001All right, I will I'm just going to try to make a comment real quick. I will call this meeting to order. It is 6 p.m. We'll do a roll call. Robert Merl here. Glenn Heidi here. Jenny here. Kelsey here. Crystal here. Um, if you'll join me with for the flag salute to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I'll open the floor for our agenda consideration. Make a motion that we um accept the agenda as presented. Do I hear a second? Second. All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Do we have any public comment? Last call. Hearing none. We'll move on. Board communication high school ASB report. Hello. Welcome, welcome. Thank you.
002Going to have a good night. Um, starting off with the basics ASB. It's been kind of slow for us right now, just like spring sports assembly, splinter sports assemblies. Kind of a slow time. Um, but we are hoping to host our annual first responders dinner around the middle of May. And so we're excited for that. We have all the local fire departments, responders, police departments come out for a pizza dinner at the school. So that should be fun when that happens. again like I think middle of Mayish but not set in stone yet. Yeah. And then moving on to robotics. I can't read that. Oh my gosh. While our 2024 2025 season is over, they will begin recruiting the new members for next year starting May 12th. And they will meet from 3 p.m. to
0035:00 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays. Everyone is welcome to join. And then Key Club, I know recently they did a little courtyard decoration thing with some rocks at River High School. And they're also planning to help out at the Aurora Cemetery Cleanup. Um the oh my god the tulip festival parking. I don't know if any guys go to that but they'll be out there working the parking there. And then as well as the Woodward Mayor's breakfast like they do every year. Nice. And then oh my word the National Honor Society has opened applications and they were due today. And for all the people that have been accepted, the tapping will be on May 16th. And that is it. And then Miss May has a little message she'd like us to read out along with their
004club update. Um for Mayday, they're working on a mural for this year's theme, which is I think it's like dinosaurs, like prehistoric, like Jurassic Park. Yeah. Kind of cool. Um but they're also opening auditions getting act together. And then her message that she wanted us to read out um was that this year 17 regularly attended art club students have been participating in the pre-announced activities not limited to the kindergarten fenc and primary school bus signup numbers. They will be presenting the welcome street banners at the Hubard city council tomorrow night as well as the completing of the Mayday backdrops and set design. Unfortunately at this time due to proposed program cuts and position shifts it appears the kindergarten bends art and the bus signup numbers will not be started. In addition, due to these circumstances,
005the NHS chapter will not be able to complete further community outreach until the visual arts program resumes. No other updates from the other clubs. That's kind of our spiel. Should be a fun should be a fun uh spring term, I think, though. Yeah, I think I think it should be. So, thank you guys. Thank you. How was prom? It was good. Good. I had fun. Yeah, it was really good. How was the beach? It was good. That was fun. And then King really cute. So it was a good it was a good night. It was really fun. Awesome. Thank you so much. Of course. Thank you guys. Have a nice night. Yeah. You and Amique not here. Uh so public meeting laws, changes, and training dates. So, I asked Diane and Dan to gather some
006information around this because for each one of our terms, this is now a required training by I don't remember it's an OS and or an OR. I'm not sure. I think it's in there. House Senate Bill 1502. So, there's a couple different pieces there. There's an OSBA webinar training and there's an Oregon um ethics training that you can select from. It is like I think two or three hours long. So you need to allocate some time to that. Um and my goal is that all of us would have it done by the end of the year. So just to keep that in the forefront. Did we say end of year ending school year? Yeah. end of well by the end of the calendar year. Yeah, you should probably December. Yeah. I don't know if it
007is for me anymore, but I did I took it anyway. Okay. Excellent. Because I did it at uh one of the conferences I Oh, perfect. So, that's a good way to do it. Yeah, we'll you'll have an opportunity to do it if you attend November conference or the conference in July summer. Yeah. Sep. September. Summer. Okay. Okay. And then again, this is a reminder to fill out your SEI filer if you have it. The deadline's tomorrow with tax day. So, just to double check on that. And then E is the board candidate list of people who have filed for May 20th, 2025 special district elections. And then the board is acknowledging an overnight extended field trip for the high school drama club to go to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. That brings us to consent
008agenda. If you've had a moment to review the consent agenda, I would entertain a motion. Yeah, I'll move that we accept the consent agenda as presented. Do I hear a second? I'll second. Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll move to a vote. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries. Business and budget. Evening. Hello. I just I just brought up the summary page for the general fund. Um we're at that time of year where we're really just waiting and waiting and waiting for information. So as you can see by what I updated there in the April part um uh we're watching the numbers closely because whatever we do get or don't get matters for our ending fund balance for this year which will help with next year's budgeting. Um we did get
009numbers for high-cost disability for the state school fund for 2324 and they were all wrong and so they're hoping to get us out new numbers tomorrow but we don't know. So it's uh really a guessing game right now as to where we're going to land. We have um they have so much federal uncertainty. They're also worried about giving us numbers for our grants, our federal grants and what that what they may give us for that because of the federal uncertainty. So, there's a lot in the play that's going on into where we're at or where we're not going to be because we fund so many people out of federal grants anymore that, you know, it it matters if I don't get enough to fund as many as I normally do or not. So, um that
