001i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i will now introduce our board of directors we have jonathan henderson mike rowley matt madeleine i still messed it up next time i'll get it right uh tasha woods and i'm jason white uh also with us we have our superintendent ginger haber we also have our executive director of finance and operation ken snyder and we have our executive director of student services kelly cronkbyer kronbyer all right oh jason look at the names right here so first step board we have the consent agenda and we did had the opportunity to review these items individually and also during the study session to seek clarification with the
002district admin so i would entertain a motion i move that we accept the consent agenda a second all right for the record tasha has moved that we accept the content content consent agenda and jonathan has second or no it was mike that seconded thank you for that clarification award any discussion then i will call the vote all those in favor any opposed [Music] all right consent agenda is approved all right next step under administration we have the superintendent's update ginger take it away yes so burt i'd like to start out with the celebration as there's we have several uh today we had a great day as both said it was the first uh big assembly they've been had at high school and we spent really all day i was had the privilege to spend with
003her with our principals we did some great professional development with solution tree today around professional learning communities and then we had a chance to go to mount stewart and actually see some of the professional learning communities in action looking at student data having some great conversations about students and so it's just some really great work happening with our staff and it was a great day professional development um and tonight we have uh director of teaching and learning jen coons and principal of ida presently lincoln but ida nates and veronica next year joanne duncan and we're excited to tell you about share with you about our stream library specialists that we are developing and want to plan to put in place for next year and really just want to emphasize the importance of literacy in our
004district and uh both jen and and joanna will have a chance to talk about especially at the elementary level uh what we're doing around literacy so jen come on up hi everyone i actually have not had the privilege of meeting over half the board in person so it is it's nice to officially meet you and thank you for having me here today um to talk about the elementary specialists and hopefully bring some broader context to some of the work that we have going on can you guys hear me okay okay um and presentation here so tonight i'm going to talk about the elementary special specialists in general um and kind of take a look at sorry gonna take a look at each one so so esd to provide some broader context esd has been working
005on a guaranteed and viable curriculum across content areas and really pre-k 12 in our system and so what we're what that means is we're looking at a guaranteed what are the standards that we want each student to be able to attain at each grade level that's the guaranteed part so what are those standards at each grade level in every content area and then also the viable part being does it make sense to have those standards occur in this time frame like in a year or whatever the chunk of time we've allotted to it so we want a curriculum that's guaranteed and viable so that we can say all students have received these things in ellensburg school district and we've been working on that actually for a number of years more targeted this year through our
006plc work um identifying essential standards and unpacking those and understanding what does success look like with those what did learning goals look like with those i'm not sure why this stopped working i know um but in addition to that thank you guys for your patience with the tech it's always something with tech um okay sure that's fine yeah that'll just be side by side it won't have the lines that pop in one at a time but that's okay we can all manage that um so if you could go back to slide two actually k5 has been working on alignment in our systems over the past number of years and that says five years i don't know why it says five years actually it's probably been longer than that but um we've been doing very specific
007things in our elementaries to ensure that because we have multiple elementary students that all feed into or multiple schools that all feed into one middle school we want to make sure that students are getting equitable experiences in those schools and that does go back to that to that guaranteed and viable curriculum and so we've been doing things like aligning our intervention systems aligning our curriculum and working on ensuring that kids have some things that are similar and that we can guarantee at each of the schools there it goes it's working again um so this is going to be more important than ever i mean it's important now but when we move to four elementaries with boundaries it's going to be even more critical because we are going to have students from all three of our
008elementaries funneling into four different elementaries so every single one of our schools we will have students who have come from all three of our current elementaries and so when we move to four elementaries making sure that we've had the right conversations around what have we been tracking progress wise with students what's the data on our students how do we share that information how do we ensure those equitable experiences is super critical this year in particular as we're moving to four elementaries so that's a little bit of some context around how we've been aligning things in our district and it's back to not working oh i see um so a little bit more context with our specialists in particular so right now lincoln elementary the specialists that they have in building are a pe teacher music
009library and art in mount steward elementary they have pe music library and steam and in valley view they have pe music library art and math lab and these are kind of dictated by the number of students in the building so one of the things despite or alongside the important content that they provide students the other thing that specialist positions provide is planning time for for teachers so when a class goes to a specialist then the teacher has their planning time built into their day um and so when we go to build to buildings that have fewer students in them there isn't the need for as many specialists and so we will have to move down to three because three will cover the number of sections that we have in our we will have in our
010building and as these buildings have grown so it used to be pe music and library in our elementary buildings and as they've grown and sections of grade levels have grown we've added specialist sections to help manage that and each one kind of added different specialists so we've ended up with these schools that have different specialist offerings you can go ahead and click the next one so i'm going to take a look at each one of these specialist sections and kind of talk through what's the importance of them and also what are our federal and state regulations around these content areas so with pe pe is part of a well-rounded education under federal law it's also a pe requirement under washington state law and as sort of a side note we aren't in an adoption year
011for pe materials and one of the things that we're working on is making sure that we are going to be consistent next year in our pe curriculum across all four elementaries so i'm excited that'll be the first time in a while they did some work a long time ago in pe to align vertically and horizontally systems but it's been so long that right now we are we they're not doing the same things in different elementaries and pe so we've been doing work this year along with other other content areas with aligning that and with adoption adopting new materials um so that's pe music so music the arts is also part of a well-rounded education under federal law and the arts in washington state is defined as dance media arts music theater and visual arts but
012we have to provide this content in our k5 system and at elementary it's been served we've done art in a number of different ways but including specialists but music has been a specialist in our system it also includes arts education includes that annual state verification report to ospi it's part of the state assessments ospi developed assessments that we have to show that we are providing this education and assessing our students on this education um and go ahead for the next one we are also in an adoption year for music so um this has also been a nice opportunity to align our curriculum across elementaries in music and so by the end of this year you know that will be the case maybe there's just extra clicks in here for some reason it seems kind of
013like that's the case so library um that's okay so library when you look at our regulations and laws around libraries the rcw that addresses libraries talks about what are the critical elements to a strong library system and it talks about um supporting these things under those other rcws so when you look at those other rcws that lays out what are the requirements under basic ed and what are the requirements under our washington state learning standards and so library programs are there to support those two areas and the next slide actually looks at what basic education is so if we're wondering what does it mean to support basic education this is the rcw that talks about basic education and the one that talks about libraries specifically says that under the basic education with those four goals
014that um we have in basic education the first two are the ones that are supposed to be focused on with library system so i bolded those there's actually two more you can show them i bolded the first two because that those are specifically called out and so the first one is read with comprehension write effectively and communicate successfully in a variety of ways and settings and with a variety of audiences and the second one is know and apply the core concepts and principles of mathematics social physical and life sciences civics and history including different cultures and participation in representative government geography arts and health and fitness we know that in the elementary in particular in that second area some of those content areas need additional support and going more in depth with them um to
