001nationisible and justice for all. Okay. Remarks for the good of the school. Well, I would just like to say that we had a meeting on Friday afternoon. Uh, I had a meeting with the PTO group at Chataroy Elementary and the Chatter Roy Elementary PTO and uh and the Rotary Club are joining forces to do a fundraiser that we haven't done before, but it's going to be a state feed on the 14th of May. And uh we we have a a member in the Rotary Club who's done that before up in OMAC. A representation of our club went up there last week and watched OMAC do it. And it's quite an event. It's going to be at the at the Vine over on Main Street Park. There will be a five till or excuse me 6
002till 8:00 event on the 14th. The purpose of that this is it's the first step of a three-year program of fundraising that we're doing with the PTO group. What we're doing is trying to raise $5,000 with the combined effort of those two groups each year and to also apply for a $5,000 matching grant from the Rotary Foundation, which I've done some research on and I think we'll get that. So, that's what we're going to do. We're going to do that three years in a row and this this steak try is the first step in it. I I was really so impressed with the enthusiasm of the PTO group. You go to you go to a meeting like that and all you see I mean these these ladies are just young moms. I I expected you
003to walk into a PTO group with a bunch of older people because a lot of times that's what I get at these meetings and that wasn't the case at all. Oh man. Oh man. Enthusiasm is just incredible. And they're going to help us with the setup and the tear down of the event. Really an exciting time. I just This is kind of a step that we haven't taken before in fundraising efforts to actually partner with an organization that supports the school. The way that we got involved to begin with is because PTO in the past has always bought the the t-shirts for the literacy program at Chedroy Elementary and this year they didn't have the funds to do it. So, the Rotary Club funded the $2,000 for that to happen. That brought the groups closer
004together. But it's just exciting stuff to see the the partnering going on. So, I just wanted to share that with you. It's going to be the 14th of May. It's a Wednesday night and it's going to be at the Vine. The Vine has uh business where they for the most part serve glasses of wine and uh and then we're going to have a steak, baked potato, and some French bread and seafood salad is going to be the meal. Anyway, 35 bucks ahead. you buy a table of pen, it's 30 bucks ahead. So, but that's that's really an exciting step forward for our partnering with that group. Other thoughts in the crowd Awesome day. Those you guys don't know when everything all You know, another thing I just I thought about saying something about this and
005not saying something about it, but I'm going to I'm going to say something. Um, we have been fortunate because of the support of the community to pass all of our 11. That's that's an essential part of running a school. When that doesn't happen, it's really, really a problem. And when it doesn't happen twice, it's a bigger problem. And we just got news today in the spokesman review that Mary Walker School District, a district with 529 students, failed their levy for the second time. And what that means is the loss of five to seven teachers and probably another 10 certified staff people. It's one thing if that happens once, but when it happens twice, it's really really a disaster. I before I started working with my home district which is really Riverside I was working with
006Mary Walker and they're development of service project for the kids and I'll tell you what a lot of the really really good teachers left a number of years ago when things were failing every time I can't even imagine what the impact of this is going to be in terms of the size of the classes take place. They're going to they're going to have they said in the paper as many as 50 kids in a class. I guarantee you they'll have some class and that's just you just can't manage it. So, it just I just want to share that with you because we are looking at bonds and capital fund levies and all of this stuff. Man, I'll tell you what, that that base levy has got to pass every time we do it because it's
007what keeps us basically in business. We absolutely got to have the support in that. Thank you to those here present who voted to support that. It is really essential. Any other remarks for this school? I need a motion to adopt the agenda. Discussion. All in favor say I. I. Approval of the minutes from the previous meeting, March 26, 2025, which was a regular meeting. I need a motion. Any discussion? All in favor say I. Opposed. Approval of the consent agenda. I need a motion. Any discussion? All in favor say I. Oppos. Ken Russell. Superintendent report. Well, if it's okay with you folks, I'd like to kind of weave it in when we have these presentations rather than doing a separate because I mean I think we intentionally uh put a lot on I'm excited to
