001All right, tonight's just a little bit different. Um, first up, we have a few new board members and a student rep that we have to give uh the oath of office to. So, Troy, if you wouldn't mind helping. First up, Cynthia. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So, uh we are uh very welcome to uh or very happy to welcome Cyn uh Cynthia Co back for uh another um term on the school board. She was reelected and so tonight we'll be swearing in uh Cindy and then we will swear in our newest board member uh Jeff. So, I will take care of this and so let's make sure we uh I follow along and do this correctly. So, all right. So, uh Cindy, we're going to take the oath of office. So, please raise your right hand.
002Uh, I, Cynthia Co, do affirm that I am a citizen of the United States of America and of the state of Washington. >> I, Cynthia Co, do affirm that I am a citizen of the United States of America and of the state of Washington. >> that I am legally qualified to assume the office of director position 3, Ellensburg School District 401. >> That I'm legally qualified to assume the office of director position 3, Ellensburg School District 401. that I will support the Constitution and laws of the United States and the State of Washington. >> that I will support the Constitution and laws of the United States and the State of Washington. >> and that I will faithfully, diligently, and impartially perform the duties of this office. >> And that I will faithfully faithfully, diligently, and
003impartially perform the duties of this office. >> As such duties are prescribed by law to the best of my judgment, skill, and ability. As such, duties are prescribed by law to the best of my judgment, skill, and ability. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> All right, Jeff, come on up. >> We're excited to welcome Jeff Don to the school board, taking the position uh director position four, replacing Tasha Woods. Uh, and Jeff's election was certified uh, last week along with Cindy's. And so we will swear Jeff in. >> All right, Jeff, please raise your right hand. Uh, I, Jeff Dond, do affirm that I am a citizen of the United States of America and of the state of Washington. >> I, Jeff Dond, do affirm that I am a citizen of the United States of
004America and of the state of Washington. >> That I am legally qualified to assume the office of director position 4, Ellensburg School District 401. and that I am legally qualified to assume the office of director position 4, Ellensburg School District 401. >> That I will support the Constitution and laws of the United States in the state of Washington. >> that I will support the Constitution and laws of the United States and the State of Washington. >> and that I will faithfully, diligently, and impartially perform the duties of this office >> and that I will faithfully, diligently, and impartially perform the duties of this office. As such duties are prescribed by law to the best of my judgment, skill, and ability. >> As such duties are prescribed by law to the best of my judgment, skill,
005and ability. >> All right. Congratulations. >> Thank you, sir. >> Welcome to the board. >> Thank you. >> All right. And we're welcoming uh new student rep uh tonight, Isabella Gutierrez. And so Mike Rowley, chairman of the school board, will uh swear her in. I'll put this here so you can actually read it too. So Isabella um if you could please state after me. I, Isabella Gutierrez, >> I, Isabella Gutierrez, >> do affirm that I am a citizen of the United States of America >> do affirm that I am a citizen of the United States of America >> and of the state of Washington. that I will support the Constitution and the laws of the United States >> that I will support the Constitution and the laws of the United States >> and and the
006Constitution and laws of the state of Washington. and the Constitution and laws of the state of Washington. >> And will to the best of my judgment, skill, and ability >> and will to the best of my judgment, skill, and ability >> truthfully, faithfully, diligently. >> Truly, faithfully, and diligently >> and impartially perform the duties of Ellensburg School rep. >> And impartially perform the duties of Ellensburg School rep. >> In and for Kittas County, Washington. in and for Kittas County, Washington. >> As such duties are prescribed by law. >> Welcome to the school board. >> Thank you. And we do have one other uh new student rep that we'll be swearing in um at probably our next business meeting, right, Troy? And that's Brianna Smith. All right. Um, again, a little out of the norm. Um,
007first up, we have our annual organizational meeting. Um, this is for us uh board members to decide who is board president, board vice president, and our ledge rep. And if I recall, the ledge rep is a two-year position. Correct? Yes. Okay. So, um, first up, we have president I would like to nominate Cynthia Co as our board president. >> As a clarification, do we need a second on that? >> No. Is it >> nomination was for Cynthia Co to be president from Kathy Day and Cynthia accepts that nomination. All right. So, I'll do a roll call vote. Kathy Day, >> I >> Maline Dean, >> I >> Jeff Thurman, >> do I vote for myself? >> Cynthia, >> I >> Mike Rally, I vote I >> Congratulations. >> Thank you. question. >> Uh, next item
008up is the board vice president. >> And I would nominate Mike Rowley for our board vice president. >> And I accept. >> All right. Roll call vote again. Kathy [clears throat] Dayton. >> I. >> Maline. >> I. Jeff, >> I >> Cindy, >> I for Mike Crowley, I'll be the next vice president. All right. Uh, next up is our legislative rep. >> I would like to nominate Kathy Day as legislative rep. >> And I accept. >> We'll make you lead off on this one. Uh, Mike Rally. I vote I >> Cindy. Jeff. >> I. >> Madeline. >> I. >> Kathy. >> I. >> There we go. Uh, so what was that? >> Kathy Day. All right. Um, >> did she take over? >> No. I'm just I'm like here you go. Uh okay. Um so
009uh I would like to introduce our board of dire board of members. Um we have our new president Cynthia Co. I will be your vice president. Mike Crowley. We have our new ledge rep Kathy Day and our newest board member Jeff Durond and Maline Demattonon joining us again. And then I need to find one other thing. Sorry, everything's everywhere. All right. We're also joined tonight by our superintendent, Troy Turno, Assistant Superintendent for Student Learning, Jennifer Counz, Executive Director of Finance and Operations, Kim Snder, Student Representatives, Yutong Leang, and Isabella Gutierrez. Board, the first action item is our consent agenda. We've had the opportunity to review these in items individually and seek clarification from the district admin prior to our meeting. I would entertain a motion. >> I move that we um approve the consent agenda.
010>> I'll second. >> Maline has moved that we accept consent agenda and Cindy has seconded board. Any discussion? >> I'll call a vote. All those in favor? >> I. Any opposed? All right, that takes us into our next item on the agenda and that is administration. And first up, we have the Ellensburg Education Foundation fall 2025 report. >> Yeah. So, as Moren and Marvin get set up, we're very happy uh to have the Ed Foundation uh present to us. uh I have the opportunity to uh serve on the board with them and this is an incredible organization that has done an awful lot for our students and staff and so really excited to hear about all the work that they do. >> All right. Um well, thank you so much for making some time for
011us in your meeting tonight and thank you for all the service that you do for our district and our students. We really appreciate it and we try and attend a meeting uh at least once, sometimes more during the uh school year to just bring you up to date on what we're doing. We update our numbers for new members like Jeff. This will be a a learning experience for you, but just to let you know what what we do at the Ed Foundation. My name is Moren Rust. I've been on the board for since 2017, I think. And I let you I'll let you introduce yourself. >> Uh Marvin Dvier. Uh been on the board since >> couple years. >> 3. >> Okay. >> 23 24. Okay. One way or the other. >> Yeah. >> So
012time flies when you're having fun. So >> I'm a retired um librarian from Central and Marvin is our county fire marshal. >> Deputy fire marshal. >> Deputy. I gave you a promotion. [laughter] So he said if he has to shoot out of here, he's on the search and rescue. a drone squad. So, >> yeah. >> All right. [snorts] >> So, just a little bit about us. Uh, and Jeff, just to let you know, we're a 501c3. We're autonomous. We're not we're not an employer or employee of the school district. We kind of run parallel with the school district. Uh, and our [laughter] goal really is to just give away money, make money, and give it away. and and you'll see tonight that's what we do um [snorts] where primarily it's within the Ellensburg school district
013although the exception to that is we have a kitas county youth award program that also extends to the upper county [gasps] the board was founded in or sorry the foundation was founded in 2021 and um what we like to do is try and find funds or supply funds for projects or supplies that the school district does not budget for extra things that students or teachers might want to incorporate into their their planning that um that they need extra funding for. All right, you're up. >> Uh so the way we do that is learning enhancement awards. um that is u an application that teachers or kids can fill out every year and basically they apply for any of the funds that we have available. Uh some of the projects that we have done with this are
014you know library books for kids um different projects around the school PE equipment if somebody wants extra sports equipment or something like that. Uh carrying cupboard is another huge one. Um, uh, most of the school district knows Mary Gordon. She kind of runs that section of the board. Um, and basically that's any needs that local kids, uh, could need. So, coats during the cold weather, uh, shoes, you know, anything that a kid might need, school supplies, you know, and not able to get it on their own. Uh, like Marine had said, we have the youth awards. Um and then scholarships, educator loan forgiveness, um staff appreciation. So, and that's where basically, you know, you'll see a random item pop up at the administration building for any of the school districts or schools around the county
015or Ellensburg. Sorry. Um I normally don't do public speaking, so this >> this is good for you. [laughter] >> Uh bookmobile support. So, we love that program. We love kids reading books, so we support that wholeheartedly. Um, umbrella insurance policy, uh, legacy wall over at the high school. Um, that's something that we're trying to boost. So, that's a pretty lowcost way for somebody's legacy to move on, whether it's a graduating class, a sports team, a family name, anything like that. It's open to anybody in the Ellwinsburg school district. And I just want to add the one of the brochures that we handed out tonight is specific to the legacy tile wall in case you would like to get more information about that. >> Yep. And then emergency funding. I'm not sure what that one is.
