think that that's back to this thing it's about the kind of impact I think you heard it tonight from uh from one of our staff Matt Miller talked about it happening specifically in his classroom and the impact that it had on the students and so when we come back to the core part of this was that students across the state have asked for this they have put in some some work to make it happen um and the the policy bringing for the policy of being born of the um of the administrative rule temporary rule they've got in um is really just speaking and affirming that certain things have impact that make it really hard for some students to go to school and I you know it's I think um I think we're working through it

106of course there's a policy and there's a procedure that that will follow there's an AR to go through a bias procedure because we did talk about having a complaint procedure and using the same ones we wouldn't have to have multiple but there are some differences when it comes to um you know hate speech and uh um this kind of an activity so they've actually got a bias thing that we'll bring forward we can review as well about what the steps are for remediating it so what is the range of potential punishments or remediation techniques for a bias incident under this sure well we haven't we don't have it fully developed yet but but it's the same thing as we have for dress code so either we ask you to change it um we maybe even

107negotiate a conversation you know Dave actually talked about uh several meetings ago that sometimes you just have kids to sit down and talk it out like you know what does this mean to you how does this work um you know we're not in the business of trying to uh create massive discipline we don't want to um put you out of school we don't want to put you another thing we want you to understand um the impact that your actions have because we're trying to help develop young adults um if it gets to a whole other place and they can just continue then we figure out the next disciplinary parts of it but you know it's um it's it's probably nothing more that if you look at I I won't go back I'm glad that UMES

108brought it up with with dress code it's the same kind of a thing we do with dress code right and we have a certain set of warnings and we go through the process and and try to work through you I I don't think that we're going to find a huge amount of that happening I think you know we've actually spoken a little bit about some of the ones that have come in I think um and we'll bring forward as soon as we've developed the AR that goes along with this policy um to go over and you can kind of see the the process we'd go through but we would still follow the same um code of conduct things that we have um right now which is for the the kinds of activities that are in

109school this would just add on to uh the kinds of things that we already limit Joe I I didn't want to cut you off uh but I my question was actually around the language of a bias incident which is yeah it's an expression of animus towards a group based on certain traits that's not where you can take their t-shirt off and turn inside out so if a person expresses that they feel the same way towards another group how do you deal with that so again it's all in context about what the what the procedure is so let's just say that they um um somebody decides to use the n-word directed at somebody else um that would follow uh the same kind of pursuit that we would use uh if they were to use some other

110kind of thing um against somebody so the Animus may not be biased specifically but it could be um I'm trying to think about something else that would use it let's just say they use the the f word in multiple ways and actually threatening somebody threatening some kind of harm we would go through the same procedure that we would normally do we would investigate we'd ask the kids uh what's happening uh get the context and then it would just depend on it could be a suspension it could be an expulsion if it were really truly that horrible I you know I don't see us quite getting to that but it is possible but we have a we have a tiered set of disciplinary procedures that we would follow along um a bias incident would just fall

111into that same kind of a thing so we would put that into into our code of conduct along whatever that Continuum is and I'm not sure what we would place it I don't have it in front of me right this second but Ryan just said there um I've been part of hundreds of the F-bomb ones you know at the school um that kind of happens you know pretty much every day we don't catch you know all obviously like like the shirt thing is easy you know we've done that for the dress code Forever you know the new swap the Confederate flag you know inappropriate those are the easy ones the bias ones are you know it's gonna be hard for everybody to hear this but all of our examples so far have been one way

112and I mean that in a in in a truest sense it's been it's always a white student towards me else that's what our examples have been tonight and so far so I just know in my time at the school it it it it goes every which way and so my only thing on the biased part is is who defines that at the end of the day being around the high school kids and and working a lot with middle school kids there's so many times where they're mad at each other over boys girls Sports who made the team you know who's on who's doing what I mean there's a lot of immaturity and then there's a lot of maturity I mean high school kids are capable of the full range but when it comes to that

113Port part where they're you know if somebody's been the accuser and somebody's been accused and I bring this up because it's been kind of personal to me this summer as we've gone through this whole summer I mean we've had people on our staff in this District call me a racist and I'm not a racist but they they think they they have a Viewpoint of what a racist is today now based on the 2020 difference of things and uh I'm just saying if a student um either way I mean I've dealt with this my entire time and I do not uh put up with with kids treating any other kind of kid in a harmful way in any way shape or form always stuck up for every single kid that's what I want to see I

