Ellensburg School District Board Meeting - 4/12/2023

001I'd like to introduce our board and other guests um I am Mike Rowley we have Tasha Woods joining us Jonathan Henderson Madeline de Mayton on Cindy Koh we have our superintendent Ginger haberer uh executive director student services Kelly crombauer we also are joined by our two student Representatives Josephine shepner and grady48. takes us to consent agenda as our first action board a move that we accept the consent agenda a second Tasha moves that we accept consent agenda Jonathan has second board all those in favor aye aye any opposed any extension the motion uh boarded consent agenda has passed all right and that takes us into Administration Ginger and we'll continue on with Jen yes so Jen thank you for your report over the data and uh as I explained Jen has another commitment at 6

00230 and didn't quite finish up with the study session so she's going to finish up her overview and then we'll go on to student reports no yeah yeah okay one second let me get it pulled back up okay so here we are again presenting the map fluency data for our K2 students and for those of you that just joined sorry you're joining like mid presentation so there might be pieces of this that don't make as much sense but um this is the first grade data and moving on to the second grade data and again where you see with the phonological awareness and the phonics and word recognition all of the yellow and red that's because students in this assessment are not given the opportunity to show Benchmark um they stop them at the scales of

003a first grade level so they're all going to be marked that way but this is our second grade fluency so again our fluency is our dyslexia screener assessment that we use K2 and then we talked about this briefly earlier but the correlation between map and SBA is one of the highest and any standardized assessments like this that exists and WEA is one of the best for it so this is our correlation data um and so I showed you last year uh the winter winter map data to Spring SBA data for both reading on the left there in the white and in the gray is the math so last year's winter Benchmark period and how many of those students were expected to be proficient on the spring SBA and how many ended up being proficient and

004so you can see there of course there's some outliers where it seems like a little further away but for the most part the correlation for an assessment like this is fairly strong and you'll notice down there at the bottom the eighth grade math that's because the all of the middle school students who take algebra took the map algebra assessment so they're not represented in this data and so that's why that one is skewed but just wanted to show you that because in this and again when I put this presentation together I really focused on growth thinking this is a mid-year Benchmark that we're looking at one of the questions I asked megier is how is the year going so growth is um pretty important and that correlation like how many students can we expect potentially

005to be meeting the state assessment Benchmark so um this shows both achievements for that projected proficient and it shows the growth and the the um the colors here follow the cohort so it's just another way to look at that data that last year second graders from fall to winter grew on average 54 um or they're in the 54th percentile the average um and then those same students this year were in the average 60th percentile so again looking at if they're 50th would be the average and if they're above that that means more kids than more expected to meet Benchmark or growth expectations did meet growth expectations so this is some of the growth data to analyze there and what I did for the achievement one difference between achievement and growth again is thinking about in

006the fall how many were projected to be proficient and then when they took that Benchmark again in the winter how many were projected to be proficient so are we seeing an increase in students over the course of the last few months be projected to be proficient on our state assessment or is that decreasing so that's the way to look at that data there um so I don't know study session I was asking for questions as we go should I hold the questions till the end okay um so then I'm transitioning on hold your map questions if you have them but I'm transitioning on to the uh wistif data so with just wish if is the Washington State Improvement framework so under federal law under Federal Essa um law we every state has to come up

007with a way in which they see how schools are doing and Washington has come up with the with if so under the wisif these are the performance indicators that they use to look at our schools and calculate um how they are as compared to other schools in these areas so the indicators are Proficiency in ela and math on the SBA for both Elementary all the way up student growth student growth is not part of the indicators at High School English learner progress so that one is for our ml students in program are they progressing on that Wida which is the the language assessment and are they um is there language acquisition progressing at the rate that we would expect and then graduation is one of the indicators at High School and then attendance is an

008indicator across the board ninth graders on track and dual credit offerings are both at the high school and this shows the weights of those categories so you'll notice and this is one of the in my opinion great things they did when they changed from the old way they looked at schools to the new one under wissf uh growth is 50 of a school's score so as we talked about earlier that's important because we could be a student if you're looking at an individual student level could still be below grade level and still um growing maybe more than expected and so that honors that growth and at high school we have 50 is the graduation rate and then you can see the other ones broken down there so this is important to note because as I

009mentioned in the study session uh one of the things to keep in mind about the Wist of data is that kova threw it off like it did so many things um but this was the year they did identification back in 1718 and in 20 in the 2021 school year they were supposed to re-identify but none of the schools in Washington had the data all those different indicators that was needed in order to recalculate and so um they are they did they just did that again like a month maybe a little bit more ago so schools were just notified they just recalculated across the state of Washington and typically they would wait a couple of years to do that again it's three years worth of data every time they identify but in order to get back

010on a cycle that makes sense they're actually going to re-identify again next year but the people who the schools who were identified this year will receive the 3 years of support so there's going to be a chunk of time here where more schools I think than would typically be receiving support are because they're going to be identifying two years in a row the reason they're identifying two years in a row is because they made some amendments you know they asked the federal government to accept some amendments to the way it was calculated because we still don't have some of the pieces that they use to calculate it and after this year we will so the two ones in green there are the two that they had to amend in order to make calculations so normally

011the growth which is one of the best pieces of how they calculate student or school health we can't calculate that because this assessment season will be the second time they use and a changed blueprint of the assessment so we've taken the SBA a couple of times since covid but it hasn't been the same test blueprint any of those times so they can't accurately calculate growth based off of that because the different test blueprints so this will this upcoming one will provide us opportunity to get that growth piece back additionally last year we moved to Wida from the elpa elpa used to be our language acquisition assessment and now it's Wida and that bridge when we're talking about one of the indicators is are they progressing through that assessment as we would expect there is no

012bridge between if they were here in elpa they should be here in Wida and so they had to um come up with a crazy calculation for calculating that piece of it temporarily and once again this will be the second year with it so after this year they'll have all the right data sets to make the calculations according to the original intent that's why they're going to re-identify again next year but for the schools that were identified this year in our district we will receive the three years of support that that comes with so this is what the wissf data looks like um and I've presented this before but the way they calculate that ID threshold and that bar of achievement under the all student categories is they take all of those indicators and all those

013weights and so every school gets a score and then they take the bottom five percent of schools and that creates that threshold line the bottom five percent fall below that threshold line then they take that threshold line and they pull it out across all those different subgroups um and you can see if if any of those subcategories fall below that threshold line so there's also new this year underwhissive this invisible threshold line that's there that's the title one threshold line so if and that matters because they change the way schools were identified this year with that but the title one threshold line is 1.89 meaning the bottom five percent of title Schools fall below the 1.89 under the all students category um and I did want to quickly take you just to where you can

014explore the this data and manipulate it on your own on the ospi report card if you click on a school and then scroll down to wsf it'll give you this data so this one is just this year's calculations what I have on the slides is the trend data so you'll see on my slides the trend data but they also have some other interesting things to explore so if you wanted to know for example the English language Learners was there a particular area and all those indicators that they struggled in um you could look at the details and detailed Trend will give you the trend in each of this area and see all of those indicators and those subgroups and how each of those subgroups performed in each of those indicators wanted to point out that

015that's live in public and as of like a month ago so here's just a snapshot of our data in Ellensburg school district and the status of support identification is off to the left and what that support identification means or how the pathway to that identification um so we've got schools identified as tier three for graduation right and that's Excel um and we have schools identified as the tier three compound which is a new identification this year and that means that they were previously tier one or tier two and they had one of those student groups fall below that title one threshold and their Title One School so those schools were identified as tier three compounds and we have tier one target which is Mount Stuart which means one or two of those subcategories fell below

016that threshold line but not below the title one threshold line and then foundational and that's no none of those subcategories fell below that threshold line or the all students and that's the high school so those different tiers come with different levels of support So for our schools that were identified as tier three um that will come with funding and with coaching support um and the idea being from the state that if there are areas that we have room to improve in the organ they're going to provide us resources in order to make improvements in those areas oops so quickly running through the um the data from our schools this is excels and of course their population sizes in some of those subcategories are low enough that they're not going to pop up on the data

017and this is EHS and um so the high school is the one that was in foundational supports because none of their subcategories fell under that threshold line and this is all comparative data as well so um there is a span across the state in each of these categories ranging from the just over zero to the almost 10. this is Morgan Middle School so they were identified tier three compounds because they are Title One school and they had um some of their subcategories that fell in this identification period below that 1.8 threshold line so again I am showing Trend data which is also helpful to be able to see even if we're below how are we trending and so the categories that fell below this year in the 2022 run below that 1.89 is here here

018sorry it's a delayed end here this is Lincoln and one of the interesting things about our elementaries this year with this identification is our staff and students are all down in different buildings so we had um all three of our old Elementary's identified for some level of support but now we have a new Elementary who um wasn't identified because they didn't exist before last year and we have our students that are all mixed up so we've been kind of talking with ospi about how might that support look given that scenario could we spread that support out to the all the elementaries this is Mount Stuart so again Mount Stewart was identified for tier one because they only had one subcategory fall below and it wasn't below that 1.89 thresholds and then this is Valley View

019questions I had a question going back to the dyslexia screener that you had mentioned earlier in the study session and being that it is new um I'm wondering what those conversations look like with parents when they have a student who's lagged um and what kind of resources or what um what you do after yeah well I would say like always our primary teachers in particular do a really nice job of talking about that reading development with parents um and so they have not just that data they have a lot of other data they bring to the table in conferences when they talk about that reading achievement so it gives a little bit more of a fuller picture of what's going on than just the fluency screener but again because we are required by law to

020hand parents something that talks about dyslexia um if their child was flagged then uh I think that part of the messaging that we've given to teachers is to ensure that we are high emphasis on what are we doing to support your child which they've always done that in conferences anyways um but I think that's the key is these this is what we're seeing on this assessment here's potentially growth data if they're growing that's a different conversation with a parent than if they haven't grown much from fall to winter or spring conferences for example um and so that conversation just looks a little bit different but I think focusing on what are we doing in order to support your child and what can you be doing to support your child at home that's the Crux of

021the conversation um and I think our teachers do a very nice job of having that conversations with parents but like I said it's a challenge given that the law specifies that so distinctly for us to um even raise that word with parents when chances are that's not something that they need to be concerned about um so it's a challenge and we are navigating that and there are things like for our ml population ospi came out with different guidance than um our monolingual English students because it's very challenging at that young age when you add the layer of they're also learning a another language on top of it to determine is this a language thing or is this a learning thing and so um we've taken the stance of having a slightly different conversation with those