016>> Well, I think it could have been miscellaneous funding too. It's like when uh a couple of years ago a group um from the choir were invited to go compete and I want to say it was in Chicago or Boston or New York and they had it was a surprise to them and so they appealed to us and we partially funded their trip. So something we had another one a student needed an adaptive bicycle and so it didn't fall within our granting period but we will definitely consider things like that that are unexpected but super worthwhile. >> Yeah. >> Uh learning enhancement awards uh kind of went over this. Basically it's uh donor money from different sponsors around the community. Uh, we have Do you have a slide for the um fundraiser? >> No. Okay.
017Oh, no. I think I do. I do. Okay. Later. Yeah. >> I won't go into that then. >> Uh, so in 2024, uh, we actually donated over 16,000. Uh, 2025, uh, we donated over 13,000. And that's anything you can think of within the school district. That's field trips, um, you know, school equipment. I think we did robots last year. We've done robotics, a robotic those Obots. >> Yeah. >> Piano one year and um soccer goals this year schools. >> So we love giving the money away. We don't hang on to any of it. So um but yeah, uh Karen Cubard kind of went through this. Um like I said, anything a kid could possibly need. Um, and the way they do this is through the school counselor. Correct. >> Yeah. Mary has developed relationships with
018all the school counselors and the administrators and she'll just get a call and they'll say, "I need some socks and boots and a coat and give us the size and she uh runs to Fred Meyer for the most part and drops them off that day." So, it's not a tangible closet. It's just immediate care for students that have a need to help them succeed in school. Yep. And then since 2014, we've given away over 48,000 in funds towards that program. So, and I think this year we're way ahead. >> We are. >> Yeah, >> we are. And I can't remember what that number is, but yeah, a lot of asks so far this year. >> Yeah. And then youth awards. Um, most of you know McCloskkey, Mike McCloskkey. So, he does an awesome job with
019this. Uh basically this is any this is any school in Kitest County, right? Yeah. So you have the schools from Kittitas, Thorp, Eastston, all of them engage with this uh another program we fully support uh giving away awards for kids [snorts] for trying to think of how many different >> Well, those are the the categories. The categories are >> that though because I thought there was like 15 categories. >> Oh, I'm not sure. Maybe maybe a lot of categories, but my they gave away 69 last year. I looked it up I looked that one up. >> Um and there anybody can nominate students. There's a certain you know suggested criteria for the different categories but and then there is a committee made up of uh school district volunteers, Rotary, that's the other one um foundation
020members and also the Quantis Club helps out with that one. Yeah. And then do you want to talk about scholarship? >> Sure. So the um well you can see that we we manage a lot of scholarship money. This is money that families or people will come to us and they want to create a scholarship but they we manage it for them. Oftentimes we're holding the funds and then um when this [clears throat] there's a um uniform scholarship application. So, it's kind of made it a little bit easier for folks to fill out the applications and for us to go through and um grade them. Often times, families that are sponsoring these scholarships, they get the applications for that scholarship and they make a decision themselves. The Ed Foundation, there's about five that they have asked
021us to go ahead and make the decision and the awards are among the foundation uh members. And so we did about five last year and we've just established um an ed foundation scholarship which it kind of seems like a a real natural. So, we are funding that with uh kind of an old fundraiser that some students at Central uh they held this fundraiser and they gave us the money and that seated the scholarship and now from here on out we will be raising money for it or we board members have just donated to it. And that one Mike is in the middle of um developing the application for that one but we're thinking we'd like it to be a bilingual learner. um have some some um not criteria but just make sure that we are
022reaching students that are not necessarily native English speakers. And then we have this very generous uh community member who came to us, I think three years ago, and he and his wife wanted to give $20,000 to a teacher in the district. And the criteria there was that they were first um firstgen graduates and that they had been in the district for at least three years. And so this year we've just um awarded our third loan forgiveness and it's to go toward their student loans that they still hold. Staff appreciation. Uh we just like to be sure that our staff know that we appreciate what they're doing. And so we have partnered with parent groups that has turned out to be really good because one year we packed cookies for every staff member and my dining
023room was was just it was kind of overwhelming. So we found um we've we're always looking for that kind of that sweet spot and we think that we've found it now. So in the fall we this year for the first time we had a welcome back breakfast and it was held outside Morgan on one of the mandatory training days before the school year started and uh we we loved it and so that's that will be um a permanent thing for us and then in winter tomorrow I'm going to be coming around to the district different offices for the schools admin maintenance and transportation early learning um to deliver just some flowers to brighten up their lounges. And then in the spring, we partner with our parent teacher organizations to to uh contribute to whatever they're
024planning for their their staff appreciation. Uh bookmobile, Marvin had mentioned this for several years now. We had been giving $500 a year for Mandy Laurent to restock her bookmobile. And we eventually we just made it a line item and so that she can count on that for ordering new books in the spring. This one, the umbrella insurance policy, it's like a liability insurance that some parent groups sometimes use for or sports groups, I think. I don't >> for events. >> Yeah, for events. Uh legacy wall we talked about a little bit. And then the miscellaneous funding. I wondered if this [laughter] was gonna do that. It looked better on scratch your neck building. >> Yeah. How many of you have been to our our annual fundraiser? Yay. That's great. Um this is as Marvin mentioned
025our our learning enhancement awards. This they are funded fully by this fundraiser and so the amount of money we can give away depends on how much money we net at this fundraiser. And I apologize for the crazy graphics, but it's coming up again January 30th, 2006. And it will be the same place, same time. Tickets are available online. And how do you get to that link at the >> uh if you guys follow us on Facebook, uh I created a event on Facebook, so you can get it through there. Um I think the Ellens School District actually shared it as well, so you guys can go through their Facebook page. Um and then the other way would be Uh, usually you can do it through our website. We're trying to get our website redone right
026now. So, I'm thinking social media or you can directly connect us number >> so we can send you guys a direct link. So, cuz the tickets are sold through Eventbrite. So, we can send the link directly out to whoever. So, even if you're not on social media, just feel free to reach out. Well, >> and I think most of you have or will be soon receiving an invitation in the mail. we got together and stuffed envelopes last week. Uh, and it's a good point that Marvin made. Our our website is under con a big redo right now. And so, it's very frustrating to find information there. Either things won't load or it's old information. So, we are going to I talked to Mary about this, put a little disclaimer on the homepage that says just
027contact us if you have questions because right now our website is not uh functioning. We're trying out the stone age. >> Yeah, this is who we have. We're so excited because um it wasn't that long ago there were just four of us on the board. Was when I joined there were 13 I think something like that and then people moved away and they got busy with other things and it was kind of a heavy lift for four of us and now we're expanding again and we're so excited about that. Marvin has been a huge addition and Michelle Bibbich our uh middle school principal Heather Buring from this school principal Phil Ban who's brings his expertise as an educator and his community involvement. Cara Mars who's been wonderful. She uh is a local realtor and she
028just jumped right in. Her kids went to school in the district. Same with Sally Haron. I think I missed an R on Sally's name. I apologize for that. Sally also has four boys in the district and she's um jumped right into to being involved. So, we're really happy about that. And Troy, who is a blessing and a wonder to work with and I'm not just saying that. [laughter] >> No, [clears throat] we're excited about this board and I've heard such good things about how well the school year is going this year. So, it's great. Also, in the past, we've had in addition in addition to Troy, we've had a member of the board of ed attend our monthly meetings. And so, if that's something you are interested or could carve any time into your schedule
029for, please get in touch with us. But, uh, we also recognize that you're you're busy with meetings as it is. So, but we're always available for um yeah, come to our meetings or email us if you have any questions or any ideas to help with >> Marine and Marvin, I do have a question for you. So, if you're inviting board members to come to your monthly meetings, does it always have to be the same one or can we kind of rotate through so everybody gets a chance to kind of if they want to come to one of the meetings and stuff? >> Really good idea. And I think in the bylaws and in my my involvement in the foundation, it's always been one person that was assigned, but also recognizing that um you know that
030that's a big commitment. And the idea is it's mainly a communication conduit. It's a way for information to come from us back to the board directly. So, um, I'll take that to the next meeting and we'll see if we might be able to to do that. >> All right. Thank Cynthia. >> Thank you for all that you do. And the people who aren't here, thank you uh to them as well. Um, so looking forward to the Super Bowl um warm-up. Even though I'm not that interested in football, it's still fun. Um, I guess I have a question about the caring cupboard and this might more be a question for guidance counselors than for you, but I'm wondering if there are students who repeatedly have needs if the foundation indicates that in some way, if there's
031followup with like more sustained support or if you really are just there like, hey, a kid doesn't have proper footwear today, so let's provide it and then >> not sort of track if if they come back with a different need. That's a really good question and Mary would be the person that would have that information. I don't get the sense there's a lot of repeat kind of requests, but I'll check with Mary and I'll get back to you. Yeah. Any other questions? Well, thank you again for your time. We uh we appreciate >> Thank you very much, Meen and Marvin. Thank you guys very much for the update. All right. Next up under administration is student reports. >> Yes, >> we'll have uh we told did not we told Isabelle she did not have to
032do a big report tonight, but she's going to do uh just a quick introduction of herself and then we'll have the the student report. >> Okay. Yes. Well, my name is Isabella and I'm a junior in high school. Um, I am pretty involved in the school, so I work with ASB and the fellows. So, I'm excited to use that and like work with you guys and help make the school environment a better place. Okay, [laughter] awesome. Um, so for this meeting I decided to make a presentation because it'll stop me from rambling and staying on topic. But I'm really excited to share some of the ideas I got from WASDA. Um, as I spoke from the last meeting, I was kind of frustrated um, in the past year with kind of the structure of being
