Phoenix-Talent School Board work session 03-20-2025

001Everyone, we're going to call the meeting to order at 5:05. And the first item is the board self evaluation. Welcome, Kristen. Hi, everybody. Hey, we've got you dialed in this time. Excellent. Nice to see you all. One second. Let me just um do my thing. Okay. Do I have the ability to share my screen shortly, please? You will in one second. Okay, now I do. All right, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and then we will begin. All right, you should should see the right thing. Um, thanks for having me everybody. Thank you for filling out the board self- evaluation. Um hopefully that was not painful. Um what we will do tonight is go through it. I know you received it in advance um along with some questions that I asked you

002to think about which will guide our discussion. you will get um a bit of an analysis from me. And then um what I'd like to do is end tonight by setting a goal or two for your own professional development um based on what we saw. And I'll give you some um ideas. I won't ask you to start from whole cloth. I've put together some ideas about what you might want to think about just based on the self-evaluation. Um but you can also come up with your own. So we will get started. Um the questions for the group that I asked you to think about um and we'll just start with these are what do you observe about the data? So I'm going to ask you this first as you looked through all of this um

003what did you observe? So at this point we're just doing observations. We're not doing interpretations um or making meaning yet. So what did you see as you looked through I go first if you want. Yeah, go for it. Because I was in the workshop. I know what I know what I'm good. I saw I noticed there was a lot of blue and some green and there was very little red. So that we were kind of blue means kind of in the middle. So I kind of feel like we were in the middle. So that's what I'm observing. Blue and green and very little red. Mhm. Let me Let's see. There we go. I'm adjusting my sound. Okay. Very little red. That That is true. Yep. What else? One of the things I remember too from

004the is to really look at areas where there's a large discrepancy maybe where some are. So, I think that's interesting, too, with a board our size that Well, I mean, I guess they're all five or seven. It's not like 15. Um, where it it's banded. There were a couple of areas that seem like we we have a very differing view too. So, the whole rainbow, a lot of similarity and then a rainbow. So, yep. And we are actually going to pull that out and talk about those areas a little bit. Yep. Anything else that you want to mention just for observations, just things that you saw? Saw a lot of things where I was like, how are we going to prioritize each of these? Yep. What um so next question is, what meaning did you

005make? So you did a great job just answering what were your observations. Thank you for doing that because it's very easy to jump into meaning, right? It's very hard for people, especially people in positions that we have to make decisions to not jump into making meaning. So now, what meaning did you make of it as you looked through? What is what does this mean? What did you what conclusions did you draw if any or conclusions did you start to draw? I I I think I even went further than I probably was supposed to out of what meaning is. What choices or decisions? What goals would we set? what would we get to to get to the desired um outcome in each of these things with the information here? So, I don't even know how to

006completely read this data, but I think I went to the end. How do we get from the end back to where we want to be? And I guess I'll ask I'll pose this question. An ideal board, which I'm not even sure if that exists. What does that look like? What color bands are we all I mean realistically we know we're not all going to be green ever. So, right. Um what ideally too are we trying to get to? And I prefer to work from the end back. What's the goal? And and then work backwards. So, right. Yeah, that's a that is a great question, Sarah. I don't think that I mean we'd asked that's a great question for Dr. Alsbury who wrote that. Um I think that what he might say is there would never

007be any red, right? I don't think that there would ever I think an ideal board we wouldn't have any red. We don't want anybody thinking that that the board never does any of these things. I think that there would be a lot of congruency, right? So fewer of the rainbows, right? But I don't think that it's realistic to think that there would be no yellow certainly like there's going to be something developing all the time and developing is not a bad thing, right? Because if you have set a goal in a certain area and your board is progressing and working on it, that's going to show up as yellow. That's going to be progressing. And so I think you know you plus in any given year you can't necessarily be in green as accomplished and

008doing it well all the time. You know something might happen and you might bump down into like yeah we didn't we didn't get to be super innovative in this year because we were dealing with X crisis and so that's something that we're you know going to be developing or X crisis hit us and all we were doing was trying to be innovative around it. you know, this last year. And so things are going to move and shift. Um, but I actually talked to Tom a lot. Maybe I'll ask him. That's a great question. I really like that question. What does it What does it look like ideally? Um, but I think no red and probably less um and you didn't actually have that much um that much discrepancy. Like you didn't have a ton of

009those rainbows. I see a lot more than that. So, um, great. Anything else about what meaning did you make? Just that it's hard to be a board member and get all of this accomplished in a year along with all the other stuff. And I was like, holy smokes. Um, there's a lot to do. And I feel like myself, and I'm just speaking for myself, I was like, I don't know if there's enough time to be a good board member. That's what I thought. Like, holy smokes. So, that's where we're at. And and for sure, you know, one of the things that I always say in my trainings because we do these are the standards that we teach to as well, right? is that it is never about achieving perfection on all of these because if

010I told you it was about achieving perfection then that would set you up for failure and that would that would like then your motivation is gone you know like that who would want to try and it is it is just about like knowing these things keeping them in mind and when possible working toward them. It is not always possible, for example, to perfectly align your resources with your strategic priorities. In a year of, you know, budget cuts and stuff, you may be less able to align your, you know, your resources with your strategic vision. That's just reality, right? even though that's in several of the standards, but can you, you know, always be thinking of students best interest in policy and program and curriculum adoption? I mean, things like that. Yes. You know, I mean,

011there are other ways um to to focus and I do think that that prioritization piece is key. There's a huge difference between boards that even know about these things and boards that don't because just that learning piece is going to inform what you do, right? It's just like that piece that that we always talk about where the single belief that all students can learn, just learn when shared by all board members moves the dial on student outcomes. You know, just believing that, just knowing about these things probably changes the way that you work. Um, okay. What did you see as the big overall strengths and areas of improvement? I mean, you get that from the from the front page, right? What did you see as the big ones? I think standard 11 would look really

012good. And eight. Why not? 12. 12. Yeah. Yeah. Areas of improvement. What did you pull out? Two, four, nine. Hold on. Okay. Five. Do you have any questions after looking at it right now that you would want to address as we go through? Well, no. I I don't think it's a question as we address we go through. I'm this might be out of the the order, but I'm wondering like looking at these questions if maybe some of them is we just didn't understand some of the question or the or the the information in the question. And once we um educate ourselves on some of the stuff, then maybe maybe it's just partly educating our ourselves. And that to me that was like maybe that should be step one is educating ourselves before we move on.

013Do we all understand the strategic plan? Do we all like is it an understanding thing or is it a not doing thing? Does that make sense? Yep. Yeah. I'm writing this down. The the survey itself or just what we are doing in the district. That that was my thought like, oh, there were some things where there was more yellow or red than I anticipated where I thought, well, what about this, this, and this? And maybe we can just be more purposeful about connecting the dots for what we're doing as a board to these standards. Well, it seems like when the word strategic is in there, we have more red. But I I don't I didn't sit down and do it all. I just kind of glance. But it looked like when the word strategic was

014in the question, there was more red. Now, I could be wrong. So that made me think, does everyone understand what strategic and strategic plan is and all of that? Maybe there's a that's where my brain went. Yeah, I don't know. That is a great that's a great observation. And I was going to say, you know, one of the reasons that we also pull out the um inongruency thing and I will and we get a little report that you all don't which is an inongruency report is because there is sometimes just calibration on like did we all read the question in the same way right or do we all have the same kind of experience with something that would might affect our answers. So, you know, where I would say, you know, never, where somebody else

015says always, there's got to be a reason for that. And maybe it's that, you know, you and I read the question completely differently or we understand the word strategic differently or, you know, like in my case for my own board, this is my second year on the board and maybe I've never experienced the process the question is is asking about, right? I mean, so like, so, you know, we also look at that impact, too. What's the impact of of needing to calibrate a question? Maybe we're not as far apart as we think we are. Um, so this question we won't answer right now. We're going to answer this at the end. What do you want to do with this? Right? Because like I don't I don't like want to just hand this to you and

016be like, "Good job. You took a self evaluation. Congratulations. Here's a barber. Congratulations." you know like it's it's worthless unless there is some okay we know you know so what now what um what so what and now what and um and so I will ask you to set a goal for yourself at the end of this all right so now we'll go through you've seen this this is the overall um the overall standards um so then this is what I put together I look at all of this your overall strengths this is by the numbers from the the numerical report that I got your strongest in standard 11 which is your roles and responsibilities. Um next was uh culture and climate and standard three effective leadership. I will say I don't often see standards seven

017and three as being the biggest strengths for for boards. So that's great. So what okay that's weird. What do these things mean? Well, you have said that we're not like other boards. That's right. So, what do these things mean? Right? Like what does it what are what are all those standards mean? So, you know, conducts, ethics, and relationship with the superintendent. That's not only your board's that's roles and responsibilities, but that's also having that collaborative relationship with your superintendent, knowing your roles, um practicing team building with your superintendent. that's fairly foundational to that that role and responsibilities piece. Really critical to to have that. That's pretty common um to have as a as a strength and be in the top three. Culture and climate is not as common to have in the top three. This

018is this is a really good one. ensuring that um that you um encourage professional development that you know that that you foster um that you empower staff and and nurture capabilities um across the organization. Nope, these are reversed. That's why they clicked in a weird order. That's effective leadership. Um nope. No, it's not the Okay, they just clicked in a weird order. So um setting a climate that um that encourages and reflects your belief that all students can learn as well like creating the conditions for success. Um and then effective leadership proactive integrated making sure that leadership is distributed across the organization as well focus direction expectations that foster student learning. So um ensuring that across the system the practices and policies that are adopted are guided by student outcomes. So that's what those are.

019So specific strengths. So then what I like to do is call out like what am I finding in the indicators that I can pull out. What I like to do is also combine themes. So if I see questions that are related to each other that you score highly on, I like to put those together. So, and sometimes they don't necessarily mesh well together, but so the board um question 20 was strong. You establish relationships with other governmental partners. That's great. Um there were a number of questions that kind of pulled out this theme that you model an empowering leadership style, including ensuring practices that foster a safe, positive environment for students and being solutionoriented. So um you know so not only modeling that that um that culture and climate piece for student but students but

020being solutionoriented when you do. So having that action orientation as part of your leadership style and then um all of those at the end that 74 75 76 um being wellversed in your roles and responsibility and you marked yourselves really high on confidentiality of executive sessions, not using your office for personal gain, not attempting to speak individually on behalf of the board. All of those just being really good practices. Okay. overall themes for areas of improvement by the numbers. Um, you said accountability, you said innovation and creativity, and you said community engagement. Why is it doing this? It's so weird. Okay. So, um, so accountability, right? This is about monitoring and um so providing strategic direction but holding the system accountable for meeting the organization's mission, vision and goals. Um the holding the superintendent accountable

021for meeting those as well. This is standard 4 goes along really closely with standard five which you did not mark yourselves low on but that is also about using data. Right? So when we talk about having a strategic plan, we talk about monitoring that strategic plan as well. So when you're working toward those big buckets of work, how are you following up on those? Um so when we talk about, you know, building a monitoring plan, that would fall under accountability. Um but holding the system accountable for achieving that vision and those goals that you set. Um innovation and creativity. Um, this got messed up. This is about I don't know where that got messed up. Innovation and creativity. That got that's that's the wrong one. Innovation and creativity is exactly like it sounds. It is

022thinking about um new problems or intractical intractable problems in innovative ways. So, how do we solve solve for X in a way that we haven't before? And um and so, you know, using our partners, using our great staff, um using good thinking to um come up with solutions for things that haven't that we haven't been able to before. And then community engagement, all your community um is is important. So that's your staff, your families, your students, community partners, um legislators, you know, who can you leverage resources and your important relationships with? Are they involved in your strategic focus? Are they involved in planning with you? Um and and how do you get feedback? Right? This is pretty community dependent and district dependent, but how do you engage your community beyond just having testimony at at

023board meetings? What does that look like? So then specific areas of improvement. I did this again. I took questions, tried to combine them where I saw themes. There was one little theme um about soliciting involvement from all areas of the community and ensuring that vision and goals are collaboratively developed with input from staff, families, students, and the broader community. Um that looked like you felt like that wasn't as strong. Um the next one was the board's strategic goals and policies ensure that employees fit into the culture and core values of the district. That wasn't rated as high and there's that word strategic. And then the board reflects on its own performance and makes change and establishes goals for itself based on that self-reflection. This comes up a lot because often this is the first time

024that the board or and it's been a long time since the board has taken a board self assessment. And so usually this is rated pretty low. Um so then we have congruence. Where were you most on the same page? And then we'll look at inongruence. Where were you least on the same page? So, um, we get a report that shows this. So, this is broken down. This is not just me looking at graphs, but, um, and when we look at congruence, it's not where were you most on the same page where you marked yourself the highest. It doesn't m if you marked yourself all red on something, you would be in congruence. It's just where are you most on the same page. So, the area of highest congruence was standard 11. That's your roles and

025responsibilities, your conduct, ethics, and relationship with the superintendent. You were all really in agreement that that's where you were super strong. And then the area of highest inongruence was standard five. And that's data using data for continuous improvement. And that you didn't find yourself in the highest or in the lowest there. That was in the middle. But there was not a lot of agreement there as to how you fell in using data. So then I like to pull out those specific areas. I look at all of the questions that have the rainbow in them. And then I I like to open this up for a little bit of discussion to see if there's something important in here that you want to talk about and calibrate. Because if any of these questions are important to get