015give kids adequate exposure and support with them so the last one when we look at these other ones that we've built in over time steam art and math lab what are sort of um the state's requirements around that and um house bill 1872 established a comprehensive initiative to increase learning in the stem areas that's science technology engineering and math and so there is a state expectation that education systems are really working on how do we increase opportunity around those areas and we know that particularly at elementary school we have some room to grow in those areas and there's another bullet that you can pull up there so that's that um law specifically talks about stem and um it's more commonly referred to now as steam the a standing for art recognizing that also as an
016area that we need to increase learning opportunities around for students and as ginger talked about in the job the elementary job we're calling it stream and some people are now they've added r to it r for reading so but i think that fits with the library because he looked at all those areas that library programs are supposed to support it really is across content areas um so we have these opportunities currently in our buildings with steam and or art and or math lab um but they're not the same in every building and next year when we move to four buildings we want to provide students as much continuity as possible and we want to find ways so how do we take these good opportunities that they've been having in various buildings and ensure that we're
017keeping that a part of their opportunities next year and so this conversation about specialists was always going to be a part of moving to four elementaries so despite other things that are going on looking at what do we do with our elementary specialists knowing that we have we don't need 4 or 4.3 in a building any longer we'll just need three because there's there's fewer number of sections so this conversation again has just been it was going to be here to think about what do we want from our specialists if we have to decrease and how do we keep these good opportunities for students knowing that we can't have 4.2 specialists in a building that only needs three but so the question becomes we've got to do pe under state and federal guidelines we've got
018to do music understand federal guidelines and obviously we value those things we're going to have a third specialist how do we how are we going to have all these things in our buildings and what is that guaranteed and viable curriculum going to be for our third specialist and so that's where we've kind of developed and to be honest it's not fully fleshed out at this point in terms of what specific standards we're going to guarantee but we do know generally that we want to keep some of these things in place and opportunities for students so we obviously want to keep library opportunities in place for students at elementary that will be still happening at elementary um and the the person who has this job will be asked to be library credentialed um and so then
019these are all the different and you can just pull them all up go ahead until it hits the end but these are all the different standard sets that we'll be looking at all of the different learning opportunities that we want for our children and so we have to identify what's the guaranteed part going to be across all four elementaries what are the computer science opportunities what are the arts opportunities um what are the environmental sustainability opportunities that we want to build into this position so that they continue to have those so that the mount stewart kids who had steam as a specialist still have some of those steam opportunities so that the lincoln kids who had art still have some of those intentional art driven activities and so we'll be looking at how do we
020take this specialist position ensuring that we're still using libraries and that they're still being taught how to use libraries they're still getting access to our k5 libraries um and that there's a certified librarian in place there but how do we use that position to also bring in some of these other content areas more intentionally and specifically and guaranteeing access across all four elementaries to those learning experiences um go ahead and put the next one thanks leslie so this is just one example and we are you guys know that um particularly at ida but we're working on a plan to get it across all elementaries we're implementing pei's field stem model this is one example of a framework that takes multiple content areas and integrates them together that takes a learning opportunity and says how do
021i use this learning opportunity to teach science standards and writing standards and math standards and reading standards so we'll be looking at things like this how to make that position feel like it's intentionally teaching content standards from multiple content areas um and then i just kind of wanted to end and then joanne is going to come up and kind of talk about a little bit too but to look at literacy in k-5 classrooms and just to reiterate how much we support literacy in our elementary schools and even if you were to break down our instructional minute guidelines for k5 teachers and look at how much time we ask of teachers spending on literacy and math and science and history and all those things you'll see how much value there is in the literacy part because
022we know that is one of the foundational pieces um for elementary to get get experiences with so i actually took some slides from the fpc adoption that we did back in the spring of 2019 so for those of you that were here then you might recognize them because they're the exact same slides i just pulled them out but i thought they were a good representation of what we do in all of our classrooms and our core when we adopted fpc fontesom panel classroom um go ahead we added to our classrooms at first 30 over 30 000 books and that was all individual books because this particular quarter um curriculum has so many different contexts for teaching literacy through um and it doesn't have writing we have lucy culkins for writing but go ahead and hit
023the next one and it'll walk you through so it's got mini lessons but it's got guided reading so there's a picture of a teacher doing a guided reading lesson with students it's got book clubs it's got interactive read aloud and that's an interactive read-aloud going on in that particular picture it's got shared reading titles and it's got phonic spelling and word study so those are all the pieces of our core curriculum that happen in every classroom with our district adopted curriculum and then this year if you hit the next one there was a seventh context that we didn't purchase back when we implemented and that was classroom libraries so we had classroom libraries in place there wasn't a single k5 classroom that didn't have a good set of books in their classroom that was regularly
024used by students as part of core content and part of their regular day and in fact prior to purchasing these ones we we went through a couple of years ago and sort of did an audit of which classrooms might need more variety and titles or might just need a little boost in our classroom libraries and we purchased books then but this year we actually purchased the last context of founders and panel classroom that we adopted back in 2019 that's their classroom library sets which added additional books it added about 150 to 200 books to each of our k5 classroom so over 11 000 or almost 12 000 more books into classrooms this year and joanne hello i'm joanne duncan i'm currently the principal of lincoln elementary here at ida and we'll be the by the
025nascent veronica principal for next year uh thanks for having us and jen did a really great job and so i'm just really here to kind of reiterate and share a little bit more about some of the things that she discussed prior to becoming a principal way back i guess many years ago i did start out as a kindergarten teacher i was a first grade teacher and the heart of the classroom really was the classroom library and i think a lot of people don't really realize or understand just what that means because i think i know when i was in school we didn't have classroom libraries that was a long very long time ago but we went to the library and we got to check out one or two books well what research has shown is
026that for kids to become readers they have to have motivation engagement how do we do that we provide a wealth of books in our classroom so they are surrounded by literacy all day long and you could even ask if dale leslie is listening and had to move all of the lincoln libraries over to here he's like what is going on here but what these slides show are examples of our classroom some of our classroom libraries and every day students have the opportunity to read independently to read with a friend to listen to their teacher read to them and what's important is that they have comfy cozy places to sit around the classroom the teachers have done just an amazing job organizing their libraries by genre sometimes by author i mean i'll just say it i
027mean kids this might not be as popular today but it's captain underpants and so yes captain underpants diary of a wimpy kid those are the books that kids love to read and be surrounded with so i i think what's just really important for the community to know is that our students are surrounded by books every day and how do teachers get these books a lot of them get these books through well what jen shared with the curriculum also with scholastic they use scholastic points we have our scholastic book fairs and our parent groups are really great about supporting those libraries what i've seen teachers do that's really amazing is kids can select favorites like we'd really love to see this in our library and so they get those books because it changes all the time