033a student rep and really wanting to have purpose in the role and structuring it so that I am making an impact. And so yeah, I guess I'll just talk a little bit about some of the ideas. Um, so the big thing we talked about was civic engagement. I know we talked a little bit more about having students being more involved in that. Um, and so to kind of start like an initiative um, specifically for students to gain um, for us to gain more input in district policies because I noticed that that's a that's kind of the overarching theme that other students were looking at in other districts. So the big idea is to implement seminar style meetings in advisory um instead of having advisory councils. So what we saw with other uh student reps is
034that they would have uh advisory councils. But what I was worried about is this is kind of like another process of applications and it would probably be the same 20 students who are always showing up for leadership um uh positions. And so having these se seminar style meetings in advisory would include everybody. It's we're going to be talking to everybody in the school. it'll evoke more um engagement and involve stakeholders because this ultimately the students are the stakeholders in district policies and so um this could be led by me and Isabella and Bri um and even involve the fellowship members but we would essentially just go into advisories and during that time we would use it to speak with students on what happened at the meeting or new policies that were um put in and
035that way we can get more students to speak on it to be more engaged in what's happening with um you know their education. So this could bleed into the middle school eventually. So we'd probably try with the high school first um because they might have more awareness on what's happening. But this could go down to middle school and even elementary by making it more digestible. And so the topics that we're talking about could be, you know, um simpler or even when we're at elementary, this is just to get them warmed up to be able to be comfortable talking about these policies. Yeah, >> thank you. Um, and then the next thing I wanted to talk about is a studentled culture. Um, and so this just a bunch of random ideas that we could possibly put
036into um the the book that I was talking about, the formula for how to be a student rep. One of this um one of these things would be a student voice and student culture retreat. So, one of the me uh one of the sessions that we went into, they had talked about doing a retreat and theirs was like a leadership one. And so, we could style it kind of similarly, but I'm hoping to get ASV and different leadership teams even down to the elementary to come to retreat where everybody can talk about what's happening in their schools. We would have guest speakers, workshops, and even input and try those seminars on the leaders of the district. Um, I've spoken to a lot of students who are leaders of their clubs and they've noticed that we
037are having a hard time implementing parliamentary. So, we're not necessarily doing what ASB wants us to do in meetings where we're taking down those notes where, you know, we're approving things as they should. And so, that could be a good time to, you know, help students in that aspect. And then another thing is doing studentled trainings. And so during Wednesdays when they're doing um their professional development per se, um we really want to bridge that relationship between teachers and students because when teachers are able to understand students better and when students are able to understand teachers better, it kind of evokes that relationship to make education more easily, more digestible from a students standpoint. Um yeah, and then one more slide. And then lastly, I think it would be a really cool idea to do
038lunch tableabling. And so for uh the three of us to just go out even at Morgan during lunch um just to sit there, allow students to come up, get to know us, to ask questions, and even we could have um a thematic session where we have a policy that was just spoken about or things that we're talking about at the last meeting. Um and just have students be able to come up and start discussions with us. Yeah. Any questions? I was thinking about the um seminars around district policies and it seemed like one of the challenges with that will be to how how to translate like this policy which is often written in pretty abstract and technical language like how does this how is this going to change student experience and I'm wondering if Troy
039or other people at the district office could help make that translation of like maybe link it to the procedures which we tend not to see at the board level but here's what it how it's actually going to change how things are done in the school or whatever. Um just so it's a little bit more concrete than the abstract stuff. >> Yeah, for sure. Um I think that kind of goes into what we're seeing with advisory right now. I know a lot of students and teachers are struggling with the content in advisory or even how to go about advisory. And so if we're able to um like dissect what the policies are, we can kind of make it more of like a discussion because I've noticed in my advisory classes, the ones where I feel the
040most engaged is when the teachers are literally just sitting us down and we're having a like a circle discussion about a certain topic. And so I think if we kind of translated those policies into a themed discussion, we could get a lot out of it as student reps, but also it's going to create that like advisory community. I have one more suggestion. Just at lunchabling, you should hand out candy because people come talk to you that. >> Yeah. Wasn't food one of the top things when we went to that session about about putting these groups together. Um this is really exciting. I love seeing this. I know it's just the nent phase and you have all kinds of other ideas and things, but I know one of the sessions that we went to together um
041there was also a board member and I know that um Troy helps you guys a lot. you know, kind of keeps you rolling. But if you wanted to have that be a piece where we meet, you know, prior to every board meeting, talk about what your input might be, talk about policies that might be up for discussion and things that have come up. If that would be useful, I'd be happy to be that person for you. So, just keep me in mind for that. Any other questions or discussion for you, Tom? All right. Thank you for your update. I believe you have to go. Correct. All right. Have a wonderful evening. All right. Next up, Jennifer in the teaching and learning update. >> Okay. Um before I get going and before you take off, I
042just was going to say um you talking about doing student le PD has my brain thinking now, but I just wanted to comment that um you kind of did that as part of the AP class that did helped the AI group look at the use of AI in schools and that was incredibly helpful. and the PD that PD that you put on for that group was fantastic and it actually led to direct correlation to impacts on our our guidelines for AI. So um you got me thinking but um okay so December updates uh not a ton has happened be since the last business meeting in November uh with conference week and Thanksgiving break and all of that. Um, so I decided to take this opportunity to here in December just take a deeper look at
043the K5 ELA adoption process. Um, I do think that this is one of the most important adoptions districts do is looking at their early literacy programs. Um, and we are taking a slightly different approach to it because of that this year. Uh, so this might feel a little bit different presentation particularly for a business session. and it's um a little bit of maybe education here around uh reading instruction um but thought it might be a good opportunity to walk you guys through that and see if you guys have any questions on it. Um so first of all this is just the timeline that we are currently on last spring well before that the year before a pilot year we generally do a needs assessment and gather a team to talk about what we want to
044put out in an RFP. Um but it kind of became obvious that we needed to slow down a tiny bit because there is so much going on out there in terms of um messaging around early literacy. And I wanted to make sure that the adoption team was all on the same page with a common language and a common understanding of what we should be looking for so that when we gather materials back we have the proper lens to evaluate them with. Um, so anyhow, the we met a couple of times last spring as an adoption team and sort of set the stage for that and did some early talking through things. Um, and this was the timeline that we amended for them last year from a sort of more typical timeline. Um, and we have
045so far stayed on track. So last spring with that group we talked about in the spring sort of the pilot team meets and begins conversations about science of reading uh in the early fall which is this fall the pilot team does two full days of training that on the science of reading that was the plan and we have completed those two days of training with that team. Um late fall the plan was to put out an RFP which typically gets sent out the year prior. So that's that l lag in um timeline here. Um but we did get that sent out November 18th. So uh companies are currently reviewing it. I get at least a few calls a day from companies about questions with how to submit their RFP and what do we mean by
046this and is this all right? Um so companies are all over it at this point. Um and those are due back to us on January 7th. So, we have already set January 12th aside with that pilot team to review those proposals that come in um and hopefully identify some potential companies to receive a demo from. Uh sort of do a screening and say these are the ones that we're the most interested in. But it's always better to hear from a live person and get demos and once you read through all their paperwork and their examples and their answers to your questions, being able to have someone in front of you answering questions. So then you do a demo. So late January, early February, hopefully we get those demos and then um would put us on
047track for a late February training on pilot materials and hopefully receiving those materials. um which would mean in March and April we can pilot those materials with students and uh that puts us back into the typical timeline which is Mayish we're usually putting those in front of the instructional materials committee and late May early June we're usually bringing that um those materials if approved by the instructional materials committee to you guys for approval. Um so you'll see it's a tight timeline. Uh I am definitely hopeful that we can stay on it. We just have to stay on top of ensuring that everyone is prepped and ready and knows exactly how to slide a pilot into their um their current year. Uh but to be honest, the pilot team has some concerns because we don't know
048what those materials look like yet because we don't know what they are. So there are these lingering questions around well what if the routines are different than the routines we've set up which matters a great deal in elementary and what if we can't find an easy entry point to switch from this to that. I think all of those will be surmountable. Um but we will just answer those questions when they are posed once we know more what we are looking at and what that would require. Um, so there's that. Back in the spring, um, when they raised those concerns, we did note timeline may be extended longer if needed, but the hope is, um, that we can get these in place sooner rather than later, uh, to assist with early literacy. >> Jen, just a