026clarification from your colleagues on, then this is a good opportunity to do that because these are the rainbow questions. So, one was that the board regularly monitors the progress of strategic goals focused on improving student learning. One was that the board supports rewards. The board supports rewards, consequences, and recognition systems to encourage advancement of the district's strategic goals. The board identifies and addresses priorities and needs based on data analysis. The board regularly assesses, holds the district accountable and provides support for the improvement of the district culture and climate. And the board analyzes issues for their impact on other parts of the system. So those were the rainbow questions and I'm wondering is there is there a question or two or we can talk about all of them. Is there a question or two in there

027that really sparks your interest in having conversation with your colleagues about why do we think we're not in alignment here? Because everybody thinks something different. What do you read that that you're interested in? So, a few things stand out on this these five bullets here. Um, on the first one, regularly. I wonder what our collective definition of regularly is. Um, on the second one, um, just kind of all of that one, you know, what does that look like? Um, examples of that. Yeah. Um, let's see. It was uh maybe not all five. Um, I think number four ties in with number two pretty well, too. Like, yeah, the accountability component. Sorry, Michael. Yes. No, that's accountable, right? On the fourth bullet point, what does that what does that look like? What does that mean um

028to everybody? Um, and then that last one, you know, what does that mean also? Um, what does it mean to analyze issues or the impact on other parts of the system? Um, so it it doesn't surprise me that this is our biggest level of inongruence because I think a lot of these are left up for interpretation. Oh, and they're also kind of fuzzy on, you know, it and maybe this is where our understanding our role kind of plays into there. There might be a lot of this that we're just not intimately aware of what's the specifics that are happening within the system. Um, oh that we can bring to the forefront a little bit more. You're fine if you have stuff to do. John, we just wanted We're not ready for you, but we just

029wanted to make sure that you knew that you could come in if you wanted. Oh, I didn't know. Okay. Yeah. Sit over there. And like and it's important also to note that like somebody said you always do all of these things, right? There's there's at least one person in your group that said always, right? And then there's at least one person in your group that says most of the time, right? And so I think this is great to talk about like, you know, what are you know, yes, let's calibrate um some of these and say what were we thinking? What is our role? And like, you know, can we all see this? You know, who does have some examples of this? Because maybe um that's just stuff that we're not seeing or don't all have

030the same experience with. Um, when I when I read this, I thought of the um No Child Left Behind Act, which isn't anymore, which really seemed that was prior to my board service, but really seemed like there were incentives and penalties based on how student achievement went. And that program went away because h how do you do that? How do you how do you hold accountable for outcome? I I I'd love to hear examples about what what that actually looks like because I don't What do you do? Are you asking me Sarah or you asking I'm asking somebody I'm asking somebody I think evaluation with the superintendent. I mean this this accountability focused on data those regular reports is an accountability measure. Okay. I mean if and I'm just looking at um if I was

031looking at question seven I mean I would with this new process I probably would say we're developing. We're still figuring out a little bit how we report to the board how regular report to the board. this report or um continue the the equity report tonight is going to look a little bit different because we used disagregated data in a report a couple months ago. So now it's going to have a little bit different flavor. So we're really we're kind of navigating through that and I think we'll hit our stride, but um we're doing more of that. So some some people might think, oh my gosh, we're starting to be accomplished, but I I still feel like it's a little clunky. So as far as the question of holding account being accountable is I mean evaluation

032systems how we report data what our expectation is what our goals where are we meeting our goals and where we have so I guess this was my confusion on accountable if I'm accountable for something and maybe we're not there what is the flip side of that or how have we changed a goal or repprioritized resources or or looked so what is the what's the other end to help balance that out or or to meet that need and I don't is that for the group is that for anybody Sarah I'm confused I'm talking about 51 assesses and holds the district accountable and provides so so I think I'm just overall talking about accountability and I probably and I appreciate those examples examples as continuing to move forward. But I this is going to sound horrible, but

033is there a stick that ever comes with not meeting that or are is there ever or is it that to um this isn't a business culture, this is a people culture, right? So in business you might make a different type of decision based on accountability but when you're in a people system it's different. So what does for me for what so what does that look like and now this age accountability for a board member is like I don't think if you asked if you asked like a group of 50 people you'd probably have 50 different different things of what accountability is especially depending on so that one is a hard word right like how do you be accountable some people might think just reading their board packet and listening and asking questions is accountable And

034I think there's some o I will just call myself out. I'm an overachiever. And so I'm like, we need to do better on this. We need to do better on that. And so I I think maybe I looked at this through a lens of maybe not as um didn't give as people as much grace as I maybe should have. I think to like and and I think this raises a really important point because like there isn't a lot of you know sometimes when we think of accountability we think of like okay what's the punishment or what's the withholding you know like what does that what does that mean and obviously there's nobody interested here in punishment or withholding because that like you said Sarah like this is a people thing this is not a business

035thing um I do think I mean you know what Brent said about like you hold your superintendent accountable, right? Like there's embedded goals there, right? There you have expectations for your one employee. So there's there's some direct accountability there, but there is accountability in talking about your data in in public, right? I mean there is like there is accountability that the bo when the board talks about like here's our progress here's you know like here's our good data here's our bad data like here's what we're looking at here's where we are on our goals like to the community and I mean there's even there's even research that says that looking at all of your data good and bad that moves the dial on student achievement because you're not hiding anything right you're accepting all data

036good and bad and I think that's embedded in this as well. Um, you know, and so then you're being accountable to the public too. And the ultimate accountability for a board member is whether you get reelected, right? I mean, so you're accountable to the public, but um but also um you know monitoring like so that and that's a huge piece. You know, I do a lot of strategic planning with boards and I never leave them without a monitoring plan because you can have a beautiful strategic plan and if you just are like great and and none of it is measurable and none of it is or the board doesn't build a plan for what kind of information comes to us on what timetable, who's bringing it and does not build that into their calendars. you

037know, I will walk into a district and be like, "Oh, this was your last one. Where'd you get on it?" and get blank stairs, you know, and like so you know what what was it? And that is accountability as well. Just like talking about these things, knowing what the progress is and and then being like, "And now how can we support? What do we need to do? Is it budget? Is it policy? Is it you know what what kind of supports in the board's role does the board need to provide to the district to keep moving on those goals? And I think all of that is wrapped up in the idea of accountability. Does that help at all? What do you what do you um can I ask a question? Yes, of course. What what

038is your advice on u when it means to say okay yes we're accountable to our statewide accountability scoring system but also if our community is not worried about some of these statewide accountability scoring system they're worried about this where where is that balance on oh good question doing so I you know like I don't know any district who wants to define themselves by the state test alone, right? I mean, like there is there there's always for every district a local either a local assessment or something else that's important to that district as well that says here's how we measure success. And it may not even it may be some non-academic measure. It could be something else or a collection of other things. And so and I think that any of those things are just additive

039to this to what you're looking at. You know, we all do we all take the state test. We all that's that's publicly reported. It's the most easily accessible information that the public has and all of that. But then what is important to your district? Like how do you know that your kids are okay? Like how do you know that your kids are learning and doing well? What are the important measurements that you take as a district that that really fill out and make rich your assessment of how you know your kids are learning like you know other internal growth-based assessments or or in some districts like what does it mean like student surveys or comm or some definition of community engagement or you know I mean there are all kinds of things but adding those

040to the pie and saying, you know, this is what it means to be here in our district, I think, is is really important on top of what's required. This is great. I think for me where it shows up like in the question 30 and um maybe 38 is when Javier goes through that the strategic plan and he talks about where we're at in those metrics and also uh like we're going to get report tonight from um the surveys that type of data about how people are feeling about it. It does. It's not really up there, but I I feel disconnected from um and I know on some of ours we scored low on there is how are we getting the information to our community and also receiving information from our community. I still don't feel

041like I feel like there's a lot personally I feel for myself there's a lot of work to be done in that because we don't have a lot of folks that come to the board meeting. So that doesn't ever happen there. So for me, I try to show up in the different spaces and maybe be available to hear, but I feel like we could do better um in connecting with the community um and hearing those things that could be included in these um reports that we're being that we're talking about. So I think I have that as one of your draft goals a little bit later. I think I had a community engagement one for you. I do appreciate the the definition of accountability and I do appreciate your question, Brent, because that's what I'm struggling

042with a lot is like, you know, we have to follow through with the division 22 standards, but some of them conflict with me on other things that are important to our to our district. you know, getting new curriculum takes time away from reading and math scores. And so, like where where do you the it's like a struggle of accountability? I'm accountable here at the state level, but then therefore I'm not accountable here at the community level. And that's like a struggle all the time. And so I think that it's it's what you're thinking of too of accountability like are you thinking accountability or what for I'm thinking accountability for the students and so me it's like we need to you know be more accountable and get their scores up and get them ready for career

043and um college and be like proud of themselves and all this stuff. So, but then it's like, oh, I got some Vision 22 standards I have to not that they're horrible, but you know, it's like some things don't align and take away from from the others. So, it's a struggle. I don't know. But I it's well, and I think accountability has been so much part of the language lately, the last year, right? And some of that has come with some pretty big I'll call them sticks again. Some of those have come with some pretty big um impacts if if certain standards aren't met. And so um yeah, what does that look like in our own district too as we're measuring our own our own goals and accountability to each other and to our community and

044to our students? Mhm. Yeah. It I mean I I know that that word is a little bit triggering right now. I mean because because it does I mean because it is sort of everywhere right now and it does come with some fairly big sticks at state level or good or whatever. I know that that that that word is um kind of hot right now and and so you know if we're thinking of it at the district level it may you know be worth so that it doesn't get confusing to use a different word like what is our responsibility you know like instead of like the accountability I mean it may help to think about it a little bit differently since when when we talk about it as a board to our district we are not

045talking about it in the same way, right? Like we're not talking about like if a if a certain area doesn't meet its goal, we're not talking about like clawing back funding, right? Or or or anything like that, you know, like we're talking about what is the responsibility or or something like that. I don't know. But anything else on on these? I think this is a really good conversation to have like what can you clear up like what do these things mean? Anything else on on these? How long do I have you? I just I want to make sure I'm mindful of your time. Uh we probably have about 14 more minutes, but including um I'd love to just briefly talk about the uh the survey um as well the proposal that we got the target

046feedback survey. Okay. Okay. And I'm gonna keep us moving. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, let me show you. So, so now is the question. what do you want to do with this information? And and again, what I suggest is that you develop at least one professional development goal out of this. And so I have a couple that I you know what I like to see boards do is leverage your strengths to improve what you say you need improvement on. And so what I did is sort of look at what did you say you were good with and how can you think about that in order to develop a goal. Um so so here are some of the things that I came up with just to think about. Um so I said accountability ensure accountability across

047the system by using disagregated data to measure progress on goals. You may already do this. These are just ideas to get you started talking. And since you said one of your strengths was in solution orientation, like that's that's a strength that you can use in a really um in a quantitative way, right? Like if you're looking at solutions, like doing that accountability piece and monitoring really goes along with that solution orientation. You said something about, you know, like not doing a self-evaluation and setting goals. Well, commit to an annual self-evaluation and goal setting session. Use your strength in knowing roles and responsibilities. This is where I said community engagement efforts particularly with respect to areas that pertain to the creation of vision related goals. So that is one area that you said that you didn't

048do very well. So that may take a little thinking and tweaking. But if you if you've got you know big strategic goals, how do you how and when do you want to revise those or when do you want to build them? And then how do you wrap community into that? Right? Because then there that is a sort of um that's a discrete way of engaging the community. Um and then using your strength and creating a safe and welcoming environment because you said you were good at that and um and so being able to create that welcoming space would will really go a long way into bringing your community along. Um, schedule work sessions. This is um, innovation. Schedule work sessions to deeply engage with key staff in creative thinking about strategic issues and make plans

049for flexibility if unforeseen events occur. Um, this is one of those um, innovative pieces and use strength and delegation of responsibilities. You said you were good at that. So, if you've got key staff that come and and talk to you and report to you and there's um there are ways that you know that you can get different information from different folks, what about like really opening up for um for discussion in certain areas that that can be very proactive um and doing that innovative thinking about things that you're trying to solve. um and using your key partners on um on your cabinet or or whoever whoever um your superintendent has you working with and brings to you for information or you can pick something out of that in congruent slide. Um, so, so my goal

050for you would be to pick something and um and and set that goal for yourself to do that over the course of the year until you take another self assessment. Does anything on this list look interesting as a starting point? Are you suggesting all of it or that we pick one? I would say pick. Do not do all of these things because you got unless you want to, right? You should have a question. I have a quick question about self. I just want to when you're saying a self evaluation or self goal, are you speaking individually as board members or self board as a collective? This is what you just did. Board self eval self evaluation. Doing this again. Okay. Or Yeah. or whatever you choose to do, right? Like, however you choose to evaluate

051yourself every year, do it every year because then you can set goals. You can monitor your progress, but do the same thing every year because like you can monitor like how you grow and change every year. Even even if and when board members change, you can still monitor your own progress. Do any of these areas look interesting? I love number one. Number four. Number four. Number four is really cool. Trying to focus on student centered thoughts. I like number three. Me too. Me too. But we could maybe do two. You could I think I think number four is more of an adjustment, not a whole start from ground up type thing. So I think it's like refining the pro to me. Number four is like refining the process and finding something that works. I think