010kind of is a is a a bugger right now. We still are very hopeful that we'll get a little more money um out of some PERS um actuarial money that not actuarial um PERS money that's in this uh reserve pot that they're going to spread over two years. But we do have to keep in mind that's only two years money not for life and we won't know till late May, early June as to whether or not we get it. So I'm trying not to count on that because I I don't know. So, um, and like I said, the high cost disability they're still looking at and hoping we get something, but with this federal uncertainty, they're waiting also for the May forecast that might matter, too. Um, you know, I want to note while I'm
011talking about all this, as I'm building the budget for 2526, the FTE reductions that we're making and basically what we've done with all of our resignations and our retirements and are not hiring back any of the contracted employees or the people that were on um temporary contracts. We're down about 30 staff members, which is 12 over 12% of our budget of our budgeted staff. So, it's a lot and it's hard and it's been wearing on our staff and all of us all of us doing this work. Um, we are in negotiations with classified and so that's a piece of what's going on and that we don't know also. But, you know, we are hopeful that we can get some of this money that I'm talking about so that we can add some staff back because
012to reduce staff in one year by 12% is a lot. Yeah. So, I think like Linda said, 12% uh in one year is a lot to absorb in addition to the emotional toll that it's taken on our staff both in those who've had reductions and people that have had to make some adjustments. And so we've been taking some steps to, like Linda said, if we get some funds, uh, more funds from the state or get some, uh, better ideas of what we might be able to add back, um, we've been having those conversations with our administrative team and all of our supervisors. And so I did ask Deian and Stacy. I'm not sure if it was asked or voluntew to hear from our principles, what would an adback of a staff member at one of
013our schools, what would that mean for students? Um, and so I've asked each of them to share at least a little something from their buildings as to what would it what would an ad back at the high school mean for our students? Well, if we're able to add that, um, we would be able to return some of our college credits. We've had to eliminate to three programs. And so hopefully with that coming back, we can bring some of those classes back. The other one is um bring a staff member back, but reduce the size of our freshman classes and that will help with our ninth grade on track data. really. And so again, I think when we think about what does this mean for students and the goals of the district, kids earning college credit
014is a big difference for kids, their families. Um, and if one of our district goals is to is nth grade on track, prioritizing freshmen having lower class sizes should be a priority. the middle school as we've been really hoping um trying to support learning in our students in the core subjects math and um English ELA um even just adding one person back would bring our core subjects down by about two to three kids per class which would make a difference um and so um I I know that the whole process is um ongoing but that idea of thinking about how best to support our students um we're hopeful for hopefully making a little dent back, you know, back back on the getting our numbers into a more managing piece. And so, one of the things
015we've been asking for them are asking input from our principles and supervisors is asking them what their priorities are and and with that there's an expectation that there is a a numeric reasoning or support for why that is added back. So you heard if there was a if we added back a staff member x number of kids would get college credit. So there's a numerical reason to support the the advocacy for a position or if we add a position back class sizes would be reduced by two to three. So I'm I'm not just asking for feelings. I'm asking for a numerical reason for why is that a priority for your building? Um so that if we get to this place where we can we have a better sense of what our budget looks like, we've
016we've done that work around what are our priorities because we're hearing advocacy. We're hearing second grade classrooms are are big. So we should be looking at that and we want to be ready to respond to uh at which of our schools or schools would we consider adding back if we're able to. So and I need that priority list in order to budget. So if I if I have in my head maybe we'll get another just pick a number $250,000 then where would I budget that so that we don't have to come back or the next person doesn't have to come back in the middle of next year and redo the appropriations would be something maybe we put in the budget but we don't hire or spend for it or add back until we're positive on
017the amount of money we get. And in addition, I've made it clear and we've had some conversations that I know that this board it or at least we're about ready to go into budgeting. I know that this budget has a 3% uh contingency. I know that that makes the board feel uncomfortable. Um and that one of the things in building that is a priority for the board, too. So, I'm I'm just want to make it sure it's out there that we are reminding people that this board uh um has at least expressed a willingness to consider that this year, but it's a priority for the board moving forward that we build that contingency back up. So, those those are all conversations that we're having when we have conversations about budget reductions, but also building up
018that that contingency for the future. So, any questions? If you don't mind, I'm just gonna go around the table really quick. Sure, Robert. Good. Merl. Um, this goes back really to the consent agenda and I know we approved it while I was collecting my thoughts, but um we we showed a resignation of a second grade teacher and you mentioned second grade and that was effective in February. Are we covering that with um um substitutes or is that what enlarge the class size? Normally when we have a resignation they'll finish out the school year so that it doesn't affect this school year. It would be for next school year that the date given there was February 4th. I just that might have been the date the resation was was given but the the but it wasn't
019effective. Correct. Correct. Some of the others the others were listed as June and this one wasn't right. So maybe some followup after offline. Yeah, that's over. But I was just putting those two together, right? Raise the question. And the advocacy really is coming around what our first grade numbers are at that are rolling into second grade and trying to kind of what people are seeing as potential class sizes. So any other questions now? When say we underestimated local income, does that mean we have that much less? Um, underestimating it can be good because then we'll get more. So, um, when you get your state school fund, the local revenue is taken away from that. So, if we overestimate, then they'll take more away. So, it means you're getting more than you expect, not the other.