049quick question. Can you describe who's on the pilot team and how I mean, it's not all the K through five teachers, so >> No. [laughter] And we are limited a little bit by um our ability to get subs. So when we pull the we pull them multiple times in an adoption year for as you can see reviewing materials and having conversations and trainings and then training for the pilot and then review of the pilot and reflection. So subs are an issue, but um with this particular adoption um we have a representative from every grade level K5 ensuring that there's representation across all four of our elementarymentaries. Some grade levels have more than one representative just how the group was made, but there's at least one teacher represented representative from everyone. Um then Lori is our
050sped director is part of it. We have um two administrators part of it. Uh Julie Hamilton as our early learning director as part of it. We have two school sites as part of it. Um so all of our MTSS specialists are part of it. Um so where we can include people that don't need subs, we that have expertise to add to the conversation, we certainly do. Okay. Um so the following slides I just lifted directly from uh the training that we received from the two professors uh Dr. Dr. Abbott and Dr. Bunnel at CWU. Um, and rather than recreate their wonderful material that they provided for us, I just stole it, but they 100% said I asked them if they were okay with it, give an attribution, and they said of course. So, most of
051these slides are theirs. Um, they created it and they facilitated the training for us. They had many more slides. So I tried to lift the highlevel explanation and then each one of them kind of went much more in depth around that particular area. But this will give you guys an idea of the areas that we had to consider as part of this. Um so this just gives you kind of a background on who those two trainers are that uh were gracious enough to provide two days of training to our teachers. um both of them having expertise in early literacy. Um and so they have a definition of the science of reading up here. This is actually what prompted the slowdown because you hear the science of reading everywhere out these out there these days. I
052mean it's even uh bled into you know normal life outside of the education fields. People have heard of the science of reading. Um and so that is part of I don't want to just call it noise but there is a lot of noise and information and um misinformation out there right now. So again we just wanted to make sure do we all understand what is meant by the term the science of reading so that when companies come and just have a big flashy science of reading on their materials uh we know what to actually look for. [laughter] Um so anyhow that's why we needed a definition. Again this is these are their slides but um pointing out that the scientific evidence base for effective reading has existed for decades and it is actually representative of
053a large body of research across multiple different disciplines looking at how do um how do we learn to read? How does the brain learn to read and what are important elements of that? Um, and the term the science of reading has gained traction in the last few years, potentially leading to misunderstandings. So, that's why we kind of need that definition of exactly what is meant by the science of reading. And it really does cross all of those different disciplinary fields. Um, and what research tells us about learning to read. So, I am going to play this. It's a little bit dry, but I think it nicely poses sort of the different puzzle pieces of the science of reading that are important to consider. And it's a few minutes long. Don't know why I can't hear
054it. Okay, we're just we're gonna skip it. But what I will >> then I get feed. >> Yeah. So, typically I don't have to do that. But we're going to skip it. But what I am going to tell you and you can watch it on your own um since you have access to this. But what I will tell you is you can see there um there's the four different puzzle pieces, education, psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience. and that um there's research from across the globe, across decades in each of those fields. And um all of it kind of helps inform the important aspects of learning how to read and how to instruct um students in reading. And this is just a nice image. One of the things that makes reading complex, it is not natural to
055the brain unlike language. If students are around language, they will develop language. Um, reading is not the same thing. So, um, this kind of demonstrates that there are various areas of the brain that are activated when you read and unless all of them are talking to each other and creating pathways between them. Um, that's when you don't see those connections between these various areas, that's when you see reading struggles. >> [sighs] >> Um, and as they pointed out, what the science of reading is not, and this is the important thing to keep in mind, it's not an ideology or philosophy. It's not a fan fad or a trend, um, or a pendulum swing, although that's what you what you see happening in the name of the science of reading. Um, it's not a political agenda
056or one-sizefits-all approach. Uh, it's not a program of instruction. It's not a single specific component of instruction such as phonics. They pointed that out because that is one of the reasons um that there's maybe misunderstandings out there around it um because over the cross and the reading wars are not new either. They've also since the science of reading has been around the reading wars have been around over what's the best way to do it and how um do we get kids learning to read by third grade. Um so that's also not new. In fact, uh, way back, you know, 50s, '60s when '7s when whole language was a thing. Um, then the nation at risk report came out and people said, "Oh my goodness, our kids can't read and we got to figure out how
057to teach them how to read better." So, there was this fight between, well, clearly the phonics people don't know how to do well and the whole language group people don't know how to do it well. So that's where balance literacy initially came from was trying to bridge that between both to say we actually have to have all parts and pieces. Um but then u a lot of the stuff that I read around balanced literacy is one of the faults of that is that it's not implemented consistently consistently at all. So people that say they do balanced literacy looks different here than there and um what we're expecting from classrooms and from students and from teachers looks different across those systems. Um so that didn't work and we find ourselves still with NAPE scores across the
058country of students who aren't reading at benchmark and we know it's possible because there are outliers that show this is possible. We can get a whole population of students reading a benchmark by third grade. Um, so our systems across the nation have not done a good job of saying what do we know about what it takes to teach students how to read and how do we ensure that that gets implemented and it is tough because it is complex. Um, but anyhow um some of this came back around because uh we still have students struggling and there have been large advocacy groups across the nation um that have lobbied for change in laws in states. Washington is one of them. Um, ours is not as uh maybe restrictive of as some states, but we passed a
059law around a dyslexia screener um to ensure that we are screening for those things and that we do know if students are showing foundational skills struggles early on. Um, so anyways, all of those things are happening currently, but the science of reading has been [clears throat] around before that and it is separate from all these things, but we don't want to get distracted by some of these things and miss what the science of reading is actually telling us. Um, so you guys have seen these five pillars before. [laughter] Lots of we looked at a number of different sort of frameworks for reading. This is one of the commonly agreed upon um frameworks for it. The five pillars being each one of these pillars from the time they start reading is important to build skill with.
060Um there's also scarbor's rope which we talked about that one as well. None of these frameworks uh compete against each other or say things that are different from each other. They're just a different way to talk about the various pieces. So in the five pillars, you're going to see fluency as a pillar because it's important to practice and provide feedback and instruction around fluency. Here you'll see that the two pieces of language comprehension which is more like vocabulary and the comprehension part of here with the word recognition which is the funological awareness awareness and decoding/ phonics. um those two kind of more separate skills uh start interweaving more and more so that they get increasingly automatic and build that fluency. Um but both of these represent the important parts of the the important skills that
061kids build through the reading process. [gasps] So >> [clears throat] >> um for each of the five pillars Jade and Georgia covered what is the definition? We went ind depth with each one of those five pillars to really understand what is it meant by it. What's the definition of it? What are what's most important about how to teach that pillar based on research and evidence? So when we talk about the science of reading, what does the science of reading tell us about how to teach phmic awareness? What does the science of reading tell us about how to teach vocabulary, how to teach comprehension? Um so we really they spent time with each pillar working through that. Um, and as they were there to help us understand what we should be looking for when we do
062an RFP, uh, they then kind of gave us some specific criteria to consider when adopting materials for each of the five pillars. Then of course they also talked about writing. In fact, they gave stats about, you know, if um the most successful literacy schools have a split that's no um that's at least 6040. So, one of either reading or writing not having more than 60% of the share of time. Um and part of that is because embedded in all of the literacy instruction should be opportunities for um writing to learn. So, of course, learning to write, explicit instruction around how to write, how to compose, how to do the different modes, what the writing process, all of those things, um, sentence structure and all of that is its own thing. But also, they should be
063doing a lot of writing to learn. So, throughout their reading instruction, they should be applying some of their reading knowledge through writing. Um, so they talked quite a bit about writing and all of the things to look for in good writing curriculum. And these are just examples. I kind of um just explained that, but the difference between writing to learn and learning to write. So in addition to really looking at the five pillars of reading or or those elements of reading instruction, how writing impacts literacy, um they also talked about sort of pedagogically what does the science of reading, which again is that large body of research tell us some of the instructional moves that um we need. I think this applies to any content area um but certainly to literacy as well. So they
064talked about explicit and systematic instruction. Um and the definition of those things explicit being, you know, direct explanation, concepts are clearly explained to students. Um skills are clearly modeled without vagueness or ambiguity. Students know what they're learning. Um and then systematic that there's a plan for it. And they broke out the various pieces that are needed for strong explicit instruction. And there are seven of them. um direct explanation, modeling, discussion, guided practice, feedback, independent practice, and the monitoring of the learning. So again thinking about all of the so this is a lot thinking about all the pieces of reading how writing plays in that does it integrate how do the various pillars integrate with materials and then do the materials offer us an opportunity and of course the the craft of teaching. You can do