052that would I think that's an easier goal and so I that's the goal to pick. I think we could do two. That's just my again I said it earlier. I'm an overachiever. I think everyone else should be. So he's going to stop me. We can also underpromise and overd deliver because sometimes we get that ourselves. Yes. Christian, do you do you find when like just I'm looking at number three, it I think to me just playing this out looks like that will help shape what we want to be accountable for and that'll just make that clarity. So I'm assuming the self assessment at a later date once we get community engagement on what our community really wants to see or how they want, you know, our them our community to evaluate the district, let alone

053the state, we'll have to do that. But that'll have it give more clarity on the um accountability measures locally. Yeah, I think so too. I think um you know getting getting a sense of what what that looks so a what do your community engagement efforts need to be and sort of tweaking that figuring that out but also you know what what is your community looking for? What do they want? And what are you specifically asking them for? Right? Like if you are I if you are looking at your vision related goals, your strategic goals and engaging your community in either the creation or refinement of those things. Being really intentional about what you're asking for um is is really important and helping and asking them to help you prioritize. Then that kind of leads to

054number one, right? because then then you are using data to measure progress on something that you've had the community weigh in on and you can just sort of naturally roll out into number one and um and number and number four may come along with that as well. And if Don is saying that that's just kind of an adjustment, you're already doing that work too, then maybe that just sort of comes along. feel like we can increase student outcomes by engaging the community and not just like parent the family units with with students in our district but also community members that have strengths that they can add to our different programs [Music] and how do we find those folks like I'm just thinking about I attended that math night And that was the perfect opportunity for

055us to maybe gain some kind of connection with the community or those reading nights like Michael and I were talking about the you know they have one at Orchard Hill the different schools those different I'm thinking about the metrics where we're really suffering in reading and math and maybe trying to capitalize on that first. I don't know that's just my two cents about that. I know when Sarah and I went to a whole ton of community events during the bond, we were like every it seemed like it was like, "Oh, they're having this, they're having that." We went to a whole bunch of school nights and all that and it was really really useful. So that might be something. Yeah, that seems to be part of the the goal. So, timingwise, Kristen, for because I

056think I think maybe this is a good time to just check in about how we felt about this process and whether we find it valuable and and talk about what some of these because I think if we're going to set a goal, that's going to require some more time. Um, and we want to be thoughtful about that, too. Yeah. And more discussion. Um, so what's a good what's a good way for us to think about that, Kristen, in terms of time frame and and what rhythm works well for boards and boards that you've seen, you know, take it seriously, commit to it, and actually create some positive change for themselves. When do you have do you have a retreat? Yeah, the summer and August. So, so the spring is the best time to do the

057self-evaluation, which you've just done in spring. So, what I usually say is start crunching on the area that you'd like to do. You know, if there's something you can knock out during this school year, do it. Um, like if you picked something that is sort of a checkbox to do, you can do it this year. But if there is something deeper like you decide that like that community engagement piece looks really tantalizing that you that you that you talk about that during your retreat and really work on defining that goal for the next school year um as part of your retreat. Um, that said, if you're like, you know what, we there's some there's some stuff we really want to start trying this year because we've got, you know, something coming up in May or

058we really want some input on blah. I mean, you can you can think of something for this year certainly, but like as more of a a strategic and longlasting approach that may be more systematic in nature, I would work on that during the retreat so that you're looking at a whole year That's what I would do. Do we have another work session scheduled? No, not this. Okay, that can be changed and I will send this to you so that you can see all of the I will send you this um PowerPoint so you can see what one thing that clicked for me like on number two I don't think we have a policy around self evaluation. I would love we do. We just weren't ever doing it. Remember we were like, "Oh, look. We have

059a policy." I tried to find it and I couldn't find it. Okay. Well, that's something to be congruent about. That's good. And Kristen, once we set a goal, once we define a goal, will you um be able to support us on kind of um writing out a goal in like through the smarty process? So I can do that and I can do that as part of this process like not as an extra thing. So if you if you are working on a goal that is related to this I'm happy to help support that. Yep. Thank you for having anything else on this? Any questions? I want to be I want to be super mindful of your time and if you wanted me to talk about the talk about the Yeah. when you talk about the

060first of all, thank you. I think I'm feeling really good about this and um just helpful for us to kind of focus our work and you know, we we are overachievers and and we want to build on some of the positive momentum that we've built in our district and I think taking this focused approach is um is really really helpful and um it's helpful to have a doctor help us walk through it. So um uh but yeah, if you could just um talk about the target feedback survey briefly, that would be great. Thank you. Yes. So we developed this a few years ago when we discovered that 360 surveys as part of the superintendent evaluation were not working because um they really unintentionally solicit complaints. So what we were finding is that you know we

061would write these surveys with boards. we would just kind of put them out there generally and um and questions like I don't I don't know nobody was intending anything bad and what we would find is that the the information that would come back would not only be not useful but it would be sometimes harmful and it would be really anecdotal in nature and just wasn't working for the boards or the superintendent. And so what we did was write a targeted feedback survey where there are questions for staff and questions for community and they're all aligned to the standards in the book in the superintendent evaluation book. So we don't let boards change the questions like we wrote them really intentionally to be aligned with the standard so that the data that you get back is

062aligned with exactly the tool that you're using and the questions are appropriate for both of those groups. Um there are standards that we ask um staff and then there are some standards we ask community but they don't get asked everything because like they won't have as much experience with like instructional design and things like that. Um, there are two open-ended questions at the end of each since most of it is like likered scale stuff, but the open-ended questions are like, you know, in your experience, what's superintendent doing really well? What could, you know, they use improvement on? And we ask the board to pick three standards um that they want to survey on in conjunction with the superintendent and then in conjunction with the superintendent, pick the audience. And we say targeted because we keep

063the audience relatively small, but both audiences should be folks that are very familiar with the superintendent's work. So like generally what we see is that staff always includes direct reports or cabinet or whatever like whoever reports directly to the superintendent plus whoever else may know their work. So like if there are teachers or classified staff that have been on committees or you know something like that um so that you get a good cross-section of the district. Um but we say like keep it at 40 at at most. And then um for the community same thing if there have been family members that have been on committees or who are very familiar with the superintendent or community partners or other folks. This tends to look really different based on I mean by um uh district, but

064again we say keep it small. And the reason that we want folks to really know the superintendent's work too is because we don't want a lot of I don't knows, right? That come back in the survey. We want folks that have the confidence to to give feedback. And then we administer the survey. It's all anonymous and confidential. We bring it back. We provide you um a summary uh not each individual question. We provide you a summary. It's aligned to the standards. Uh we also code all of the um uh the open-ended questions for themes and bring you back those themes, not each individual comment. And then that becomes part of the information that you use to do your own evaluation. It is not the evaluation, it is a data set. Um, but we also ask

065that just like when you're done with the evaluation, you adopt your tool, your process, and your timeline, that if you decide to do any survey, whether it's ours or not, that you decide that and adopt that really early on, you know, right after you're done with your evaluation and you adopt next year's evaluation process so that your superintendent knows what to expect and knows that there's going to be a survey for the next year. That's ours. questions on that. Okay. Anything you need from me? Anything I can do for you? Not at this moment, but I think we'll definitely be in touch. Um, and we might solicit some help from you to help us with goal setting. Happy to do that. So yeah, but this was very very useful and helpful. So thank you so

066much. Good. Thank you. Nice to see you all. Thank you. You too. Have a good evening. Bye. Bye. All right. Any final thoughts on that? Okay. Moving on. Um, I have next on my list the equity and community care update. You want to stick with that order? Does that still work or do you want to go first? John. Yeah. You want to go next, John? Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. Wherever you're comfortable and makes sense for you. the orange. So, just as he's uh coming up here, wanted to give a general facilities kind of update. Um, also highlighting on um Secure Jack LLC that did the assessments of all of our buildings postbond where went through all of our building and so we've gone through those assessments. John has uh some plans that he'll talk about

067and so we just also decided to do a lot of other kind of ads on this facility. all the relative up properties and um facility assessment. And before we get going, you probably won't share this, but we applied for three different grants for facility assessment, uh review, two others that I can't remember, but I was really excited about the facility assessment for you. facility assessment, long range facility plan, and a specialist hazard assessment and digitizing all of our records. Oh, nice. We applied for those. We got all three of them. We got them. How nice. Wow. So, is it the strategic plan for this? What's the strategic plan for a little bit? Just the all of district facilities. Remember when uh before we did the bond uh we had hired CSA that the long range

068facility they did a strategic plan or the facility assessment and then the long range facility plan. Okay. So we felt it's been almost nine years. It was about time to look at it again. Um, not that we're not that we're going there, but that will set us up if down the road when the bond payment lowers if we wanted to go for more money to work on this. We keep trying for that, don't we? Master because I know we had it here, but that was a huge accomplishment getting all Oh, absolutely. Congratulations. That's all yours. Okay. Um, well, first of all, I'm going to talk about Bear Creek Nature Classroom. I uh in board book, I did include uh I think you guys may have already seen this. It was from the community meeting. Yeah,

069you emailed it. So, uh I wasn't sure, but I included it in case in case you want to review it again. Um, I did get an update and they expect to have a rough drawing of the ideas that we have here incorporated into the that piece of property. Um, so I hope to have that in the next month to share. That's about the only update on that part. Okay. Um, on the next part, I just put the coal mine sale because I know that somebody else looked at it the other day and that uh that is going to be important for the next building. So, on progress, I actually um I just got these updated drawings about an hour before the meeting and Denise was actually able to um put it on board. So, it's

070actually there now at this place, but if you want to see a hurricane I kept bugging them all day. Is it ready yet? Is it ready yet? Is this the Yes. And I'll kind of go over this just real quick. Kind of the differences. If you look at if you look at door, what we had to do was we had to move Boys and Girls Club back a little bit because we needed storm water treatment here. That was a requirement by the city. Um and then the city decided that this was too close to where you turn it over. So on the new plan, it actually comes down here and this is moved over and this is where you drive into the facility. Oh yeah, that's going to kind of a nightmare, isn't it? This

071is the old. This is the old. That's the new. Um, so the new one brings you up Wagner Creek south a little bit more before you get into turning either way down those other parking um, that's really tight. Well, this is Wagner Creek where it would extend and go all the way to town middle school. Okay. That's where the easement is. Oh, I see. Yeah. Then now we have a te-ball field in the middle of the easement. Well, he just didn't get they were moving things around to do this and I was pushing hard. But I'm what I'm talking about is this little This is a one little out this way and one I don't know. This seems like this is going to be really Yes, that's the right word. It's a It's a two-lane.

072But this is actually wider than what it looks like. Quite it's quite a bit wider than than normal road. It's sufficient space, but it's just not drawn to size. Yeah. Okay. That and and they're going to have to have fencing right probably around there. So there would be one in and I mean that might be part of it too. That's going to be a huge bottleneck. Don't do I you know the other part you can't really see. Um, so we're having to widen, we're being forced to widen Culver to three lane to put in a turn lane turn and then also a bike path and there's quite a bit going on going on. When all will that come into play like uh when Boys and Girls Club Well, first of all, we need more money

073and also we need to negotiate with Boys and Girls Club to get them to pay their portion. Okay. I mean, there's a lot that went into this design. Um, you may or may not know that there is contaminated soil, right? Um, it's not a hazard to humans, but it's not clean enough that we can just dump it somewhere as clean bill. It has to be uh we either have to pay to do it. So, we worked well my direction to CCS and they worked really hard was to come up with a complete grading plan um that would have us move as little soil out of this site as possible and find areas that we could actually use it that we would be burying it. Like the majority of it is going to go into the

074soccer field. The soccer field from here to here the field drops 14 ft. Oh wow. So, we got to level it up a bunch. So, like where the soccer field is, that's actually going to be three feet higher than the parking lot. It'll have a retaining wall and nets. Um, that's where most of our soils go. Okay. And part of the negotiation tactic that we are trying to employ with Boys and Girls Club is you're going to have to excavate this out to do anything. You're going to have to remove the dirt. We can take the dirt front. You need to pay to move it because then we can use it. If they don't want to do that, we we have areas here we can take dirt from. But it it just it would be

075a good deal for them and try to an incentive to try to get them get more help on the rightway work. Um that is the majority of the of the question or of the uh changes just right in here. Is there any way to add additional out? I know I'm still stuck on this bottleneck junk just because that's a lot of cars trying to certainly share that with CCS and see what they have. I mean, can they put another one up here? I can tell you that now. There what that we cannot do one up this close to the road. That was the city was definitely opposed to that. Now, I don't see why we couldn't do Well, I mean, I'm not looking for drawing right now, but I know, but look at how much

076parking is going to They're going to go this way to the freeway. They're going to go this way. This is just a lot of cars to only have these two. And this is going to be This is straight out onto the freeway. And here you have this. This is all going to get backed up, isn't it? Not free. Yes. Well, I mean here to go potentially, I guess. The thing is, well, the back parking lot that that borders kind of what is designated Little League right now, that would actually be joined to Wagner Creek when that's built that that come direction. No one has any real plan. I mean, to build up Wagner Creek Road. Oh, no. But this part's on our property. So extending it that extra 75 ft. Oh, I see what you're