020It can go both ways depending on what we're looking at. Transportation is a tricky one too. Thank you. No, thank you Jenny. No, thank you Kelsey. Thank you so much for all the work you do on your on the budgeting. Yeah. Okay. Um anything else? Okay. Uh we'll go to board action. Um, yeah, actually I just like back to where I'm still. Sorry you guys. I'm totally spaced, but I have You're good. Okay. um trying to get my appropriation to correct for 2425. Um I missed appropriating a transfer from a special revenue fund to the debt service and that was to finish up the construction. So I'm just making that one right. And then the last couple of years I've had the finding where I've over spent for debt service or yes and underspent somewhere
021else because of our Gazsby 87 and 96. So I took some time like ours to try to figure out what those numbers are going to be. So I believe these appropriation of death will cover it. We shouldn't have a finding in that area. I'd like to come out with a really clean audit for the new person. So um so what I need is for you to uh approve the resolution uh reopting the appropriations as I've stated. So any questions on that? I think I wrote it pretty well in my mouth. Do you want it read like making appropriations or adopting the budget? Making appropriations as shown um as the revision show or something to that effect. Okay. Um be it result that the amounts for the fiscal year beginning July 1st, 2024 for the purposes
022shown below are hereby appropriated as revised. As revised. Thank you. Do I hear a second? of a statement. Any discussion? None. We'll move to a vote. All those in favor say I. I. Oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. Now I think. So I just want to remind the board that um this is our superintendent official evaluation report. uh being brought into we had some discussion in executive session and this is being brought in to be be presented uh in an open public meeting. Do I hear a motion? I'll make a motion that we approve the superintendent official evaluation report. Do I hear a second? A second. Moving to a vote. All those in favor? I opposed. Motion carries and we are so thankful for you. Thank you for the evaluation and I really appreciate the process.
023Okay. District operations reports up. Well, so we have an operations report here uh that David Schultz has put together. Diane was going to be here to answer any questions, but she is not feeling well. And so there really isn't anyone prepared to respond to this unless Linda or somebody knows the specific answer, but otherwise I think this is a requirement for us to do annually. Okay. So if you have questions regarding this document, please email Dan after the fact. Yep. Nice. Yeah. Yep. We're ready for you. Thanks. All right. Well, good evening everyone. We are going to be talking really quickly about our presentation of our integrated plan that is going to OD at the end of this month. Um the integrated plan will we'll present it and then OD goes through a review panel.
024So, it's still up for some negotiations with OD and as things are finalized, we'll bring you updated reports as well. But to start, I want to just kind of give you a little bit of a background. Um, especially since we have some new board members. Just a reminder that the integrated program was designed to take a bunch of grants that we normally had to do a bunch of different plans for and put them all together. Though, as Lyndon and I will attest to, we still have to report on them as if they're all separate, which, you know, it's just the fun of the work, I suppose. But it's a combination of the SIA accounts, our continuing improvement plans, our CTE plans, our high school success plans, everyday matters, which is our attendance work, as well
025as early indicator and intervention systems, which is like a little teeny bit of money that we get every year. The plan that we develop has to have these five components. We have to really look to um be making actions that are around equity and improving access for all students. We're looking to expand our CTE access and that comes out of the high school success work. Um we're looking to improve academic achievement for all students, build staff development so that our teachers have the right skills to be able to execute these things and improve our family engagement. So these are all different parts of the um planning process and I won't go into a lot of detail with this safe to just point out that we um use the OD equity lens as part of our
026process. We do a comprehensive needs assessment and if you'll remember a few months back I talked about what that comprehensive need assessment um revealed for us and that's looking at a lot of different pieces of data to kind of say where are we seeing gaps that we need to address. We also wanted to um we took information from our community and we used our listening sessions and our youth truth data as a big component of that. What are we hearing from our families, our areas of need and um then we kind of put all those things together to create a plan around what are our specific actions we're trying to do and how do we want to invest money to um kind of make the progress we're looking to make. So, this just is what
027the OD equity lens is. And I won't read through this. Um, but it's there for you guys to review. A big component of the OD equity lens though is just really trying to identify when we make decisions, who are these decisions impacting and what should we see if that impact is positive or negative? And then how can we use that to make sure that we're making good investments with our funds that really improve equitable access for all students. So, in terms of our community engagement, as I said, we used our youth troop data as well as the community listening sessions that Dan held and our staff listening sessions to kind of hear what our families are telling us in terms of our needs. And in reality, we're all really aware of what our community has
028identified. there's a lot of places of pride that they have in our district, but also places where they want to see us stepping up to improve outcomes for their students. So, our needs assessment um revealed very similar things. This is an example, just a small example of all the different pieces of data that we looked at from our district data like our school calendars and our CTE dashboards and our lensures to state testing data to school-based assessments. And I will tell you that school-based list is extensive. Um, it's in that uh board report that I provided a few months ago. And then there's school-based data as well. things like analyzing our master schedule, analyzing student schedules, looking at course enrollment, nth grade on track data, high school graduation data, attendance data, behavior data, all of