022parents um because ospi has different guidelines um because that's an important layer so we're trying to be very thoughtful and intentional about how that conversation looks with parents but like I said that law was put in place with all of us of intentions to ensure parents are aware of what's happening in the classroom and kids aren't falling through the cracks and um we are assessing them and seeing where is their current level and the other thing about that law is it actually specifies which you don't see very often a specific type of instruction we have to use multi-sensory instruction in rating K2 per law so ORD any other questions thank you very much Jen sure do that thanks guys all right that'll take us on to uh student reports next and we'll start with grady4a

023uh well first I want to thank you all for such a warm welcome back I was gone for quite a while but I'm happy to be here and I have quite a bit to report on so I'll just get started um my name is grady4a I am a student at Ellensburg High School who was recently very disappointed by an all-school anti-bullying assembly put on by the Ellensburg High School administration I can understand anyone's confusion regarding that statement because How could an assembly intended to promote kindness and peace possibly go wrong I have asked myself the same question far too many times at this assembly the principal at Ellensburg High School briefly touched base on the ASB Executive Board election that took place last spring if you didn't already know this was an election in which

024I was running for ASB executive board president against one other election year my campaign had students at EHS stealing about 50 worth of posters vandalizing my posters with homophobic jokes such as crossing the r and the D out of my name to spell gay bullying me online by using pictures of my posters with captions containing the word literally producing feces on my poster and posting it online threatening me with gun violence and more this homophobic violence towards me last year got so serious that police officials were knocking on my door to ask me questions about the situation considering the seriousness of the events that took place last year and never even for once thought I would be sitting on the bleachers in the Ellensburg high school gym listening to the administration bring up these events

025during an anti-pulling assembly without ever Consulting me after everything went down last year the ASB election assembly was moved a virtual format for safety reasons before campaign speeches began the principal gave a speech much like the speech he gave at the recent anti-bullying assembly many students including me feel that this speech was filtered and shied away from reality in attempts to keep EHS from looking bad I didn't express any grievances in regards to what I thought was an unemotional speech until after an announcement was made about a senior game involving fake guns that was proclaimed banned by the administration in this announcement the principal explained that gun violence is not permitted or tolerated by the EHS Administration and that any participation in the game would result in serious consequences after this announcement was made I

026asked the vice principal why such an announcement wasn't made about homophobia I was facing I explained that I only wish that the principal could interrupt classes over the intercom to explain that homophobia isn't tolerated at EHS and that any participation instead violence will result in serious consequences the vice principal explained to me that the straightforward and to the point announcement concerning the senior game was simply a result of the lessons that had been learned after the election this is all more reason that I was deeply and profoundly upset by the speech given at the recent anti-bullying assembly maybe if I had been consulted beforehand I could have offered up some advice and proposed not filtering the events that heard in any way shape or form the principal never used the words homophobia Kate Prime gun

027threats Etc when explaining what happened last year in fact he barely even explained what happened last year which in my perspective was only an attempt at protecting EHS from getting angry parent phone calls or to shelter students from sensitive topics I never thought something like this would happen again after my conversation with the vice principal about the lessons they had learned at the recent assembly the principal started by explaining that students outnumber staff so it's our responsibility to end bullying while students in my opinion can definitely do their part in not bullying people I think it's unrealistic to say that because there aren't as many staff members as students that staff can't really do anything if I had been shown any sort of support from the administration last year maybe the events wouldn't have had

028such a deep effect on me the staff wasn't made aware that anything was even going on last year until I touched on the situation in my campaign speech the support that many staff members showed me after I made them aware that I was being bullied was incredible and almost outweighed the horrible things that the people were doing and the lack of support that the administration was giving me I think it would have been beneficial for students if the principal had stated that EHS is a school that promises to protect lgbtq plus students and students of the global majority and that discrimination towards students based on sexual orientation gender race Etc will not be tolerated I wouldn't have been so upset by this assembly if I was offered an apology from the administration directly and a

029promise to do better in the future during this assembly I felt that numerous excuses were made to protect the administration's reputations as well as many students the principal explained in a speech that he doesn't want us to think that we are a school with bad students because we are one of the best schools in the region from my frame of reference I feel that it's surely about time that we stop protecting students as Egos and call it like it is we have a school with far too many students who have been victims of racism sexism homophobia transphobia xenophobia Etc I think many can agree that if the administration doesn't start using those words and calling out the students as well as apologizing for their own actions and their own mistreatment towards students in situations where

030students are being threatened and bullied nothing will ever change now um before I end this letter I want to briefly touch base on the many conversations I have had with the administration in my time at EHS I have never been afraid to express disappointment or frustration towards the way situations have been dealt with and I think it's important to acknowledge the numerous productive conversations I've had with the admin about the process of dealing with the situations at hand and what could possibly be done better the frustration conveyed in this letter is in connection with the fact that it's been made very clear to me that the administration cares and wants to do better but from my point of view they have yet to do so I think it's only fair to say that there was

031quite a bit of ignorance when it comes to dealing with prejudice towards specific communities at EHS but there is care I would like to offer some respectful and unsolicited advice to the staff at administration at EHS as well as to the students growing and learning may only come from respecting and listening to each other I have done my fair share of reacting to situations poorly I have come to find that through my anger I have only hurt people made situations worse and made people even more hateful students we need to give ourselves space to grow so that we can be inspiring truly productive leaders for our future Generations this comes with gracefully offering our wisdom and knowledge of different communities and different Community needs to the people before us who have yet to learn as

032students I feel that it's part of our job to ensure a safe environment for all people by expressing Grievances and discomforts to our higher ups but it is not our job to step forward and speak out no matter what the climate may be the level of care that you have for students and student voices needs to be made more clear I have been expressing frustrations to the administration for the last four years not caring what the response may be luckily I have insane support from friends and family and I have always had the courage to speak up even in my unsettlement but it is a fact that not all students feel brave enough to voice what they are passionate about when they don't know if their admin cares enough to hear them but I believe

033if these certain students knew that you were willing to listen and grow from them we could go far we as students will promise to educate if you promise to learn thank you for listening foreign thank you Grady Josephine hello so my report might be a little bit of recap from the board meeting before Spring Break um this is something that we've been working on for a while and we've recently made a lot more progress um this is also in response to bullying bullying is a universal problem that not only every school district deals with but that everyone continues to deal with throughout their life past high school or college it's been clear to me that bullying has been a constant problem within our district and many students go through school feeling invisible unheard or silenced

034last month a couple students posted on their Instagrams about their experiences with bullying through Elementary School Middle School and High School in our district and it was heartbreaking one of them was present at the last board meeting these stories that are coming out are just the tip of the iceberg and it is very saddening however it's time to learn from past mistakes and move on to find a solution so many times when the problem has been addressed in the past it has been with anger and blame one side versus another I.E students versus admin this is not to say that these students weren't valid dated in their pain and anger it's time for the division to stop or no solid Solutions can be created I've reached out to another student and we are working together

035to create a discussion group centered around bullying the principal has been working with us and will be sitting in on the discussions along with the superintendent however this group is student-led and they will be there to listen our first meeting will be next Monday and we have reached out to about 25 students our goal for the first meeting is to let everyone share their stories and experiences of being bullied or silenced within our school we want them to not just feel heard but be heard it will be very difficult to sit through but it's also very necessary from there we would like to move on to finding Solutions and creating an outlet where students who don't get as much obvious recognition can have a voice within our schools we want to give them an opportunity

036to not only create change but be a part of the change they want to see our goal is to work with the principal and the superintendent so that they can also become more aware of the problems within our school and learn what they can do best to help the situation fixing the problem is not totally reliant on just students or just the admin just as the problem is not solely because of students or admin moving forward we would like to come together to find Solutions this discussion group is going by the name of we the people right now we are planning to name it students United and create an image as a metaphor to explain what we stand for our whole idea is that we are growing and supporting a forest of trees instead of

037burning everything down therefore the image will consist of a big tree full of luscious green leaves below the tree will be its roots and they will taper into rays of light as our idea is to spread light where it appears darkest above the tree will be a banner that says we the people and below the tree the phrase will continue on to say Stand United thank you thank you very much Josephine greetings Josephine thank you both for your reports or any discussion any questions I want to ask some questions and I want to start with a huge thank you both to you and Reagan who unfortunately is not here tonight but I think we've said a couple times that you three of student leaders have certainly stood out and were thankful to have your voices

038on the board because this is a voluntary situation for you also and you do spend long hours here and also thank you to the students who came last week one of the more difficult things to do on the board is that you can't respond during public comments so that's always difficult and it was certainly very difficult last week because people were laying their heart out there um Josephine what you said uh ring a place for students to not just feel heard but to be heard and so Grady with what you uh offered I am wondering um with the discussion we had in the study session where the principal came and answered our questions because the board asked for a report immediately after last week's public comment and we did receive that report um do you

039feel like there are steps being taken where you are being heard and not just feeling like you're heard yeah um that's a good question um I think um a really good question because part of the frustration conveyed in the letter um was that I felt like um I I felt like I wasn't being heard um and I've had a lot of great conversations with um many people in the administration this year um about what has happened during the election last year um and what could have been done differently and what could have been done differently at the assembly um and apologies took place and all that um stuff um and I think going forward students will continue um to feel heard by the administration because I think the administration knows what needs to be done

040differently going forward um and I certainly feel like this year in like the second semester of school I felt like I've definitely been heard more than I did in previous years and that's why the last four years were kind of hard and difficult but I think we are definitely going in the right direction um and I hope we continue going where I where I think we're going right now um I don't know if that answer answers your question yeah but no it was great I don't know if Josephine willing to add anything or um what was the can you repeat the question again I'm wondering if the steps the steps that students have brilliantly brought their voices and have been vulnerable and offering it administration's also been vulnerable and offering uh parts of that discussion

041you said in your in your in your reading tonight uh not to just feel heard but to be heard and do you feel like there are steps I think tonight's study session was informative sorry uh do you do you feel like there are steps being taken that you feel more like you're being heard um I would definitely say in the past um there was a lot of talking that was done and I don't think there was a lot of action and so I think that led to a lot of people feeling lost or not really knowing what the situation was um but I think right now especially with what we're trying to do with this group we're seeing more action being done towards people everyone being heard in a more diverse array of students being