077saying, right? Cuz cuz Yes, we're responsible for this portion. Yes. Okay, I understand. I initially thought So it could be two turnins. It's just we can't have that first one so close. No, I I think two turnins would be really helpful. And we would still have the other gate down by the baseball field and that's another way to come in to this area too, right? so cars could come out. They just didn't like um that turn being so close. No, I can I can appreciate that and not having it so close. My concern is the bulk of the parking is on this side of the field. So, I don't see people hitting this exit when the bulk is parked on this side over here. So that's um and if this facility is going to be

078as busy as I think it's going to be and well used as I think it's going to be, it's going to be important to get the um sure the access and to not have people when they're leaving or not want to go there because you can't ever get out of the parking lot. Well, I mean traffic study and evaluation will be part of the whole process. Already done. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One thing about and we boys and girls. So because of this hazardous soil or this not so great soil, we've worked on this plan as an entire thing. Even though we really can only maybe do phase one, but all of the the soils testing, not just for the environmental, but also for u the engineering aspect, like where we put roads, where we might

079build buildings, that is being done for the entire site. So, we've already done a lot of their homework. So, that's another another thing that we can go to them and say, "Hey, we've already set you uh up to win." and and that's kind of what we talked about in not meeting will the traffic study that's already been done because I think this is a valid concern um will that is that accounted for with this change of having to set it back further now or are we going to require that is actually why okay it was the traffic stud lane a bike lane and at this point um at least until we start developing some more of this. The uh bike lane and stuff ends at the edge of the soccer field and that's where it

080starts to taper back. But eventually when we were, you know, we do some of these other ones, then that bike lane would extend um down to probably this driveway and then taper down here before the bus gone. And that's why we're showing you this good point. we'll take the ZCS do that say hey there's uh especially in different phases of development that's where people can get frustrated too is it just if there is planning on being you know another you know access point or what or exit point how is that going to shape if we start phasing these things in so is it possible to have a third access on to clover or is that just lots and lots more city will only last have two yeah I'm not even I'm sure they're crazy about

081too, but it the size of the facility dictates it. They they really because of the traffic on Culver. They really frown from punching out more driveways and coal mine is a great example of that where they they actually want to stop traffic and have coal mine not allow them. They want them to have to go around to want a barrel. Okay. The bus bar's ours, right? Yes. So, is there any way there's no way to tie an out through that driveway? No, it's a secure it's secure facility. I mean, yeah. Yeah, it Well, we just secured it with fencing because of the catalytic converters and all of that stuff. So, there's not a good way to do that. Okay. Any more questions on this part? I guess my question I do have a question. Were

082we planning what kind It shows all these parking spots and stuff. Were we planning like a paved area or was it paid? Okay, that's what my mind said, but I want to make sure that my mind was and part of this project um is eventually so the bus bar is on wellwater and septic tank and and all that. Um, part of the plan is to bring those services up here, which right now there's a pretty good sized portion of the front of the bus plane that can't be used because that's where the um septic system is, right? So, if we do that, then we actually could fit another 10 or 11 buses probably down the road. Um, any more questions on that part? I see the solar. Are we going to put like solar paneling

083to for electricity for this? I know that that's like a huge investment, but Well, um, or what? When we were doing the design, I thought it would be good to include a future in the master plan, include a future solar place if we got grants. Um, but also so that we could possibly feed a couple of electric buses. So that's why it's kind of in that general area. Okay. So that's for future now. Yeah, definitely future. I mean, the only part of this project right now that that we're uh working on or designing to actually do right away is the soccer fields, the turf soccer fields. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Yeah. And with that, we thought we would give just what we're kind of thinking. Obviously, this will have board approval, but just

084on some revenue sources and estimated cost. So, um, with leveraging a lot of other, um, uh, dollars, we have about $1.9 million left in our bond, um, resources. Uh, interest from that is about three 350,000. Um, I just approximated a potential sale of coal mining, if the board chooses to put towards this project at about 1.6, um, after fees and everything. And then this is to be estimated. We had a meeting last maybe this week or last week with Boys and Girls Club about um once we look at all the infrastructure that needs to happen um ZCS is portioning out um some responsibility and some estimated costs that we would be in agreement um to have Boys and Girls Club make sure that they put up that those dollars for um that portion of the

085and RO is right away by the way um and Cobra improvements. Um that that's a we we'll give better estimates. ECS does I mean they suggest that we get somebody else but once we get the full details of that John can go out to his his partners um that we use to give you some more real numbers. But uh 2 and a half million is about an estimate that we have for that. Um two turf soccer fields and the landscape around it about 1.25 25 and then I just put miscellaneous just for some cushion in there. So, um to make sure we any excess cost. So, if you look at that, if these come to fruition and the board chooses to use these dollars in this way, um we we will be able to do

086the improvements on Culver the rideway um and the two turf soccer fields to start those projects. Um which is which is a really good start. And then I think as we and even talking to Boys and Girls Club, once dirt gets moving, once turf fields get in, then we can start accessing more grants, looking at doing some other things on the field to uh because once PE people start seeing that, they start getting a little more excited. So, and they were very hopeful, too. They they were actually excited about wanting to move their dirt over to our space because they can put a sign there once that's all done and then create that excitement for their building campaign. I have another question. Sorry. The bathrooms, how many? It looks Is there three going to be

087three bathrooms or two bathrooms? Well, they we already have the one that's over by the over in this corner. That one would stay. These were just future ones. Uh if Little League and when Little League built it in that they could Yeah, because it seems like they're here and here. Like these are right by each other. It just seemed kind of silly. And then these. So all these is no B. This is a long ways to walk. I was wondering why you put all the bathrooms in one area. Well, actually, so the existing bathrooms, my idea is that that multi-purpose building, which people wanted for running and all that stuff, right, on the end would have bathroom and a concession stand. Oh, okay. Right. That would be built into it. And I think the the

088in my opinion the multi-purpose building is the easiest one to get a grant on. Okay. Um my reasoning is is like when CO happened when the fire we our warehouses were overran and we didn't have large spaces for some of the students to go to to exercise things like that. So my thinking is is that's a multi-purpose building but it's also an emergency haven when we need it. Yeah. Um, but I think that the like if putting bathrooms in there, putting a concession stand in there really sets that whole area up for success. Maybe over on the other end like over we already have a restroom here. Maybe on this end here possibly. Well, it it depends on whether that restaurant can stay. it may need to be part of the purpose because we need

089a big enough building for like people to run things like that, right? So the nice restaurant there, right? Or outside like the um outdoor restrooms at the high school, right? They're just accessible from outside. Well, I don't know. What's economic? Have we done an economic impact survey or study on on what a facility like this would mean for the local economy? Allen Phoenix, you know, you think about the impact that Rogue X has had on the local economy. Um, the field the field USA. Yeah. Right. Yeah. USA. like the Memorial Day Cup or maybe change the name, but they're always looking for space and that'd be so cool to be willing to reach out. So, it's I've always wondered where they get those numbers, right? Just like $24 million impact last year because they looked

090at tourism, right? Yeah. And so it' be interesting to see what the city of Member does and maybe we can mimic some of that or I just think, you know, when you're looking at $4.5 million for infrastructure alone, it the sticker shock is there, but I think to be able to say, well, you know, this is this is what besides what you can't even measure, you know. Um, but there's definitely going to be a positive economic impact on facility. the competition between Phoenix and talent about who's rebuilding. I'm just kidding. That's but that's real. I don't want to minimize the cross country because it's in a muted color, right? Because there isn't one. So, similarly to having the multi-purpose for the community, the um the cross country path, there isn't one. And so just the

091the uniqueness of some of the facilities um similarly to Rogex, the uniqueness of the pool environment and and what you can offer with that for this facility I think will you thinking there's not one now? There isn't one like in the region you're talking about right in the region. Oh, in the region. Yeah. Okay. I was going to say they're using cobras. No, I mean in the region. This is the only one in the region. doesn't have one. Medford doesn't have one. So, the draw that this will be regally is what I was trying to sou rent it regularly for their big need. I think it would be good to have a Yeah, John and I will dig in a little bit, see how we can reach out to Rich Rosenthal or something at the

092city of Medford to say, "Hey, how how do you gauge that impact?" We can also reach out to the county because they're building the new one at the expo. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And they did basically what I want to do. They called it an emergency facilities uh due to co and all that stuff. Mhm. So, and that's where I think we could be hugely successful in getting a grant to help pay for this. Yeah. Very cool. Cool. Smoke mitigation, too, right? It was the first time I've seen numbers attached to this. It's good. It's good to get an idea. And we we kind of wrap up our summer projects and stuff, so we wanted to um see what we were left with. And um and I I think coming up with this, it's it seems

093doable and real. And um DCS is pushing. I mean, there are some things that we may be able to start this fall to get some soccer fields at least moving dirt. So, great. Yeah, we're going to need to get some use off of the turf field at the high school. Yeah, for sure. All right, more questions on it. Yeah. But what's the dimensions of the multi-purpose meeting? It's not designed. It's just it's just put in there as a placeholder. How many square feet that I I couldn't tell you at this point. We haven't we haven't gotten that far. We allocated property for each of the things um that came from the all the committees that had input on the master plan. And so, you know, they looked at this and figured out how to fit

094it in. And we even we've even talked about that. Um, so this this area where the bleachers are that maybe this sidewalk area gets widened and actually becomes a wide concrete area so that we could have some big bay doors on this side uh for if we ever needed it to store stuff, but also for big events, things like that. Yeah. about that sit that sits on our um well our old varsity soccer field um you know the one closest to the baseball field there that'll be roughly about the size maybe not quite that big but um but close sorry Sarah I interrupted you no not at all any more questions on Good update. Thank you. Awesome. So, now we'll move on to the vulnerability assessment. Um, Ernie White did a great job and I've

095been through all the books. Um, I've kind of I included some pictures of examples that he had in in the assessment and some of our immediate plans um that we're pricing out as we speak. And the vegetation thing, we've already turned it back. that's fixed. The things that we could fix, we fixed right away. Working on uh getting pricing for the cameras, the additional cameras, which he basically spelled out in most of the um facilities. Um PHS was one that there wasn't really much to be added. Um he had he has a couple of recommendations that we're still considering. Not not super happy with um or not sure how they would work like putting alarms in the high school. Um that facility is used so much I'd be down here two three times a day.

096Yeah. Um so we're not not super crazy about that. And I I think maybe we look see if we have a pull. It's been open for 5 years. We've never had a problem. Um, you're talking about afterh hour alarms. Yeah, basically motion detectors in every hallway, all of that. And since you know how busy that facility is and it's it's multiple sections, right? So, you could be on the gym side and trigger an a commons alarm potentially and yeah, it could be a real mess and staff going in at all different hours prepping or whatever. Yeah. The reason we when we designed the high school, the the old high school used to have um motion detectors in the office and stuff and I was told that the main reason was to protect the records, right?

097But even then, I got called at least a couple times a week because the staff member would wander in and then I get called down to or or the police would call me and say, "Oh, it's so and so." Yeah, they're fine. Um but uh so like I said that recommendation we're just kind of uh going to sit on for a little while I think and see if it becomes a problem. Um and then if it does become a problem then we'll have to figure out what areas that we feel are important to target. Um he did highlight several fence repairs and we're working on getting estimates for that. That work will be finished over the summer. Um the drive gates I included a picture. So at the high school he uh first of all

098the gate was out of alignment. We fixed that but he didn't like the the fact that it it didn't stop on something. And this is what we actually on the the next picture is actually what we did at TMS. So I've got quality pens looking adding that to the high school to fix that situation. Another item that Ernie wasn't he recommended we change. We just had standard chain on our on our gates around all the facilities. Um he didn't like he didn't like that because you could cut it with a bolt cutter, but his recommendation was to use the little drop down thing on the pole, which we know from experience. I can push through every one of them if they're down. I can kick it. And they twist or they snap off. We see

099it all the time. But they make a hardened cobalt chain that you can't cut with bolt cutters. Um it'll actually damage bolt cutters because it's harder. It's a harder steel than what they are. So we are going to go through and and change all of the chains to that. It's probably really spending type of chain, too, isn't it? Well, we're going to get it before the tariffs hit any. They're about 35. Sorry. Um, no, they're about $35 a piece. Yeah. Oh, so I guess I would have thought. Yeah, but it will be at spendy because we'll need uh I think we counted nine at the high school. Um, we've got them everywhere except TMS. So, and include TMS though, huh? No, what I'm saying is we don't have any uh gates like that at TMS.