029those things kind of feed into our understanding of where schools have gaps and how we can help start to close those gaps using these funds. So, as I talked about a few months ago, um our needs assessment highlighted the following areas. We really want to look at instructional ex excellence and our curriculum alignment so that we can see students achieving at higher levels. We want to look at databased decisionmaking and assessment literacy, helping our teachers and our administrators understand how to use data more effectively to make and inform our decisions. We want to have really targeted support for our English language learners because that's where we see some of our most significant gaps along with our students who are experiencing disabilities. We want to provide good professional development and support for our staff. Improve our
030community engagement. We've seen a lot of strides going forward the last couple years in terms of getting more staff and student and teacher and um parent voice in our decision. but especially within our family and community, we want to keep increasing that. Um, and then we want to think about our student centered support systems. This year, we've been doing a lot of work on our intervention systems and trying to get more consistent with that. So, um, posted to this and we will be posting on the website for community our community to be able to review is our both current plan and our new application questions that we have to fill out. In reality, our plan is not changing a great deal because when they put all these pots of money in together, we had budgets
031already built for all of them and people who we had hired and systems that we had built and we couldn't just say, "Oh, now that it's a brand new big plan, we're going to turn over the apple cart and start all over." It was like, "No, we're going to figure out how do we use this to make these plans more effective." The only big ad to the plan is that we're trying to put in jumpstart into our our student investment account. Um, so that that is in a secure pot of funds. And so that's really the only ad. Am I right, Linda, with that? For the most part, the funding goes towards those CTE programs that we're building, helping with our ESOL um endorsements, helping get training for staff on various different things, and improving
032our academic outcomes by really focusing on solid instructional strategies. So, the new application questions ask us more about how we're doing that and what we did from before and how we're seeing those outcomes flush out. These are five or one, two, three, four, five, six outcomes that we've identified. Um, really they focus on those big picture items that we're trying to really move and look for outcomes on. So looking to improve belonging and inclusion, making sure every student graduates college and career ready with employability skill skills, supporting um training on solid instructional uh practices. We'd identified specifically culturally responsive practices in our strategic plan. I think that list is going to expand as part of our work with both youth truth and looking at the data we saw as well as some work that Dan
033and I are doing on like developing an instructional framework. Um we're going to look at our CTE programs and figure out how to expand those to get even more students uh participating in those that course work. Um and then we are looking to increase academic achievement in math and literacy and science for all student as measured by the state assessments and fostering that community engagement um by bringing more parent and community voice to the table. So I'm not going to read through all of these but these are some of our key investments that have been built into those plans prior to the integrated plan and continuing with the integrated plan. things like um making sure that we have good networks of support and intervention for students. Um having multi-tered intervention systems developed, which is something
034we're working on this year. thinking about how we can embraic into our schooling so that we have better access points for students and increasing our opportunities for those CTE pathways and college and career options for kids as well as making sure that we are looking at our core instruction and improving what instruction looks like in the classroom, building the capacity of our ELLL program, increasing language arts performances through real like really good high prof professional high quality professional development for our staff and um increasing parent engagement and community communication and we're going to be measured on that using luckily the exact things that we've identified and this is one piece that I'm actually really excited about when we think about the metrics we are linking all of our metrics together we're not saying well we're
035going to measure this success in this way and this success in another way Dan's goals are the same thing as the integrated plan. Our hope with u probably moving forward with the strategic plan is going to be the integrated plan. So it's those big metrics that we know are kind of core to the health of our system. If these are off, we know that things are not running the way they need to. So looking at things like our high school success requirements, our CTE performance requirements, progress markers that we identify through um our state assessments. We have some local uh optional metrics that we've added which include our um enrollment and success in our CTE classes and college credit classes. Um we also have things like our financial reporting and our auditing that are part
036of our performance measures. And then from there we work with OD and we set up longitudinal performance growth targets. So it's a combination. And these growth targets are where are we now and how are we just trying to grow gradually over five years as well as how are our focal students doing? And our focal students are students who have been historically underserved within our system. So specifically our language learners, our students experiencing disabilities and our students with lower SCES. Um, and so what we do is we set our goal for our entire district and then we set goals for our focal students because often there's a gap, right, between our all student group and our students um, who've maybe historically been underserved. And then we try to figure out how we're going to grow in
037both of those categories. last year or last time we set our goals. We really worked to create a path that look like this. So, we're growing as a district because obviously those scores on a whole are not where we want them to be. For our focal students, they're even lower and not where we want them to be. So, we need to grow as a district, but our focal students need to actually grow faster. So, eventually within a few years, those things aren't gapped anymore. They are one in the same bowl. and all students are achieving at the same level. So, I just put in this status so you could have a reminder of where we're at currently and what our goal is around um these places. This is specifically Dan's goals um for his superintendency.