114just don't want to see our principles are always the last to know because it happens security a teacher a coach somebody drags them into the office and says this is what happened you fill out incident report form and what's going to happen though and he said she said because that can happen super easy in school and to me it's like when you do set kids down and we do the the conflict resolution and we we go through the whole process with the kids it works really well like the young man said from Catalyst um you know when you sit down at the end of the day and you talk it through it's the best way to do that as long as our students just know that it's not all of our students uh you know

115that's why I said this a couple months ago the first thing I'm doing when working back in school is I'm having a school assembly talking every single kid in that school saying this is how you treat another human being correctly and I and I hope our our principals would do that and and especially now coming out of what we're coming out of um this is really important to me so I hope I'm getting through to you guys yeah I spent my entire career trying to do this for kids and uh it's I want every kid to feel safe and important but there's going to be times where the most awful things are said in those hallways and it's not directed at somebody sometimes and sometimes it's totally directed at somebody but it goes from all

116students to everybody there's nobody that's completely innocent in this and so I'm just I'm just curious like if a principal has it set at the end of the day between two kids and there's no like one kid's word to another kid to word how is this going to pan out for for every kid because every kid deserves his time uh you know to feel safe there well notice that in the the I think that's I'm so I'm actually glad you brought that up there are two points that I want to make number one the bias Institute doesn't talk about any specific race one to another so if you read that paragraph it says animus and and Brian quoted it earlier animus toured another person relating to the person's perceived race color religion gender identity sexual

117orientation disability national origin it doesn't say which one is right or wrong it doesn't say which direction it just says a bias uh incident and then the second part of that I think that it's probably um the case of of why we've only brought up um certain things about uh race going One Direction is that everybody that has spoken so far uh minus one person on our board is white and so I think we take it from our own perspective I'm just as guilty because that those the examples that first came to mind because that's what I think of because um so but I think that if you look at this if you back up a little bit and look at the policy and you say and the paragraph right before that one in this

118policy also says that all visitors all students all employees are entitled to participate in an environment that's free from discrimination or harassment based on perceived race color religion and the whole list so it doesn't say which way is which way is correct and I do know that people say things to each other going I'll call it both directions but it is important to remember that this is about um the Hostile expression of animus toward another person based on these other things and so everybody can be wrong at any time and I think that that's uh back to the working with students to have a conversation about it you know that's sometimes that's the the most important thing that can happen because you're going to go through and understand the impact that that your words have

119on somebody else so I I think that the policy is wide open enough in that kind of a thing especially when exactly the examples you've brought up Dave about you know making sure that this is this is for all students and I would agree it is for Austin but this is we're supposed to have a place where all students belong and that means we're gonna have to have some tough conversations about things well probably never before coming out of what we came through this this year and we're not out of it yet kids are going to walk back into a tough situation in a lot of different ways for school not just uh being back in a classroom and having to sit down and you know not have their cereal while they're listening to a

120lesson they're going to have to like get up early and they're going to have to eat school lunches again and they're not going to do all that kind of stuff um I just uh I think it's gonna be a tough time for them coming back out of this this this political climate we've we've we're still in and How's that gonna I think that's where we're gonna I'd like to know how all the principles are gonna react to us I know they have to do what you tell them and I know like Tammy at the high school does a great job on this kind of stuff um so as we come back to a different School Year Joe as we're sorry Dr Morlock as we're coming back out of that into a different time when we

121do get back whenever we do and these kids are in person some of these issues start to happen I'd like to have feedback back down the road from those principals saying hey this resolution didn't go far enough it went too far uh uh it it uh you know what's that what's going to be the results of this same thing Brian said about our our data points on the uh the language thing I'd like our principals to come back and say because it's going to be a different year for those principals and the kids than it ever before yep I would uh so I apologize for cutting off in the middle um I would actually so I fully agree I think you know one of the things we're going to be coming back to is being