028so i just think it's really really important for people to understand that we are all advocates for literacy and we know that kids need to be surrounded with books every single day and so while we we value our libraries and a library is a great resource and our librarians are amazing i think it's important just to know that we are all advocates for reading and we are surrounded with books um so if you can go to the next slide and you can just see like the comfy chairs the buddy reading here's a a a picture a teacher's working with a student and then look at the selection of books they're trying to decide they go book shopping and maybe that might be once a week they go book shopping and they fill their book boxes
029with their favorite books we have nonfiction books we have all kinds of things that it's that choice and that daily intentional time for kids to read the only way to become a better reader is to spend time reading and the way to do that is to have things that you're interested in and then have a teacher every day who's modeling why that's important i don't know about you all but one of my best memories of elementary school is the teacher reading aloud to me and it was for me it was mrs gurkey in fifth grade and she read the little house on the prairie series and we would hang on every word and i just saw that happen i i see that happening every day here and if you ever need some joy in your
030life come visit us and walk around the halls of our school yet just yesterday i started at the fifth grade wing and as i walked by there was miss frampton reading with character voices and the kids were just listening and then it was mrs corbett's class and just went down the line and and it's just part of what we do as teachers we model what that means um to be a reader why it's exciting we have those great discussions okay can go to the next slide thank you so what jen was explaining about how can we as we move to four elementaries and we you know we're not going to have our art teacher at lincoln they're not going to have their steam teacher at mount stewart they're not going to have their math lab
031at valley view but those have been amazing opportunities for our students that we really want to see in this new role of what what is a stream librarian position look like and i've visited schools where i've seen that happen and i know every single member of our community wants our kids to have the most amazing opportunities and so when we know all this great literacy is happening in our classrooms how can we ensure that they can when they visit the library or the librarians stream specialist is not only incorporating literacy but they're providing opportunities to have kids create and make things how are they demonstrating their learning how are we helping to integrate science and all those great things um into what we're doing and so some examples that we see are what they call
032maker spaces there's um really big collaborations with class the classroom teachers um just all kinds of different ideas and as i've talked with some of the librarians i've heard them like be excited about it and i've seen pieces of that happening and so i think it's just i think it's an amazing opportunity you can go to the next slide so we have beautiful library spaces um you can make spaces within a library where you can have maker areas you can have kids designing things i was at a school where the fifth grade kids were able to have a green screen and they did a newscast and it was amazing and we just haven't had those kind of opportunities yet and so i'm hoping that with this model that our kids are going to have more
033opportunities to do those kind of things okay and i think the next one and again the idea with the library stream specialist is a really collaborating with our classes like how can we support all together the work that we're we're doing to really provide our kids with opportunities to create to discuss to learn although all of those great things um there are some examples here you know if a fourth grade's doing their electricity unit uh how can they they work with the library stream person that specialist to help provide more of that time and opportunity to do some of those things and then have those things on display so i think it's very very exciting and i know one more you know and here here's an example as we look at the pei framework or
034we look at how are we integrating the outdoors and science and how are the with this stream librarian specialist help with this this is an example of a bird club that was started here at lincoln and the the students go out at their lunch time we have a great parent volunteer that comes and helps with that and you can see the student on the right they've got their book learning identifying the different birds and habitats and and i've already talked with um you know with this idea how would a stream librarian help with that maybe first part of that time they're taking kids out to go observe the habitats or they're you know coming back and they're researching the different birds so um while change can be hard change is also necessary it's necessary because
035we can't get better if we stay the way we are and i just think it's a a great opportunity for our students and i i hope after hearing this that um the community can realize and know like one just how many how many books we have in our libraries come visit us come come check it out really i'd love any if any of you want to come and see that that would be really exciting so thank you questions thank you joanne and jen um i'm assuming we will have questions i have some so jen i heard you say did i hear you correct that the elementary schools each will have a a credential librarian in each building yeah go ahead yes or someone who if they if they accept the position then they need to
036they need to be working towards that they have to make the commitment to that because that is a requirement okay um another question how were the current elementary librarians involved with this plan so before finalizing a job description for this principals got feedback from all of them and then additionally when i said to be honest we don't have it fully fleshed out part of that is because we want them to be whoever ends up in those positions to be part of the conversation of what is the guaranteed and viable curriculum just like teachers are part of that conversation um in all the other grade levels and content areas okay i think my last question is how have the other staff been involved and at what time what's the time frame for this so yeah the
037time frame up to this point right like how long how so in other words how long has this project been kind of worked on and who's all been involved at the district level yeah so like i said this this conversation around what are we going to do with specialists at elementary when we move to four buildings is not a new one because it's always been part of one of the things that will have to be looked at when we move to four elementaries we've always known we won't be able to support as many specialists in each building as we currently have that the need will be around three depending on where the numbers landed once we figured out where the numbers landed with boundaries um it was determined that yes in fact the number of
038sections needed at each building will be uh will dictate the need for three specialists so there's that that's always been there in terms of um and again pe and music because of some of the requirements um has unless we were to teach those in the gen ed classroom that's always been on the table as those will be there so i don't know when the conversation i don't know if you can help with this but when the conversation started around what specifically that third one will be but i want to say we started having conversations specific conversations um i think we we really had to wait and see okay with the boundaries how many students are going to be in each building because then that helped us better understand how many sections are we going to
039need at every building of specialists and then we started looking at which that had been a discussion all along has been okay well what what are the different offerings for specialists at the buildings now we knew we wanted to have more coherence across the buildings for that and so we thought well would this be an opportunity to be able to bring in one position the opportunity for students to have all of something that's more consistent rather than if you go to lincoln you get art if you go to valley view you get steam and and so then we started exploring that idea and then you know joanne had brought in some of the examples she had seen and we had some conversations around that and then the principals went to their librarians and then eventually
040shared it with their staff and we we haven't yet posted that in part because those conversations were still happening sorry board i've got one more question i kind of want to go back to the first question so the four elementary schools will they be credentialed so can you help me understand so for secondary library librarians we have eliminated those positions because of budgetary reductions for next year there's a gap year right and we reduce them for next year and we could we have a committee in place where we will be looking at the positions that we want to reinstate for the following year assuming that our budget is no longer needing reductions right and i think what it comes down to is it's kind of the personal like those two librarians they are certified right
041they can move back to english they can become a teacher my question would be for the three librarians that are currently there i think what i'm my question is is do they still have their library jobs or not or how does that work so can you explain in other words what their options are can they apply for these new positions right now because they're opening up within the buildings the principals are going to open up that position within the building first to see if somebody within the building wants to have that position all right thank you i had a question about the programming so every school will have the same stream so you'll get the science technology engineering reading arts and math um so that will be consistent between all four schools there will not