008hear from Mandy and the team and Clint and then Jack and and Lance are here from Kry because this could be a little longer of a discussion around the eating and Kool-Aid topic. We've never really gone to the granular level of discussion in the open meeting and there needs to be some education and communication about that. So knowing that length I probably will take take so you just step in for lengthy report since the rest of us don't know anywhere near as much about it as you do whatever it is we appreciate. Okay. Thank you Mandy. Mandy Burn outdoor committee. Here we go. I'm Manny Burns. I high school. I'm Jake. I teach learning committee. That's kind of what we point ourselves. over the last couple of years a couple of different grants that um
009the first school Washington. It was good though, you know. Yeah, I think um actually this year we talked about it a little bit in the fall. Um next year we'll be going in June the end of school year, but um yeah, the first year we went the same We went over the corner. [Music] So, and then the second we had and it's outdoors for all. I applied for it last year and $4,000 and yeah, so couple things that we bought were the shed. So Mandy was kind of talking about before going to Home Depot and all the different um some of the landscaping supplies. So like that's shovels, rakes, benches, those sort of things. We have things that students can engage with. Uh education materials. So there's curriculum that students can learn um that we
010have available for them. Uh algebra classroom materials. So that's like clipboards, um binoculars, compasses, um really ways that we can engage students. Uh dog way stations. So really what we're trying to do is um really get a lot of engagement stuff from the community. So if like people want to bring their dogs, they'll have a place that they can poop and put in the garbage. Uh bat boxes which I didn't know about until today talking about the yeah special boxes for um and um the educational times for the forest. So, I don't know if you guys have been back there recently, but it's really cool. So, like when you go to like the zoo and it talks about the different features of animals and um educating students about their habitat, what they eat, those sort
011of things. We have nice science back there. I mean really the the cool part for us is that we have been talking about this for almost like two years now and we're finally starting to see some of this money and things get into process and get going a little bit and being able to see the shed out there and being able to see some things going on. It's it's pretty cool. So, um, it's just a great way to engage the community and get everybody involved. Again, focus kind of there. We are focused on the main campus that we want to be able to bring everyone together, but we're Now they'll have their own and another big did a great job at our but they also cut out all that story that we had. So we
012will be trying to bring that back. and we're going to our go together. This is what we've got for our set up and then some of the We're going to also want an We're out there also outside. Yeah. So, memory lane, we have all our different trails. So when you go back by the middle school we're going to call that memory lane or memory we have family highlight pictures of their original homestead trying to highlight some of the district and also have some old pictures of school together and create want to try and honor that. A lot of those old things get lost as grandparents take their families on that trail. Um so the youth ecology education for restoration is a grant. It's not a grant that we are applying for. Um their own grant
013and but they were looking for middle schoolers middle school to partner with um they do a lot of work on the west side of the state. They have SH school in town and they wanted um a middle school to partner with and so um our name was kind of submitted because of our work outdoor learning. Um they contacted us to see if we wanted to work with them. Um and what it is um is curriculum a fully full out curriculum unit one unit um unit that would be done in the fall and it is to restore um in town it's to bring back natural habitat to sh forest but um the Washington native plants So we need to get rid of species bring in native species um and it's a phenomenon based and um students
014would prepare a proposal native plant society um research plants native plants off the area their area work in Um they ask for a threeyear commitment class for two years. Um you get all the material materials they provide all the plants. Um they come out the teachers teach the curriculum um every day period every day. And then um times they send it to the volunteers out one day to clear out It goes well. Just a big thank you Mandy for all your hard work and we want all of your involvement. Love the leadership collectively around it. You think about our mission statement to educate our students and better our community. We were just talking today about this week being a really good example of using those two parts of our mission together and involving our students.