042heard and I think it helps that a lot of students have been stepping up and voicing their opinions and I think we're working towards creating a stronger channel of communication between admin and students and I think that will help a lot and so I think there's definitely been mistakes made in the past but I think it's time to move forward from those and I would say we're making a lot of progress hmm thank you I just want I want to say thank you on this subject of bullying that you you both uh brought up uh I want to thank the administration because this is a hard topic and I don't think it's enough to say well that's what the world's dealing with right that's out there in the world yes that's out there in the

043world but we're a school and we're a learning community and so like I said earlier in study session school is now a place to seek out justice but rather to figure out how we can push towards progress and so some of the steps that um I was thankful to hear about is that we continue to work with uh clear risk to do an investigation every single time something comes up I was thrilled to hear that we'll have liaison student Liaisons to the asbs to broaden the voices at the table um you know we the people is quite the the Legacy to leave as a senior and that both the superintendent and the administrators will be in there um it is it is a difficult conversation but because of the students um being willing to speak

044and because of the administrators being willing to listen and it's uncomfortable topics at times right um they're important and so I'm thankful for your leadership and being there because I do believe that you've pushed students more to the center I guess I'll just say that I think the idea of a listening session and encouraging people to tell their stories is an excellent first step when you're dealing with something that in the literature is called institutional betrayal this sense that you've been harmed and then you report it and nothing gets done um like that goes very deep in term in terms of trusting like well why should I even bother reporting something that happens to me in the future and so rebuilding that kind of trust requires not only people sharing their stories but then really

045seeing measurable action as a result of that and so I think if there are ways that I'll just speak for myself if there if there are ways that I as a board member could help support the action in addition to the sharing of experiences I hope you'll let us know I like what you said I like what you said about um how you you bring something up um and then perhaps you don't feel like enough was done so you feel like there's no point in doing it in the future um I've done my fair share of just being like I I'm not even going to report it nothing's gonna get done um and I think the key to making students feel like they they can continue to express Grievances and discomforts um is communication that's

046the word we've brought up so many times is communication um and I think we have quite a ways to go but I think making our main goal um giving this making the students feel like the administration is a safe place to go um and I certainly have gotten there as a student but I know it's going to take quite a while for a lot of students to get there just because they haven't had the conversations that I personally have had with the administration um and don't know exactly what goes on behind closed doors and I and I just keep going back to the word communication and I I think that's really important and I don't think we will go anywhere without it so I like what you said about um yeah what you said or

047any more questions or discussion right thank you again both oh yes Josephine I would just add um thank you guys for supporting us and being willing to continue to support us and also thank you to the admin for being willing to work with us and everyone who stepped forward and shared because communication requires everyone so all right thank you both uh Ginger that takes us on to your update I also just really want to thank her soon perhaps and they just acknowledge the importance of student voice and I know I've had a many opportunities to um speak with both Grady and Josephine and Reagan and I know I always learn a lot from you as well as students and it just really emphasizes I think the importance of student voice and continuing our commitment as

048a superintendent as a district to finding ways to have ongoing opportunities for students to have a voice to provide for that dialogue and certainly acknowledge that we need to continue to strengthen our systems so that every student our lgbtq plus students all of our students feel affirmed and valued and safe at our schools and as you shared as well Cindy actions that go with that right so I'm excited that I love the uh the metaphor of the tree because when you have deep roots and there's storms that comes the tree stays intact right and we want everyone to be well rooted in feeling that sense of belonging and affirmation when they're in our schools where there is no just discrimination so thank you again you guys and I also want to thank uh all of

049you guys and uh Mr snow for the great conversation that we had during the study session too and as I shared with the board we continue to follow up on um what was shared at public comment and we will continue to share uh our ongoing uh what we find as a result of those follow-up steps so next we have uh Joanne Duncan again uh this is really exciting she shared a little bit about the Curious Garden but we truly uh if you remember when we opened Idina cineronica the erotica family came and one of the things that one of the ironic or brothers I think shared was just that importance of having like a healing garden and uh that we know that Ida was so committed to stewardship of our lands and I am just

050so excited about what Joanne and her staff is is doing around those values and really aligning with um would just probably be really excited about oh wait Joanne I don't think you're Mike's on oh there you go oh is that it no so you just needed to get up and come over it's like magic it would be more exciting of course if the amazing Stephanie Teasley was here but she did have another commitment tonight so um it's just me it's not as fun and exciting but I will do my best so yes uh first of all thank you to the board our community our superintendent to the school boards in the past that have made the school possible to be in our community with these new elementary schools is amazing I know Ginger had just

051kind of mentioned that whole process of the Committees that came together the community members that went on tours of schools on the West Side saying this is what we want in our community a school that promotes Outdoor Learning that lets that natural connection between nature and the like students just be just a really great fit and so um with that we had an opportunity to apply for a grant outdoor Grant from ospi and we were awarded the Grant and so it was very exciting we found out in November and so this update about our community project really is about we have created now a functional Garden space in our Courtyard Taylor Wilson from EHS and his students have built 14 beautiful garden beds two strawberry towers and two potato boxes and we worked with Wendy

052me from the Kittitas County Conservation District on the design and layout of the Garden and we're working with Elaine Jameson from the Master Gardeners on seed soil and all things gardening we've also met with members of the Yakima Nation to get their ideas and perspectives because we recognize the importance of acknowledging and celebrating the land we inhabit and the people who have been stewards of it for Generations our community garden project provides a valuable opportunity to learn about indigenous cultures and their deep connection to the land in particular of course we are inspired by the legacy of Idaho after whom our great school is named Ida was a strong and courageous woman who was deeply committed to stewardship kindness and persistence she was a leader in our community and worked tirelessly tirelessly to improve the

053lives of those around her we believe every day that her Legacy can serve as an inspiration to our students and can help instill a sense of Pride and responsibility for the land we inhabit we have Incorporated many lessons and activities that highlight the contributions of indigenous peoples to our community and the importance of stewardship sustainability and what it means to be a change maker when you walk down our Hall we have our change maker wall and so students are learning what that means your small acts make a big difference by incorporating indigenous perspectives into our community garden project we hope to foster a sense of empathy and understanding among our students to promote a more inclusive and Equitable Community we believe that our project can help to carry on the legacy of Ida nation eronica

054and to honor the rich history and the culture of the land on which we live although we are still in the very early stages of the project every day we get a little we got to get going we got to get planting which we are getting closer and closer to um we are so excited about the potential of the garden to provide so many benefits to our students we're planning to incorporate garden-based lessons tied to standards covering topics such as plant biology environmental science and sustainability the lessons will allow students to apply their Knowledge and Skills in real life situations such as planting harvesting crops composting that's something we'll be talking about later and just caring for the garden the garden will provide opportunities for social emotional learning to meet social emotional learning standards students

055will be able to work in teams to plan and execute special garden projects learning important SEL skills such as communication collaboration and problem solving they will also be able to develop a sense of responsibility and ownership over the garden which will help to foster a sense of community among the students the garden will also provide a valuable Outdoor Learning environment students will be able to learn and play in fresh air and sunshine and sometimes maybe a little bit of wind just a little I hope the plants actually will not get blown over um which will help to reduce stress and improve their mental health being outdoors will also help to cultivate a sense of curiosity and wonder among the students as they explore and discover the natural world around them we are so excited at

056the about the project progress we have made so far in rolling out our community garden project we understand it as a work in progress and I hope everyone else understands that but we are committed to seeing this project through and providing the students with a unique learning experience that promotes academic social and emotional development and continues to foster a sense of curiosity and wonder and I want to just thank our maintenance department has been so helpful with getting the beds we we've got them set up in the courtyard if you haven't had a chance to see those yet we have log benches being delivered Friday the soil is coming kids are going to be mixing soil and the library area Stephanie Teasley our library stream specialist has got her growing racks ready with lights and

057so kids will start planting seeds we'll also be planning out in the dirt once that gets there um and I just love this quote children are natural gardeners they are curious experimental and have a great love of learning a garden is a wonderful place for them to explore discover and learn about the world around them so we are just excited and grateful for this wonderful project and I don't know Leslie if you had that other link I sent if it's okay if you don't that's fine I've probably said it said enough the other exciting thing um Ginger I saw you that had we you had on there was about the artist um and so as a new school we the Washington State Arts Council we get a piece of art and so a committee was

058formed with a diverse group of community members and it was quite a process we had to look through hundreds through hundreds of artists we had to go through in this amazing process and we're really excited the artist that was pretty much unanimous unanimously selected her name is Diane Williams and she's from Ohio and she does these beautiful mosaics and she's completed several of these mosaics and other elementary schools where she works with the students and they help become part of the project and her art is inspired by nature and growth and learning so she's a perfect fit and she'll be visiting our school in early May to just get a feel for who we are what our school is about and where the best place will be for this artwork we have this link what

059we did if you want to just scroll up we you know as we got is the project going if you want to go down just to go I mean back to the top we won't go through the whole thing you have access to it so you can follow our progress it's just this became the Hub where we could keep track of everything for uh the garden so you'll see our timeline information about the grant uh just you know how we're progressing but um here it is a Ida Nation eronica community garden a community of change makers who are stewarding the land to learn and honor those who have gone before us and those who will come after us so you have that link I've um I know there's a lot more to share so just

060enjoy looking at it if you have questions please let me know and please come visit come hang out in the garden it's going to be a great place any questions I don't think anybody has any questions thank you very much yeah thank you so much so we let's see here it is we had a great interview process for the mount new Mount Stewart principle and I wanted to share let's see if it's going to turn Melissa Singletary is going to be our new principal at Mount Stewart we had several parents and staff members administrators come together for first round and then those same groups helped participate um actually invited a parent I don't think we had a parent on the second round but we did invite him uh to um come together to say what

061do we what are the characteristics that really want in a new principle and Melissa is amazing and so she will be our new principal and I think she wants to come to a board meeting in June so you guys have a chance to meet her but you can see she has a wealth of educational experience she's currently the principal of the Early Learning Center at the Sela school district and she comes to us with the background and K2 instructional coaching multi-language learning and early learning literacy so we're super excited to have her on board and then I want to end with uh recently last Saturday we had a wonderful event that was a building on the first event that we had in the fall for belonging in the Berg and this time it was around