042be one school that has art that doesn't at another school or something like that correct and i think that that is that is a big piece of this is making sure that we've had those pieces in place in some schools and how do we we know that we want those opportunities for all kids so how do we ensure that but yes it'll be consistent i'm wondering what kind of i mean that seems very broad and so i'm wondering if there's additional qualifications or certifications um if you're losing somebody that's specifically an art teacher versus trying to do a little bit of everything how do you find somebody that does that so we do have on the job posting some of the requirements and or preferred qualifications and familiarity with these different pieces is on there
043because we do want somebody and at elementary our teachers teach all content areas um but we do want someone that has strong library experience we do want someone who can support these other content area learning and integrate it in a way that is intentionally teaching these other pieces and not just as a side note and what i mean by that is for example you could be doing writing in your science instruction but that doesn't mean that you're intentionally teaching writing standards so we do want someone who has familiarity with these different areas and the standards so that they can intentionally pull them into their instruction and integrate the learning experiences board any other questions all right thanks again [Music] ginger anything else for the superintendent's update yes let me pull this up here i don't
044need to pull it up on the big screen i'm just going to read off my slide had this posted before and i'll post it again um [Music] i just want to talk about esser funds i'd like to be able to make sure we touch on this every single board meeting and that's the use of esser funds uh elementary and secondary school emergency relief is what esser stands for and it's federally given to schools in their one-time funds uh esther funds are not an ongoing funding stream for schools once these funds are depleted there is no current plan by the federal government to replace them esther funds can only be used for specific purposes like addressing the academic and social emotional needs of students and safety related to the pandemic are so far and so far
045esd has spent esser funds on items such as and this isn't a comprehensive list but these are some of the major things that we have already spent esther funds on and anytime you hear of a position that's a something that we want to continue until that we no longer have the ester funds and you'll see the positions on here relate to you know they call it the learning loss i know we still saw growth in academic achievement even during the pandemic because we have an amazing staff and parents who are very supportive during the pandemic but we we definitely put some personnel in place to help support some of the gaps that happen because of the pandemics so some of those temporary staffing and in order to have a staff using answer funds they have
046to be temporary positions so we with those funds is mental health para education para educators family liaisons a math science teacher at morgan middle school who really has helped to do intervention with students behavioral tech which is like a paraprofessional who has very specific talent and and skills in working with students who have challenging behaviors additional classrooms at ida mason ironica that was huge in being able to get that done and we were able to use esther funds with that special education recovery services especially over the summer and outside of school times our special education students have time that they needed to be able to make up for and services to get because they were home during the pandemic when we had to be virtual and even when we were in hybrid sanitation personal protection
047equipment the mass the gloves and all that which you know had any mass anymore at least they're not required although some people still choose to and we still really support that so we still are ordering masks and making sure that we have masks and gloves and that equipment available so that people that choose to do that can still do that we definitely support that choice software we have schoology which is a platform that we use to help organize information for teachers for parents and for students most importantly imagine learning and lexia which are adaptive software that helps students with their like their reading skills and math skills uh online learning platform edge annuity uh we have what is it 60 or 80 students how many students do we have virtual right now i think about
04865 i want to say somewhere in the program yes somewhere between 60 80 kids in virtual right now these are parents that said we just want to have our students be virtual this year additional science kits solution tree we've made a commitment to three years in working with solution tree and i mentioned that professional development that we had today for to support our professional learning communities and this is the time that we've provided for our staff on wednesdays that are you know early release wednesdays and that's really important time for teachers for administrators for district office folks to come together the official term is collective efficacy uh john hattie is an educational researcher and it's one of the highest on his skill one of the highest impact you can have on student achievement is giving
049teachers time and professional development and support and meeting together around the needs of their students looking at student work together setting goals together and supporting each other with principals directors superintendent everybody really supporting that work so i'm super excited about that we've just about finished our first year of that and we will continue for the next two years with esser funds using funds for that summer school we've used it for that and then we are going to do and we talked about this i think a few board meetings ago we are going to have our hanover research equity and belonging survey we did that last year and you know one of the areas you have for me to keep on my framework for my evaluation is equity and so the hanover research equity framework and
050survey will go out again and this this time i think we're going to go for not next week but the following week in april so i'll have more information on that at our next board meeting so those are many of the things that we've spent esther funds on so far and again they're one-time funds and if people have um if they see some needs that they think that we should consider for use of the esser funds then they just need to contact me or jen or their principal and we certainly consider those suggestions when they come in that's all board any questions for ginger what's the remaining amount so right now um we have what is it i know and an estimate's okay yeah currently we probably have around um we budgeted for 2 million
051to spend 2 million this year and 2 million next year for 20 um 223 and a million in the following year and then we will be done with okay there are no more questions we'll go on to the next agenda item so the overview of salary and benefit structures at esd yes the board board member during agenda setting asked to put this together and put it on the agenda just to kind of give us an overview of salary ranges and benefits structures that we have in esd for various employee groups so we include the included the attachment and so kim's just going to go over some of the general terms that are on there just so that you understand what what those are for just for clarification are we able to put that attachment up
052so that the audience and everyone can see it can you do that yes is there any way you can zoom in a little bit i knew i should have brought my glasses i think if you zoom in one more time and then if you have to scroll thank you leslie i just want to make sure can you see oh you've got it okay yeah we have an arms okay all right okay um i'm gonna go over this chart i i wasn't gonna go through the numbers part of it if you don't want me to do that i will i can read them all if you'd like me to do that i was just gonna go more over the the different um definitions of what a base pay is and the contract is and what that
053means so a contract type is going to be either an exempt or non-exempt depending if the group is eligible for overtime and exempt employees are not overtime eligible and non-exempt group is eligible for overtime after eight hours or after 40 hours depending on the contract agreement so our pse if it's a um eight hour day and they work more than eight hours in a day then they can have over time but for like our protect it has to be over in a 40-hour week so if they they don't get overtime until they work that 40 hours then they get overtime eligible base pay is the main contract salary amount or hourly amount compared to miscellaneous um compared to miscellaneous pay longevity pay this is pay that teachers and esa's we see once they reach 25
054years of experience is and is paid at fifteen hundred dollars per year the classified directors psc and pro tech employees also receive longevity pay one we could pay after 10 years of service two weeks of pay up to 15 years of service and three weeks of pay after 20 years of service and that is added to their hourly rate each year and those are the only groups that do receive longevity pay the other ones don't um other pay the teachers and esa's in our eea groups may receive supplemental pay pay if they do extra duties outside of their normal base contract duties payroll taxes everybody has payroll taxes the district pays their part of the payroll taxes and employees also pay their part and then we have retirement and the district contributes to eligible employee
055state retirement accounts this can range from 10.25 percent to 14.42 of gross pay each month depending on what um what group they are in um for the state retirement and we have sub-medical employees that work 630 hours annually are eligible for sub-benefits and the district pays approximately a thousand dollars a month for each employee the district has to also pay for employees that are eligible but they waive their medical and so we still have to pay for them even though they waive the medical and don't receive it and that has been a huge cost to the district um we do have viva accounts um at this time we only have one group that actually the district pays and contributes a hundred dollars a month to our principal and um directors um group that's in our