065these things with any materials. The materials are not the thing. um they just help support the thing and give some resources and tools to teachers for the thing. Um but it is always nice when considering materials to say is does this make this easy for teachers? Is it clear opportunities for these things? Do we have um are there activities embedded that provide the independent practice opportunity so that the teachers aren't having to think about what that looks like? Um, so it was a lot over two days for the team to digest in terms of what we should be looking for for literacy materials. Oh, keep going. I guess this is just a a representation of that. All of those things when you look at the elements of explicit instruction, thinking about direct explanation, modeling, that's
066heavy teacher control. Discussion is starting to involve some teacher or sorry, some student control. Guided practice has a little bit more student control, but the teacher is still heavily scaffolding and guiding that. Um, independent practice is obviously much more student controlled. Um and so this is a visual that they provided of that gradual release model and the um the movement from heavy teacher control to heavy student control and the need for students to engage in all of those different levels. They also um spent some time clearing up what the research says about some controversial practices. So some of the stuff out there right now, I mean if you were to Google science of reading or reading wars right now, these are two things three queuing system and leveled readers that would pop up in most
067of the results that you would get back. Um and there are practices that are often misapplied across districts including our own. Um so three queuing system is where it is meant to be an assessment practice where you ask yourself is the student using um does it sound right? Does it look right? And if they're using those um tips for reading the word you know what they're struggling with. if they look at a picture to come up with the word, they're struggling with decoding. So, it's an assessment practice to figure out what tools and strategies is the child using to read a word. Um, but if used as a teaching point, which lots of people move to that, um, it ends up providing a a a crutch to students that potentially masks some of their reading
068difficulties. If you teach them, um, well, look at the picture. What do you think? Now, can you read the word? Now, they're no longer decoding. They're guessing based off of a picture. And so, if you use that as an instructional piece, it could keep students with masking their challenge. And so, this is one of that has come under heavy attack for good reason. Uh it's not a it's not a good instructional strategy, but it is a worthy assessment strategy. Um and then leveled readers. So that's another area where uh implementation matters greatly and they talked about um what ends up happening and we have a lot of leveled readers in our district. Um we use them through guided reading and teachers have been very used to finding a student's level and reporting the level. Um,
069and that is important information and is is important for a teacher to understand at what text complexity is a student reading at because text complexity does equate to whether or not they're on benchmark to a degree. Um, and so it it's not that leveled readers are bad, it's that they end up then using that as what that student is learning without specific intention behind what skill does the student need practice with. especially in the early grades. Um, and so if they are reading at a level C, then they might be given a level C book and read through that and they're working on generalized skills in that um, level of complexity. But that child needs very could potentially need very specific help with specific skills like blending. So if they are working on blending, the
070time that they spend in a book should be very targeted towards can I help this child blend? Um, and it also too often has replaced decodables when decodables are an important part of instructing in those foundational skills. So, leveled readers are not in and of themselves bad. They actually are good. When kids are reading in their zone of proximal development, which is a a text that they um might struggle with a little bit, but they can read or if they can read at an independent level, they are building fluency. And when you practice that with repeated practice, that builds fluency, which is one of the pillars. So they're not bad. They you just have to be used correctly. Um so they helped clear up some of those things because those two pieces are some of
071what has come under attack in a lot of the um a lot of what's out there. Um, so all of this information, uh, what ended up on the RFP, because all of this was in preparation for let's not put an RFP out until we know what we're asking for. Um and so what we did after this is we had a list of um sort of items and the entire team uh was able to do independent thinking and then paired thinking and then group thinking around um go back to Georgia and Jade's slides, review everything that we learned um about what all of this research tells us and pull out the pieces that are important to put in the RFP. Um, and we went through a reiterative process with that group where they walked to multiple
072posters and put their ideas down and, you know, wrote notes and, um, then we took it and consolidated it into the, um, the RFP, pushed it out to the adoption team, gave them a chance to review it, provide any feedback they had before it went out into the world. Um, and so that's what was led to. What you'll see here are in the selection criteria are the actual these are just snippets from the RFP. I just took screenshots. Um, but of course we asked for alignment to state standards. That is a non-negotiable and um, one of the complicating factors is they are releasing new standards. Um, so we're going to have to do sort of double duty with evaluation. Um, we asked companies to provide provide evidence of alignment to both, but it is a
073bit of an unfair ask because I'm sure since they haven't been released officially, no company has invested lots of money into creating those alignments. So, um, but we just asked them to provide us what they know and we gave them the draft standards that I do not believe will change significantly to look at. So, of course, there was that. This is really tiny and hard to read, but um if you can, what you'll see here is we asked for alignment to the five pillars of reading. Um and then under each one of those pillars, we built out what are the elements that are important. So for example, um clear scope and sequence that spirals is one of those pieces from research that says that's super important with funological awareness. So, we want to be able
074to see that the program has a clear scope and sequence that spirals. Um, explicit built-in assessments. Um, so you can probably read through that with how tiny it is, but for each pillar we kind of did the bolded were really tight. like we really want to see those things in the materials and the unbolded were it'd be nice to have and we also want to see it but they're not the um sort of deal breakers and then the alignment to the writing elements off to the right hand side. In addition to alignment to the five pillars of reading and writing, um we also included support for instructional modes of those gradual release. Uh that explicit whole group, differentiate small group, collaborative learning and independent practice and application. Um and in addition to that, we asked
075for um other things like that it be evidence-based. We asked that they provide the research behind it. um spiraling scope and sequence uh assessment and feedback um supports, accessibility support, strong engagement, unbiased content, and teacher guidance and usability. So all of those things are what we are looking for in our K5 materials and uh there's a direct through line from um the training we got on the science of reading to what ended up in the RFP. And so just landing on again the timeline, we will be meeting January 12th to review all of the materials that come in and hopefully we'll be off on our next step of finding something that's that's going to work for our students. Any questions? Jen, I have a question for you. after reflecting on um the needs assessment that
076was done last spring, um can you just kind of share with us are there things that are missing in the current curriculum or things that are not as strong as they should be and kind of go over that. >> Yeah. Um to be honest, one of the one of the things that is the biggest need in our system is for um implementation fidelity. And so one of the issues with our current materials is um while we provided training on all of them, some of it happened around I think I've even like mentioned this to you guys, but happened around the time of COVID and so that training was happening during a tumultuous time. Um, and the followup and the leadership in ensuring that those materials were understood by teachers and that teachers were supported in
077how to implement them um could have been better. And so this time around, we're really really want to ensure that our training plan is strong, that our um monitoring of implementation is strong, and that our support for teachers in that process is strong. Um I think that was one of the biggest areas. Uh but yes, we've also heard in addition like the materials in general. There's a lot of stuff that um that I think potentially could be stronger. And I think we're going to find that with any materials, just to be clear, any material we get, we're going to find we need to beef up this part of it or we need to supplement or um and I could be wrong. I'm hoping that I am wrong, but I just don't know that there's going
078to be a program out there that um is going to answer it all for us. Everything I read about the districts that have done it well is in the um the application and the implementation of reading materials and teachers understanding what I just covered so that they can make good decisions and be responsive to student need because they understand the parts and pieces of what's important. Um but yes, so currently um our writing program is difficult to implement for teachers because the way the curriculum is written um it's really lengthy like a a lesson is you know 5 to 10 pages and that's not easy to pull out and it's written in like a narrative form. Um and that's challenging for teachers who are very busy to day-to-day pull out and understand what am I
079doing with students right now. Um but again supporting the structure around that which was workshop model and how to manage how to set up structures for that that could have been done better. um our reading like we have fantasy and panel classroom um and for we realized right away when we adopted that the the foundational pieces of phonics instruction and funological awareness were not strong. So we actually adopted the IM um the IMSE which is an OG aligned or in Gillingham aligned curriculum for our foundational pieces. We are uh we are learning that the implementation of that is a a little bit clunky because of um the lack of embedded assessments in the program. So the practices are good, the scope and sequence is good, but they don't get to all of the parts of
080it in whole groups. So then they're using it sometimes as intervention, but it it's initially as meant to be a whole group. and the um it's hard to track progress because there's no embedded assessments. Um so that's that part. And then for the FPC, I think just the the ease of understanding what's the teaching point, how does how does this readaloud connect with the mini lesson connect to um the guided reading so that they don't feel integrated and connected and they certainly don't feel connected to our writing. So, um, yeah, I mean, there's there's a number of things that, uh, could be stronger in our current reading materials, and we're hopeful that we're going to find something that will meet student need better. >> And just as a followup, when when you're looking at these
081different proposals, um, the implementation and kind of the onboarding process, does that vary wildly across different companies or is that process fairly similar? um by onboarding and implementation from the company's side. What do you what are you thinking about? >> Sorry, I mean like kind of training the teachers, getting them onboarded. So once you've adopted this curriculum, how what does that process look like for getting everybody trained? >> Yep. So generally speaking, companies work with you to figure out what is feasible for your system for training. Um, and I'm hoping that by the end of this year, our plan is to train all K5 teachers in the science of reading that the adoption team got so that prior to implementing materials, they do have that foundational understanding. Um, and then it just becomes a matter