122back in a building with a whole lot of other humans and we've actually been we're going to have to kind of relearn some of those muscles right because we're we're sort of used to doing the scene you know how to surf the hallway you know how to get to your place you know how to kind of interact so there will be some relearning um I totally agree with that the second point that I like to make is that um when I first started here two and a half years ago I think it was this is one of the Hot Topics that came to me from our secondary principles uh this is something they wanted us to change already in policy because they were struggling with um symbols of hate coming in and this is something

123that they actually had been uh pressing on us to to move ahead with and so it's really I would be um I actually would glad gladly have our principals kind of come back and talk about uh all the things about reopening school and um I I agree I think we'll still be in some political thing I think we're going to get through some of the politics by the time we're all back in person um you know I think some of that heat will will cool down a bit before we get back in but you know we are going to have to relearn how to be with each other in shared spaces um kind of with a new reality and so I think that that's I I totally agree with you on that side of things

124and I think that this just allows us to kind of name the things that are bias incident and symbols of hate and make it very clear about what we we tolerate what we don't tolerate and then you know how we discipline and how we move forward and how we help kids learn to be functional humans with each other whether they like each other or not I think that's a big and a big Next Step so I you know I think you're right on David in a lot of those points frankly and I think we have a lot of a lot of work to do but hey you know this this policy allows us to develop then other procedures and other ways for us to build a work through the challenges that will come forward as

125we come back together and even when we're not together I mean the incident you heard about tonight from Matt Miller wasn't it happened as we are remote and so it's these things do happen and we need to work on them Joe last thing on that before I know somebody else wants to talk and I'm sorry but I just want to say I have a lot more this is a tough one to read through for me just because of being working in there and seeing all this stuff and I know Matt I mean he's down there building good stuff um that what a horrible classroom sorry I had to go through that if I vote for this so I want you to come back to me as a board member and give us updates on this

126to to tell us how it's going and what's going on it it just can't be an open-ended thing it's like is this enough or is it not enough or are we going in the wrong direction I think you know for me I haven't asked you to do very many specific things but that would be one I would ask like how's it going at Mountain View compared to CB compared to the high school compared to the grade schools compared to you know uh Catalyst and how's this going you know every now and then your comments I'd like you to come back and say uh pretty good or whatever yeah I think that's yeah go ahead sorry I'm ready to make a motion so um I'll move that the Newberg School District Board of Directors approved policy

127ACB all students belong as presented oh Rebecca you got the last one so this one I think should go to Boston okay okay five seconds okay motion to the second uh further discussion and Dave great questions good conversation but let's let um see if anybody else has any questions or thoughts for just a little bit here so um on symbols of hate um am I reading this correct that is not that we're just Banning The Noose the swastikan the Confederate flag we're Banning symbols of hate which include those three things am I reading that correctly so who defines What a symbol of hate is so if you were to have a lawsuit about this uh you would be asking the tire effect might be a jury sometimes to decide whether the display was reasonably likely

128to cause a substantial disruption the first Clause there or reasonably likely to interfere with the rights of a student but full access and we don't you know so the way that officially the way the law works is that these criteria becoming questions of thought for a dryer effect in a lawsuit uh we're not going to want to take every case to court so what's going to happen I think Joe will have to comment more on this people trying to make that determination based on those two criteria yep that's exactly correct okay the Tinker the Tinker case was specifically around black armbands uh protesting and that's why in that case it was not considered a simple paper which is why that case is interesting used the other direction because the they said the school district couldn't

129ban them because there wasn't them that was creating immediate harm or other kinds of discomfort and uninterrupting the school environment and in that case one of the things they cited was that some students were wearing Iron crosses which is traditionally a symbol of Nazism which I assume would be covered under this rule so the thing the Supreme Court used as an example of why you can't stand bands is one of the things that we would be outlining under this policy well this is not about going across the Iron Cross is not listed so it's this Washington the Iron Cross has way a lot more connotation within this Washington bills all those wants to go had other connotations too which probably had the Nazis not come along would mean that this swastika wouldn't follow us um