062Building Bridges in Allensburg uh which really I think connects to some of the uh some of what we've talked about and the work that we're doing in our schools we're also partnering with our community to provide those spaces for dialogue and that's what this world Cafe is about so the school district CWU and the City of Ellensburg we as you remember we did a I think a resolution together that we agreed to have a partnership a shared partnership we had some really good conversations and just like the conversation we had here that we still have work to do to strengthen those systems and ensure that every single student and staff member feels that they belong we still have work to do in the community so just know that as a school district we're committed to

063that work inside our schools but we're also committed to that work within our community so I'm excited about that work and I think that we can want to continue with the World Cafe and continue to have that dialogue because it really I think does open up people to being open to hear other perspectives and I think when I hear other perspectives it helps me to be reflective on my own assumptions that I make and I know I grow and learn every time I hear somebody else's perspective or hear their personal story so um just want to thank our partners for that event because I thought it was very successful and I'm excited that they are they're going to have another one potentially next fall and that's the end of my report oh wait no one

064right um so we did do an equity survey with Hanover and the survey closed and they got back with me we had a little over 800 students middle school and high school that responded that survey one of the questions on this survey is around bullying and and a feeling of belongings so we'll have some more data from a large sample group of students uh coming to us and I think we'll get the executive summary from that survey uh maybe by the second meeting board meeting in May but maybe not until early June but for sure before we before the end of June before our last meeting so I'm excited to see what those results are going to be because we did have a really good sample of students who replied to the survey as well

065as parents and staff and now that's the end of my report great thank you very much Ginger any discussion board or any questions all right now take us into business uh first up transition program or special education yep and that's going to be be Kelly all right good evening um very excited to introduce a very important person in our school district and I feel bad that it's taken us this long to get her in front of you this is uh Mrs Kelly riddle and she is our new special education director she replaced Patty Kimmel uh mid-october or early November October 6th October 6th okay so as we know Patty stepped out a little early for some medical things it's super challenging to find um candidates that would be acceptable and knowledgeable mid-year and we just

066got super lucky with Kelly riddle honestly Kelly has a so I'm going to introduce Kelly a little bit to you um Kelly is a 22-year veteran of special education and Kelly you have your Masters in special education as well is that correct and she actually has administrative background so Kelly comes to us from the Yakima Valley she went to Central Central grad she loves ellensburg's one of the reasons way she wanted to come back Kelly has spent years in the classroom in the Silas school district and also Yakima and she was promoted into an assistance special education director in Yakima and worked there in administration and was promoted up to the director of enrollment in the Yakima schools and then when this opportunity came along it just kind of fit with her narrative and it

067was an opportunity this is a place she's always wanted to be so we feel really fortunate so we we nabbed her early in the year and she's um she's been doing some pretty heavy lifting I will say I think the reason why we haven't gotten her in front of you at this point is because of the heavy lifting she's been doing it's been a lot of learning so anyway welcome Kelly Kelly and I are going to uh present on the concept of transition and transition in special education is really about Services provided to students up until they're 21 and it's typically additional service services for students we provide transition services to every special education student in our program but the transition we're going to be talking about is going to be really for pretty significantly

068in need kids who need additional support in launching into life and what are we doing and really I've always felt that the feather in our cap as a district is really preparing those kids to go out and have successful student outcomes and so we want to talk to you a little bit about kind of what we would Envision and where we'd like to go so Kelly thank you Kelly um yeah and that's one of our most vulnerable populations we do survey every year those students that exit uh the the this High School to check back on them to see how they're doing and oftentimes it can be challenging and a struggle for our students especially our students with with challenges and and disabilities uh social emotional some students in the spectrum of autism you know

069multiple things that can make it difficult for students to continue uh Beyond high school so that's that's what our goal is is to look at that sort of population of students and see how we can support them so I'm just going to briefly talk to you about what I um have been doing oh there it is thank you Leslie so just that the enrollment numbers if you look at 2021 uh the total numbers of students in at the Ellensburg School District on IEPs was 412 students 2020 21 22 421 and then currently we're at 437 so there is definitely a slow increase of student population of those students qualifying for special education services so that I've been working on since I've been here which is just six months I think this week or last week

070I've been familiarized familiarizing myself with staff and the systems here in Ellensburg I have to tell you I think the IEP or excuse me the special education staff is amazing it is what a wonderful group of people as well as all the people here the teachers the administration just have been really welcoming and supportive of my new role and my learning curve if you will um I've been navigating some challenges uh on the up with educational and legal system situations as well professional development we did a two-day IEP compliance training for all the certified staff we just completed that a couple of weeks ago I've been establishing a district special education monthly meetings with secondary and Elementary staff collaborating with my SLP group as psychologists The mtss Specialist um around the mtss referral process as

071well as the ell critical data which is something that Jen had just spoke about which is those El learner students and how we can really serve those students before we bring them up for referral for an IEP so we're going to be doing some training around the Steve Gill program for most of our staff all of our staff that work with those students um working on the collaboration with the Early Childhood Program to create a Continuum of best practice we've hired I've hired two psychologists for the fall we um have one retiring and another one that left us unfortunately early in the fall so those have been filled and then continuing looking at the SLP shortage as well that's not only Statewide but it's actually National so trying to really do some recruiting on that

072end as well um we have working on the extended school year for students that qualify for E it's called esy which is students that qualify to have continuing Services during the summer uh working on that we did some safety net funding which is how we can get some monies back from the state on our some of our real complex kids that receive lots of services some of these kids receive maybe Vision Services or have um just just a lot of layers of support one-on-one support where they need an adult full-time those type of students we've received some we've got that submitted on time there's a deadline for that so I got that done we got that done we had a special education audit when I came in we got that done check um and then

073we're starting to work on the developing and planning of a transition program like which Kelly had mentioned for our 17 to 21 year olds so we're going to discuss that here yeah and just just to jump on the back when we say SLP um that speech and language pathology I'm sorry when nope it's good we have so many acronyms so please like raise your hand and go okay we don't know but we have a severe shortage of speech and language pathology we can find them electronically but not human beings who are willing to come on campus and we're by law required to do that and so that's been a huge Initiative for us I just figured you might not know what that means so and they fight what's happened is during the pandemic they found

074it really desirable to be able to stay home and serve serve students and and be moms or or whatever they need to be um it's a primarily a female profession um and so they're they're not willing to come out now and and work directly with our students so there's a lot of work to be done at that level as far as trying to figure out um and one of the things I I am on the Heritage advisory committee in fact we have a meeting on Friday and and we're constantly discussing that topic as well so okay so what are transition Services first so I want you to notice to the right of services there it says unfunded mandate so this is a in the law requirement for all school districts the level and quality of

075which a school district does this varies greatly depending on the school district we are recognizing that in our transition Services we see that there is a need to bolster it a bit and we've had a couple situations this year that have kind of led us down that road to say we could be a little bit more proactive to assure that we're doing that so just the formal definition up there transition services are a coordinated set of activities based upon current age-appropriate transition assistance and this includes instruction or related Services community experiences possibly the development of employment for students and other post-school living objectives when appropriate they include acquisition of daily living skills and the provision of functional vocational assessments so these are kids that that are young adults that need additional support and executive functioning

076for them to go out and launch into the world they're needing more intensive supports to be able to do that so they need to be connected with all of the main players that are going to help them in Adult Services so from 18 to 21 it's a really specific program on how do we come alongside them and their families how do we know who they are what they like what they're good at what they're passionate about and then help them get there and some some kiddos might be um you know severely impacted where they might not be entering into the workforce ever but they could go and get a coffee downtown and have a friendship with someone and that could be an outcome for them where other kids could go to work and have either

077volunteer or paid employment and it's just going to depend on the kit and the individual so it's very unique and then how are we accountable for this the state does a electronic accountability system and they do it through a post-school outcome survey they do it every year and we're happy to report that we have passed it every year so we are meeting the state requirement but we are required basically to conduct a survey where we call up our former graduates and ask what are you doing what are you doing with your life are you employed are you working are you in school and then that data is recorded in a state database and we've either met the requirement or we haven't and we've skimmed those requirements so we are we are sufficient but we do

078see that there's a place for some improvements to be made and and so that's we're here and and we're here to just kind of propose what we would like to see and kind of give you an idea of what that might look like well I don't know if we mentioned that that students that are on IEPs have a right to be educated until they're 21 years of age so um that sometimes can mean uh they get in stuck in a classroom um meaning that that classroom is the only services that we have available and so they aren't able to really um move Beyond there especially if they have some significant needs um and then they spend they can spend multiple years in the same setting so this is that opportunity to expand their life uh

079their life set their skill set thank you for clarifying that piece because yeah and the and there is funding that comes along with it for any child that stays begoned their graduate year they become super seniors they do get the full FTE plus the special ed dollars so it will to a certain degree there's some funding that comes with it but it is an unfunded unfunded mandate but there with the additional funding there is I guess with additional years so through the transition process what we're just going to kind of kind of give you an idea of what it what it looks like we first conduct age-appropriate transition assessment on students so we look at their strengths we look at what they prefer what what are their likes or dislikes uh interests and what their

080needs are and each is done on an individual basis we write measurable post-secondary goals so each IEP a student is on has goals so we're writing measurable goals goals that we can go uh we can actually we can actually measure I know that but we can actually say they have they started here and now they're here and we can have those type of goals for them I hope that makes sense um so that includes Education and Training employment and independent living skills as as needed to identify the transition Services um the identity to identify the transition Services they would include specially designed instruction which is that instruction in instruction based on their needs as individuals it would be related services so maybe that student would need additional services in Vision hearing may need additional services

081in you know speech and language or social emotional and then community experiences and employment and living skills we would write the course of study for that individual student write annual IEP goals and then coordinate Services services with adult agencies that's also a very important part which we're going to talk about over here which is the DVR DDA and SSI which is the Social Security developmental disabilities we want to make sure that we're linking our students and their families with those Beyond 21 Services as well it just strengthens the community as well so it's it's something that we really for Ellensburg as a whole too it's it's just better to have those students have something to take with them in adulthood so it's community experiences it's Independent Living it's life and career planning it's employment opportunities