056eea and they get 100 a month um that the district contributes to them but no other group does have that and that's all part of negotiations and how negotiations are vacation only employees that work 260 days a year are eligible for vacation vacation days are determined by contract agreement and can range from 10 days to 30 days paid on call days these days are these days are in the principal and directors group again e-e-a-e-a-a and what this has is that they can leave the school premises and be a home or doing um errands but they have to be available if needed paid holiday pay holidays can range from 0 to 12. days depending on the contract agreement it's kind of all over the place with that as you look across the spreadsheet and down the
057spreadsheet it gives you the different amounts for each employee group i have used salary amounts for the groups that are exempt and hourly amounts for the groups that are non-exim employees um other than that um is there any questions on that thank you for sharing i think this is very helpful i don't think a lot of our community members as well as as us as a board know a lot of the the salary ranges and how this works um i think this is helpful i know i asked more questions i sent you all a bunch of questions after you shared this so uh board these were some of the questions i asked um [Music] because i think um often being the person that responds to the as the board uh sometimes people are saying well
058there's a salary schedule so that's the teacher's salary but what i i think i learned is that there's all these additional things that are not listed on this teacher's salary that puts them into a higher higher thing so what i had asked is how many teachers or esa's are paid over 100 000 and i was told 32 teachers in the district um are our teachers and esa's that make over a hundred thousand um i also ask how many teachers are making over the 99 000 and i learned that 53 teachers and again this includes their base pay but they also get professional days they get curriculum days they get optional days so that that was the response i got back another question i ask is what about just the 90 000 range how are we
059doing at esd for 90 000 we have 80 teachers um that were at that level so i think that um i think that that's helpful to see where our teachers are at i also ask as our taxpayers i think they want to know per teacher on an average total of salaries and benefits how much is the taxpayer paying for each teacher or esa that we employ and i was told 112 147 is the average total so um those were some of the questions as i dug a little bit deeper into this to try to really understand [Music] right how much our our teachers and our esa's are paid so any other questions i think the only question i'd have is on the sub medical you say it's a pretty extensive cost on people that are
060deferring not to use it and i'd just be curious as to how much that is because and are they refusing or are they turning it down because of other medical programs that they're obviously involved in different stuff yeah they might be covered by their spouse or something else and so they don't need the medical so they turn it down so they don't have to pay that deductible but we still have to pay the thousand dollars a month and i'm not sure what that amount i'll have to come back to you on that because i'm not sure that i'm out [Music] um thank you for the clarification on this our budget is primarily uh people and so when we do try the rcws are very clear this board is held to keeping the district in financial
061good standing and it does get complicated when you look at the graph like that you're just trying to say okay what's the salary schedule and and then seb got thrown on there you know but people turned it down and then there were these requirements and then you start learning all these awesome things like prototypical and acronyms that you never wanted in your head at all um and then you're like oh and that's unfunded like you have to do that from the federal level you have to do that from the state level but it's completely unfunded but you are so it it gets it gets difficult and um i'm now sitting in uh my fifth year these very kind people have looked at me like yes passion and i've asked my questions over and over again
062because we do all of a sudden i look at him like this is a brand new board right and so asking these questions and hearing it over and over again really is important because it's it's not as straightforward as as you think or what will tends to work in other work life or other work streams and so thank you for that clarification and thank you for answering my questions in the future um the only thing i would like to see in the future is like the number of employees that fit in those categories on here it would be much easier to because i don't know how many classified directors and supervisors we have off the top of my head how about we will how about if we can no seriously how about if we just
063continue this conversation we can put it on the agenda for next time when we come back and if you guys think of more questions and you send it that way we can make sure we're giving you the accurate numbers yeah sorry thank you this is really [Music] right and i think we can continue this conversation i think i think it'd be helpful so okay all right board is it for that topic so next we'll move to business uh the first item on the agenda is donation of of class of 2022. yes and we have haley nabojek here our asb student leadership director amazing haley thank you um i am here on behalf of the class of 22 and the asb officers to ask that the board please consider accepting a donation of at minimum 9
064000 and probably up to around twelve thousand um from the parent group uh the senior party parents have been out raising money um they're planning the senior party they are a recognized parent group who follows the rules and expectations that we have in the district um and they have exceeded their fundraising they do not need those funds and we at the high school could desperately use them um as you know the last couple of years have not exactly been um the easiest to do much of anything let alone fundraise for 261 kids um and so that donation of at minimum the 9000 would finance our senior trip um i told you where we are going but i don't want to publicly state it without the kids getting to know first um but it would get
065every kid there in addition you know they do have money so we're not it's not as bad as it sounds but the money that we currently have is designated for they have fireworks um we do our flowers you know that show up at scholarship night and then they show up again at the assembly and at breakfast and and um you know but so we use them well and we have the ticket expenses for those students who can't afford to pay um our house bill 1660 kids this year you know approximately 30 percent of 260 is 70ish kids maybe not i don't know it's around eleven hundred dollars and when i calculated it out and then uh the buses we will transport the seniors they will park at st andrews so that parents and grandparents and
066families can park a little closer to commencement but it does cost to transport them so the money they have is spent um and so this donation would greatly help make a lock-in not the option for their senior excursion are there any questions thank you haley and thank you parents for all the hard work i i remember that those that year and that's it's a lot of work for parents and the families and so and the generosity of our community and truly it's humbling to to not be able to afford to do something and have the kids like yep we're doing a lock-in and you know the parent group to be like no you're not um you know so it is it's very um it is it's very humbling yeah excellent thank you so much there's
067an objection we're just gonna i think it sounds like you guys are supportive of that oh it is okay yeah go ahead so before it is an action item so the board will need to uh vote on this or make a decision i do just want to point out a clarification that madeleine has joined us tonight which we are so thrilled to have madeline um but we have not inducted madeleine yet so madeline will not be able to vote however that is on the agenda for our next board meeting in a week to induct madeleine to fully be a full-fledged board member so just for clarification so that we're all on the same page with that so okay board this is an action item i will entertain a motion i move that we humbly accept
068the donation to class of 2022. i second all right tasha has moved that we humbly accept the notation of class of 2022 and jonathan has seconded board any discussion then i'll call the vote all those in favor aye any opposed all right donation accepted thank you haley thank you parents yes all right next on the business is enrollment report all right so you have received both the monthly enrollment uh reports and then also the comparison uh for each month and so i thought i would just start with the enrollment report so both snow did a nice job in our uh study session talking about running start and how a lot of running start kids the majority of our running star kids actually attend the high school for a portion of the day so when you
069take a look at this report you're gonna see big big differences between the head count number and the fte number so currently district wide we have 3 277 students head count but we only receive full-time enrollment for 31.50 and the reason why is because a big chunk of them are going off to the college but you will see that there's quite a few we you know we pick up little pieces two or three periods from certain students and so you'll see that um from last month we increased eight students 8.43 students across the district some of that has to do with our transitional k program as it started and we did have numbers on the books last month for it we didn't have all of the kids not all the parents had their paperwork in