130well the Enterprise does have other connotations and uh so uh and the question would be you know how it you're you're pointing to a problem that will occur eventually in this in this that we're going to get the borderline cases and um I don't think the Iron Cross is a borderline case at this point but maybe at some point it will become one but the case in Tigger um um would be it'd still be a distinction between the iron Crossings for us to Joe would an iron cross be considered a symbol of hate in our district resolution uh does the Iron Cross include the swastika no just the Iron Cross because there are so in Germany as an example right it's illegal to create them with the swastika on them but they do actually have

131the Iron Cross and so they're not used necessarily in that way so again is it being used as a way to intimidate somebody else or are they just wearing the Iron Cross that seems incredibly subjective I don't know how you would make that determination right and that's why the conversation usually happens um you know you can see the Iron Cross used in um uh and I can't remember the skateboard brand and somebody's going to tell me later what it is but you know as part of the logo of a skateboard brand as a for instance and you can see that that symbology being used um so at this point uh I don't think that's going to be covered under this there are of course iron crosses that have the swastika in them um but uh

132you know at this point it's not one of the things that we would consider to be used as a symbol of hate necessarily so does context matter on the swastika because the swastikas a 5 000 year old symbol that's still foreign to Hindus and Buddhists so Hindu or Buddhist student be able to wear a piece of religious guard in our school that included a swastika under this policy I think the swastika and the Iron Cross are two very different things well I'm asking specifically about the swastika well the swastika I think we've been Banning because it has an unfortunate too deep of a conver connotation within our culture so a the swastik is also specifically called out in the policy so a Buddhist or Hindu cannot wear a religious symbol at school if it's the

133swastika is that if it were something they're going to disrupt the educational environment then yes that's correct yeah uh back to my questioning about bias incidents um I noticed that in your response you use the example of someone who was threatening someone with harm which of course has been held by the Supreme Court to not be free speech so an expression of animus saying I don't like somebody or I don't like this group is not threatening them yet under this policy that would not be allowed correct you mean they couldn't say something bad to somebody else that they couldn't say let's student a says I don't like this race I don't trust people of this race I don't like people of this race is that a hostile expression of animus under this policy well I

134think context matters but I don't think they're saying it directly to that person they're saying in general I don't like this because of X Y or Z now if they're saying it in ways that they are continuing to say it over and over again they continue to say it over and over again because they're using it as a way to bully or to create um some kind of a um of A disruption in the educational environment then yes then they would be going through a disciplinary procedure because they would be using that as a way to make somebody else feel less welcome they make them feel less comfortable create some other kind of a an incident in the educational environment and it's not always um it's not always the exact words you use it has

135to do with the uh the intent and then the impact of those words so if they say it one time it's okay I you know what I'm not gonna to go back and forth on this one it could be one time they say it really badly it could be one time they say it accidentally and there could be a thousand ways to do it again that's why we have uh administrators that go through and have conversations with students and sometimes there is a larger impact to that students educational experience and sometimes there's less of one uh depending upon and that's why people spend those times doing those things I think Dave actually spoke earlier about the conversations he's had with students when he sits them down they go through to find out what was meant

136by that person saying it and I think that there's all you know there are always issues of that he says she said but uh context does matter and I do know that our secondary administrators especially secondary administrators go through this all the time and they go after what what was the impact what was the intended impact on this were you just being a knucklehead kid you said the word because you were listening to a rap song or were you trying to create some sort of fear in somebody else uh I can speak I do know a case where something like that happened you know because the kid was in the world and uh he got called in the office and he got written up but you know because basically he had used the word the

137n-word actually and uh but he was treated he was treated uh fairly by the district so I'm I'm I'm sure you understand the fact is possible I have a question for you Brian um is it acceptable for someone to intimidate somebody so they don't so they feel afraid to come to school no and if we have evidence that the three of these things uh have a pattern of intimidating people so they don't come to school which is basically what we're basically from is evidence that we're supposed to have okay I'm going to need you to find intimidating though well I don't know why we need to find intimidate the the the principle is that it's not you don't have a right to intimidate somebody so they don't come to school and uh and once you

138establish that principle then you always have borderline cases the fact that there are borderline cases does not undermine the attempt in fact and to assert the principle well how much intimidation obviously if you have a Gang of Five Guys and there's a uh you know the 90 pound eight ninth grader hasn't grown yet and those five guys say you better not come to school today or something bad's gonna happen to you we could stop that what if there's only three guys what if there's only one guy and he's only five pounds heavier at this point now you're getting the borderline cases and you're not going to stop the Five Guys you're not gonna allow the Five Guys to do it just because you can't decide what to do about the two guys with the same