015But what a great example. forest on your campus and you're actually using it for student experiential learning which I you know as teacher as teachers it really pumps up the student engage so you don't want them sitting in desk all day and so they're into it they have a lot of hands I think the most powerful part is the community you can partner with different generations different. So the clean up yesterday. And then lastly, we're just working a lot on what can we do for rather than what this is. Thank you. [Applause] Next we've got Clint Riverside High School and Career Revenue. Right, Clint. All right. Yeah, I'm Clint. I'm the principal here at the high school. Thanks for being here tonight and thanks for for uh choosing our location tonight. uh can talk to
016you about a couple ideas to maybe share with you guys and uh you know I really am proud of a lot of the things we got going on right now. I'm super excited to share I could probably talk for a while. We tried to narrow the focus to our college and career uh readiness program because it's hit home right now for our seniors. Um we have a pretty intensive program. Students end up with with high school credit for being in our college and career program. It's not just the high school, starts at the middle school and even the elementary this week. In fact, tomorrow we have a career fair being hosted at the middle school and that kind of starts that pro uh process of getting to know maybe what you might be interested in
017later. Uh when we get to the high school, it's a pretty comprehensive approach. 9 through 12, every grade kind of transitions to a new layer, a new level of depth and getting closer to that graduation goal of everyone having a postsecary plan. And what I really like about our program is it's got options. We're not sitting here, you know, shoving a four-year degree down their throat and saying that college or bus. We recognize that our students are each unique and their pathways are all going to be individually tailored for what what they want to do. And uh with that, we try to expose them to as many different opportunities as possible. So we're getting guest speakers in all the time. we are, you know, given the option of four year, the option of two-year apprenticeship
018program, uh, right into the workforce depending on what they want to do. And so really proud of that program and and what it does for students. I'm going to share just briefly three quick things today. Um, the first one is a little bit about FAFSA. Um, so I'm sure you've heard Ken talk about it, uh, but it's a federal aid program that's available for students um, entering any sort of postsecary plan. And so we just in fact filmed a really cool video. I'm excited for it to come out um with three of our students that did the FAFSA for different reasons. One u one of those students who was going to go to a four-year college no matter what. They knew that from the time they were young and they were all set to go.
019So that particular student of filling out the FASA opened up a number of scholarship opportunities uh for them. Second option or second student was a student who with the help of some of this a program was able to attend Washington State University, live on campus through the full meal deal as opposed to the prior plan at home and the town of Spokane Community College. So great opportunity there. And then the third student is still undecided on what he's going to do. Um but his choices are u he's looking at an apprenticeship program where start in January. So have to do some work to make sure he's prepared for that. He's also looking at Pokane Community College welding program and both of those also are supported by this program. So, pretty awesome deal there. As part
020of the reason I mentioned the FAA is the the work we do and just for our students who are part of our CTR program, Riverside High School, if they fill out the FAFSA, um we have a scholarship program um supported by Launch Northwest uh an outfit in town if you've heard of that or seen their logos popped up where our students get $2,500 to further their education, whatever that may be. And that's per year and it's renewable. I just talked to a couple students who are freshman in um in college at SC right now and they just got the email, oh my gosh, I get $2,500 if I just fill this out again. So, it's pretty cool deal. Um and uh last thing on the FAFSA, it was just down today at the uh College
021Success Foundation lunchon where they referenced Riverside High School as we're have the highest FA completion percentage of any district in the area as we stand right now. We still got some work to do. We got to uh we got to continue that. But we have a lot of students that are taking advantage of not only the aid but also the scholarship that come with it. So wanted to highlight that. Uh the second thing just real quick is that I'll I'll hand out some of these. Yeah. There's two two things here. We're not going to go through all of them, but maybe you can take it home and take a look at it later. Something I'm super proud of our teachers for committing to is expanding our dual credit offerings here at the high school. So
022dual credits are um those credits available for college and high school credit at the same time. And so you'll get two different sheets that will come around. Um one is what's called college in the high school. So these are courses where they're getting straight college credit um or uh their the classes that they're already in. I'll get it. I'll explain it real quick. Uh, no. So, the one with the with the Ram logo on the top says Riverside High School here real quick. I guess they both say the same thing. Let's start with this one. The one that only has on one page. Uh so those are our college and the high school uh courses. So those would be your more typical core type classes for the most part. English, math, social studies, those sorts