082and that is sheltered opportunities to actually page opportunities so sheltered opportunities you took my note out of there so sheltered opportunities can be opportunities within the school system and we and and we've talked about that that could be working in things around the school to help like working with um with different uh the director like I know maintenance we've talked about that where they could help you know shovel snow or or learn a skill in um in how to um you know just just do something maybe repetitive if that's their level or just being able to serve other people um so um then paid would be that then possibly we'd have students who actually could be paid most of it is volunteer when we go out to agent are out to employers um it's a

083it's a volunteering it's an agreement that we have with employee employers but there always is that possibility that students will then move into a paid position parent uh linkages to government resources like I mentioned before um you know those resources that can help support those families and those students as they become uh 21 so that they're able to get the the resources they need in adulthood um parent family support and education as well and uh and personal centered planning is is our goal all right you can move forward for us thank you so just just to let you know um we have gone ahead and put together a job description for a transition specialist this is a very specific skill set not everybody with a special ed endorsement is really qualified to do this it

084really is very targeted we know that we if we're going to run this program we gotta have the right person to do it because it is going to involve a lot of autonomy working with businesses it's a very public position and so we've gone ahead and we've posted it internally we are not posting it outside at this point we are seeking to find a candidate or find a situation where we're not going to be adding overall to our staff so we are looking to be economizing to not be adding and and creating additional costs for the district so I want to say that up front pretty clearly we know that we're in a budget reduction time so we're going to be looking at those efficiencies we're going to examine and look at the numbers and

085figure out where exactly is their room and then we will be moving forward with that we would love for this to start this coming year we have really motivated staff that are the high school group we met with today they're very excited but um you know what we're prepared to give it whatever time it needs if it needs another year then we'll do that we have a lot of time to prepare but we want to make sure that it's the right thing so although we're out there seeking it we want to make sure that we're going to do it right and do it well okay so what could it look like um ultimately the location would be best if it was not on campus we would love to find a spot downtown in the economic

086Corridor area where kids can kind of leave and go and work in businesses on walk on foot or get around and jump on Transportation we've talked with Central about potentially uh having a spot on Central's campus and collaborating with Central's special education program um so we're still working with them a little bit on that we could do a mix of maybe the first year we'd do it on campus with an idea that we would expand it maybe a semester because there's going to be quite a bit to build here we're we're going to start a sheltered business meaning we're going to actually have a business where these students will actually be creating a product and selling it and we really want our community involved with that and we want it to be a pretty you

087know known aspect so there's that plus there's all the other learning that needs to come along with the skills that we're going to build so pretty much you can see there we're going to have two groups so we're going to have a group that attends in the morning we're going to have a group that tends in the afternoon it's going to be a half day program for the classroom component of it and then the other part of the day that they're not in the classroom they will be out in the community either in a job or they'll be doing some form of living experience or Community Connection or employment of some form so we're looking at half day in in a in a structured learning environment and then another part of the day Ena work

088in a learning experience so it'll you know we'll be having two groups and they'll be rotating between those uh we're looking like we're going to probably have one teacher and then one to two Perez which would involve uh supported employment training and working with community members okay does anybody have any questions for us or any questions okay anything to add it's pretty straightforward I think we didn't want to catch the board by surprise by posting this job we wanted you to understand the tenant behind it what are we looking at why are we doing it and now it's really about building a program that we can be really proud of that will it will last a long time and it's it's long overdue it's time that we we install something like this it's just got

089to be the right process of doing that so we're putting it out there we'll see what happens we're actually super excited and super thrilled to bring this to Ellensburg bring it back to Ellensburg so I guess I do have a quick question um back on one of the earlier slides you said that currently there's 437 students that have IEPs um and then in the very last slide you're saying that approximately 13 students for this program so that's quite a bit of drop from the students that actually have IEPs to going into this program do you anticipate this program growing or yeah so let's clarify that 437 are all kids preschool through 12th grade that have an IEP so it could be for anything yeah um these the target population for Trans transition is going to

090be our life skills classrooms you know you see kind of a range kids with moderate um low to moderate um cognition and not all of those kids the uh 437 would meet that um so right now we actually were kind of amazed we mapped out who would be what we'd be looking at for next year and then we don't want to start something if it's not going to continue to feed and we were amazed at the feeding potential of it because there's quite a few 10th graders quite a few ninth graders that were already identifying that would benefit from this service but again it's not an appropriate service for every senior or Junior yeah so just uh I know I've been to Selah and West Valley and just looked at their programs recently and um

091I for some reason we we got I got reached I got reached out to by a Netherland director um in another District nearby that asked if we were going to be starting a transition program because they have students that need to be in a transition program so there's always that opportunity as well if there was a lower year of enrollment I know Sela has done that in the past but we looking at our projections we are pretty solid wood all the way to through actually look like through 8th 7th and 8th grade kids we have a pretty heavy cluster of students that are rolling through the system um that will definitely benefit so great thank you Kelly and Kelly I know right thank you [Music] all right that takes us on to the next item

092uh Lincoln proposal good evening thank you um this is pretty straightforward I just need uh I think you all have did you guys get copies of the uh proposal uh so I just need a approval from you to move forward with uh replacing and restoring the roof on Lincoln um this year uh we're actually in closing a bunch of the vents and everything that are on top of that roof so we had that included um so the the total cost of that did not include the the state tax on that's the state tax will add another 48 361 dollars onto that proposal uh for a total of 624 000 94.88 or just as a reminder when we were putting together the plans for Lincoln and we were looking at where to spend our money we

093knew that we were still going to get some match money back the state match money from Morgan and so we were able to take the bond money and put it towards a lot of the great improvements that we have on the inside so that our teachers could fully maximize um the benefit of having a remodeled school and knowing that we were going to have that cash flow so now that that money is starting to come in from the state so that is the money that that we're talking about putting towards the roof which was the plan all along and Brian again was the one that did that original analysis and and helped us make those decisions yeah and this came at an opportune time we were going to have to restore that roof as in

094the process but during the process of commissioning we found out we needed to enclose all of those vents so a great time to do it what's the time frame uh we're potentially doing it and how long will it take um it's we're looking at starting a project late summer uh whenever we can get onto their schedules you know as soon as we get them the the POS and given the approval to move forward we'll get a better time frame uh it takes approximately about a month give or take it you know a week there to to get it all done so this is this is about the fifth project I've done with trimco on on Roofing over the years so they're pretty proficient and uh once they get started it goes pretty quick so potentially

095summertime and hopefully done before school begins so it's No Interruption and yeah that's the plan to try to have it uh even if it if it did run into you know some of the inspections and everything might run into the school year for warranty and everything after they get the job done they have to come back and uh Warranty company inspects the roof and make sure that everything's up to uh spec as far as what the scope of the job was done and then but it takes a couple of months after the job is done to close it that state match money that's coming in is that enough to cover the entirety of the project or is that um yes I believe so from what I understand it's we the state match is more than

096what we need uh and board just is the previous boards that did this and with Brian Aiken 's always the plan like when when he forecasted that and did that they were always watching those numbers knowing that Lincoln's roof had to be replaced and so that money has been thought of and sort of earmarked for that any other questions board this is an action item I move that we approve the Lincoln roof proposal I'll second Pasha has moved that we approved the Lincoln route proposal and Cindy has second all those in favor aye aye any opposed any obsessions all right Lincoln roof proposal has passed thank you and that takes us on to the next one Randy all right you know clean building performance standards the house bill 1257. so I've explained to you guys

097in the past in a couple other meetings we talked about house bill 1257. um I brought uh mckissory Jack Knudson and his team they're going to go into a little more in depth on you know what we're looking at and what our next steps moving forward would be and you know any opportunities for funding that they can talk about a little bit so I'm going to turn it over to him I think Leslie I think I sent you um they did make a couple of changes to those slides did you have some I don't know thumb drive but I do have some handouts we can use the same deck that you guys have and then when it comes to the certain ones that we need to talk to that are not included and then I'll

098just hand them out okay that's okay connection yeah nice to meet you jack Knutson with mckinstry we are a design build firm specializing in renovations for schools um our claim to fame is energy upgrades so if you look up mckinstry we're all about Energy savings conservation sustainability and so on we do have a lot of expertise in uh upgrading renovating schools so today um another unfunded mandate conversation I'm really sorry number two tonight um with me I want to introduce Lance Funk um Lance bunk is one of our program managers that leads development of projects but in particular on this fund helps help do a lot of the calculations and the strategy involved to see what you're going to see in this report so he'll be talking through a lot of the things here and

099then Ira no lender is also a program manager and when it comes down to defining projects and things like that as a result to what you see here when we get to those stages assessing and making recommendations things like that he'll leave that effort so let me jump in go ahead and and start um we'll be quick on the agenda front to just run through the slides I know you guys we want to be quick on this front but um does everybody know what clean building performance standards is is this the first time everybody's seen this okay Randy has done an awesome job talking to us about it okay so it's one of those things that everybody is like do we really need to do this do we not there's a lot of mixed messages

100out there and and things and so just to kind of clear the air this is we do this a lot this is probably what the 10th 11th board meeting in the last probably 30 days we've attended on something like this that spoke on this but it is a situation where the state has come down and actually put down some requirements put it into a program level and then actually move to an actual law so this is not just a program that is out there recommended it is actually a law now unfortunately it's basically uh basically looking at buildings from it says 20 there is 20 to to and higher thousand square foot buildings what we're going to talk about today is really specific 50 000 or higher and what your requirements are and things like

101that and what the program States but it is you know we included the link here if you guys wanted to look at it it has been around for a while however Commerce Department who's running the program has actually changed several different iterations and put things into place um probably what I think early last year is kind of like the final what they have uh for some things um unfortunately so um there are Paths of compliance that are required to different and I'll have Lance speak on those and then some considerations um it's not our job as a construction company that renovates schools to point out this uh uh in the way of wow you you have to do this you do have to do some things and you have some Alternatives and some considerations and

102that's all why we're here today is as your guys's partner to basically explain what options you have and to consider and it really does help you plan because you do have deferred maintenance already so how do you leverage that deferred maintenance and if you do deferred maintenance any changes like a roofing project and things like that on when it comes to meeting requirements with these buildings it's really you would want to before you do something in a big magnitude know about this and use that as part of your planning if not if you do renovate a school and it doesn't meet The Benchmark for You're Gonna Go you know you know oh boy well now we have to pay more money so now that's why we're here it's helping do the planning if that makes