082of how much training do we think these materials require? How do we schedule that out in um, a year? How do we do it during a time when it makes the most sense for teachers with something like reading? We want to do it early in the year. It's tough to ensure that we can get every teacher in summer. So, generally we look for um contracted time, but then you don't want to do early early in the year, first week or so. So, you kind of just try to target in conversations with administrators and teachers um that sweet spot for timing of it. But the important piece is the followup so that that um there's additional training opportunities after the first one, but that there's a plan for monitoring and supporting the classroom teaching that's occurring
083outside of sort of the larger training that happens from the company. But do our administrators, do our support people like MTSS, do they understand what are the look fors, what are the important parts and are they asking for feedback on teachers and going into classrooms and monitoring how that's going and identifying, okay, we might need a little bit more support on this aspect of it. So, let's figure out a time where we can provide that support. Um, but yeah, it's just intentionality of paying attention to what's happening. Well, you know that I could nerd out with you about this for probably days on end. But my the question that I had is about teaching the reading and writing across the curriculum. I mean, which is a missed opportunity that we continue to have everywhere because
084we silo it and it should be taught in science and social studies and all the different ways and types of reading. So I I guess just to keep my question to K5 in a K5 classroom like say in a fourth grade classroom the strategies that teachers are now going to learn and use more explicitly are they also going to be taught in the science lessons and the content area lessons or do you know that yet? like the pedagogical pieces like how to provide >> do the do the curriculum so like the science curriculum let's say what they use for fourth grade is it going to lend itself to you know you were talking about the the materials need to be usable you know we don't want to create all these piles and piles of new
085lessons and work and strategies for teachers are that what they're currently using in the other um areas are these new ELA you know methodologies and the the development because they're probably going to change some of the way that they deliver their instruction now with reading and writing. Are those going to easily transfer to when they're doing science or when the students are doing social studies? >> I think so. Yes. I mean, once you learn what it means to scaffold for a student, how to respond in writing to something they're reading. Um, each content is going to be a little bit different. We use the science kits for through ESU 105 for science. Um and those a lot of that uh is handson um but pointing out opportunities the books also invite opportunities for writing so
086it's there it's embedded um but yeah I think simply calling it out and naming this is important to do during science as well and during your social studies this is important to do but it also brings up a good point that kind of across the nation um reading in elementary schools takes takes up the largest chunk. Reading and literacy instruction takes up the largest chunk of the day um because it's that important and takes that much time with um instructing on the various pieces of it. Uh so when you were looking at materials that help support reading, that's another important thing that I didn't even it's not even listed up here, but they actually emphasized um which is when we look at comprehension, background knowledge is so important. And so if you are not into
087your reading instruction integrating rich content um then you are missing an opportunity to build content knowledge with students which is exactly what will impede their comprehension um as they go through the grades. So it is an it's kind of both like how do we think about our science materials in a way that it incorporates reading and writing across the content areas but it's also for these materials how do we ensure that we're um exposing them to various good rich content um through interactive readalouds and um various opportunities through the different five pillars for that um it's another reason why you don't want to just focus on the foundational pillars for example simple because you can't forget those other pieces of building comprehension and um providing opportunities for that exposure to those things. I'm wondering if
088you can say just a little bit more about what monitoring looks like so that there we don't repeat the you know like here's the initial blast of a new curriculum or new learning materials and then it's not implemented well. Um, and I'm just wondering if especially people who have been part of the pilot team, if mentoring could be part of what they do and and how it is that we support all of that work of sort of continuous monitoring um to make sure that this is implemented well. >> Yes. Um, that's a great question and I don't have a specific answer for you right now because I think that's part of building out what are the various components, what are the pieces that we need to support and until we know exactly what program we're
089looking at, um, we don't know exactly what that looks like. But it is ensuring that we have very clear look fors like what are the non-negotiables with this? What are the parts that you should see across the day? Um, and by monitoring I mean, are we checking that we're actually seeing those parts happen in classrooms? And if some grade levels or teams or individuals struggle with certain components of it, how are you deciding? Is it the MTSS specialist? Is it the team coming alongside? Is it providing them opportunities for peer observations in other classrooms? Um but it's understanding what does good instruction in this um content area and with these materials look like. What are the look fors and are we actually monitoring whether or not those things are happening and once we have identified
090that are we um coming up with a next steps for support? Uh if I recall, uh curriculum adoption happens on a cycle for different things and things like that. How long have we been on the current curriculum for the ELA for K5? >> Oh, that's a good question because I think it was after this adoption maybe that we put ourselves on a cycle because we hadn't been on a cycle previous to that. Um but I want to say riding was sometime around like 2015 16. So, it's been quite some time since writing and I believe reading was right around um the 201819 school year because I think the 1920 school year is when we were first implementing it and then that's when COVID hit. We were still trying to do training. Yeah. >> Sorry, one
091more question. This could be about any content area, but I'm wondering when new teachers arrive, like what is the process of training them in a curriculum that maybe they haven't used in another district or something like that? >> That is something we struggle with and kind of every year we talk about how do we get a better plan put together for that. Um, part of the plan for that in my mind is if we have teams that are very clear on what this looks like. Um, another kind of issue for us in the past has been like when we did this uh reading adoption, it was at the same time as our math adoption. So, our elementary teachers were implementing two major curriculum areas at the same time. Um, so if we can get our
092teams very clear and feeling good about, oh, this is how to implement it, when they have a team member come on, they can support that team member quite a bit. Um it doesn't make sense for us to schedule trainings every year if we have a new third grade and a new fourth grade in separate buildings um for all of our content areas to get a trainer for them on it. So we really have to rely on the people that we have helping them understand what this looks like. um we do have um orientation and things like that which is supposed to be an initial kind of look at here's all of our programs and what we use and our assessments and but obviously that's not enough. So job embedded support through the MTSS specialists and
093team members but the part lacking currently is that our team members don't always feel confident in these materials that we've had. So then they're left all kind of scrambling together. >> Well, um I guess I have a question. Like legend has it that occasionally old veteran teachers have opinions about the way things should be taught and um resist change. Um, and so I'm curious about the the adoption committee and I if there's I guess two sort of a two-pronged question. How universal is the buyin that the new curriculum is needed? And if if it's not universal, is there a plan to address that to try to bring everybody along? And then the other prong of that question is with so many teachers not having the opportunity to test the new curriculum, are the members of
094the adoption committee likely the right voices to be bringing that back to their buildings? >> Yeah, those are great questions. Um I think there is a fairly wide we like anything um we have opinions sort of all over the map on this. Um but I think there's a fairly wide agreement that um we want to see something new. Um part of that is they don't feel necessarily comfortable with what they have. So um their struggle through it over the last number of years has made them feel like let's look at something new. So um yeah I think generally speaking this is going to be a welcomed thing and there are certainly teachers that really love our current materials and change is hard for anybody. Um, so having to navigate that, the pilot team, I don't
095think they, the weight is not on them to be the ones to really sell it or to go back and assist everybody with knowing how to use it. Their role is to help us um, make a good choice and then it still filters through the instructional materials committee and it still filters through you guys. So in my opinion, the weight is not on them to ensure that it gets implemented well. Um but um yeah, I mean change is hard. Are we still using Lucy Caulkins? Is that what we're referring to? Okay. >> For writing. For writing. >> Yes. Not the reading. >> Yes. Yep. Where is it being and used? [laughter] >> Any other questions for Jen tonight? >> All right. Thank you very much, Jen. Uh board, that takes us on to our next
096item, which is the super superintendent update. And Troy, >> okay, just a a few things. um with the levy resolution, explanatory statement, everything was submitted uh to the county on time. It actually needed to be in by um Friday, but we've got everything in. Uh we have received the official ballot title back uh which is an important step. Um that's lets them and our uh levy attorneys know that they've got it and proved it and so they're prepping for things. Uh the advertising me uh advertising for the procon committee appointments began uh after we adopted the resolution and and they were closed on Monday. Uh we did not uh have a lot of people reach out to us but we have uh Bill Bundan who's volunteered to write the pro statement in the voters pamphlet
097and we did not have uh anybody reach out to us uh for the con statement. So, um the county will try to find someone to do that, but the voter the statements are due um 122, I believe. Um either 12 19 or 22 to the um to the county. So, that's all working forward. So, everything that we needed to do in that time period after passing the resolution, we are good with uh have it all sent in and uh are in good shape moving forward with that. So, Uh, next one, please, Leslie. Uh, so one thing we don't know very much about, but we're uh excited is that we've joined OSBI's 5-year challenge uh to cut chronic absenteeism in half. So, that's a a statewide program that they solicited for over the last couple weeks.