070so kids were attending but we couldn't fully count them and that's how that goes with the state rules so we've increased that pretty everybody is holding pretty consistently i would say that uh high school the secondary program has the biggest shift of numbers um and you see that oftentimes with kids who are changing programs based on their need but the beauty of uh what we have in our district is that we've got the high school we have the alternative high school and the plc programs and they usually just kind of float around so we don't lose those kids and so we're maintaining consistency across the secondary schools so um and then you you'll see a few other pieces are transitional bilingual kids the kids we serve for language services and those council remain the same
071so yeah we're doing great we're holding steady any questions right thank you kelly and we will move to the next item assessment us asset reservation yes and this is not an action item it's just something to make you aware of um and i talked about it in the study session but basically uh we the greenhouse that says associated with the high school we just have regular checks that we do on the building and dale went out there and did the necessary report but we're required to share with the board so it's on the agenda thank you gender board any questions [Music] okay then we'll move to the last item for business the monthly financial report [Music] okay tonight i'm going to be presenting the monthly financial report um this is up through february 2022 and
072so for the general fund as of february 20th 2022 the district has received 45 about 45 percent of the budgeted revenue and has spent about 44 percent of the total budget the pacific increases to 79 percent when we include income and congress can't even talk which are scheduled expenditures like salaries and benefits we don't do this for all expenditures that's why it is only 79 these percentages are below the expected budget amount of 50 um this relates to six months of expenditures out of total of 12 months for the year so we're halfway through the year for expenditures and revenues the unassigned fund balance equates to a little over half a month of operating expenditures or 11. about 11 fund balance after considering balance restriction and sign which is primarily an indicator of the district's
073financial condition this presidential is above the board policy of five percent however however if you compare it to the end of 2021 school year school year which was at 15.28 percent you will see that the fund balance is decreasing a few items that contribute to the ex to this is extra extra expenses due to coved and salaries and benefits that are not covered by current revenue sources capital project fund the capital project fund is below the expected 50 budgeted revenue expenditures as of february 28 2022 revenue came in at 36.54 and expenditures came in around 40 percent the fund balance is at 6.8 million dollars that consists of state match tech levy and assigned fund to support other capital projects lincoln remodel is coming along nicely and is now being funded mostly through state match
074revenue we have we've already spent all our bond proceeds so that we're using state match which is awesome because not every state not every state does match other schools their school will bond so i know in idaho they have to get all the bond proceeds through levies and the state does not match that so we're very fortunate that our state does that for us debt service fund the debt service fund revenues are below the expected 50 budget of revenue coming in at 42.96 with the expenditures being above the expected revenue are expected 50 at 80 the reason the revenues will be load below expected budget is because the next bulk of property taxes are not collected until april of 2022. um these revenues are are then used to pay our debt service payment in june
075of 22. expenditures are above their projected expenses i'm gonna have to slow down experiment project expenditure budget due to principal and interest being paid in december of 21 and then in june of 22 another interest payment will be due the asb fund is below the expected 50 budgeted revenue and expenditures as of february 2022. revenue came in at 24 and expenditures came in around 25 this may seem low however the asb board has decided to budget for all possible fundraisers that could occur in the year and the expenses that go with it to build budget capacity if needed private purpose trust funds since the ppt fund is a fiduciary fund it is not a budgeted fund so this we have approximately fifty four thousand dollars in fund balance for that um transportation vehicle fund the
076transportation vehicle fund is also below the expected 25 budgeted revenue expenditures as of february 2022. revenue came in at 1.73 and that is just all interest investment interest and expenditures came in at zero and the reason this percentages are so low is we prepare the budget for planned and unplanned bus purchases case we have to buy a bus if something happens but we haven't planned to buy any this year and that's one reason why it's so low um and i just want to remind everybody these are different funds so we have general fund and you can't spend and cross funds between the different funds that we have are there any questions uh just as a reminder to myself and to our new board members uh we received this uh update monthly and we are required
077by law to pass a balanced budget for next year um wait is that uh we have to adopt it by august 31st but it gets goes to esd105 by july 10th so it has to be reviewed and we have to do the adoption of that and have the public form form on that and it is required to be balanced and then uh we are thankful that our community passed the levy uh when will our levy dollars from what we just collected when do we have access to those dollars for the new levy yeah yes so the new levy money um coming in the revenue will not start will not start to come in until january of 2023 and really we won't get the bulk of that or start really seeing that until after april of
0782023. thank you any other questions board all right thank you kim all right so now we have moved to policy we have one policy uh ginger would you like to talk about that yes so this is a policy for safety and management of traffic at schools and this is a policy that we're actually developing as an esd policy uh safety and traffic around schools is a top priority for us and so this is just a first reading of this policy and if you have any questions about the policy as it's written and then there will be a procedure which is also included in the packet the board at our next sporting meeting on april 6 will have it up for adoption um and the procedure is very it's specific to ida masonronica right now and
079we we can add additional procedures really for all of our schools um as needed because the procedure is always something that we can change and put in um that the policy is something that the board votes on and adopts and the procedure is there to support the policy board any questions looks like there are no questions thanks ginger all right so now we'll move on to reports our we don't have our students with us tonight so that will lead us to the teaching and learning report tasha yes you may [Music] nestle do you mind bringing that up on so bored uh as i've done in the past i've included a memo for the teaching report everything in here is hyperlinked there's a lot of information in here updating on the most recent washington state board
080of education's agenda that just held and also updates from wea washington state board of education what happened after the legislative session and kind of where uh schools are sitting there's not terrible laws specifics and that because people are still trying to comb through but everything in here is hyperlinked um so as a reminder what we were going to do in our study session where we didn't have time was to review the testimony of the mastery-based work group to the legislature the master-based work group has been in has has been in being for uh the past three years uh as a reminder on january 28th or excuse me january 20th the state board of education awarded funding to 18 schools to further support mastery-based learning these schools will be putting it into place this spring and
081moving into next year this is the list the schools closest to us moses lake school district quincy school district and west valley school district there'll be more about master based learning too further on uh an update on sort of what's happening with sat act and the college board uh that has been sort of at play everyone's wondering where everything's going to land on on feet on that one the california state university system will completely eliminate the use of sat and act tests at all 23 of its campuses and it is not going to reinstate it or look for a test to replace it at the same time as the california state university made that announcement mit announced that they will reinstate the s.a.t and the act requirement so we're seeing that play out for for
082further education the washington state board of education held their meeting earlier this month on it this is just sort of some of the agenda items from it but i did hyperlink to their to their agenda they once again reviewed their alignment of graduation requirements with the washington profile of a graduate the state board of education has been directed by the legislature to submit recommendations about aligning graduation requirements with the washington profile the graduate the recommendations are intended to support expanding opportunities for mastery-based learning and adding different pathways for graduation this report is due to the legislature in in december the legislature has before that they want to see alignment and change into our graduation including the diploma the requirements for a diploma and what the transcript looks like you can see that alignment and their
083timeline all of that is hyperlinked in this document and i've shared that before but i do have highlighted here suggested action there's going to be the first round of listening sessions with stakeholders that the state board of education will be holding that happens this month uh the the date and time is is uh linked in here it is zoom uh something i hope that we can share with our students at the high school and certainly our student board reps is that the student session is tuesday may 3rd and students will be allowed to speak but all adults will only be in a listening mode i recommend that we at least listen and certainly we find someone to participate so that ellensburg is represented in those listening sessions this is the statutory charge i always wanted