139size you establish the principle and you're always going to have borderline cases the fact that you're focusing on borderline cases I'm not sure what if you're objecting to the principle or not I'm trying to figure out where the line is because saying that someone cannot express animus towards and tell me what you use on the Five Guys where's the line on General intimidation if you can't if we can't define the line in advance we can't have any print policy no that's not what I'm saying I'm trying to understand this policy which I thought was our job yes it is our job but I think in my view we already have established the understanding the policy that there are going to be clear cases that this is directed at and there are going to be borderline

140cases I said that last time the borderline cases are going to be a problem I said that last time that doesn't stop us from establishing the principle in like an important matter like this because it does there's not going to be able to articulate any principle that does anything that doesn't have borderline cases foreign Americans constitutional rights I think we need to know where that line is no we can't it's I I said this several times Brian we don't know and it always comes out in the case when they said Congress shall make no law infringing the uh oh I can't even I can't quote it that's a little embarrassing colleges to make no law respecting establishing religion or imprinting that's a long amendment I understand what you're saying anyway all those are fundamental principles

141which I deeply believe in and I think they're fundamental to what America is and it's promised but nobody knew at the time even at the time but the borderline cases would come out sure and we've had a lot of Supreme Court cases in the meantime and I'm trying to understand how this policy fits into the framework that the Supreme Court has given us and in my view it doesn't because saying that you dislike somebody even on account of race or religion or whatever which I find abhorrent this protected speech under our constitution for the general population the general population is but not in within school can I have a question please yeah I'm going to let Bob go ahead and ask the question and see if Rebecca and he does have anything to add to

142this and then I think we should take the vote what I was going to ask it and kind of in the similar vein is I'm not clear Brian if you're trying to understand the policy or if you're trying to persuade folks to to your side of disagreeing with the policy um you know if you're if your goal is to understand the policy you know I think we can continue I would be more than willing to help you understand it if you're trying to persuade me um I don't find your argument persuasive and I'd like to to move on I would like to add that to you know what Brian's trying to say though is hey Dave Dave I'm sorry I don't want to be interrupted Brandy I want to I know here's what I'm going

143to let you know I want to let Rebecca have the chance to speak and then we can come back to you okay we need to ensure that all board members have at least a chance and they know that you and Brian are passionate about this issue and have had quite a bit of time to speak so I will come right back to you after we get to Rebecca Nina's Rebecca do you have anything to add to this or any questions I feel that it's important it the policy is is clear enough and and I think we should go ahead and vote on it I don't find it a a violation of free speech I feel it's a defining what the students can and can do at school and that we we know there will be

144um staff and administration to help the students learn how to respond in cases of of biasedness or um hate speech we we need to teach them how to how to work through their issues you know do you have anything to add um just uh I think this is in line with what we've discussed our goals to be for the year and with our resolution that we passed I don't see a problem with this I'm ready to move forward which is why I moved and made the motion Dave final thoughts I think when you guys don't want to hear somebody talk you dismiss them and whether I agree with Brian or not it's like this has happened too many times and his questions are valid and he's not trying to argue over um certain things but

145you know we're talking about a major league issue here and he has good concerns and Ron I talked to you about this it's it this the the dismissal of somebody on our board um and you just decide you don't want to hear anymore and you guys just want to move forward with the boat I think that's that's frustrating when you're on the board and you um I don't hear Brian says he he has said over and over in his comments that he is against um treating people poorly in every sense of the word he has said that several times tonight and yet you guys still are dismissing uh one of our board members for having his opinion there's a big difference between disagreeing and dismissing you know Brian's made his point he's made it very

146strongly and very effectively I don't agree with it and that's that's different than dismissing it dismissing means I'm not even going to listen to you and I don't think your thoughts are worthy or valid I have not said that and I don't feel that in my heart I have listened to Brian I've listened to you I've listened to the rest of the board I've taken that and I've processed that and I've come to a decision and if Brian as I said if he had trouble if you have trouble understanding the policy that's that's a discussion to continue having if you just disagree with it then we're we're in opposition that's different than dismissing you're just making from the standpoint that you want to just go ahead and vote right now and if we vote right