038But, um this is where we're shooting to be at that state average if not higher. Um I will say and it's one of those places where you feel the urgency but you also feel the reality. um where when we set the goals with OD because the goal setting process is handinhand with OD they will ask us questions they will tweak our numbers in front of us if they don't like them um that there are times where we're going to say it needs to be at 60% and they're like we're going to look at statistically schools your size don't make that big of a jump in one year let's set it at 40 or something like that. So sometimes they're going to shoot us a little lower because it's what is more of a realistic goal
039and then it's our job to prove them wrong and go get even higher. So remember it's attendance, third grade reading, uh eighth grade math, ninth grade on track to graduation, the ontime graduation and the fifth year. And then we also set another goal that isn't um part of Dan's goals, which is um enrollment in our CTE classes. And so this is our OD timeline. We are going to go and get this um like out for public comment. So this is going to be posted on the web for people to give feedback on. Then we will submit to OD and then they will go through the process to help us co-develop those goals, make any revisions to the plan as needed and then hopefully it gets approved and we use that to start building other plans
040as we're moving forward. Okay, we'll take questions. Kelsey, we're going to start with you. Thanks a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. No, no, you're good. Um, so on the slide that says our outcomes and there's A through F, are those prioritized? Like A would be your, you know, A is the most important, B's the most important. Um, partly because each of those outcomes are typically associated with its own pot of funds and so they each have kind of equal importance. um where the larger overarching thing is how I would say that large big goal of improving academic achievement though is the umbrella that fits over all of those outcomes because we know it it's kind of an interesting aspect right if for example I'll take high school if we have students who are not achieving
041in their their regular math class then suddenly they don't have access to CTE classes because they don't have room in their schedule to take their fun elective because they need to retake math. Um, if they fail English, same thing. We're going to actually create barriers. So, that overarching academic achievement starting as early as possible is our top priority because we know it's what makes all those other things happen, but also at the same time, all those other things are things that feed into academic achievement. So the right intervention systems being in place, um kids feeling like they belong in school, improving attendance, all are also going to feed into that larger umbrella kind of goal. So these really are like a braided together outcomes. There isn't anything like this takes priority over this because you
042take away one and you still end up you still have some of the exact same problems. Yeah. So, when we look at like the key investment slide, um, some of that, it's kind of warm fuzzy stuff to me because I'm not a, you know, educator, so I don't understand the the lingo all the time. But, so here's my question. We see all this stuff and then we get down to the actual like graphs, third grade reading, eighth grade math, etc. And it's like I'm trying to figure out how come in 22 23 which was well you know which was after co how come we've gone down since then? I I don't understand it. I don't and that's something that I have not been able to understand um as a board member for years and I'm
043sure that's you know on me but uh I I don't understand why our numbers are low. I don't understand why we're low compared to other similar districts. Um I just don't I just don't I I wish we could maybe have a time where we could meet and talk about this in more of maybe a workshop setting or something. But um I it's I guess because I'm at the end of my time and it's kind of like I don't feel like maybe we've helped. So I so I'm just I'm I'm kind of struggling to understand why, you know, why this is. We talk well, you know, oh, we got new curriculum. It's going to be different this year. Oh, we have new professional development. It's going to be better this year. Yeah. Okay. That's just my
044frustrations. I hear you. I feel it. Um well I think so in two weeks is uh a work session and I'm going to be bringing back these these major data points and so to respond to that I can after you know almost a year on the job I can give you what I see as some of the issues are I can point to maybe some areas where we've done some things well and starting to make some changes. Um so I think that we can prepare to have a open more open conversation with you in a work session format where I can give you an update on some of these data points. You know several months ago we gave you know what data do we look at that should predict how we well we do we'll
045come back with some more some follow-ups to that is where where we're seeing where we're going to be. But it's a total fair question. Yeah it's a fair question. I think they're um I think for me it's really easy to to what Dan Dan saying is it's really easy to get into a space where I can give you a lot of reasons and I you know I remember last year when Bill and I presented like we can look at for example the COVID years and see how it's trickled through our system right um there wasn't a point and it it They've there's research now that's been done that says there it's going to be almost a generation before some of that impacts of the gaps that were created during COVID fully flesh themselves out of
046our system or flush themselves out of our system. What it has to change though to that I think the point you're making is it's kind of like so what are we going to do differently then? It can't just be like let's just throw another PD at it. There has to be some real systemic looking at like what is not working within our system. I feel like this year, probably more than any other year during my tenure here, even prior, I've seen a push towards that systems thinking and really wanting to step back and like look within the data of like how do we keep like approaching this differently? I'm hearing the principles talk about it different. you know, we're talking about it just different at the district office level. So, my hope is we're starting