098It's a nationwide effort uh led by uh Attendance Works, and right now there's 17 states signed up for it. Washington is one of those states. And so, um, it's going to be an emphasis to try to, you know, and our attendance is not, uh, horrible. Schools have been tracking it better as we've gone on. We were a couple schools this week and we looked at their data, but, uh, it has reached a plateau in terms since coming back from CO. Uh, other states have, you know, even have severe attendance issues, but, uh, it's something that we felt that kind of mirrors and goes along. It's not a spec, it's not specifically called out in our strategic plan for the next 5 years, but it's also implied strongly in our strategic plan that we need kids
099to be in school and and we need to um work on chronic abs absenteeism. So, uh so we're we don't know exactly what it looks like. There'll be some cohort work within the state, probably some national stuff. There'll be some resources shared with us. Um, and I we don't know the the uh sign up period for the state has not ended yet. I think it ends probably at the end of next week somewhere around there. So, we'll see who's who's joined us in it and what we're doing. But, uh, going to try to be a part of that across the the nation and that will help us with resources and help us. Um, each one of our schools, we put it out to the principles. Everybody was really excited about being a part of it
100because um it'll make it easier for us not to sort of lone range or the problem and work together with it. So, we're pretty excited about it. Uh but don't yet know exactly what it means. Uh and exactly OSBI hasn't even put out uh sort of what our state roadmap looks like yet. And but that's okay. I mean, we're not supposed to have all that figured out right now. We're just they're just looking for interest. but uh looking at it from the national level across all parts of the country. It's not just a west coast thing or a southern thing. So uh we should be able to get a lot of resources, a lot of ideas through that. So that's also going to be something that we do that sort of works alongside our strategic
101plan for the next 5 years that emphasis on on absenteeism. So uh and then lastly is just the list of the holiday programs. A good chunk of them happened last week, but we have a bunch of them uh going on uh this this coming week and this week. So, Mour's done with theirs. Uh Ida is has next week two performances on the 18th. Uh Lincoln completed theirs. Uh and Valley [clears throat] View has uh a couple different things next week, a K through two and then a 345 on two different evenings. Uh we've had the uh choir and the bands at the secondary schools have been going full speed for a while and doing a great job. So uh we've got some more coming up uh coming up next week. So we're in full holiday
102swing. Uh Leslie's been capturing a lot of the holiday festivities. Uh and even as I drove by uh tonight as it was dark and looked left, there was a Santa at Mount Stewart. So in the in the office. So, I really don't know what was going on cuz most of the kids were gone, but we had Santa at Mount Stewart. So, we uh we do have a robust holiday program and and the staff and students have been doing a great job and look forward to next week. >> I have a quick question. When the county writes the con statement, what is the process after that? Do you get to at least look at it or something or how >> county won't actually write it? They'll try to recruit they they'll Yeah, they'll they'll do >>
103and then do you get to see it? >> Then it gets sent out. uh it would get sent out to um yeah, we get to see it. We don't get to do anything with it, but then there's a process back where they would see the pro statements, whoever writes the con, and they rebut each other's statements with it's 200 words on the original statement. I think the rebuttal is limited to like 75 or something like that. So, yeah. >> And then my second thing, I went to the Lincoln Holiday program. It was amazing and they're adorable, but we need to get the little kids up higher. I know we don't want them on the 10 foot, you know, riser or anything like that, but you can't see them. So, >> yeah. >> And Kathy, I
104was going to kind of follow up with the um pro and con statements um because Troy, correct me if I'm wrong, but the county tries to recruit. If they don't, it just goes without a con statement and it doesn't stop our nothing for us. It's just we wouldn't have a con statement if they don't find someone to like. Exactly. >> Exactly. >> And one more follow-up question just about the um the absence tracking. Um do we currently have a system in place where we're combining all of the school uh absentee data. So it's easy to say, okay, um for the district, this is what the trend is. Or is the tracking vary across the schools? Yeah, that goes into our our uh database there. Um, so we've used school data solutions in the past. We
105have Aubrey now, so all that stuff's tracked in there. Um, there's a bit of a challenge uh with the way that we had our uh with Aubrey hooking up to Skyward properly to draw it, but that's all getting worked out. But yeah, it's it's there and it's uh schools can pull it pretty easy from Skyward as well. So, any other questions for Troy? All right, Troy, thank you very much for the update. Uh board, that takes us into uh the business portion of our meeting. And first up, we have the enrollment enrollment report. >> Yep. So, I've had a chance to see that we're we're pretty happy with how we've hung uh through the fall uh you know, with a an enrollment of 3,00 FTE 3,173 uh which is above projection, which is good. uh
106usually you have uh your your sort of your peak in October and then it sort of starts to trail but we've we've remained a little more consistent in the fall then in the past two years of course it's only two more months November and December. Uh so we'll really see uh you know as things tend to trend down January tends to be a little bit less then because that ends the secondary first semester and then you get a bump in February and then you see how you go through the rest of the year. Uh but we're actually in um have held a little more steady in our enrollments uh throughout the fall than we have in in the past. So we're in good shape. Thank you, Troy. Any questions for Troy on enrollment? All right.
107Uh all right. Next up is uh Kim and the financial update. So tonight I'm going to be going over October. Usually we're going over November's report by this time, but due to some um issues with the county report still, we're working with them very closely. Um we had to wait for some corrected reports before we could do the October. So I will be presenting November and December. In January is what my plan is. So um at this time all funds are on track with um for our second month of 2526. October is the month that we receive a big portion of our property tax revenue. You will notice a few discrepancies between Kittas County Treasury and the district. The general fund and capital project fund cashes off by 1.2 million um due to the timing
108of a correction of a transfer amount made in air. So we corrected on our side, they didn't correct it till November. So that's why it's off that way. Um we also have a warrant in the general fund that we corrected in October and they did not correct it till November and the um the other funds are the other fund trial balances are matching with the kit county reports and just comparing it to October 2024. We are right there um comparing them very similar. So general fund we are now two months into the fiscal year. The general fund revenue comes in at 18.38% and expenditures come in at 16.41%. The fund balance is sitting at 11.1 million or 17.13%. For the month of October, the district spent a total of 4.73 million which is made up
109of some of it is 86% of salaries and benefits. This is a little higher this month because we um issued supplemental contracts for committees and we also issued contracts for fall coaches. We spent 7% on supplies. Some of the expenses that make up this percentage is 63,000 to Apple Inc. for laptops and iPads for administrators and students. 36,000 to US foods for child nutrition. um 12,000 to moving beyond the page for AL curriculum and 12,000 to Amazon for school supplies. 7% on professional services. The major expenses for October were $34,000 payment to fix the compressor at EHS, $27,000 to ESD 105 for vision services, 31,000 payment to CWU for Running Start um for the summer students, $31,000 for occupational therapist services for the month of October, $35,000 for SLP services, 22,000 to Yako Mechanic to
110replace the hot water heater for the EHS dishwasher. And then we spent about 9,000 between travel and capital project fund. The revenue comes in at 34.38% and again that's um mostly that um property tax coming in and when there were no October expenditures. Uh revenue came in at 36.28% 28% and there were no expenditures in October or first debt our first in October our first debt payment for the year is in December as you will see on the December financial report in January revenue came in at 20 for ASB fund revenue came in at 24.04% 04% and expenditures came in at 12.36%. Some of the expenditures for October were 2,000 for concession stand products, 1,700 for fireworks for the homecoming, 10,000 to just for yearbooks, 1,500 to training room inc for athletic trainer supplies, 3,000
111to CW recreation for the rental of tennis courts, and 3,100 to BSN for wrestling uniforms. the private purpose fund. The fund balance is sitting at about 35,000 and there were no expenditures in October. We will be working with our plan is to work with the Ed Foundation to actually um get into their program where they have the committee now. It used to be our counselors at the high school that would do the committee and select scholarships for our students. Um, but now the Ed Foundation has taken that over, but we still have that money sitting in our district funds um, without really the ability to ask the the people who did contribute to that for the scholarships. So, we're going to just have them go ahead and select the students and then we can write
112the checks out for that. Um, and then the transportation vehicle fund, the revenue for this fund came in at 0.55% and no expenditures for October. And that is what I have financial update. Are there any questions? >> Um for the the the error that you mentioned for the capital um fund. So the balance sheet right now has like a negative $800 some,000 in the cash. That's the error. Was that a transfer then that was done? >> Yeah, the transfer was coming from the capital project fund to the general fund. Um and it was an era of it was error on our side where we had asked them to move that money real the person who had asked that did not realize we had already moved most of that money already. So I had caught I
113caught that and so we had asked the county to reject that transfer request and put in our new transfer request and they said yep no problem but then they didn't fix their reports [snorts] until November on that. So, we do have cash. Don't worry. [laughter] We really do have cash in the count in the capital project fund. >> And And do you know has the um has the treasur's office been able to figure out what the system errors are that are that are causing all of the issues? >> Yes. And no. I I I think [laughter] I mean they are getting better. Um, and we do work very closely with them. Um, they did give us new reports this month that I haven't had a chance to look at. So, it's a whole new format
114um, for November. So, I'm going to be looking through those again. Um, but, you know, we're just keeping very good, very close track of what we know, what our cash should be and where we should be. Now, again, we have to rely on them to let us know um, what warrants. were um um redeemed. Um but we keep track of like making sure that there's no doubled redeem because we're kind of having that issue. So now we're like, okay, we're making sure that no warrants are redeemed twice. Um so we're looking through that. We're keeping track of our warrants, of course, and making sure that we're um matching it to theirs and seeing what And then again with our cash, we know what investments we're asking for. we know what revenue we're bringing in, so