084to include that below the legislature has asked them to do this the legislature is wanting to change a high school experience and this is their timeline and sort of what they've submitted and once again that will be happening in december there are resources below that for a possible adding of an additional requirement the ethnic studies graduation requirement i mean it's interesting to to flow through and see how did they come to that and what are they thinking about including an additional agenda item for the state board of education was an update on the 2021 graduation rates so last year's graduation rates everyone was concerned about how did our students fare during covid what were those numbers going to show us the rate of graduation was 82.5 percent in the state of washington which was 0.4
085percent lower than 2020. they did do graduation waivers they're considering doing graduation waivers again this year in 2021 the amount of graduates that received a waiver was 12.5 percent or 8737 graduates the board wanted clarification on who received those waivers and who had a decrease in graduation and so taken straight from the from the materials provided to the board the graduation rates for black asian and english learner student groups increased a little while the rate for hispanic or latin students was unchanged the graduation rates declined for the american indian or alaskans hawaiian or pacific islander white students identifying with two or more races low income and students with a disability group the board of education as an ad for cl has asked for clarity and reports on what happens after a student is awarded or
086earns a high school diploma in the state of washington there's been a really strong focus on graduation rates and making sure that we're we're getting those higher but what the board is concerned with is that we have a very high rate of washington state graduates who then move on to our four year and two year colleges and they have to take pre-college courses um math or reading that they test into that costs students time and money so this is also linked in there the education research and data center you can put your school district in there you compare it to a school district you can see the state average this is a screenshot of ellensburg school district um it's really time so i'm going to try to do takeaways from here i really suggest board
087that you go in there and play with this data and see what it is and come with questions we're lucky to have dr henderson here who can further answer those questions uh the key takeaways for what the state board was asking um what would be a key takeaway for ellensburg school district the data shown in this graph is from 2005 to 2019 the orange line is for students who are the bolder orange line for students who are moving on to a two-year or a career in technical education the not quite as bold orange line is the state average and then the blue boulder line is a four-year college and then the slightly skinnier blue line is the state average i know that's difficult to see up there so for 2019 esd graduates of esd graduates
088that enrolled in four-year schools right the blue line uh in in for a pre-college math course right so for the math course you have to that you won't get credit for it won't count towards your diploma was 21 for esd graduates the state average was 10 uh 37 percent of esd graduates that enrolled in a two-year career technical program uh 37 for esd 25 for state average for esd graduates when it comes to english this is 2019 uh six percent of esd graduates that enrolled in four-year schools i had to enroll in a pre-english course the state average was one percent 11 to 19 percent of esd graduates enrolled in a two-year career and technical program i had to enroll in that course was eleven to nineteen percent state average was nine percent so this
089is what is informing the board's work looking for additional pathways linking to what is that high school experience looking like are we preparing them for life after high school and this is going to inform that mastery-based work group and the profile of a graduate any questions about washington state board of education really highly recommend that some of us jump into those april listening sessions so legislative update a big win for the washington state board of education is that the student board members there are two of them they won the ability to vote on board decisions that means we join states california maryland massachusetts tennessee and vermont if i know we're going to watch one testimonial to the ledge on our next study session but the student testimonials in support of this bill are really inspiring
090those those students who zoomed in and spoke about the necessity of student voice being on those boards it was really inspiring to listen to legislative update on ipd so a lot of us we're looking at ipd uh for the non-business person sitting here uh it's not cola i know that but it's close to cola uh kim's like no it's not tasha we've had that conversation so for ipd k-12 educators including classified and certified [Music] the legislature voted in a 5.5 percent ipd the constraint on that is that they only will find it at the prototypical model so one of those wonderful words that we're going to learn all about the prototypical model is the suggested staffing level for school districts across the state it is a recommendation we are not held to the prototypical model
091uh i'll show you what um some of the prototypical model is further down um we over staff here for instance i always use nurses i'm thankful that we have nurses in every building especially during covid and the heavy heavy lift that they had to do the state does not fund for them and so when we're looking at 5.5 they will not just be sending us a check for every single staff member they will send us a check for those within the prototypical model so another frustration point that often happens with the legislative sessions they say one thing and then you start getting into the details you're like wait what at the same time because we have central sitting here for your college faculty they will not receive a 5.5 they will receive a 3.25 percent
092but we did have some slight wins something to be excited about so major k-12 investments uh state house bill 1590 enrollment stabilization wasn't as much as we wanted how districts are going to be affected by it we'll still let be found out but it did pass student support staffing this one a lot of us had eyes on it because we do believe that students and staff need support like counselors and nurses but unfortunately with the protypical model we are not funded so there is a big change coming to that but it's over three years so you'll be excited to see it further down the list i know you're so excited so these are the major legislative uh wins and kind of explaining where the funding is coming from this i'm not going to read to
093you i think that you really should go in and take a look at it because we're going to hear a lot about it and it's going to inform our advocacy work when we go back to them and write and uh and all of our letters and our meetings uh some of the some of the things coming out though i think that might not be known is that there will be a change to the active shooter drills uh they have to be trauma informed so uh i have a freshman in high school he has gone through active shooter drills since he was a kindergartner that will now change that experience for for students the dual credit program is going to be under revision they've passed a bill to collect data on it and to see the
094effectiveness and to see how money should be allocated to it so something that the legislators are broadcasting is going to happen further in the future so the big one hb 1664 right uh sorry leslie it's further down there prototypical model right so uh we are not funded every single month ospi will send us an allocation of funds based on enrollment and this uh math uh algorithm that they put through and they say this is your chunk of money but you're not held to the prototypical model it is simply a recommendation and so if we look at this column it can be very confusing in 2122 at the very top where it says elementary and it says school nurses for the state to fund a school nurse this academic year your elementary school would have to
095have 5 263 students we are not anywhere near that so now hbill 1664 is slowly changing that funding level if you scan across that to the right in 2024 2025 for one elementary they would need to have 684 students to have one full-time school nurse funded from the state so thankful to our community who stepped in and passed that levy because even though the state is only saying this is that you only need one nurse for every 5 000 students we were able to say our students deserve better if you go down to high school right that's further down on their unless what we'll do for high school do counselors so for counselors you can have one counselor for every 236 students and we in a study session heard from principal bo snow that it's
096important to have one-on-one conversations with our students in an increasingly complex world where there's opportunities for dual credit or moving into life after high school well the state says we will fund that for 236 students but in the year 2024 2025 that will change to 197 students so help is coming the state does recognizing does recognize it but it's over three years so really ellensburg with our numbers we're not going to see much help with this until 2024 2025 but it is significant because we didn't get that before so board this is just a quick look at the legislative session i think that's really going to inform us when we get to talk to our legislative reps about thanking them for the work that they did but there are still problems that we can expect