100Oh, okay. Because we have the two drive gates on the two sides. Um, so we don't really we don't really have any at that location. All the other schools have multiple, so we'll be working with that. Um, TMS, we did include like uh he did a camera coverage drawing on most of the schools for some reason. Um, he didn't include PHS. M um at least he didn't have any recommendations, so he didn't go through a whole drawing. He looked at where everything was covered. Um but in all of these I included uh the maps where he he thought we should order we should add a couple cameras to cover some of the blind spots. Um like I said, we'll get prices on that. He didn't The middle picture is actually the doors. He doesn't like

101the um the two handles cuz somebody could lock it down. Um so we will go through um and this is going to be a maintenance thing. It's not going to be a we're doing it overnight. It'll be do a few here, do a few there. We don't have this condition at quite a few of our facilities. There's only a few, but we'll just tackle them that way. And where are these doors? The blue doors. Where are those? Yeah. What are they? That's a front door. Well, how do you get in without a handle? That's my point. You just put a handle on one side. Oh, okay. Then they then they can't run a chain through both. Okay. So, the purpose is that this is the the blue p the picture with the blue doors is

102what we currently have and we're moving in the picture with the black doors, right? Where one side is flat and Got it. That's what I thought, but I'm glad that you asked. Or the black. The black picture have a Yeah. A handle that you pull the door open like this? No, it's the door knob on the on the side. Just one side and then just a blank on one side. That way you can't wrap a chain through both. So you can only two doors both open. Only open the one door you can go. The problem with that one is that you can chain it and lock it. the other one. How about the cameras, John? There's a lot of recommendations for cameras. Do you have a do you have a budget you need to be

103able to handle? Uh, we've we've planned um because we have been doing a capital a capital account. Yeah. Um I think last year was 200,000. We talked about potentially moving it to three this year if we can swing it. Mhm. Um that'll help me do this. And then there's some flooring things and and some other stuff that I need to do over the summer that will kind of eat up the rest. Um but we do plan on using a lot of that for this. And it can either look like that or add some money to a safety upgrade. So it's can so it's specifically because we will have Ernie come back and that recommended three to five years to do again. So just have budget items versus 18. That's great. Are there I know this

104is kind of a budget question. should have asked Yas mean but are we seeing increases to the construction excise tax with a lot of the different buildings things happening in town? We have. Yes. And also a lot of the energy trust money that we got um got transferred into that. Um we are I think it was about 650,000 is where it's at, but about 320,000 of that is going to cover the excess um solar at TMS because we're we designed to 1.3. Um but that money that 300,000 is going to come back to us. um in taxes. Normally if you put in solar you get a an incentive, you know, tax incentive and in the past we never did. Last year they changed that. They changed the law and so now public entities that have

105solar actually get a cash rebate of what it would have been. Nice. So when we did the design, we calculated how much what the cost of it should be with the money coming back. And once we do that, we'll only have been spending the $1 million grant that that we got. Um, pretty much all the rest reads just like that, right? You have any questions on that? ODP, are they getting new big new fencing or trimming or what's going on with the security outside of ODP? That's all going to be happening. It starts Monday. It should be done before the end of the week. All of the fencing around the entire facility goes to six feet. gets an electronic fog access uh gate. Um so you won't even be able to get to the building

106anymore without a fog. Um this is going to have parents will have to go to tees. They'll have to sign into the raptor system and then the office will issue them a fog that will work for the gate. So like if they're coming to volunteer then they can fob into the gate and then on the inside the even the doors to the building don't have to be locked because it'll be a to completely secure facility. Um and the other nice thing about that is if we were to go into a lockdown when tees pushes the red button to override all schedules and lock all all of the the electronic doors it will include that one as well. Okay. the gate or the door to the building. The gate to the building. The gate to the

107building. Right. A parent forgets and takes the father. I apologize. What if a parent forgets and takes? So, uh, good question. Never happened. No. Good question. I'm just thinking of the times that I've had like those little clip that said visitor and how many. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, one, we're only going to program those fobs to work during school hours. Okay. So, if you take it home, you don't get to come back later and play in the playground. Right. Right. Um, two, if they're not returned, we can automatically just disable them until they're brought back or we can uh just replace them. Are they are is is this a fob? Yes. Okay. I'm thinking the expensive thing that goes to your car. Oh, no. Yeah. Sorry. So, I mean, you have control over all of

108these. So, it doesn't That's a fog. That's also another fob. Okay. And, uh, Cheryl actually knows how to disable the fog and then reenable them. So, if somebody takes it home, she can disable it. She can enable it the next morning when they bring it back. Um, so can staff get in and out like if they need to go get them for services and different things? It's not like it'll all just be another in and out. And our plan is to program the door to be unlocked for the drop off time and the pickup time so that which is pretty much what we do at all the other schools too. Okay. Well, um I just, you know, with regard to the safety, I just I I know there's a lot you already do proactively as

109part of your regular job, and I appreciate that. And I just appreciate both of your willingness to have somebody who we know and trust um and is familiar to us, but somebody external come in and take a look at, you know, what needs to be addressed and and how seriously you both take that and um it's important to do and makes me feel better as someone who has kids in the school to know that we're consistently looking at these things and updating them. And so thank you for your work on that. I appreciate it. And I think it's it's especially especially nice to say, hey, this is what we wanted to do pre-bond and these are the things we knew we had to secure our entrances. We knew we had to secure our um facility,

110just a perimeter. And it it was nice to be able to do that, but also there's some things cutting shrubs, right? You know, and some adding some cameras. Yeah. Um there wasn't a lot of misses, but we can all always improve. So So yeah, really it's nice to have somebody else come in and look at your work and and because they see different things. I if I remodeled the jail and added a bed from there and I still at the end of the project went wish we' have changed that. Yeah. Well, he's from the report he should he's Bernie is an expert. looked at everything very thoroughly. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Any more questions for John? And this is what you got. What did you get a grant for this report or for

111going forward? It's going forward. Yeah, we we we purchase we paid Bernie out of a different funding source. So, yeah. And money well spent for what he provided is really impressive. Yeah, definitely. and he did give some goals that we're going to work on increasing some lighting in the campuses after hours um like in some of the fields things like that. So I've been looking into like old lights with solar that actually drop down to like 20% but if they sense motion they they turn on bright stuff like that'll even help law enforcement if somebody's you know back in the field. Hey that light get brighter, right? So, those are all things that I'll work on probably annually. He he showed us some spots. And so, those are my first ones. And then and then

112we'll just start looking at every part of every facility and like, oh, um, that's going to be another 800 bucks, but I think a light there is going to be really important, you know, things like that. We'll just do that over time with maintenance. Very good. Um, just a couple updates on miscellaneous projects. Monday, the surfacing and stripes and everything on the tennis court will begin. I think it's going to take about 3 days. Um, and wanted to add that we are adding eight pickle ball courts there. Oh, you are. That is I talked to the city. They were they seem to be really happy about kind of excited about it actually. So, what does that mean for security for our facility? I thought we weren't doing pickle ball. Well, we're mainly for PE I

113mean for RP curriculum, not necessarily open to public pickle ball. Yeah, I'm not sure. Everybody asked me, so is this going to be open to the public? And I'm like, well, it's not really my call. That's more admin at the high school. And I said, but if somebody vandalizes my facility, you know, nobody else is going there. Yeah. So, I think like I said, I'd have to defer to Kalin and her team and we'll take every measure that we can to make sure that it's Could we Could we rent I mean, I don't know much about pickle ball, so excuse me, but um I think they have pickle ball tournaments. Could we rent a hot Could we rent it out and like we do like the gyms and stuff? I mean Oh, for sure. We

114We do that with every facility. We rent out Bulbert on a regular basis. We uh even rent out TS's parking lot for uh farmers markets and and our flea markets, things like that. Yeah. Occasionally whenever the community comes to us. So yeah, we would come up with a fee structure and if an outside entity wanted to use it, I just want to make sure that it's that tennis is getting the time that it needs, right? like that school priority first and um and and honestly just a little and this is going to sound horrible. I'm gonna say it out loud in public meeting a little um that was a good preamble just another use of the space with the amount of parking and the amount of people coming and going as someone who crosses that

115street fairly regularly. That's there's a lot going on right there. There is with a big goal that just got Yeah, that was crazy. I love walking people by that. You see that tennis court? Million bucks, right? I get so many swimming pool. We will opening on April 14th. Um we'll have kind of a grand opening even though we'll have events there before that. Um we'll have um that is our opening and we'll share that with you guys right right before that uh tennis meet or tennis play just the final two I think tees replacement parking lot that'll happen this summer we were trying to get it done for spring break it just needed some more design um and I have full designs now but if by the time I got them it was less than

116two weeks to spring break. There was no way that was happening. So, we'll put it out pretty quick and get a contractor selected and then plan to do that at the beginning of summer. But that won't impact I've got plans for how we would accommodate Boys and Girls Club summer school there. Um because we're only really doing the staff side, the the one that's close to Brown building. The other one's in great shape. It's newer. It didn't seem like it was in great shape when I was at the bigger side. Yeah. That's farthest away by the Oh, that looks like it. That's the staff part, right? No, most of them parked by the round building. There's a few visitor deals, but uh back in the day when my kids went there, staff parked in the

117far and the parents parked up close. They must have changed that. So, I got confused. Well, it's a mixture. Like I said, there are there are visitors spots and things. Um, but yeah, that that smaller area is is the part where it's the part that cuz I was like the right I was You're right. I I named them wrong. That was my I wanted to do it last summer but we had so much going on there was no way. No, that's and I would have ended up with less hair. Yeah, that's fine. I just got impossible. Um, TMS Solar actually started yesterday. Um, as far as as far as prepping the pad, uh, where the batter is going to go and getting the underground condo to the building, things like that. Um, over the next

118couple months, uh, we should start seeing solar panels going up on the roof. But it won't be functional until probably close to the end of June. Okay. Because the battery is not coming until uh, mid June. and we have to cut the power of the building for for a couple days. So, we're going to target it when school's out and we can get in there. Um, they're estimating that we will save approximately 25,000 on power. Plus, we'll have battery backup for gyms and cafeteria. Straight forward. And are you planning to you're you're planning to utilize the battery backup for Yeah. for more power savings. Yeah, I think that's why they said 25,000 because it's about the same size array we have at PHS. Oh, I see. But when you have battery power, you can when

119it's peak power, you can run off battery. Yeah. And then and then it just recharges itself after. Yeah. Right. So, very cool. It'll be And it's all once it's programmed in, it's pretty automatic. Very awesome. Sweet. TES solar should kick off uh right when school ends mid June and be completed uh by the before school starts. That battery has already been ordered. The batteries are like six, seven months out. We we ordered it back in November for TMS and we ordered um TES's in beginning of February. So, are you just getting one battery or is it huge? It's it's huge. Okay. And uh the way I the way that I instructed them to design this because we're not we don't have enough power to power the whole Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. But like the

120pad for the battery, the batteries they were getting, they just link together. Okay. So if we get another grant, I can add another battery and I can add twice the solar. If I get another grant after that, I can add another battery and three times. And both schools are designed that way. and we're trying to I'm working with Amaresco to put together a package for PES um because we're thinking this may be the last round of solar we're hearing they've already announced they're doing this year's we're hearing that it's might be in jeopardy next year they don't know um so we're going to apply for pees to do the same thing at tees and I'm going to apply for the high school to double the solar and add battery backup over there. That's nice because

121that's the nicest facility because it's the newest and the battery backup would be really nice for, you know, if there was another emergency. Um, and then of course we already announced the the grants that you were uh awarded last week. Nice. Or actually I think it was Monday. Congrats. Very good. And it's [Laughter] Yeah, pretty intense, right? I don't know. Me neither. Oh, yeah. Can we take five? We'll take five minute recess. I want to speak with you for a minute. School. All right. Last item of the evening is the EDI annual report. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. Yeah, we you have our slides, but um also just to kind of kick us off, it's a interesting time to be in schools and in to be in the um the work

122of equity, diversity, and inclusion. So we are going to start with a few other things. Um uh instead of jumping right into data, we want to talk a little bit how we're navigating some of the aspects of executive orders. Another one today um and just how we're navigating that and how we're trying to really stay focused on the work. How the executive orders are uh in line or not in line with or law and statute and how we are, you know, what are the different areas related to this work that that are being navigated in that. So, we'll talk about a lot of that and uh ask questions at any of time along in that area. Um, and then we're going to talk about some data uh some of our course demographics and how we're

123monitoring some of the re the sources that we're using for data and some progress that we've made since last year and talk a little bit about some additional next steps and then questions. That sound good? Sounds great. All right. So, um, I won't read all of the executive orders, and I'm sure you all have been following them, but clearly there's definitely a theme coming from administration around equity, diversity, and inclusion, around uh, gender, um, around Title 9 civil rights, um, protections and such. these four um and the the additional executive order today around dismantling the or uh improving the efficiency of the department of education um was another executive order today and again specifically called out the importance of um eliminating any DEI programs. So all of that themes to say um we have great

124resources and support through um KOSA and through Brent's um kind of executive leadership with uh the AASA and a lot of resources that can help us kind of remove the noise and understand what does this mean for us which is really valuable. We can really get lost in all of the um kind of like crisis threats I guess. Um, and so it's been really helpful to kind of just strip that down and think about like can this really be done? Is this um constitutional? Does it require the power of Congress? All of those pieces. Not to say that doesn't bring fear and hasn't brought up questions from students and staff and and parents around are we eliminating services to kids? Are we um no longer doing affinity groups? Are we all, you know, kind of

125the gamut of things, but these are really the ones that we're paying attention to. I'll talk a little bit about the fourth one, um, keeping men out of women's sports because it applies to Title N work. So, that's an executive order, but um, also related to some title N stuff. There's also the next one is the dear colleague letter. Um this is um kind of related to some guidance that came out of the office of civil rights um and how the current administration is interpreting civil rights law and um some of the the um differences in how it might be have been interpreted previously. Um there was an additional I wanted to highlight in February an additional piece of that colleague letter which also framed social emotional learning and culturally responsive teaching as like undercover