147now this is what happens because trust me I understand the no vote real well if we go ahead and vote right now because we just want to get it done got to get her done then you're going to get calls from constituents you're going to get emails from constituents Dr Joe and the School Board gets gets emails from constituents hammering away because of a no vote and again Brian has brought up several good points I don't believe he's trying to dissuade me on my vote Yes or no he's just bringing up points and you are dismissing him um I'll I will I will tell you how it works I will show you what's up you guys have said that and he's he's not arguing with you over how we want to treat our kids who

148who said that it's been said in the last like half hour Nobody by who who said that yeah just like I think Dave's accusing me of saying that you know I'm not saying I said you guys are just trying to talk you guys are not listening to everything he's saying on this thing at least if the vote is uh four to three or six to seven to zero or whatever it is he is he's still sitting here because I I feel I felt the same way he's feeling right now is that let's just move on and be done because obviously like Bob you don't agree with it and that's fine you get your vote and Brian gets his vote and I get mine and so on my point right now is the fact that we

149still have a board member who's passionately trying to make a point and it's hard to do on this school board it's really hard to do that and because we just want to push ahead to a vote and uh it's it's I I for me personally this is a really important issue and it's a big issue and yet it's like a lot of things in our school board we get to a certain point where we've made up our mind and we're just going to vote let's go let's get it right Dave I'm going to remind you it's a business meeting conducted in public and we have an agenda with times to facilitate the ease of the meeting and Brian emailed these concerns ahead of time which was excellent because it was great communication we were able

150to know that these concerns were some of the ones that he was having come prepared to the meeting to address them we have talked about this for far longer than what was actually on the agenda which was convenient because we were ahead in our schedule so that's excellent the whole point of this is to have good conversation which we've had but it is not to have endless conversation and the there's a motion in a second we've had discussion I have asked repeatedly if there's further discussion that will move the conversation along and at this point it feels that we're getting off topic and talking about issues that you have within relationships on the board and again I will encourage you to reach out have dialogue meet with board members beyond that we cannot say it

151at all I am trying to look up for a fellow board member right now who's who's not being heard I I have heard Brian loud and clear and I think everyone on this board has Randy I just want to mention why I moved to vote is because I am being conscious of time and we've been talking about this for a while we uh I understand that Brian has concerns and that's okay like for him to bring him up we've heard them I've heard them Still's not gonna change my vote my vote is still going to be to support this which is why I moved to vote and if moving this to a vote is me dismissing him I guess I'm sorry for that but my job is to do my best and my best is

152to do what's best for for the only resources we have which are energy time and attention and how are we spending that you know we don't get paid for this this is volunteer and yet we have to make these decisions for the betterment of the students and everybody involved and US wasting time talking in circles is not going to be effective in any way and as whenever you have something to say about one of your topics you have no problem going on and on about it so why can't I'm not going to let you do that I'm not gonna let you disparage other board members at this point we have a motion in a second we have spoke about this for far longer than was originally allocated I'm going to call the vote that you

153give us all those in favor point of order point of order I know I'm going to ask for a point of order too foreign you're out of line you're interrupting we've had the conversation I'm calling the vote all those in favor please point of order we're taking a 10 minute break please meet back here at 9 15. can you please tell me what rule your your you know point of order means you are referencing you took a break we're taking a break till 9 15. [Music] thank you foreign thank you [Music] sit down the same thing okay I'll be out here [Music] foreign hey Rebecca yes just so you know your your phone is not muted oh okay yeah it's okay just we could hear you breathing oh I'm sorry it's not a big deal

154but just so you knew you were not me yeah thank you foreign okay it's 9 15. Dave are you available let's give him another minute to return oh there he is okay all right we have a motion in a second we've had ample discussion we've had members call for a vote including me and it's time to vote the motion uh director Pena moved at the Newburgh School District Board of Directors approved policy ACB all students belong is presented all those in favor please raise your hand all those opposed and abstaining okay so we had passes five to two with director Shannon a no vote and director Brown abstaining final agenda item tonight is Dr Morlock discussing policy ikar are you ready if I hit the unmute button I will be yes all right thank you