103sense let's move on to the next go ahead all right I want to walk through this sure so as uh Jack pointed out um a lot of the the Our intention with this and bringing this up is we would like to help you guys along this path make you aware of all of your options and uh make give you the information that you need to make informed timely decisions and just make sure you're aware of all of the things that uh different paths that you can take to go through this so as part of that we put together largely it's a it's a five-step process and we started phase zero largely that's it's been uh benchmarking where your building's at so that's the phase we have just completed and gone through and we'll go into

104detail um on the buildings that we looked at why where they're at Etc uh the next phase and Next Step which I will go into in depth here in a little bit is what we can call an investment grade audit that audit is will be broken up into two pieces uh so the first portion of that audit is to answer the question what would it take to make a building fully compliant right if you had to do a full project it takes a new if it takes a new uh HVAC system Windows installation Etc giving you guys that budget and direction of what it would it take to be that make that building compliant uh from that point uh we would come back and make a decision or determination on what path forward that you

105guys would like to go in order to meet compliance whether that's uh conditional through investment criteria path which we'll go into here in a minute or go for a full metered compliance and there's some pros and cons we'll run through here in a minute um from that point we will come back and re-look at the investment grade audit to determine what the next phase of that is that is for us to get to a guaranteed maximum project design and cost for the proposed project to move forward in construction so this would be about 40 to 60 percent design uh it's enough for us to guarantee contractor numbers and Energy savings in the scope of work to be done and at that point we can move into the actual Construction contract but we want to make

106sure that we're hyper focused on the direction that we want to go and do effectively the lowest cost fastest amount of work that we can do for you to get you to decision points so you can make informed decisions um once we finish that investment grade audit we would go move into construction or implementation of that work and following that we would go into the actual compliance period so you have two years of data that you can pick from to submit for compliance uh man as part of that we will help you proactively monitor your energy bills to ensure kind of as an insurance policy that you will be compliant uh via whatever method uh that we move forward with at that juncture does that make sense all right we can go to the next

107one fire hose it is feel free to stop me I tend to talk a little fast so um so the main two paths to compliance are metered compliance this is your building meets the requirements meat succeeds the requirements um the main benefit of this one is in addition you have no penalty assessed however there's no additional work as long as the plans are maintained the maintenance and operation plan and energy management plans with the facility largely as long as the building is still operating and still meeting Appliance in your next five years when you have to recomply you just have to submit that data and largely that data will all be either automated or easily uploaded into Department of commerce's program um making it a very low cost easy path forward um the second path

108is investment criteria path now this pass needs to meet a couple criteria in order to use this path as an alternative to full compliance so um the building either physically can't meet metered compliance which some buildings just can't they're not designed to do so or the cost to do it is so astronomical it's unfeasible um or the building owner you can't afford improvements necessary at that time but you plan to make those improvements in a phase approach long term to get towards meter to compliance so the big Pro it gets you away from penalties uh the big con is that you have to do this compliance past step every five years until you're building meets meter compliance um so what we do to find your compliance is every building based on usage type age and

109occupational hours gets a Target it's an eui Target eui stands for energy usage intensity effectively we measure all of the build energy coming into the building so namely natural gas and electric break that down into kbtu energy usage and distribute that over the square footage of the conditioned space of the building and it gives you an eui score um there's going to be a quiz yeah yeah as soon as you I just want to make sure you guys know what the act all the acronyms stand for because there's a million of them um and then you build your operations and maintenance and energy management plan so um that your energy usage is normalized over the last 30 years of weather pattern data and that's to try to take out seasonal highs and lows you know

110extraordinarily hot summer or a cold winter so any questions on the two pass there can I just say that without Randy having come and explain this a lot or with this open book test that we have here yeah it'd be very hard to follow you no thank you so the real you in the long short of it is there's only two paths to take but with these two paths one of the second pass has options to consider the first path we'll actually go through as fixing a building but you really have to have money to do that so there's unfortunately again this is part of the end why we are presenting here is it's a program that we gotta they help plan for things that makes sense yeah just as a heads up we are

111recording and so if you could speak into the microphone it would be great thank you okay we'll do you want to go to the next slide yeah so uh where are your buildings at we assessed six of your facilities um as you might have seen or Randy has talked to you about the the law is now extended down to 20 000 or more square feet however uh buildings over 20 000 square feet and under 50 000 square feet there are no defined rules or guidelines for as of yet uh Commerce has given themselves until the end of uh 2023 to publish those rules uh so those buildings have not been included in this assessment at this stage uh we have largely just focused on the buildings over 50 000 square feet um so as you

112can see here uh the Blue Line there is your target across all of those buildings uh the orange bar is your natural gas energy usage is predominantly heating or domestic hot water and then the gray is your electric so all of your plug loads lights and cooling largely um so as you can see all six of the buildings are actually just over their target as you might expect to see your either new or newly renovated three buildings are all very close to the Target including the one we're in so Idaho Mount Stuart and Lincoln Elementary School are very close to the Target and we can kind of go into what that might mean for next steps for you guys on those ones but the the three that are the big Focus would be Valley View

113Elementary Morgan middle school and Ellensburg High School all right um actually before we jump off of that one uh we also put this calculation in here just as a high level estimate for you guys up in the top right you'll see that the total energy spend on average over the last I think three years of data that we had uh for Ellensburg School District was just shy of 1.8 million dollars in utility dollars spent if all of those buildings uh proportionally use natural gas and electric the same but all were to meet that Target that would be about an annual energy cost avoidance of about 732 000 a year annually so there is some benefit uh aside from just meeting it not getting fined to substantial utility savings as well all right you go ahead

114next one so uh the results right uh first we'll hit on the three that are very near the target so Ida Nason Mount Stuart and Lincoln I used to be kind of highlighted uh I'm going to say the important information in yellow there uh what you have on the left is the weather normalized eui for the three years of data that we have collected on these buildings the next column in is the target set by the state and then you have the Delta you know how far off of the Target that you are so for those three buildings you can see that you're 1.3 6.6 and 6.9 over the target um I'm going to use that's very close and largely we believe that can be addressed through the completion of commissioning on those projects and

115fine-tuning of the system as you guys use it and and get you know used to the space um as you notice there's a there's asterisk on those typically where we see a building only that far over the target we would recommend retro commissioning of the building which is going through and retuning the building to its original design as buildings are operated and used they tend to go off of their original design intent and this helps to bring them back and basically put them back into their Peak Performance that they can be with that being said the data that we have for these buildings is either impartial because they haven't been in use this whole time period that we have collected data or uh the projects are just being finished up today right and that we

116don't have they haven't been in use after they've been fully commissioned and completed so this is a good screenshot this is a good thing for you guys to be aware of where they are however we're recommending that you wait at least a year after that final commissioning report to see where that building is and you can tweak and monitor over the next court course of that year and then reevaluate um history that we're going to focus on are Valley View Morgan middle and Ellensburg High School which are all quite a bit farther over their respective targets Valley View being the highest over their target um and this would be that full IGA full investment rate audit path where we will assess building envelope electrical systems lighting HVAC airflow everything that uses energy within the building

117effectively um you can go to the next one if you want so with that in those buildings um the timeline how long do you have so the deadline for a 220 000 square foot building is actually uh July 1st 2026 uh then 90 000 above is 2027 and 15 above is 2028. however as we kind of talked about you get some time periods to collect data to submit for that so really your full time period is about two years 24 months that you can use for your data collection and pick the best 12 consecutive months of the year before that so that date moves back a few years right or at least one year to collect your data to submit for compliance and then you have the time of construction in the time of assessment

118ahead of it to kind of build your game plan on how you want to address it so not meant to be a scare tactic mostly meant to just be informative to let you guys know that while it does seem like it is a few years away that can sneak up on you pretty quick um and the you guys don't have any buildings over 220 000 square feet uh so there's a little bit of breathing room there but Morgan middle and Ellensburg high school would be in the second tier um and those would need to be compliant as of 2027 or uh July 1st 2027 meaning that you need to start your data collection at least a year prior to that so you'd want to finish uh whatever projects or improvements that you were making by

119July 1st 2026 at the latest preferably by July 1st 2025 to give you that full window um and then a year after that would be your item Ace and Valley View Mount Stewart and Lincoln and the three that are there that you guys have just renovated will likely be able to be corrected uh quite a bit ahead of time any questions on the timeline all right um so this is uh the non-compliance piece this is the potential fines they built this law with a rather big stick and a pretty small carrot um so the actual language we didn't put in here you can go look in the RCW there and it's worded very well thought it was easier to look at it as a formula um simplified it's a dollar the maximum penalty is a

120dollar fifty a square foot plus a five thousand dollar fee um that fee is distributed out over 18 months depending on how long it takes you to become compliant so if you're a month late to compliance you don't get the full penalty if you're over 18 months late to compliance you get the full penalty um with that being said you can see that the penalty and the way that the law is written today it doesn't matter if you're one eui point over the Target or 120 ey points over the target you get the penalty so the total penalty that the district is at risk for at the moment is 827 thousand dollars and that would be assessed every five year um duration so for this first batch um 2027 would be about 164 000 2028

121would be 440 in 2029 would be 223 000 and then that cycle would start again any questions on that all right and then here's the small carrot I want to say on a good note there is a push to push this off one year so instead of torting starting with the 26 there is a bill on the table right now to push this from starting in 26 to 27. um I wanted to make that mention so yeah um that's a great Point yeah uh so hopefully that happens I know there's been a few different bills on the floor to try to push that so they're getting closer so um the carried on this is the early adopter incentive it's a little bit misleading on the name this incentive will be given out through your local

122utility as a utility rebate effectively and we'll come uh you apply for the incentive at the time of uh when we would go to a construction project because you have a full plan and detail of how you are going to meet those uh that Target and then once that construction project is complete and you successfully apply for compliance and get approved as a compliant building they will issue 85 cents per square foot of the building there's some caveats on this the building has to be 15 ey points higher than the Target in order to qualify which is why these three are the only ones that qualify um however there is a finite bucket of money uh to date I think there's only been a handful of folks that have even successfully applied to get on