047to see some shifts and I I think we we'll bring the data to the the table, but like the things we're seeing at the primary school, which is our first indicator, right? You know, the canary and the coal mine, like if kids leave second grade off track, it gets harder and harder and harder to get them back on track. We're seeing like fewer kids off track and that's exciting. And so we know that some of this is finally starting to get some traction. Um I think the other hard piece of it to the other point you made is we within those here are our investments. You're right. It's it's legal. It's education ease. Those all those bullet points translate into this teacher was hired right to do this work. So the question is like is
048it the right work and have we put the investment in the right place? And that's the other thing we have to sort out um especially in this next iteration of this this you know initiative because we can't just keep saying well this is what we're spending SIA on so let's just keep spending it. It's like if this is not actually gaining us some results is it time to make a different investment and put our our money in a different spot. Um a good example is one of the funding sources that we typically have is Title One. It's not part of the integrated plan, though we typically kind of braid it together or not title one, title two. Title two does professional development. This last couple years, we've been focusing on math. We've seen some gains
049in terms of teacher perspective, but not always the gains we want to see score-wise. We are shifting our funding. It's like no more investing in this if we're not seeing the growth we need. And we're focusing next year a lot more on language development and how do we give teachers some specific training. We haven't done any training like that in the district for multiple years. It's time and we have brand new staffs that that are ready for it. So those type of investments and strategic thinking is a huge part of it. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. I echo those concerns. Egypt month after month goes by and tidy says we have new curriculums and we're going to go ahead and down by 50% is not at the top of the list nationwide. It's very close to
050the bottom and I feel like too I look around and I say the staff is great and I like them and it's looks like we're doing well. And then you look at the numbers and you say, "What are we are we fooling ourselves and and then there's all this graded and equity and cultural and all the rest that's woven in there." And you say, "What are we doing? Can they read the math? Can they think critically?" And that's a rhetorical question, but but you get the answer. I I I look forward to a work session, Robert. Well, I agree with both of you guys, but I would just be interested to find out historically when was it good? Do do we know that? Like when when did when did we go off clip? Yeah, there's
051two things. We were actually having this conversation this morning. Um there were points within North Marian's kind of history where we saw better scores. Funny enough though, there was also the a point about then where Oregon said, "We're going to change the standard." And the test changed completely. It went from an assessment that typically took like a day in class to something now that could take two to three days to finish. They've kind of started to go backwards realizing they're over testing kids. They started shortening the assessment and now it doesn't give us as good of data. Um so the question became is it that we moved the bar um we moved the goalpost and it is now the goalpost is where it should be but now none of us can make field goals or
052is it that um they changed it too far or is it that we haven't yet changed to meet what that new standard was or that our standards were too low for there was an in and this was actually at the point when I was a um an administrator here prior um that moment where you saw a lot of schools who had been doing really well suddenly their test scores just plummeted and part of it was um the shift in how we were approaching the standards uh as a state and what how they were being assessed. So it's hard to even compare like if we could only do what we used to be doing in like 2012 13 let's just do that. It's like, well, we were doing that even when our test score started dropping
053because they changed the the the finish line, basically. Well, and I'm old enough to remember that we didn't have disruptive classrooms. Sure. We, you know, we were all taking those tests and we all had to there was certain requirements in order for you to get to that next grade. And if you didn't, you were held back. My brother was one of those that were held back and for a good reason. He's a dentist now. But but um so I don't know. I just think there was definitely a there is a point there where things did change and I'll just say like um I mean I do echo that sentiment and I'm looking forward to the work session. I think accountability is an issue that we've had. Um, and I'm glad to have the team that
054we do looking at all those uh systemwide changes that we need. Um, my son Robert graduated and did very well in 2016 here. So hopefully we can get majority of back on track. But thank you, Dez, for all your effort and energy and preciseness and detailedness that goes into these critical reports that we have to get submitted. Yeah. So, I just want to thank you for that so much and we look forward to hearing from you. The one thing I do not know because it on the OD thing, it said approve and in the other thing I read it said present for feedback and I do not know if we need an approval. So, we'll have to check on that. So, might be we might add an action item on the work session. Can we
055just get one tonight? Can we do that now or not? Um, that's not a bad idea, I think. Just do it. Yeah, do it. It doesn't matter. It won't hurt anything. Yeah. You're saying you need need an approval so you can submit and get the grants that we need to. Exactly. Exactly. And that doesn't keep us from having a serious discussion later on. I think too that I do believe last time we did approve it. I do. Yes. I just deadline. There is April 30th is my deadline to submit and I just don't know if Yeah. So yes, if we could submit for approval, I think it would save us all some heartache of having to come back. For sure. So hearing that, do I hear a motion to approve the integrated plan sh presented.