115we're keeping track of all that. Um, and but you know, for property tax, they tell us what that revenue is or the interest earned, they tell us what that is. So, we're working very close with them to continue to be on top of this >> because to clarify, this is not just a a school district problem. >> It is not just a school district. Agencies are having the same issue. Okay. Yes. Any other questions for Kim? All right, thank you for the update and we'll hear more budget in January. >> Uh that takes us into board reports. Uh tonight I do not have a board chair report. Um so we can move along into community in input which we don't have anybody in person and we have student congratulations. >> Thank you very much. All
116right. Um, since there's nobody wanting to make public comment, we'll go ahead and just close public comment for tonight. Um, and move on to our next item, which is new business. And we, uh, Troy and I think it was Cindy, right? Yeah. Yeah. I've run into who we meet sometimes when we meet for agenda setting. Trying to remember who was there. Meline was there. Okay. Maline was there. and we wanted to build in some time to uh have some discussions over our was the conference and our experiences and so if anybody would like to start I need to go through web >> I'll start um I went to two sessions that seemed particularly relevant to us one was Ferndale um school district which talked about its cell phone policy which is stricter than ours so
117they I have a copy of their policy and also some of their procedures But essentially they are aiming for phone free schools from bell to bell. The only exception to that is during the high school um students can use phones in the cafeteria but they're saying like even during passing periods in the gym um that they're trying to be phone free schools and they really had a studentled effort to to educate students about it. And one aspect of it that I thought was really helpful was first of all it's taken so teachers can notify admin that there's an issue like someone has a phone out in their classroom but then admin come and confiscate it so there isn't really a power struggle between the teachers and the student and it's been it seems like it's
118also normalized that the adults in the building will not have their phones out and so that's also modeling uh phone free schools and it seems to be working well based on their presentation. And so I thought that was um it was it would be interesting to talk about whether we wanted to implement like kind of that next level uh here and maybe hear from teachers and high school students if they think that's necessary. So that was one I went to. The second one I went to was from the Vancouver school district which has started to implement a new uh what they call a hate and bias policy. Um, so they were having real issues um, especially at the middle school and high school with uh, hate speech towards marginalized groups of students. And so they
119implemented this policy again that was very much studentled. Um, they had they have equity teams in each school. Um, they're trying out a restorative justice option and they have restorative justice coaches available. Um, and it just sounded like, uh, again, I would like to hear from people at the high school and the middle school, especially if this is an issue that we would like to address more seriously. And then this seems like we could borrow pieces of this policy and procedure um to address that. >> Yeah. The two sessions that were uh significant for me was the student voice which I went to with you and so she is killing it with bringing back all of these ideas. Um and so hopefully we'll see some fruition for that a little bit more um purpose I
120think like more intentional um student representation at our board meetings because you'll have a structure to gather information uh from the schools. So I'm excited about that and want to help with that. And then the legislative outlook was just dim and dismal. There wasn't anything. There was literally nothing um good. And there wasn't anything new that Troy hadn't shared with us. And so there are uh three opportunities for me to go over in January. And I will probably go to at least one of them. Um but I talked to Troy a little bit about whether it's worth going for the full two-day when we may not garner anything from it. But I I'll talk to some of the WASDA people and just see if it's worth just being there to gather information. Um, and we'll
121see. They're They have to trim $390 million. So, that's it. >> I want I went to one that was uh for board chair and uh how to run an efficient meeting. So, I will have to share those notes with you uh when I can find them. Um Troy and I also went to uh one that was on uh running an effective levy pretty much. Um, we actually had uh one of our representatives there from Oh, Steve, not Steven's Clay, that's the attorney's Garvey. >> Uh, yeah. No, we got >> Yeah. So, um lots of information on just making sure that we are doing things correctly and we are and uh um and then um I went on one that was uh about uh student safety, school safety and things like that. We have some pretty
122safe schools here, but you never know. And um you know, larger communities and whatnot. Um it just it just kind of helped reaffirm that uh what we have in place, the uh SRO that wanders around, the multiple staff that are, you know, um we're lucky with uh Neil and Bo being reserve officers and um and then I know Troy has mentioned several times that Neil is actually out and about in other schools uh assessing issues and things like that. So, it just make made me um feel good about our district. I I know Tasha used to always bring up things uh when things happen around the nation and whatnot. So, uh felt I think we're in pretty good shape here, which is nice. Um and then there was one other one. I was trying to
123find what the title was, but I can't remember. So, sorry. No, they did not. Um I think there were three sessions that I went to that that really um left the left a good flavor. Um one of the I went to one of the with Troy one of the levy sessions um where they talked about a failed levy. It was it was Airway Heights and they >> go >> and they they failed a levy and and they just really dissected what the messaging was behind their failed levy and then they they fired it up and and ran it again and described the tweaks that they made um and uh to to great success. Um so there was there was a lot of good stuff to to think about there. Um, and I mean you could
124boil it all down to you need to sell it and tell an emotional message, not a you know we calculated this many things. Um, the Ferndale the Ferndale one was that was the best session I went to. Um, and I think you covered it really well. Uh, a couple of other little tidbits from Ferndale that I think lended themselves to the success uh, with their cell phone policy is um, the the adult accountability, but also they as a district said this is a district policy and if the teacher is not following it, that's going to show up on their evaluations. which leveled the playing field and eliminated the cool teacher who doesn't care, which makes all the other teachers make makes it harder for everyone else to enforce the policy. Um, and yeah, I would
125I would be in favor of of investigating pursuing something like that in Ellensburg. Um, and then the other one that I went to that I honestly wasn't even expecting to take that much away from it, um, Isiqua has a really slick districtwide standardized data um, tracking system and they went deep into the weeds on how they created it and how they continue to tweak it. Um, and I couldn't even begin to describe all of it to you, but they're really excited about it. And I'm sure they would be happy to provide more information if we identify um having a more standardized sort of data hub um with it had both a public facing and an internal side to it, but u be a good resource. So those that's what I took away. So, I went
126to the legislative um kind of update with you and that was really depressing. Um so, that was a downer. Um but um after that then I went with um uh I heard the Airway Heights kind of um presentation about the bond that they passed. Um, and then I did uh the financial health from OSPI which was also I mean a lot of this ended up being very just kind of with the turbulent times it was a lot of things were scary and it just felt like okay what are we doing that or what practices do we have in place now that um kind of will help us ward off any financial disaster and so um I also went to the um the crucial role of schoolboard members in financial oversight So, I would like to
127see kind of ways that we can make sure as board members that we are uh financially literate as far as the the school budget goes and really making sure that we understand your presentations and what that means on a month-to-month basis. And um we talked a little bit about kind of maybe having a schedule where we dive into a particular topic just so we have um more than just a bare minimum as far as the overview goes, but we really can understand and when we're having those conversations um with community members or parents that we have an idea of how all of these things kind of come together to make that school budget. >> Did you guys all have the app? the was app. I keep going back and looking at slides. It's nice to
128have that resource that you can go back and >> look at those. So, >> yeah. >> All right. >> One followup. Sila has a very similar cell phone policy as Fell and we do have the I don't have to interact at all. If you're being a pain and you won't put it away, I just put the ticket on your desk. It tells you what to do, you go do it and come back and I just keep teaching. Um, but it does have its flaws. And so if we ever want to have like a debrief of do we want to try to implement something? Do you know what do we want to do? How are we going to support the staff? It takes support staff to implement that because someone's got to be up there to
129take the little buggers phones and their tickets and then you got to get back at the end of the day, you know? I mean, so there is there's a people part to it, too. Um, but it's a good system. So I just wanted to throw that out there. We might want to put that on a future agenda and just talk more. So, >> and we do have the program at the middle school that's >> under trial uh or >> yeah going right now as a I guess trial program this year. So, >> Ferndale, just to follow up on that, Ferndale's system is there's some kind of email address so that like you're not even really interacting with the student like putting a ticket on their desk. You just send a message to this >> to
130the phone, >> not to their phone, to an admin administrator's phone and the administrator comes and gets the phone and it's, you know, like if they've uh there's some intervention where you like, you know, there's a phone jail basically they said [laughter] where the phones are kept until the end of the day and then, you know, if there multiple violations then there's like some other consequence that happens. But >> it sounded like it was working pretty well for them. Yeah. All right. Anything else for now? We can always talk about it at a study session too down the road. Uh, all right. If nothing else under new business, uh, that takes us into meeting closing. Uh, right. No executive session tonight. Okay. Uh, move on to clarification and next steps. Board, any clarification or next
131steps uh, to discuss about Okay. Um, moves on to board calendar. Uh, anything for board calendar tonight? Okay. I think I the one thing I was going to say is I think at our uh agenda setting I mentioned to Troy about the budget um update for January. Since you said you were going to do both of them in January, I think we were going to we talked about it and it's okay to do one in the study session and one in the business meeting. So, it's not both if that works for you. Okay. Um Leslie, do we have documents to sign tonight? Okay. So, Jeff, we have documents to sign tonight. So, we all have to stand around and sign them before you leave. >> Oh, yeah. and Leslie, you want to get a picture
132tonight when we're done. So, um I'm going to look at the board and see if there's any other business for tonight. And if not, thank you very much. Cindy, congratulations on your reelection. And Jeff, welcome to the board. And Isabella, welcome to the board as well. We are adjourned. Thank you.