123the list for early adopter incentives so there still is you know large amounts of money available um but it's not enough to pay for the project um so it I guess our guidance that we've been giving is it's a good it's good thing to go for it's great to have and we should shoot for it however in making the decisions on whether or not to make go for full compliance or investment criteria necessarily shouldn't be a deciding factor any questions on the incentive has the district applied for utility incentives and rebates in the past I'm assuming so when you look at planning an upgrade of any kind just know that this is something you apply for early and then after the project is complete you get this money okay and similarly you would also apply

124for a utility rebate at the same time in addition to this so um yeah it's not something that you can actually plan for actually funding a project is kind of the point believe you're taking this one so I'm gonna take this one um we write a lot of Grants that's kind of an understatement I think last year we were in the 15 or 16 range this year we're already about that much um but there is even though there's a lot uh you know here there is ways of looking at funding and so any an opera any opportunity that comes up to help finance things it's kind of my job and our team's job to basically look at what options there are there's federal state grants private grants there's you guys know user up and down

125and backwards I'm assuming but there's those kind of things that'll that'll pay for these things and so when we get into looking at what all is needed to upgrade your buildings to meet these benchmarks at the same time there's how to fund it so Commerce department has grants coming out you have the feds bringing out the I don't know if you're familiar with the it says Raz Grant but that stands for renew America schools Grant those kind of things uh are changing to where you folks will actually be able to apply for those kind of things I mentioned Raz specifically because that's a minimum 500 maximum 15 million dollar Grant with a five percent match that's pretty awesome um it does have a changing of criteria from this last round that'll kick into gear in

126November which means you'll be able to apply um and uh yeah and the actual budget for that is 350 million so there'll be a lot of schools applying for it however there's a lot of creativity that goes into winning grants and so we'll help you with that because of already applying for this grant seven times already and getting a couple of them so it's kind of cool but I guess the long story short yes it's an unfended Monday to mandate and you don't have the specific amount of funds needed there's ways to plan and look at things uh to get them funded you want to go ahead um let's see I already mentioned the first one um I don't think we need to go through this one I think we're okay other than I think

127there is a process in terms of how to do this that we've outlined in the process slide initially procurement is something I was going to hand out mckinstry is a Performance Contractor I don't believe this you guys the school district has done performance Contracting before and I that is something that I'd probably want to come back at a later time to talk a little bit more about but in essence uh we're a Performance Contractor and it is basically a vehicle for uh in the state of uh Washington where you can uh upgrade the only energy-based systems with a performance Contracting selection you have opportunities to you know or different options to select your Performance Contractor but what's really unique about performance Contracting is every project gets three guarantees cost performance and Energy savings okay at

128the same time we have to substantiate our costs and we're actually uh we open up and show you our how we actually profit where is the cost and all those kind of things very unique from whatever you guys have seen before if it's designed bid build and other different mechanisms this is a very awesome thing where your your risk is reduced dramatically a lot of the grants I point out they actually specify using performance Contracting because of that because we have to open it up and show you where the contractor costs are and so on so with Randy for example we were on it you know in his previous uh when he was at Riverside uh one of the things that we did with him was actually point out the different options to select performance

129Contracting and one of those was leveraging cooperative purchasing and just to give you an example a Wapato School District they're doing they're using a Cooperative purchasing agreement they said National agreement that we have with what they call tips and they unanimously they're boarded voted for that because it was stands for not just the state funding but also Federal funding okay so Esser as well as Commerce grants locally as well as like the Raz Grant it all adheres to all of the state and federal requirements and it actually shows in great detail so I would probably want to follow up and go through that in more detail all the different options for performance Contracting and just show you where you're you're less risk and had to plan for it effectively and how we can help you

130on that front if that makes sense um the last one you want to go for that go for it yeah good news this is the last slide so yeah um next steps so with all the information that Lance and Jack have shared um the phase one and phase two we would start with phase one the 1.1 normally when you have schools that are close to the Target like Lance said we would recommend retro commissioning for year three schools because they're still being commissioned is let them get commissioned and then run a year and see if you're at the Target that would be our recommendation okay uh the three schools that are not income that are well above the target we would recommend doing what we call here in ashrae level 2 audit and what that

131means is that we would go in and look at everything again that Lance said so your plug loads your HVAC systems your windows anywhere that consumes energy or loses energy and then we would provide you with a rough order order of magnitude pricing so we would come back and say Here's the list of things that it's going to take to to get you to your target here's what we think is going to cost it also here's what we anticipate the Energy savings how close to that Target are you going to get to and at that point it would be a discussion again and say okay based on the price tag for these improvements on these three schools which way to compliance makes sense for this District so if you decide to go and let's fix

132it and go to a metered compliance then we would run it to a guaranteed maximum price um and then get contractor costing again I'm just recapping everything that Lance started with and then if you want to go with the investment criteria you can see the bottom here we would the life cycle cost analysis tool we would still provide you with an ESP g-max level and go that route but the first step would be the ROM exercise for the three schools is what we would recommend a lot of acronyms gmax is guaranteed maximum price yes sorry no it's okay so yeah again it's fire hose I'm sorry at the same time now you know at the same time we're working very closely with Randy so um there's a process here for sure uh we you guys

133paid us to put together the report that you saw for their benchmarking so included in that is we've actually uploaded onto a website uh a Energy Star portfolio manager that actually manages the benchmarks on behalf of the of the school district to the State of the State the Commerce Department that runs the program so there's a lot of work that's already been done for you guys to comply with this program just the next step is now actually reporting what is needed with the with the the different facilities we pointed out so any questions did I cover everything I cover everything on here oh I guess just big picture if I'm just remembering the numbers correctly right now we're spending 1.8 million dollars a year on utility costs if we do nothing we're looking at approximately

134eight hundred thousand dollars in fines every five years yeah so those are like sort of existing costs if we don't touch this correct if we if we follow one of these two paths we're looking at eight hundred thousand potentially eight hundred thousand dollars or I forgotten the exact number but approach approximately eight hundred thousand dollars in utility savings and possibly in terms of this incentive another three hundred thousand coming back to the district for the early adopter program correct so like for for me those are the numbers that I'm just kind of Weighing on each side is that accurate that is accurate okay it's probably the word there's when you apply for the early adoption there's applying for what potentially might be utility rebates and incentives in addition to that and then I I'm pretty

135I'm very confident there's going to be a grant that to apply for in the mix as well um Commerce sometimes has a one-to-one match Grant sometimes you have a three to one match Grant um those kind of things are all to consider too as well sometimes you can use your federal fundings to use that match like your Esser funds uh other times if it's a Federal grant you can't use your Esser funds to match those um so that you will when we get into it Ira had walked through in terms of the first phase that options of what's going on there definitely be how what level of funding applies to what at the same time thank you thanks too that we just came across too the uh inflationary reduction act has come out with some

136money for uh Wildfire smoke mitigation in that in some of those grants there is money available we've got to look at more of the rules but you know that's up to two million dollars uh in Grants that we could possibly apply for tuna whether we get it or not but it's a that's a nationwide Grant I forgot how much it was total it's like 150 million or something like that that they've put towards this and we're finding out more as we go because I just came out I just attended a webinar on it um so that's something we can possibly go after too yeah just to add to that too strategy wise when you look at the full list of what you need to a building and for example you're not going to be able

137to meet it you're going to have to pay a fine if you find that what are the most extreme circumstances to get you to that benchmark sometimes you have to implement a solar solution okay if you do a so if you implement a solar array on the roof to help reduce your utility bill there's a grant for solar okay in addition if you need to replace the roof and you add that to the the solar because you're putting it on the roof Ira will allow you to actually uh get back on your project up to 40 percent of the project so it's kind of creative I'm sorry but there's a lot of stuff to figure out the creativity of funding something and that's kind of our job right that's that's what we do so it's

138complicated it is complicated it is complicated but we have Randy what's that we've Randy and just to clarify um district is this works at the current committee is also going to wrestle with going forward in the puzzle problem solving the existing committee capital projects yeah that is on uh part of our our list part of our list that we do have on the for the committee okay so we have a committee in place we have Randy in place yes and we have mckinstry and our cheat sheet so thank you all right any other questions forward any other questions uh thank you Randy Jack Lance Ira for all the information I'm sure we will be looking at it over and over again so thank you very much I'm always available yeah and there is a lot

139of other schools all of them are in the same boat as you so if there's any references that we can help with that we did the exact same exercise with it let us know I'll get back to yes so um that takes us to the next item on business which is uh board resolution 0.6 0.423 to Machinery report yes I'd like to talk about the next two they're both commission reports one is for Mount Stuart one's for Ida all we have here is just the resolution uh document and I think that we're hopeful to have the whole commissioning report available but we need to have you guys need to be able to look at the report to be able to pass the resolution so I want to make you aware we're excited we're finally at

140that commissioning uh step which is huge for us and that's really important to be uh to pass the commission report because that helps to release some of the funding that comes back to us then from the state uh some of our match money and so um we will make sure that the whole report gets to you ahead of time since it says we're all attesting the fact that we've read the report and that we you know understand it and uh that's usually the second board meeting is when Damon comes and talks with us as well and I'll have him address those commissioning reports so we will have those in place I'd like to propose that we take d and e and move it to our next agenda I'd also like to look at F the

141board resolution of the updated signature Authority in the past it's been the superintendent executive of finance and operations so I have my name and Jim's name on there but I want would like before we just pass it I'd like to go back and just see because there's capital projects on there if perhaps in the past we've had somebody because Randy's position is fairly new I want to be able to go back and check to make sure that see if we take it Randy's name on there too potentially and Kim would need to help us with that so I'd like to propose that we bring all three of those back for full uh approval on our next for me so I think to amend the agenda then with that proposal then I would like to make

142a motion that items d e and f are a move forward to the next agenda Tasha has moved that we move items d e and f on the business to the next board meeting and Madeleine has second uh call about all those in favor aye aye any opposed any abstentions those will will get those reports and move those items to the next board meeting thank you that takes us to policy and ginger there is one first reading on here yes and we already have this policy 3115 and uh when you open it up you can see that uh part in yellow there and that is the addition to the policy it's the first reading so if there's any discussion at this point and then we'll bring it back for full adoption after the next meeting