126um indoctrination or radicalized uh theory um in schools. Um things like that worry people like they worry us when we're really focused on social emotional learning and we're really wanting to support whole child and whole family. um those are terms that we use. Um so we're just paying attention to that right now because um you know agencies like the Office of Civil Rights do investigate complaints and discrimination and such and so we're just balancing balancing all of that out. You likely have heard um through this also the Department of Education launched an NDEI gov website. Um, when you go to that, it's really interesting, but when you go to that, this text right here down below, um, uh, introduces you to it. And there's a place where anyone can report a discriminary discriminatory practice, the

127school, the district, etc. And it's sort of couched in if that indoctrination or those radicalized ideas are happening in your school or district, you can report that because it's discriminatory. Um, so those are just things that we're paying attention to. Um, title N guidance. Um, I mentioned this before. Um, the 2020 Title N guidance is what we had been pay um, following up until uh, August or or so of this last year, 2024. The 2024 guidance there there was always this new guidance on the horizon. the new guidance under in the on the horizon, the 2024 guidance actually was under the first Trump administration as well. That's sort of when the new guidance began and became um being updated, it was in that first Trump administration and then finalized and enacted under Biden's and and

128um administration. When Trump took office again, the new 2020 24 guidance had finally taken effect. And these are four areas that added addition that were changes the kind of the highlights in that there was additional gender protection. So gender identity was specifically called out as a protected class in Title 9 when it wasn't before. Um transgender athletes were protected. Sexual harassment definition was expanded and a reporting for assault assault reporting added protections for the victim a little bit more. and then LGBTQ student discrimination was also protected. All of those areas um in Trump rescended the 2024 guidance, so we default back to 2020, which is what we've been using for quite some time. So, we're we're back to the 2020 guidance, which isn't the end of the world. Um but these kind of areas of

129additional protection are no longer exist. the 20 that that in that he also ordered the executive order around banning um transgender the transgender executive order around making sure men are out of women's sports. That's also related to this Title 9 guidance because the that wasn't specifically called out when we were sending the Title 9 2024 guidance. So, the executive order is like another way to make sure that students are participating in athletics as they're in their assigned birth, their assigned gender at birth. Does that make sense? Okay. So, we're back to the 2020 guidance, which isn't the end of the world, but that does mean that we have some really vulnerable populations, particularly around gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Can I ask a real quick question? Um, does our I can't remember. Can't think

130of the name, but the person that does the sports is I'm assuming he's involved in um athletic director. Yeah. Director. I am tired. Athletic director. He isn't on the OSA. He is involved in what they're doing. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. I know there's a somebody from OSBA is also an exofficio of that which holy smokes I'm like you got your work ahead kind of up ahead of you but yeah I was just there was a Senate bill I can't you you all might know but there was a Senate bill like Tommy Tuberville I think of Alabama had put a Senate bill forth about the transgender and I think it was blocked I think it has not gone forward which is also part of the executive order ex um rescending the title n but there's still a

131lot of movement around that. How are we informing and communicating these changes and not changes, these movements with families of particular really protected and vulnerable populations because there is there's this and there's a lot of language that can be really confusing. Um, and then I mean there's kind of like this flip-flopping of of executive orders. Yeah. You know, so there's this accelerated threats or risk of threats and then there's a lot of noise that can make families incredibly um fearful of what might happen. And then there's like the reality of like what is really happening. So how are we as a school district um supporting but also communicating with our families about what it is that we're doing. Um great question. Um, you know, fortunately, and we'll get to this eventually, too, but fortunately, Oregon

132law um still provides a lot of protections for vulnerable populations. Oregon law still requires um our bias response, um sexual harassment, discrimination, all of the board policies. There's a lot of Oregon protections that still um we still follow. Um, I think it's really important that that makes the, you know, like the policies around bullying and harassment and bias and safe spaces all the more important in that in that practice piece when we're talking about staff and administrators and trusted adults and all of those pieces. Communicating with our vulnerable populations. Um, that's a little trickier, right? We're navigating that with how we do that with like our immigrant and refugee families and how we do that in a safe trusted space. I still still think the schools and district is a trusted partner for families and

133and kind of relying on those relationships because we aren't doing town halls, right, to talk about some of these pieces, right? We're not doing staff newsletters that or family newsletters, I mean, that that um that draw attention to certain things. So, it's really kind of like trying to navigate under the radar and and relying on our trusted adults. We do have we do have spaces for kids with our affinity groups, our student unions when um led by, you know, a trusted adult in a community. There can be private conversations in those. At the same time, we need to make sure that we're not excluding people from participating in those student unions and clubs because that could be seen as a discriminatory practice if we don't allow a certain individual to join. Anyone can join as

134an ally. Um, so it's really tricky. Yeah. You know, and in some cases we don't we don't collect we don't collect information about sexual orientation, which is great. Yeah. You know, so so it has to be through trust. And what does that mean as far as like funding from I mean which is another I know I mean it's a good everybody's asking that question what does it mean we're just talking we'll get into a little bit more just looking at our website and if there's sweeping information how vulnerable we are for potential federal funings being so I mean it it's we don't know I mean that's why we rely on AASA and OSBA and KOSA uh to try to to try to navigate that. I feel like we get a new two or three emails

135from executive director at KOSA based on and we just got another one uh this morning on uh transgender athletes. So there's some guidance there and and James had already seen that. So um did you say what AASA what is Oh ASA is a super national superintendent. It's kind of like an SBA. Okay. So to national um superintendent so to pick back on NY's question, there's the opposite side of the rumor mills out there is like girls are being forced to have men in their locker rooms and girls are forced to participate in sports with with a born male and you know there's so there's fear on both sides and so I guess the the question is probably the same, but how are we making sure that, you know, families aren't like, "Okay, now my track

136is a big topic this week. You know, my kids are not going to be safe when I send them to a track meet somewhere." And so, how are we how I'm I'm guessing that's a huge challenge. I'm assuming you mean youth on either side of Yes. On both sides. like you know some fans is there a threat of having males participating in female sports and then is there a threat in the exclusion right and then you know there's rumors of these girls were they had no choice they had to change in the locker rooms and and I I I mean we feel I feel like our district does a good job thinking of things and giving choices to people but you know there's that scare of if my kid goes to a track me because

137that's and somewhere else. Are they going are they not going to be able to have a choice on um because we don't want anybody to feel uncomfortable in a locker room, I'm guessing. Right. And so I guess that's the hard thing of how to navigate it on all sides so everyone feels safe. Safe. Yeah. I mean, speaking from our facilities, I think we're in an incredible situation that so many schools aren't in just around the way that spaces were designed to have different types of, you know, there's shared spaces, there's private spaces, there's, you know, just general spaces like, you know, and that's a situation that a lot of older schools aren't in. Yeah. which is certainly something if we're a visiting team and we're at different facilities in other districts and buildings, you know,

138not all facilities have the same setup that we do. Um, in general though, I mean, there is really regardless of title N or any other practice. There is, you know, more and more focus on individual stalls or individual space regardless of gender. Right. Just Right. Right. I mean there's different situations where a female might not be comfortable doing and changing. There's a whole bunch of situations but then you get all this. So that's and I know that when we built our facilities we were really cautious about people feeling safe and having different options but I know like you said other facilities aren't and so I was wondering how we there are mechanisms to to do sort of a a support plan again that has to be you know we need to be aware of it

139needs to be addressed and that again could just it it could be a it could be a medical diagnosis right or it could be a um anxiety or depression kind of um diagn agnosis that really creates anxiety around changing it. Or it could be a gender situation. But if um with that relationship and and with processes that let families know that we can create a support plan that kind of thinks through all of the steps so that perhaps when the you know changing comes about, we've already identified different places with a coach or with a mentor or with an adult to help the kind of work through those processes. And I think that's a good reminder like when we do our winter sports nights or when we do our introduction to athletics or when we

140do a handbook policy that there's always really calling out that like if your child needs additional accommodations or support planning, please reach out too, right? And and make sure that that that is part of our regular process instead of being reactionary. We can be a little bit more like this is how we do things proactive. Thank you so much for that because there's a lot of different people to be informed of what what's available. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. We're making the unseen think. Yeah. And kids are uncomfortable and changing no matter what. Um I'm going to show a couple of slides. Um this is really kind of to the point around we use the words equity, diversity, and inclusion. We use EDI. Um but it's you know just the same words but the administration is using

141DEI the same words and we just kind of really looked at what are some of our core values um practices that we do for like a strategic plan kinds of work program work with community care. What are some of the things that are really like the meat of our work and and where do we currently have them under like the umbrella of equity, diversity or inclusion? And this is an example. These are things that we would say this is equity, right? Removing barriers and and providing opportunities for all kids to have the support that they need. That looks different for every kid. That's equity because we're doing what we need to do for each kid. Responding to urgent family needs, removing barriers, addressing attendance. Again, that looks different for every family and that's equity. So,

142I'm not I'm not going to read each one, but these are really kind of examples. And if equity is the buzzword that we need to be worried about right now, we're still going to keep doing this work because this is our work. This is also student advocacy, family support, wraparound teams, policy and procedure. This is community care. We don't have to call it equity, but we still get to do these things because they are core values for us, right? And that's kind of where we talk about like how can we remove the noise of the work, right? Not draw attention to us in unwanted ways and not feel at risk about doing so so much of the forward thinking work that the district does. And and if that means renaming websites or renaming titles or

143programs, that's not the crux of it. It's the it's the other stuff. And I appreciate this because I I don't know about the rest of you, but when I have conversations with people, it seems like, and not to be mean, but like the people that are not in schools and it's not part of their practice, their definition of words are different than my definition of words. For example, someone's like, "Oh, we should get rid of Title N." I'm like, "Do you even know what's in Title N?" Like, Title N is this big robust thing and it protects women from getting sexually assaulted. And they're like, "Really?" And so I think a lot of it is just people don't for me. Yeah. Well, and and they just don't understand their definition of of equity is way

144different. And so I like that you're putting it in this is what we're doing to give good examples because a lot of people just go to meaning to definitions and not just moving through like a lot of misconstrued or words that have been villainized to create a sense. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's possible and and this can be a discussion too, but I think it's possible that the words create intense feelings that take away from what we'd like to focus on like privilege, right? It can be an incredibly polarizing word. We all have privilege. Like we forget that all of us have a lot of privilege in a lot of different ways. It's not a dirty word. It's not anything like that. you know, the fact being able-bodied. I mean, I think I've used this

145example before, like I think about my mom who has had limited mobility and had had I not been with her and supporting her through so many different things, it's really easy for me to like not pay attention when I'm walking and it's uneven pavement or there's no there's no I don't know what it's called, ramps or um or handlebars when I'm walking somewhere because I don't need them. So I never have to think about him. But then when I think about who has maybe limited mobility and then I really have to be really thoughtful because I care for her, right? And I want her to be able to have the same access as I do. I can totally acknowledge that I have an abundance of privilege in many ways. And there's other spaces where I

146do not have that privilege and there's a lot of intersectionality but even that word has been villainized as we have heard. Um, yeah. So, there's a lot of misunderstanding and I'm hoping that people can have open and willing hearts to have a conversation, to have mutual understanding, and it doesn't mean mutual agreements, but you're willing to understand what particular words mean for different things. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I gave some examples under diversity. Um, again, we could we could that list could be longer if it's not all-encompassing, right? And as I look at that, I think, well, culturally responsive teaching is also another one that's been called out that we need to be aware of. So, maybe we, you know, need to call that something different. But that's really about like responding to our cultures and

147teaching in different ways so that we differentiate our teaching and we can address kids of all cultures and all ethnicities and all languages and races. It doesn't right that's the you know that we provide support for all of our identities. It's that we have policies around discrimination. Right? That's that's organ that's Oregon law and policy. Um you know we we know we can't do it all. Right? Schools can't do it all. So we partner with other organizations to provide services. That's diversity. Our dual language program, right? Teaching in different languages. So and then um another some more examples under inclusion you know we've done a lot of work in inclusion around you know bringing bringing neighborhood school programs for our students with disabilities and making an opportunities for them to attend their neighborhood schools. We've

148been on a journey of inclusive practices with with students with IEPs and how we and students with disabilities and how we serve them in grade level support that is that has nothing to do with race and ethnicity. um it has nothing to do with gender. Unfortunately though, the the disability community is starting to get attacked too. And so, you know, I don't know if there's any any community that is Yeah. But I I mean, I agree with it, but I'm just saying that I've been questioned about that as well recently. And it's Yeah. So, with these we brainstorm um Brent and I met with Joe and brainstormed a little bit about like what's our exposure on a website? What does that look like? What could that be? You know, a lot of this could be

149um housed under community care. A lot of this work um could be housed under community care. we could um focus more on, you know, family supports, advocacy, culture of care, things like that to kind of help um help refocus us maybe. Um next, I'd like to talk a little bit about our EDI committee, currently called EDI committee. There have been some questions. Yeah, there have been questions from our committee, from our committee members, and from community about whether that would continue. So that is Oregon law. It's written into Oregon law and statute. There would have to be a change in that in the legislature in order for us to not proceed with our committee. We have long the last couple of years been been doing this work voluntarily per se, right? But September 2025, just