155uh this is actually uh the AR um that goes along with our academic achievement we have been of course um going through quite a challenging time for uh students and staff alike and so we've had several discussions at uh primarily our secondary level uh and specifically at our high school level when it comes to credit uh there are some things uh within the AR that we are making some switches to I just wanted you to be aware because there are some some changes um some of these things have not been used anyway and some of them are small uh differentials so I wanted to just uh highlight some of those for you now if you will look at uh in the policy which is on page 65 66 of the packet um is where the

156changes were made um within uh the policy uh Ika or it's not the policy I'm sorry it's the um the administrative regulation a couple of changes that we have made uh so uh number one um uh allowing a more judicious use of the incomplete rather than an immediate failure so we have uh lots of teachers we did this in the springtime uh when we were working through from uh from March through the end of the year uh where students were allowed to make up an incomplete so rather than going through having a failure then trying to come back and and change the grade out uh and uh this is something that we would the teachers can make arrangements for the student and make a plan to doing that if they do not then fix that

157after the next at the end of the next semester that would then revert automatically to an F which is something we do earlier than that usually we've been done uh 10 school days we've changed that to the end of the following semester um because we wanted to make sure that we we can allow teachers to work directly with students to help them get you know sometimes it's just a one or two three three things we know it's been really hard on students and we're trying to help allow teachers to do more helpful things for them so that's in the incomplete change under uh NC that's a no credit so if they uh we may have a student who is taking a course and uh in the past and they they do not do well and

158we can actually change those to no credit which makes it so it does not impact their GPA necessarily but it does allow them to retake that class for a different grade so they wouldn't have just an f and then the class taken again it would be given a no credit um with all of these changes I should have backed up and said we did discuss the policy around folks who are applying for or who would be eligible for the valedictorian and salutatorian and determine that these these would not if these were part of that calculation that they would not qualify to be to get that award at the end of the year if that were so desired under the pass and no pass we as the as the procedure was uh prior to we had

159to have a courses that were set up to only be passed or no pass this allows us to actually have other courses that are passed no pass for students much like we had in the springtime um through from March to the end of the year and so we've added the opportunity for certain students if we need to make it into a pass no pass situation that we could do that that was something that came up clearly from both our sorry our Middle School and High School administrators and teachers to allow us to do that we did remove the language on the following page which would be page 67 in the packet um for two reasons number one we tried to to Tinker with it it didn't actually make as much sense so we just removed

160that because one of them was about IEP and the other ones were about having them having having to have them marked pre-marked in the course guides which is something that we were not going to do so we removed that language for that time period and then we considered some other changes that we have not brought forward into the AR at this time but some of these things you know we've had lots of pleas for support from parents from students and from our staff members wanting to find different ways that there were some places within our administrative regulations that made it challenging for them to be able to support students in ways that just makes sense so um the these small changes in here will allow us to do more of that kind of support for

161students we know we've already begun the discussions of what recovery looks like you know we we know that we're going to get through the school year we'll have some students coming in we're working on those plans but we also recognize the need that we'll be looking at a long recovery window to get back you know several years of trying to get students back up to to grade level working with kids who are in danger of not graduating students who are you know kind of fighting through and having a very challenging year so this allows our teachers and administrators some additional tools to help students kind of get past that and not be completely wiped out when they come back you know as we come back full time and I'm expecting that we would certainly do

162that next year as the indicators are kind of leaning that way so I wanted you to be aware of the the changes that we um that that I made in the administrative regulation they still do follow the general ik policy so we've not made any changes to that that would be material in that way um I think I'll pause there and see if there are any questions uh related specifically to the changes that we made in in ikar uh I had a question Joe first I just wanted to thank you you know for finding this flexibility and bringing this to us you know this is one of those things that you didn't necessarily need to bring forward but it has a significant impact so I appreciate you sharing that with us my question is um