143or do you have any questions or discussion about this right now okay I guess my one question is who is the district's homeless student liaison at this point I'm sorry I was asking questions who's the district's homeless student liaison so uh there is a sorry so the law has changed quite a bit on almost Liaisons there's a district liaison and that is rolled into Kelly Reynolds position the lady that just presented she's the district liaison and then every building has a building specific liaison hooked to them yeah foreign any other questions or comments board all right we'll see that one again um that takes us to board reports Tasha do you have a legislative report um it's pretty short uh the session is coming to an end rapidly and as your first time being legislative

144representative I'm learning that things can change in the last week so looking to see what actually happens um some things that are head to the governor's desk uh was that there was some movement and support on feeding all of our students um currently their their the guess is or the estimate is that it'll be a free breakfast and lunch for about 50 of our students in the state of Washington I mean that is a phased in approach um so unknown at this point of how it supports Ellensburg students there is still not a significant change in removing the special education cap that is still there which is unfortunate everyone went in pretty optimistic that that they would meet their their legal and moral obligation to fully fund those Services um and so that's it's about

145a week and a half before we finally see the ending of the session so there'll be a longer board report next time Thank You Tasha any questions [Music] all right uh I do not have a board chair report tonight I just want to reiterate again uh Grady Josephine thank you both for your reports today um I know that uh you guys will be working closely with Bo and that new student group so I think that's uh something to really look forward to uh and then you know uh the underclassmen being a part of it to have that potentially be a a longer living uh programmer group that gets together so thank you both um but that I don't have anything else so that'll take us into public comment Leslie all right now I gotta read

146this uh the board will allot up to 30 minutes as a total time allotted for public comment this evening and each speaker will have up to three minutes of time the board is not obligated to provide additional public comment time to accommodate everyone in attendance the board is not obligated to respond to questions or challenges made during the public comment period and the board's silence will not signal agreement or endorsement of any speaker's remarks in my capacity as board president I may terminate an individual's remarks when the allotted time has passed I may also interrupt or terminate any speaker who is making uncivil comments uncivil comments include but are not limited to obscene comments comments that are defamatory toward another person or comment commentary that is unwarranted invasion of privacy the board reserves the right

147to have anyone removed who refuses to adhere to the rules and creates a material and substantial disruption of the meeting Personnel matters are generally private and administrative in nature constructive criticism can be helpful at the same time the board has confidence in its staff and programs that will act to protect them from unwarranted criticism or disruptive interference complaints or concerns received by the board or any board member will be referred to the superintendent and will not be considered or discussed by the board in this setting I'd ask that you respect all staff members privacy and considered putting any concerns you have in writing if they pertain to to a personal matter the board can then review and forward those on to an appropriate administrator Leslie are we ready for public comment all right individuals in

148person wishing to be heard by the board needed to be signed up to speak and those on Zoom need to add their names to the document in the zoom chat box if you are unable to do this individuals may also be recognized with within Zoom by using the icon or Emoji to show you are raising your hand for public comment once the board chair calls on an individual they will identify themselves by stating their name and address for the record individuals will proceed to make comments within the three-minute time limit if an individual wants to request a response from the board this may be possible by submitting this requests in writing or email to board esd41.org Leslie will begin with those in attending in person please uh Marine Parliament good evening Lorraine Barlow 11670 manastash

149Road and I I want to clarify and add to my comments because I spoke emotionally at the last board meeting and I do want to say that eh admin do their jobs I know especially Ollie Hall works very hard to be inclusive of and empathetic to the lgbtqia plus population at EHS at inobo snow is listening to and learning from students what I want to see however is systemic change rather than ad hoc discipline and I also when I say admin I also mean District admin um this year I asked the district for staff trainings beyond the usual required trainings which include bloodborne pathogens required yearly even though it says it's for first-year teachers and the trainings are there in the system making schools safe and inclusive for lgbtq plus students making schools safe and

150inclusive for transgender students and I received a reply that they were working on it but all staff received was a letter that we had to read and sign off on that we had read it and we just received another today another one of those required for our ospi audit a letter that we a thing we need to read through and sign off on and the law requires staff trainings on these subjects Washington administrative code 392-190020 a letter or some other training that we read is not enough and students should not be the ones training staff ospi also has guidelines for non-discriminatory curriculum and we do I I don't think we follow those guidelines we consider the community's sensitivity to issues over the safety of our students and we need to consider our students first especially

151those at the highest risk highest risk of self-harm we have students who do not see themselves anywhere in the curriculum in the newly adopted Health curriculum students have to check out supplemental material to learn about sexual orientation and gender expression and identity our curriculum is supposed to avoid bias according to Washington Administrative Code 392-190055 but leaving an entire group out of the curriculum is biased exclusion is bullying teachers are exhausted from having to defend themselves to the community even though civil rights laws are on their side District admin needs to step up and support us we should not have to defend ourselves for teaching material that is legally required the community needs to know the law and admin needs to support its teachers who are following it I've been told that a concern is parents

152pulling kids out of school and the school losing FTE I want to finish my concern is students continuing to feel ignored invisible and excluded and everyone losing those students there are civil rights laws for a reason and no amount of money is worth the death of even one student thank you Larry hello um my name is Miles hayeslett my address is 105 North Anderson Street and I'm a junior at Ellensburg High School um this topic of bullying in terms of marginalized students feels incredibly important to me as a fairly open queer student um I am transgender which puts me in a vulnerable position at school every single day I have been alienated and bullied by my peers in past years which has taught me to become invincible at Ellensburg School District I have been pushed

153to stay under the radar and stay silent someone casually asked me the other day if I was running for a position in the ASB elections I believe that no matter how much effort I put into a campaign I would lose to a cisgender running mate regardless of my qualifications queer students who have run from for ASB positions in the past few years at EHS have been intensely bullied and hate crimes it is not safe for me and other people in the lgbtq plus Community to run for an ASB position it's not it is not safe for me to be visible in my school I think that change will occur when Administration expresses out outright support for their marginalized students rather than just private acknowledgment and avoidance I will not stop fighting for my community and

154standing up for lgbtq plus students who are being bullied thank you thank you miles hi I'm back um my name is Nina Gonzalez I live at 1114 East Seattle Avenue um and just really quickly I'd like to reiterate what Grady and Josephine talked about earlier when they emphasized communication in the school district um talking to my counselor earlier this week really reminded me of how much the administration fails to tell the staff what is going on um this in the continuous lack of information my teachers receive reminds me of how this is out of their control and I feel like it's an important topic that I neglected to address last meeting and I feel betrayed that not only the students but also the staff are being let down by a lack of admin-based trust and

155connection that can only exist in this environment that is all thank you thank you Nina hi my name is Delana Brecken and I live at 90 Blue Sky Lane I didn't come intending to speak but I wanted to um I wanted to I want to ask a question that you can't answer and that is in regards to Grady's comment about um has the has the high school administrators made an announcement over the intercom stating that um any harassment of lgbtq Plus or other protected groups by law that any harassment towards those students is will not be tolerated because I think that's something that um setting that tone and expectation can be done and it's done from the top and I think it's important to note that students can't learn in an unsafe environment I'm a

156mom of students at the high school and I think I wanted to State my support of action towards actually building a safe environment for all our students because it I mean this is a critical time and to feel like you have to be invisible is you know there's no thriving in that environment you have you're at school for a lot of of your day and it's it's just it's not right to be um forced into that position and I think you know there's there's laws that are protecting our kids we need to and we need to um hold everyone accountable thanks thank you DeLana okay um if there's anybody online on Zoom that would like to be heard please make sure you raise your hand or sign up in the chat document um we'll wait

157a few seconds to see if anybody who does that and all right thank you uh thank you everyone uh that will conclude public comment and take us on to uh new business proposed items for future consideration so I think we've bounced some ideas around for the agenda for our upcoming work session and so I'll send that out to you guys if you have some feedback for me um we can do that okay thank you Ginger uh that will any board any other items for future consideration okay that'll take us into meeting closing Ginger do we have an executive session thank you um that'll take us to Board calendar and I just wanna clarify that the date of our work study session is right it is let me pull it up I I know that on

158the 14th is when we have the closing for um any of the companies who are going to potentially help us out for the interim superintendent position as well as the full-time superintendent position and um and then at the beginning of the next week which is what the 17th um we will most likely we said that we would need to have a quick maybe Zoom special meeting and we can have it one in person and open it up at the central office just so that you can see the companies that applied uh and then we can have a follow-up conversation uh about that at our Retreat and then the board can make a decision at that point as to whether or not they're going to decide to post it through the HR office or to have

159a company actually do the interim process and the board work session is Friday the 21st and the time that we'll probably have a special session would be Monday the 17th or 18th and I'll have Leslie look at the doodle poll and we'll send that that date and time out to you guys tomorrow okay and then the last thing I want to ask for my Board calendar question is do we have a capital projects board meeting this month let me look through and I will I don't see it again so yeah I think that we put that off for right now because we wanted to have them in Kingstree and and we thought we would have one more Bond Capital project meeting probably that first week in May but we do have a student learning committee

160meeting on the 20 next week yes yes okay we have one scheduled for that next week and just to follow up with that question um when uh Jen gave her presentation on the list of data uh myself Kelly Jen and the three principals from those three schools we will all be at ESD 105 tomorrow morning uh getting some additional training we need to do A needs assessment for those three schools and we're going to be talking about school Improvement plans and uh we'll like most likely be able to bring that information that we gain there to the student student-centered learning committee so they can also have an overview of our data and also see some of the survey results we got regarding the board ends even though we probably want to hold on do anything

161any major changes knowing that you have a new superintendent coming in but it would be helpful I think to look at there might be some slight tweaks on the board in plan that we might want to make that doesn't require an overhaul but still is uh honoring of folks that answered and I think aligned with some of the conversations that we've had as support and we can look at those together at the work session too okay and then that takes us into clarification and next steps and the only thing I want to say is um the um I'm gonna get it wrong FRP RFP the RFP thank you uh that went out to the agencies those are at no cost to us and um the bids that they're going to come back to us there's

162no cost up front for us sending those out it's just a get an idea of what it will cost us if we go that route so um I did have somebody reach out to me that uh was like spending money he was like nope nope this part is not spending money this is just getting the information for us as a board to know what it would cost to do that that's correct Leslie signing up documents oh sorry anybody else have clarifications next steps okay signing of documents uh Joy uh that takes us to an adjournment a second yeah Tasha moves that we adjourned Jonathan seconds thank you everyone have a good night sometimes everybody um right