150a few months from now, we will need to do it um according to public meeting um just like a budget committee. So there's a little increased anxiety around that with our committee. A couple of things that we um in preparation of that technically it's called the Educational Equity Advisory Committee in Oregon statute, the EAC. Um we will fall in line with that. It's called the EAC and Oregon statute. So we'll we'll have our EAC committee or educational equity committee. Um and most committees, I don't know that this increases or decreases our exposure, but most um we meet monthly, which is quite a bit. That's far more than like a budget committee or others. I think we'll probably scale that back a little bit and do more like quarterly for the committee. It may help with

151our attendance. We've we we have always struggled with like participation at the beginning of the year and it waver. Monthly commitment might just be too much for some of our members and they participate in different things. and and then really focusing on training for the committee members as we pro proceed around especially moving into the public meeting venue around what that looks like as a committee member um what their protections are of the community member and um how we plan the run the the process in the system but I will say that the um participation has been pretty consistent of the folks that come I mean I think at the at the beginning there's a lot of names and people do come and then like the second or third meeting like that group is pretty

152set and we have a consistent number of people and this year I'd say is our best year for consistency too. Yeah. And not just the consistency but like the engagement is really strong which feels really promising and exciting and people are like I want to step in. I want to do this. I feel that you've done a really beautiful job of structuring and in a way that feels like people it people can step into that courageous space. people ask a lot of questions when people don't know people are before people wouldn't ask because I think we all have this thing about like I don't want to sound uninformed so I don't ask questions but people ask a lot of questions and people also like really advocate and kind of push and feel yeah I feel

153that those things have been really really really good promising will you remind me um the district's been doing it voluntarily But what goes into um rule for us come 2025 is it the is it a board me a student I can't there's a certain group that there's no there's no um limitation or requirement on the number of members there is something unless it's changed there is something about a board member but we can look at the language when that comes um we have to follow a public meeting and the recommendation is um a member of the EDI committee or the advisory committee um is on budget committee that it was the budget it was the budget committee that's and it was the budget committee that I was remembering and and they are advocating which is

154like for example so this year a couple of things that we did this year as well we have uh co-chairs that facilitate which is a really wonderful especially awesome that's a good idea and um um the the the kind of strategic priorities ities that are in the strategic plan around equity priorities. Um, we spent some time having the committee kind of focus in what would you what would they like to focus in on whether it be education, learning, advocacy, opportunity and the one that was selected was diverse perspectives of curriculum and um uh demographics and course demographics and what students are taking and how that looks in an equitable grade which has been awesome, super great. Um so not only did they move forward with like a kind of committee structure again co-chairs but really

155focused in so that the work of the committee is also connected to the strategic plan and priority committees which has been great. I think the more years that have gone by, there's more alignment and like understanding of what the structure is. And not just that, there's been a whole lot more of buy in of people, which feels really promising to have that buy in from not just community members. like we have a community member feels false like they stay and participate and it's really they come from falls well they reside in but falls they reside in yes but they yeah they live in but falls but they're have been a teacher oh okay participating but they're so committed I mean they go home it's late and they have an hour drive home and they stay

156participate and you expressed is yeah we're engaged. Yeah. Student we have we have four student representatives and schedule and athletics and stuff has been hard but we have two that have come quite regularly. We put them on the agenda um to give a student report. So really kind of like following some of those kind of processes that the board follows too. Um I I think it gives a power and voice to the students too and I feel like the students feel it's a safe space. Um so it's been a good transition. It's been a good evolution. So I guess my question is how do we it sounds like it because I was on the very first year we did the equity. It was very, you know, it was rough, but um how do we continue

157this momentum now that it's public? And how do we help that committee continue to blossom and and grow? What can the board do? You probably don't know the answer yet, but what can the board do to help ease people's minds to help Does that make sense? Um I would love to pose that question to the committee. I think that's really smart and especially when we talk about training that they need too. I think that's a place that the board could support around um training that that maybe is provided or supported a board member has support with. Okay. That a advisory committee might not have the same level of access to but maybe the board can help support that in some way. Um I think other thing we have the benefit of learning to other districts

158that have gone before us in terms of public meeting and such. So really kind of listening to those stories. We've got support from KOSA for example around districts our size that are getting ready to implement a like there's tips and tricks to say tricks. Scratch that from the record. um tips around um an executive session similar to a board meeting where uh potentially the committee could could have a space to do some conversation that's not public. I think also, you know, we're a smaller district that doesn't get a ton of public participation sometimes. So, I think we'll have to navigate that. But I also think there'll be times where where it might not be an issue. And I think something else that the equity committee has asked about is, you know, sometimes I love that

159there's opportunities for them to help figure out solve for a problem. And I think that they're al they also have a similar question like you. They want to learn more about the board. What is the structure? How does that work? How how are they interrelated or interconnected to the board and the rest of the school system? which are again I think that I think it's been smart that it's been Kelly has been very wise to just kind of do bite-sized pieces because the school system is a beast. It's a lot. Um so trying to create those like case studies of like real things for example the review of curriculum that has been something that has been really wellreceived and there's a lot of questions and there's a lot of curiosity and then after there's been

160discussion I mean it takes some time after a minute they they'll say can we have Anthony Lambert come in and explain how do people choose curriculums was like how does this happen and people you know we make assumptions about how many things from a school system work and it's been really helpful to say actually do a really great learning opportunity and this is how this functions and then this process Tiffany looks at curriculum we have opportunity for the public to come and look at it there's a team of folks that come and also look at the curriculum and then the board also looks at it and then they make a decision and you know, it gets voted. So, there's they've gone through like this process and that's the most recent one that people have been

161like, oh, and people are starting to connect the dots and that's a question that they're consistently asking of themselves. What is the connection interconnection of this new upand cominging equity and the board? Yeah. Yeah, that was so actually this is that's a great transition. These are all standards or curriculum kind of areas that the committee has expressed interest in or dug into. We are the the TESL standards or social emotional standards. That's something really pretty unique for Oregon. And when we talk about like kind of having that as a a new area of concern Oregon has standards that are written into into um our requirements for division 22. I think that I'm actually not sure it's a division 22 standard, but we are we as of July 1st, we needed to have a curriculum resources

162and a plan to implement that. Um there's a lot of opportunity to interweave that with other content. We're preparing to do the adoption for the 2024 social science standards. All of those pieces under there are part of the social science standard. Was very timely for our committee to look at the new standards and to have Tiffany share at the last committee meeting around that process for social science that social science is an area where we can see a lot of impact on representation, diverse perspectives, um stories of of perspect unique perspect first person stories. So they were very interested in this and and they do want to know kind of they kind of want that advisory role. So in into this they are preparing um something to bring to the board around a process that

163an advisory committee member always be part of a curriculum adoption process. Um and so that's something that they have this they're going to prepare a a suggestion for the board to consider whether that fall in policy or school practice policy procedure. So have they looked into this is because this is something I'm very interested in. Have they looked into incorporating how like how incorporating this curriculum, how to save time and help um the teachers and everybody incorporated because it's like huge when you bring in curriculum that's so has this group looked at that aspect of it or not really it's been the curriculum itself. Okay. It's been really the standards around what we will be teaching. So yeah, but I think that a win for this has been looking at all of the standards and

164them going, "Oh my gosh, all of like teachers have to make sure all of these standards are in these lessons." I think the level of empathy and awareness has definitely increased and I think that they've been more um surprised by the level of by the deeper understanding of difficulty that it takes to be a teacher and to implement and provide or follow through with all of the standards. they haven't had like a lot of solutions to that because they've been like, "Holy cow, this is a lot." Um, which I think it is a win because I think so often we can be we can look at educators and be like, "What did you do?" You know, whatever my limited worldview is. Um, versus there's been a sense of growth of empathy and going, "So, how

165do you figure this out? Cuz there's only this much time in the day. There's only this. There's all that." and they haven't even like really dug into all of the various daily interruptions, right? There's reading, there's this, there math, you're pulling out for this. I mean, it's complicated, but I think that they have at least an increased level of like awareness and understanding and compassion. And I think that there's also a level of respect of, wow, there's a lot that need goes on into this. And that's a huge first step, right? realizing that realizing that that is a challenge and then sometimes you get these light bulb moments and you're like oh my gosh that might help this challenge. So just knowing that the challenge is there is a huge huge step. Growing in that

166awareness as you're saying is really important. And again I think from the groups that I because I participated in various groups most of the time it's oh my gosh how are we doing? They're not through solution yet. They're still in the wow phase. Well I don't know if there's very many people in the solution phase. I so I was just wondering conversation wise. Okay. Next one. Yeah. Okay. Um, so transitioning again, Oregon uh statute and Oregon law still has us following um every student belongs the rule and the board policy. Part of that is bias response. That's still nothing has changed with all the other noise. We still follow Oregon law and Oregon statute with that. That's just a quick reminder of that. But um the next piece is our bias response. Last year we

167shared about some data around our bias response and some gaps. Um so you can go to the next slide. Um the if you recall there's a couple of ways that people can report an official incident. Um one is through an anonymous reporting tool. There is an option to give your name but it is an anonymous option. Um we have really worked hard to kind of put this mechanism out there more right. um out there in like all the all the platforms, but also like back of bathroom doors at the high school and really trying to, you know, kind of think about different audience, especially um you know, so we have kind of signage at more elementary level and office space and common areas and then places where teenagers or high schoolers might be able to

168have a quiet moment to see that. We didn't see we we have seen increased incident reporting, right? and and so that's either more incidents are happening or we've done a better job of allowing opportunity for it to be reported. It can also be reported, you know, via phone or conversation or and any of the normal practices when we have adults or students telling a an adult teacher or a staff member that something has happened. Um, and all of our kind of investigatory stuff around behavior. Sometimes we dig into a behavior situation and we discover, hey, there's some discrimination or bias in this, too. So those are all part of the mechanisms. So these are some things that we feel like we did a um some improvement on. We create there was a matrix that middle

169school and high school both used included in their parent handbook, student handbook and kind of disciplinary matrix. Um PHS as you saw really kind of embraced this culture of care and equity and opportunity and Joe did a beautiful job of some of the um video campaigns early in the year. So increasing exposure in that way. Um and then really the the rule requires rightfully so it requires educational intervention too not just disciplinary right it's just like any other disciplinary action it doesn't necessarily change behavior so really focused on the educational that intent versus impact in the educational envir um intervention. So expanding, what does that look like? Giving resources so our administrators aren't scrambling with what the inter the the educational intervention could be. We're giving them a menu of choices or providing some resources

170for that. Um we all report in power school now. That was something that we had a little bit of a gap in last year so we can capture the same data. Next steps um a matrix for K5 having that be included in the same way in K5 and how that might overlap with bullying and harassment. um more progressive responses, right? So, first incident, second incident, third incident. So, more progression on that. Um continuing our awareness campaigns and then really we've got some great opportunities with curriculum resources to integrate those educational opportunities. Wayfinder we we're finding has all kinds of different resources and and connecting those in a more concrete way. So, like here's the type of incident, here's the lesson, here's the type of incident, here's the lesson. So it can be way more streamlined

171for administrators to kind of give that as a response some next steps for that. Am I am I understanding this correctly? This is just for students. It's for anyone anyone but this is includes like yeah we adult to adult adult like incidents um power school incidents that we log in power school involve a student. Okay. We don't log a p school incident for adult to adult. But if we have two staff members, let's say as an example, and there's an issue, that can still be reported. It's going to be handled and investigated or different. It's not going to go into power school, but we might still count to this one. And are those numbers included here? Uh, they are on the next slide. Oh, yes. And does Wayfinder, this is a weird question, does Wayfinder

172help with adult situations, too? It does have adult seal. It does have adult resources. Yeah. Right. We're kind of still uncovering all of we're still uncovering all the resources for Wayfinder. And the other thing is that because Wayfinder is organ based or maybe it's not because it's organ based, but they're continuing to respond and create. Um so even pieces that we um there are still new things being launched as they get further into stuff and then they're sharing, you know, new elements and new components that and it's not all encompassing, right? There's some really great resources from from other locations that are important to provide those resources to. This is some data that we have to for just this year as of uh a week or so ago. We have 45 incidents logged in power

173school. So that's going to be an incident that involves a student. It's all grades. I don't have that um broken down for you right now, but we do have that. Not surprising. um our our biggest uh our biggest concern is racial ins insensitivity and insensitivity and slurs. That's um what we saw in last year's data also. We do have more incidents reported now. But again, is that because we've done a better job or we have more incidents. Um derogatory language is very similar, but we have that called out separately. And then harassment of some sort based on culture identity. This includes students with disabilities and um harassment or discrimination around a disability. These are some of our big patterns. We really struggle with students minimizing the impact of of that behavior. I was just joking.