056I'll make the motion that we approve the integrated plan as presented. Do I hear a second? I'll be the man second. So, we have a first from Merl and a second from Robert. All those in favor? Oh, do we have any discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Oppose. Motion carries. And this will all be posted on the website as well along with a Google form for parents to give comments if they'd like and we can continue to make um improvements. So Jeff, before you So there were a couple things that you and I had talked about kind of making sure we covered before we transitioned. Sure. Or at least some point tonight. Mhm. So, one was next year's school calendar that you wanted. Yes. So, just a reminder um that last year we
057approved two calendar years and so we posted on the website a reminder to families and we'll be sending out a communication but just for you as a board to as a reminder that you've already approved the calendar for next year and um we just want to we've gotten some comments like when's the calendar going to be decided? It's like no, we're done. We got this for next year already. So, we're just putting out a reminder for that. And the second one is in your uh weekly update you got last week, uh I officially told you that we're pausing the strategic plan development until the fall. And so I just wanted to make sure that that was in the public record that we're doing that and gave you all of the reasons with a couple new
058principles, new business manager, board elections, uh the ability of our staff at this point in time to really commit to doing that. Fall seemed like a better time to do that. It is still uh our intent to not have an outside consultant uh save the money, figure out a way to do it ourselves. I know although Heidi, you may not be on the board at that point. I know you expressed an interest. Maybe we can bring you back as a facilitator of that or something like that. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, uh, we we we do look forward to doing that because I think some of the concerns that were shared, a lot of the the things that we can focus on will be a a good part of that process. Yeah. And with the
059integrated plan at that point will be approved. It will allow us to bring some of that to the table as part of the discussion with that planning. So, I think the more we can weave all those things together, the stronger they become because it's here's our strategic plan and here are the investments we're actually making to ensure that that plan can have some legs. Thank you. Right. So the power um this one doesn't either one. I'm not sure if that one will take you. Oh, there we go. So um a month ago I attended uh I've been attending our uh some of our ELLL migrant uh family nights. I think I've attended three of them maybe so this year. And so uh in March I facilitated a listening session with the parents that uh attended
060to better understand their feedback and experiences. And I just want to thank Irma for that runs these has been leading these meetings. It's uh I would encourage you to attend one at some point in the future because they're they're wonderful and you can sense the sense of community uh openness, people's comfortability just to share their thoughts and feelings openly. Uh so just want to thank you for your work in in creating such a a great environment for our migrant families. So, um, this is going to be pretty short and sweet presentation. And so, there was after I presented, so Heidi brought up the kind of the comparison data. So, if you remember a few months ago, I showed some comparisons to other districts that were like sized and whatnot. So I shared that with the
061these families and said basically that our Latino students or students that English is not their home language uh aren't performing at the ability that we feel like they're a they should be able to and uh really want to emphasize the fact that I think that all of our students are not at the potential that we know that they possess and really the purpose of this was to listen to our parents to say in this case uh if our students are not meeting their potential what is getting in their way and so I thought that their responses were worth sharing so one thing that they felt is that students aren't taking enough responsibility for their learning uh they also thought that we need to communicate better with parents um they shared especially as Spanish speakers that
062it's difficult as parents parents to be involved in their students learning. Um, and they also felt that parents need to be more accountable and give their best effort to support their children. So they even they were pointing the fingers back at themselves to say they could do a better job parenting. Um, then we asked them what supports were needed. They said they we need more reading support, more math support. They need tutoring in after school in all schools. and that parents and I think that this for this particular demographic felt like they need more training, better access on how to use the tools that we provide that they feel that maybe as Spanish speaking families that they have not they're not fully equipped to uh use the tools that we have there for them. Um,
063and then kind of this this question I kind of put it into kind of some themes of, you know, so what are students struggling with? Why are they struggling? And how do we fix it? That's kind of what the what, why, and how is aiming to say. So where are students struggling? Reading, math, and science. Why are they uh struggling? they really feel like their students don't comprehend. That sometimes they can read along and sound like they're reading, but they truly are not comprehending what they're reading. And so that was something that I heard over and over at their tables is that they they listen to their kids read. They feel like they are reading somewhat fluently, but then they don't understand. Um, and interesting enough, I think maybe this kind of get to what