023of things. And we have a lot of um opportunities for students on both the honors track and just general uh courses as well. So, if you just glance, there's we work primarily with central Washington, Eastern Washington, ton of credits. Cool thing about them is they're all free. Um, we like to talk to our students about the fact that they get college credits from having a teacher that they know. A lot of times, you know, it might be Mr. Wood teaching them pre-calculus who they already know. They maybe had him as a football coach or maybe he taught algebra one and he knows them. He has a relationship as opposed to those college math classes where you go and you might just be a a name or a number for someone in there. So, great opportunities
024there. The fact that they're free, um the uh estate grant is super helpful because cost of college credits can be pretty expensive. And then on the other sheet that has the front and the back. Two things on that one. On one side is the actual courses that are available through our career and technical ed programs. Um again, those are free if you just glance. Obviously, welding, a business, marketing, yearbook, financial math, and engineering. We're all the time trying to grow those offerings. And I mentioned at the start, but our teachers are kind of the driving force behind that. We're not going to them and saying, "Hey, we have to do this. You need to do this." They're coming to, "Hey, how else can we support our students?" And it does take extra work for them
025to get their course subscriptions approved by the instructors at these schools and run it through the deans and then we have to work with those colleges to get it um get it dialed in. So, a lot of work from our teachers to get this for them. Then the last If you just flip it over, there's a number of certifications that are uh industry recognized that come with some of those classes. So, a lot of our students will take things like I mean obviously the um the first aid certification, PPR certification, but also the food handlers and even the forklift certification and they'll apply that right now to jobs that they have. they'll get either, you know, additional job responsibilities, open up for new jobs they could get, or even just sometimes it's a raise with
026what they're already doing. Um, great example of that, we posted on Facebook a couple years ago, 10 students out uh next to the forklift after they got their forklift certification. And two things happened with that. Number one, our office phone started ringing. People saying, "Hey, are they are they employable? Can we we offer them a job?" And then number two, we had students, two students that were already working at North 40 that by doing nothing else other than getting that certification got like a $2 an hour rate because they were more marketable. So those types of things that we offer again because our teachers are willing to go through get trained to be a for certification instructor or whatever it happens to be um then offer for the students and just give them more and
027more option for for post high school. I'll go quickly through this last one and then I'll have any questions. I'm talking talking a lot scared us back later through here more exciting I don't know after this uh Dson you mentioned a second ago the the day of service yesterday and I know it's been brought up a couple different times so the last piece of our college and career readiness program is service how are our students not only do they have a plan for after high school but do they have a plan to give back to their community. And a lot of our students talk about um service in their church or um community service hours they provide for a youth group or um they help coach a youth basketball team. Whatever it may be, we're
028trying we're looking for um how do they contribute to our community once they're done? And yesterday we had a great opportunity. We had a few different things going. We had our senior class kind of see here a little bit. Uh our senior class went out to three different properties um in our elk community that was impacted by fires um and planted trees. So mostly pine varieties, but we had a few different native species as well. But you can see kind of the we just went out and took over a couple of these properties. Um the the beauty of it was not only were they giving back um but also they had to learn a little bit how to problem solve. Maybe something didn't quite work just right. and uh and that to see them kind
029of work together to push through. I mean, if it's a math problem, we all have to we get something done and we ask a question. We're out here. We didn't always have that option. They might have been over here by themselves trying to figure out how to plant the tree and they ran out of water or what are you going to do? Someone going to go back, whatever it is. Um but super awesome yesterday getting out and doing that. That was our senior class. Um, our juniors um did a couple different projects on campus. But here's another look at part of our uh campus course that they were talking about earlier. This particular group was cleaning up the trails. U Mandy mentioned that DNR helped us thin out and make it a little more firewise.