174My bad um are some good examples of that, justifying it in that way. That's where that educational intervention is so important and why it's important for us to have a progressive response. Right? We can't just we can't have that same conversation with the same kid over and over again when we're having the same behavior. There has to be a progression there. Um we do have repeat offenders. Um so um we know that that further suggests that we need some more teeth in that. Um and then there is some mob mentality or group behavior in some of that. um that again is a culture kind of piece and maybe and sometimes in a classroom piece right so really targeting where those are happening. One thing that um we are one thing that's still uh something to

175consider the way we log it in powers school we don't collect the identity of the victim. So it's logged under the perpetrator. Um, and in that we can, you know, there's some anecdotal pieces, but we still aren't capturing in this way if a particular student is disproportionately targeted. Does that make sense? Um, and that still is something that I think, you know, anecdotally, do our administrators know if a student is really struggling in that way? Yes. And we hope so. But like when we drill into the data, that's still a gap. Yeah, that's questions because I'm going to switch gears a little bit to some data on courses. I I really appreciate um you know having the insight and I think we in the future let's compare between years um so that we can see

176that and I don't think that should be something that we should be afraid of. I'm not suggesting that's why it's not in here, but I my sense would be that we are having more incidents because they're being reported more frequently, which is what you want really, right? you know um so yeah I think just that's my yeah I think I think um quality of data is important with this one in terms of like where is it happening you know um at which locations and this is a small sample size so I understand we don't want to identify any students or maybe even schools specifically but I hope that we're looking at that just ways to we can have this by school. It It is primarily middle school and high school. Yeah. Makes sense. Uhhuh. And

177um I think middle school and high school have uh a little bit tighter systems for documenting it. Again, elementary can be a little messy if it's discrimination and bias or if it's harassment and bullying. So, I think there's probably some overlap in reporting from elementary, but I also think that's why we have a heavier middle school, high school. Yeah. And and primarily middle school, honestly. Um and I'm happy we do have I mean I'm not happy to share that but but but I'm happy to share the um breakdown by school. I think it's all you know it's it's a it's we're growing and learning you know and I recognize that I think this is I think next year will be a good opportunity to really compare. it'll probably be a better basis of comparison too

178with now that so I appreciate the outreach that's been done and all the efforts that went into making sure and I know that was something we talked a lot about last year people even know about this you know um and so it feels good to know that that's out there more and just keep that up maybe and this may not be appropriate at this time um um is is a report like This may be appropriate at the jab meeting because really this is a core component of a culture and of our school and we're looking at different things from year to year. Maybe having this type of report included in those so that there's some comparisons that we can see and track. Yeah. Okay. Not to change gears, but we also want to share a

179little bit about program and course uh demographics. This is another part that our um advisory committee um has been really interested in that's part of that same um piece around diversity in our curriculum and um we were able to pull out some information for you tonight. There's a lot more that could be shared, so please don't hesitate to ask about certain things that you'd like to see at a future meeting, too. This is our just general nothing around. This is just general participation in our CTE courses. We have great opportunities for kids to to take different courses and our CTE program and really identify different ways. So this was just interesting about numbers in our program. Right? So this is simply numbers. The next slide um breaks it down a little bit more by focal

180groups. Um this is any um partic any number of student that falls into that focal group and whether they've taken one or more PTE courses in um in their high school career. It doesn't tell us how many courses they've taken or if they're a a completer in that CTE. It's just that they have participated in a CTE course. Right? So 91 almost 92% of our students with disabilities have taken at least a CTE course. A next level of this would be like, well, how many courses are they taking? What course are they taking? Right? That's some stuff we can do as well. So, by and large, most of our populations are participating in our CTE courses. We have lower representation from our black and African-American students. That's something we, you know, that's why we look

181at this data. Why? What what are they participating in? What are they not participating in? What do we wonder about that? What could we do about it? Yeah. Next, um, transitioning a little bit, you know, we all know math has been a really big focus, um, and area of growth and and need for us. So, I'm doing some comparisons here in nth grade math courses. Of course, students um, by by ethnicity, what math class they're taking as they enter nth grade is on your left. And then same courses um if they are a student in our EL program or a student with disabilities what course they are taking. We are about pretty much very close. We're about 50/50 white and um Hispanic and then small populations of our multi-race and other ethnicities. So um kind

182of paying attention to like that would be make sense that we might have 5050 distribution on those. Statistics make me so sad. So statistics is not typically a freshman course. Okay. Yeah. It is a pathway that kids might take later um when they're kind of transitioning to pre-calculus or geometry. Right. overlating just about the statistics. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. Oh, gotcha. Sorry. Yes. Yes. Geometry is not typically freshman. It's not either. It's more of an advanced classroom for um fresh. So again, we we talked about this last year and it's definitely something that is on uh our our work. Um this is very driven on student um teacher forecasting, teacher recommendations and then data, right? And really having practices and procedures in place where it is data driven and student advocating, right?

183Math might not be a great example of that, but we always want a practice where students can advocate to be placed in an advanced placement class, right? And we want to be more on the equitable grading practices that ensure there is um objective reasoning that places students in our classes and less on the subjective. Attendance and behavior shouldn't be part of the class that we put kids in as they enter math. And really nth grade math starts at sixth grade math. You said the right side is ELLL or the the red on this side. The red is students with disabilities and the blue is um students in our EL programs. Fundamentals of algebra would be the lower math as a freshman incoming math. We would really like them to come in and take algebra 1

184as freshman. But that's a systemic growth that we need to see overall in math. That's a that's a K12 systemic um benchmark. The next one um is advanced classes. So the other end of the spectrum and all the same things apply. That depends on what happened in K5 math. That depends on what they were placed in sixth grade math and so on. But we do three years of math is required. So we do see what the demographics might look like if somebody chose to take four years of math. What demographics of what populations of kids are are taking our upper level math. Right. So algebra 2, pre-calculus, and calculus. Is this all grades? All grades. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So again, we really want to see an even distribution or or on populations of kids

185enrolled in our classes that are at or above the population of that demographic in our schools. Right? So if we're about 25% mixed race or multi-race, we'd like to see 25% of our kids enrolled in a class. Algebra 2, as we know, right? We would like all kids to take algebra 2 as they um prepare to graduate. And if they're wanting to go on to a post-secary four-year school, they need algebra 2. We would really like we do see, you know, about 5050 on the Hispanic and white in algebra 2. I was going to say the algebra 2 looks about in line with our with our district demographic. So that seems like that's right. This is where you might see and I don't have statistics on this list too that could be something that that

186would be a good addition next year but this is where we would also see statistics as you know a venue for kids to take maybe in lie of algebra 2 or in lie of pre-calculus if someone's going on to pre-calculus. We do see our Hispanic or our white num our white population slightly outnumbered by our Hispanic population in pre-calculus. But then the opposite when we get on to calculus. So more of our fewer of our Hispanic kiddos are continuing on after pre-calculus. How do the numbers of our kids in calculus compare to the norm? average high school either in Oregon or is that pretty low that participation? Well, it's been getting lower. Okay. Yeah. So, we're I mean that's something that we're looking at and that that's why we need to build up that track

187because we've been declining over the year. We used to have two calculus classes. Um Yeah. Several years ago. Yeah. Um and now we barely have one. I'm just thinking who's going to be building our bridges in 20 years. This is kind of And it goes back to having our eighth graders be ready to enter in algebra one. The less kid the fewer kids or even geometry. Yeah. Or geometry. Yeah. Well, and looking at financial literacy types, not every kid on track, you know, to take calculus, but definitely some a broader advanced math type of course. Yeah. Uh the last uh slide I have is similar advanced math but by ESL and special education. Can you flip forward? Um so same courses our populations of English learners and non-English learners and then our populations of students

188with disabilities and non students with disabilities. So there are some pretty stark differences here. Yeah. And this is a um I would venture to say around accessing the content and the academic um rigor. Uh-huh. Um, but we we do have much lower representation of our English learners and our students with disabilities. I wanted to take not to breeze past this because please ask any questions, but we were awarded uh another fast and furious immigrant and refugee student success plan grant. They created a new success plan around immigrant and refugee students and in that they offered a very last minute success plan grant for populations to apply for school districts to apply but it was also based on the number of recent ars. So our population of newcomers is pretty high as compared to our student

189population total population. So we applied we were awarded fast and furious. We have $150,000 to spend by June 30th. Oh my god. It's like yay. It's like a blessing and a burden. I'm like yay and but one of the products that we are looking at in this because of this is an opportunity where we need to do some more one-time costs versus staffing or programmatic changes. We just don't have time for that. We will be doing some summer summer blast work before June 30th. But really we have to look at some what are some one-time purchases that can really bolster that population. So we're looking at a really exciting product um called um a communication hub where a student example we'd have kind of a onetoone whereas an immigrant or an newcomer student that needs

190the language translation will have their own product that they take from course to course to course and in presentation mode it will automatically pick up through Bluetooth Wi-Fi everything that the course teacher the teacher is saying in English and translate it through a little tiny earbud. It'll interpret it. It interprets. Sorry. Yeah. Um and um that will really improve the rigor of academic content that those kiddos are getting right now, right? With and and we want teachers to be sheltering instruction and doing all of the best practices that help our language learners. But this also will improve access to the content through interpretation of their language. Eventually, we'll want to, you know, have that as a scaffolding tool. And eventually, you know, we'll want to help transition them in their English language development, but this

191can really help with some gaps when we're losing some of that academic content for them. Does it do everything that's said in the classroom or is it just what the teacher says? We um we're pilot we're going to pilot a product um actually two different products. Um the communication hub, we don't have uh one yet. Um but it it's intended to trans interpret from the teacher. Okay. Because it would be nice for the classroom because the students ask questions or if they're doing group work or whatever, but maybe that's too much. And I'm also curious what it does translate, right? Because if there's if there is um presentations and slides and the teacher I mean we hope that the teacher's not just reading everything on the slide deck but what happens otherwise there is a

192gap there. Yeah. There's some translation devices too where they can even take a picture of something and have it do a transcription translation. one of the what about um because I know individualized support onetoone is such a hot topic right now especially with AI it seems like that's a big opportunity because sometimes it's I mean what happens in the classroom is very important but so many times it's what do I have access to later on that I you know using a Chromebook right do I have access to a one-on-one tutoring situation that can then translate the material also in an academically relevant way, right? So, I can access the rigor of the material in my native language. We're going to try a couple of products because we do need it to be Chromebook accessible so

193that they can use a Chromebook. We can't necessarily rely on a student having their own phone and we have to be cautious about putting apps. Yes. On a student's phone. So, there's a couple of different ways. There are some translation devices that a student could use in that sense and then they could use an interpretation device. It's also going to help us with like communication with counselors, communication and enrollment, you know, conversations in the office. Yeah. And we are really called personal translation and interpretation devices. So, we're just kind of exploring that. It's exciting. Yeah. It might, you know, might not be the perfect fix, but it's something that this grant could support. Yeah. I want to be a tester. I know. Yeah, Erica has one a personal translation um earbud part where you know

194two different people wear one um and she's really happy with it so far. Fantastic. I sent it out with counselors and stuff. Yeah. Cool. Um that's kind of the end of our our presentation tonight. Again, there's other data that we could bring and I know y'all have seen some of the academic data and attendance data disagregated. Um, but knowing that we needed to spend a chunk of time on some of the other work, we narrowed it down to to really looking at this coursework. But please let me know if you'd like data to be brought to another meeting around a different area. I think one of the things I I went back and looked at our equity policy and one of the pieces of that was um measuring comparing our student demographics to our staff

195demographics. I'm sure we're probably planning on having that be maybe that can be a part of a future just equity report um for the board. Um but an update on that and it would be really helpful where that representation is at that it's really easy to be like we have a diverse population but if our diverse population is um administrative or classified classified assistants and the kitchen staff and the folks in janitorial I think that you know it it can be misleading and for us to continue to bolster that representation at the different levels and by school and will be incredibly helpful. But this is really it's exciting, you know, all of this soon and I know it's always we'd like it to be more robust and I'm sure there's a lot of things you'd

196like to be more robust, but this is we're making progress. You know, I'm seeing reports now that I haven't seen yet in my time on the board. And that's, you know, I think understanding especially the participation stuff. Um I I keep think going back to what we know about kids who participate in CTE and what it means to graduate. Um and so it's not surprising to see that we have this level of participation because our graduation rates. Um I will say there's also a mechanism that will um the advisory committee also showed an interest in what about athletics, what about extracurricular schools in DECA, what about FFA like how can we measure that? Yeah. Um there is that's not something that we collect universally in all of those areas. Some but not all. But there

197is a way to do that in power school to do that. And thank you for bringing that up because I think we've talked about it. But yeah, it's action. I mean, be part of our graduation statistics and then even our on track statistics. Who's on track? Where are they participating? Yes. Really interesting. Slice and slice the data. Yeah. Awesome. Any other questions for me? I just want to thank Kelly. I mean, this could be a full-time job. She has a few other umbrellas that she has under her uh duties here. and um just really grateful for her to stay up on all the executive orders, what that means, and continue to focus on. So, yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for staying longer and later you stay longer and later. Uh do I have anything

198else we need to talk about? I just want to say one last thing. I know that this work can feel from someone like me can feel really slow and painful like we're not getting we're not doing enough but it's really nice to be able to have this data to continue to go oh my gosh even for like a year or three years or four years or before things can get kind of a little bit meddled and I know that it creates a lot more work for you as Brent said you have multiple other programs that you're overseeing and supporting but this is really really grateful and um happy grateful that we are looking you know we're having honest conversations. I think that it can also be we can sw the other way and not look

199at this and just pretend everything is really beautiful and and there's a lot of good things to celebrate and there's a lot of good to continue to be done. So I'm really grateful for your partnership and support in this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. We are journ to sign up and meet with