064you're saying, Robert, a little bit about what are our expectations for kids and how do we have some accountability and they really feel like we need to raise expectations for kids. And so, I really thought, well, we'll go ahead and kind of cover these up. So, these are just some other things that were on the list of things that they they said. They said attendance matters. Kids are distracted. Social media gets in the way. Kids don't get enough sleep. Uh lessons need to be more interactive. Kids need more time to process. Um and that we need to teach kids better study habits. And then the next one, I also heard that parents need resources. Parents and teachers need to better motivate children. More preschool opportunities. More teacher assistance to help students. Better nutrition. Parents don't
065understand today's math. I think everybody would say that. uh and underperforming students lose motivation. I thought that was really insightful. And so here's the thing that I just want to point out and pause here for a second is that is that so this is a this makes up almost 50% of our population is our our Latino students. I don't think you heard anything different there that doesn't is no different than a white parent or anything else. The the our Latino parents want the same things uh for their kids. Now the how might just be different in terms you saw some things there that are different barriers for them in terms of utilizing our resources but ultimately a lot of the things that they wish for their kids are the same things that we would we
066would wish for all kids. I do think that we are our data does say that our our Latino students are not performing at the same rate and level as our white students. So, we have a responsibility to figure that out and do something to address that. But the feedback from the parents is they want the same things for their kids. So um so I don't think they shared anything new but we still have data that say says we are we have a responsibility to better understand why their children are not performing at the same rate as our white students which I think is the reason why I'm really looking forward to uh the superintendent's advisory work group for equitable experiences and outcomes. That's a mouthful. I just with my teammates I just said the work
067group. Um, and so because it really is about what are the equitable experiences and outcomes? What do our families uh in this context or in this particular example, our Latino families, are they reporting positive experiences and having the same outcomes as our white students? And so I'm really excited that we've got five parents have applied for it. We have two students that have applied for it. We have one staff member. I'd like to recruit some more staff members. We'll probably now you have a responsibility to approve my recommendation of these of this work group in June. So um so that we can begin some work to find out how we can uh better serve um these students. And Dan, can you just share a little bit on why we're having this work group? So this
068required by law. So, um, Senate Bill, do we remember Senate number two? I know it's one of the Senate bills. 732. So, it's required by law. Uh, it's required that superintendent bring you the list of those people that are on the work group. I don't like the word committee. Um, because we're going to meet in a group and we're going to do work. Yeah. Um, and so, and then you need to approve that and they do need to report to the board periodically. So, Great. Robert, two things. One is I think we need to enlarge our vision and consider other factors for disparities rather than just race. There's family makeup, there's home situations, and I'm sure I could think of some more things that make a difference. two parent families versus one versus so on.
069It's that and we don't even think about that. It's just well this and this. The other thing I would continue to encourage is that we recruit members rather than just take the volunteers as we'll get the same local view. Unless we go out and recruit and I guess I could try too but that's your job. You're the nominator. But we could make suggestions or your staff could. They might know people who just need a little encouragement that would give us a little broader view on on that work group. Yes. What a couple points of clarification. Is this the equity committee that's mandated by law? Yes. Okay. Um is it a standing committee or is it a superintendent committee? I'm calling it a superintendent work group. Okay. So it doesn't have the same public. Correct. Okay.
070That's my clarification. Hey, thank you, Jenny. Kelsey. Thanks, D. All right. Is this you, too? Who's this? Education. All right. So, we thought that we would end our uh our meeting tonight with a very positive video uh featuring some of our middle school students and middle school staff. Uh Dez, do you want to explain what Style is just so we have some context there? Yeah, style is the materials that we selected for the middle school for our science m uh adoption and it um has been really well received by our students. It's very handson um digital very digital heavy but very hands-on um at the same time with like lab experiments etc. Um Styles a newer company and the work that we've done at the middle school they've been super excited about. So they actually
071requested to come and film the work that's as kids were working on it and it was happening and are using arts district as a promotional as part of their promotional system as they go out and oh yes and if you're listening at home you will not have access to the volume but there is a link in the board agenda found on the website you can watch it through your own computer at home since we cannot figure out how to make it work on this end. So, I'm going to be muting it because otherwise we're going to get a horrible feedback. Back. this off and they're going to do it this Saturday. It's going to be wonderful weather and it's going to be wonderful. You're all invited. It'll be a wonderful time with our Okay, so
072we have future meetings, topics, and new business and uh Danip notes about the work session requests. Um, so we're going to journ the regular business meeting, but we're going into executive session. So, I'm just going to take this opportunity to um read that before we adjourn and turn off our recording. So, we're going into executive session 192.6602. The board will now meet in executive session according to OS 1 192.6602 660 2D to conduct deliberations with persons designated by the governing body to carry on labor negotiations. We will not be reopening the session afterwards. We are adjourned. Uh I will make a note have my that Robert joined the meeting at 6:09. Glenn joined the meeting at 6:30 and we're adjouring at 7:07