163are you looking are you envisioning this to be something that's just in place during distance learning or is it are you picturing it in place uh beyond that yeah that's a great question Bob um at this point we're making these changes for the current time we're also going to then be monitoring to see what impact it has later on that's why I was talking about recovery it may take us a couple of years to recover again this really came from our school administrators saying that he's here at the things that are keeping us from moving forward in certain situations um you know we did have a conversation what happens if x y or Z student starts to abuse this because they're doing these other things so they can get past um you know so we

164can cross that bridge when we come to but at this point we're looking this is a kind of a short term and then we're going to monitor how it works and if we need to make adjustments I mean the good news is uh because it's under an AR if if this is not working we can make that switch quickly come back to the board say hey by the way here's some of the things that didn't work in this and we can make those adjustments but um right now we're specifically focusing on our our students in our schools right now so this is that's why we're looking at doing this now yeah yeah I appreciate you going through the work to try to create flexibility but still make guidelines so that people aren't just out there

165freewheeling uh the part where you say uh the NC or can be a teacher discretion uh I assume that's because we have so many different kinds of cases right now generally I would not want to have teacher discretion built into the policy too much I mean there's got to be something in this situation seems like it might make sense um so I appreciate you guys doing that um so again you did say that it might we don't know how long it's going to be that you'd want to keep these um is there some way of sort of documenting um your thoughts on that so there's guidance uh or how are you doing that I guess that's your just to do that well I'm sorry I cut you off it's just I just want everybody the

166people that have to use this to understand is how long it's going to be and and why these conditions you know what kind what kinds of conditions would move us back to a more traditional model right well and that's um which I was saying at the beginning this is something that kind of came forward from that group they said here are some of our pinch points right now we're trying to work through the system here's where we're running into some issues um and so it really was we worked on it together in fact I okay I assigned I want you to figure out what that language can say talk to your counselors talk to your teacher talk to your assistant principles and ask them what they think on this so we worked on this a

167couple different times we um they alerted us to the need to make some changes we had a few meetings um as I said before I I signed out some language things they came back with this is what we our counselors thought would work or this is what our teachers thought would work with this is what our administrative teams that would work so we did do this based upon this was not me bringing this forward to them this was them saying here are some of our biggest pinch points and then we we did uh talk about so you know the concern you've brought up like did this go forever is this just for now um you know I think that right now we're looking at our our are shorter term because we've got to get through

168some of this process to help kids get through and and not penalize them for all the things they're going through and then at the same time they can come back and we can change it later okay this is not working because it's being abused at X Y or Z or this is not working because we didn't say it the right way or gave too much flexibility or it's too much discretion you know the point about teacher discretion it also goes you know from a teacher a counselor notices at the registrar so it's not just you know totally unknown under the radar it has to it goes through a process anyway but yeah it's really it's it's been brought forth and brought forward to us from our school administrators saying here are some of the biggest

169pinch points we have um so we can move forward on well that's what those AR system is for so you can be flexible right thing uh is that what happens similar situations at least in my experience is that the teacher starts to get a lot of pressure from people hey it's your discretion at some point yeah let's don't give me this much discretion right make a better run we do and that does happen like we would rather just the district have a rule uh and then just do this and then make some decision yeah we think right now is the best time to be at maximum flexibility on things like this because we've got to try to you know support people all over the place yeah like a uh Bob's statement on having flexibility I've

170seen it with my own students and feeling overwhelmed and completely underwater and then getting a little bit of flexibility from teachers not at the disadvantage of academic success more in support of academic success um and I appreciate not just you doing this job but I know it's happening Across The District Individual levels any other questions for Joe regarding this AR okay thank you you're welcome well this is the last meeting of 2020. just kind of crazy we don't have any another meeting in December so we'll see everybody back here in January at our January 12th meeting we'll have our work session on uh Finance which I think Ron you're working with Nikki on correct oh you're muted uh I will be working with Nikki great um so we'll have that work session um time probably

171six but we'll get that out to board members um in the public in plenty of time and we'll have our ad hoc committee updates um potentially inclusionary practice model and mental health and wellness report our school Health Service Grant from Luke which will be exciting to hear about um our first read of the new high school course proposals potentially and uh the National School Board Association Convention discussion and then we should have some policies to approve so with that I wish everybody Happy Holidays um stay safe stay healthy and we'll see you back here in 2021 meeting's adjourned