030Well, one of the things that did happen there was the trails, which we use for PE, cross country, track, and a few other programs got kind of left with some mid-range branch type things that are perfect for rolling an ankle. So, before we got back out there, we wanted to to get after it was a lot of work. So, if we take a whole entire junior class out there with six, seven adults per group of 25 to 30, we got a lot of work done yesterday. Uh, so trails got improved. Um, this is part of that amphitheater prep. Um, we took down some trees um for that actual area. Got that stuff cleared out. Um, so that was the juniors. Um, our freshman and sophomores packed food as part of Generation Alive um to give
031um meal packets to North County Food Pantry and to Greenhouse. Um, and this process was pretty awesome. generation is a group in town that comes in. They kind of help us facilitate the process. Um they handle, we raise money, they go to North to Second Harvest, pick up all the supplies and we come out, provide the manpower and pack all the meals. And what that looked like was we had these tables running where they they're weighing out their right amount of oatmeal, right amount of cinnamon sugar, sending it down the assembly line, heat feeling it, packing them up. Um we spent some time uh training some table leaders earlier the last couple weeks so that they could come in and then direct the students. And that's um one of the things I wanted to mention
032was what this day did not just to help others because it does that it what it did for some of our students to empower them whether they were leading out in the tree planting process whether they were leading in the um in the forest or an example here is the young man that's pointing at the right here he's directing how to do that um he has come out of his shell in this leadership role and he's not someone who maybe his peers would have looked to as a leader before this and it totally shifted his mindset of wanting to be in school and his uh just his interaction with other students and with staff members. So, pretty awesome there. And then the last thing I'll say as part of this was we had um an
033opening assembly for the whole entire school to set the stage for um the day of service. And we had some volunteers. In fact, I didn't realize Matt was going to be here tonight, but Matt's daughter, Valerie, was one of them. We had another um young lady, Joey, and they spoke from the heart about what it means to give, what it means to serve others, how you you can couple um you know, sympathy with action and it becomes compassion and how what that can do not only for the person impacted but for you. And it was pretty powerful stuff. I mean, it was like one of those pregame speeches where the students left this like, "All right, let's go. We're ready to do it." So, pretty awesome day overall. And again, just to tie it back
034in, it's the service component, the last piece of our college and career readiness program. Are they ready to go out and help serve others? So, pretty awesome. Pretty awesome. I just talked a lot. Any questions on any of those? FAFSA, dual credits, day of service, anything I can I just want I want to thank you, Clint, you're not going to say yourself. humble. You just wouldn't happen without leadership, wouldn't happen without a vision. And so you you made it happen staff and an example of that mission statement of educating bettering our community. Imagine if everybody in Riverside felt a responsibility to better. We're fighting a lot. What's in it for me? And kids kids are being trained really well on that on social media. And so we got to fight that a little bit. We
035got to we got to be intentional about what's what's good for the whole what's good for the collective community. So they may not even know that, but they're going to walk away from this. They're going to be more likely. And then if you feel that collective responsibility, then you can still do something. And what I love about Clint's leadership is you didn't have to have all the details about you talk about excellence being the enemy of good or excuse me, perfection being the enemy of good because we always feel like, oh, what if they, you know, what if they uh hurt themselves with shovel? Um what what if we uh you know, what about insurance? you know, you would never do anything if you were so worried about all of the little minutia. So, you
036just have to take some risk know that we we were like laughing like, "Oh god, we do that differently next time." But anyways, I just really appreciate that kind of leadership. So, makes it makes that [Applause] Yeah, we'll we'll let Bob, but I'll do a little. So, we're we're looking now at having Jacken from Indoor Air Quality Study and HVAC. Yeah. So, let me let me let me introduce and I apologize, Lance, that we didn't put your name on the agenda. All right. Here's we thought we we do it a little bit differently with this this setting. Here's here's what I told Jack and Lance. I said, I know you do a lot of board meetings and you go to a lot of districts throughout the state. Riverside's a little bit different. One is that
037we let we let the crowd talk. Okay? And we don't time them and we don't make them sign in. All right? So, I know that's a little bit different, but uh with that with that, I wanted to have it part of the conversation. So, I invite everybody in the crowd tonight, the audience, the board, the staff to, uh, listen, learn, ask tough questions, uh, pose different issues that you think we have to work on because, think about it, folks. You know, we ran a bond in February 2024 and it was a 50% passive. It was 50%. It takes 60%. to win the election. Well, if you remember on that bond, it was $23 million of it was heating and cooling systems throughout our district. Okay, there were quite a few responses to that. One was