097them to help us solve and it really is important for us to look at the state board of education because these conversations have been going on for a very long time about we live in an innovative state do we have innovative learning and on our kids prepared to move into our higher ed opportunities or into jobs and so the changes that the legislature is requiring from the state board of education that's next december thank you josh for all that um i did have a something to add even though you know we have a much higher level of students taking in remedial um classes in college compared to the state average i also think we as a board should decide what our um peer school districts are so we can um compare ourselves to our peers
098in some of our size and see if some of our peers are succeeding more or less i think that'll be a good way to start you know bridging that gap and the other thing was on the dual credit you said they passed the bill to start collecting data so there's no data being collected right now it's it is it's in the large church that's further down so the legislature wants to know the effectiveness of the dual credit and specifically they're hearing from small districts that it's an equity issue that they can't offer dual credit classes like the larger districts can and that their students are a disservice so they want to know about the roadblocks the hindrances what is happening in the dual credit classes and how can we expand that some districts have moved
099in that it's a high school requirement that all kids take a dual credit class and that they have something after that diploma so they just want further information on it thank you tasha that was very informative board any other questions for tasha all right then we will go to the next item board chair update i just have something really short and fast um just to reminder board members uh board members serving last year need to file your f1 financial affairs disclosure by april 15th the deadline is in the state law and cannot be extended by the public disclosure commission and no board members don't get paid to be board members but we will have to pay to be board members if we missed that deadline so we don't want to miss that deadline um so
100just as just for clarification if you ran for office last year and you were elected for the first time or you were appointed last year the report you previously submitted as a candidate or appointee does not meet the annual filing requirement so if you have questions let ask me ask gender we'll help guide you through that process because you do not want to miss that deadline so and that's my report so next up we have public comment so leslie if you can get us set up for that uh all right as leslie's setting up um i just want to point out the board will allow up to one hour of public comment this evening individuals wishing to be heard by the board will add their names to the document in the zoom chat box or
101they will have signed up uh at the door um and leslie there were two sign up sheets is that correct one was attendance and one was a sign up sheet so if there is anyone who wanted to do public comment you and you're like did i sign the right one uh leslie will have that uh for you to reference um if you are joining us via zoom if you are on uh please sorry i lost my spot individuals wishing to be heard by the board we'll add their names to the document in the zoom chat box if you are unable to do this individuals may also be recognized within zoom by using the icon or emoji to show you are raising your hand for public comment once the chair calls on an individual they will
102identify themselves by stating their name and address for the record individuals will proceed to make comments within the three minute time limit in order to provide equal opportunity for comments an individual's microphone will be turned off at the 3 minute time limit the chair may interrupt or terminate an individual's statement when is too lengthy personally directed abusive obscene or irrelevant the board as a whole has the final decision [Music] has the final decision in determining the appropriateness of such rulings in accordance to the open public's meeting act 4230 agendas and topics must be set in advance of the meeting board members will not respond to the public respond to public comment during the meeting additionally comments may be submitted to the board at board esd401.org leslie are we ready to open public comment all right
103i think i would like to start with uh the in person folks first so if you want to call the person's first name hi my name is jan houston my address is 5875 coke road i'm a community member i am a taxpayer and i am a registered voter i was clearly under the impression at the last meeting that it was clear that neither the union or the librarians were part of the decision-making process to eliminate those positions in the ellensburg education association contract there is a trust agreement and as a community member i am concerned that this agreement is not being honored and here are some of the phrases that are in the agreement creating an atmosphere of trust mutual trust respect and open communication together we will continually strive to improve student learning nurturing
104a culture of collaboration openly sharing information knowledge and experience commitment to developing decision-making process that decentralizes the process and empowers staff to make decisions and judgments about programs and resources there is a section parent and community involvement we jointly commit to continue to involve parents and community members in our school this commitment is based on the belief that a parent and community support is key to maintaining an effective public education system i ask you is this part of the contract being honored thank you thank you [Music] leslie who's then my name is joseph kingston i live at 901 midfield drive in hillensburg and jason thank you for reminding me to wear glasses i don't want to stray from my notes too much that's why i am wearing these glasses and to the board on our
105mission and or on your mission in value statement page there are many references to the importance of teamwork and involving all stakeholders in decision making please respond in writing and the collaboration that occurred and the choices offered to trim the budget before making the bold move to remove accredited librarians at all levels and negatively change our school district which clearly is not something your stakeholders support thank you hi my name is debbie rowden i live at 921 kittitas highway um i have a copy of the washington state library impact study that was published in 2015 and it's 71 pages long i'd be happy to give you the link for it but i've made copies that i'll give you at the end of the meeting after you've adjourned of the highlights from it but before i
106share those i checked today online you have probably better numbers than the online sources but it indicated that of ehs students are on free and reduced lunch district district-wide it said 27 i know those are ballpark numbers they're probably not particularly accurate think about those kids those low-income kids those kids from families that don't have all of the advantages that my kids had that your kids have or have had students who attend schools with a certificated teacher librarian perform better on standardized tests and they are more likely to graduate there is a particularly high relationship in the school's five-year graduation rate they have more equitable access to technology greater access to databases and resources and they are more likely to be taught information technology skills and technology fluency skills students who are least likely to
107have access to a quality library are disproportionately more likely to face poverty and other risk factors known to adversely impact student achievements these kids have gone through a really challenging two years and my heart breaks for every one of them and i am so worried that the choices we're making today will make the rest of their lives more difficult because if they don't graduate if they don't have the computer skills if they don't have the ability to find the information they can't be fully engaged members of our community and that breaks my heart thank you thank you my name is joy lassard i live at 815 east 5th avenue in ellensburg superintendent haber you are not listening ellensburg school board you are not listening at the last school board meeting multiple speakers took the mic
108to the microphone to speak eloquently from the heart about why they thought the two librarian positions at morgan middle school and ellensburg high school should be maintained they made valid thoughtful points several letters to the editor of the daily record have echoed the same sentiment and has online comments not one has been in support of what you have proposed the elimination of these two positions in exchange for non-certificated employees to operate the library as a leader you must recognize that people tend to support what they create ask teachers students community members for their input it's best not to announce a final decision that affects a group that values their voice being heard i taught at ellensburg high school when the new school building was being built i remember that the architects revealed their floor plan
109showing that the new building would feature a library in the heart of the school and promote the whole reason for being there to foster their learning environment all six thousand square feet of it their design was flawed in many ways as the book in the current libraries would not even fit in the new design that we had already had because we had a library of 13 000 square feet to house these books we had a computer lab and conference labs we would not take a step backward and we chose to keep the library where it's located to maintain the gem that we had this of course is just a room what is needed to make the library a valuable component in the education of our students is the leadership of a certificated librarian in the
110past 50 years ehs students have had the pleasure to work with three remarkable librarians who each elevated the program to meet the needs of the students whether it be to purchase relevant books needed that students needed to have available to them or incorporated updated technology so our students had the access to research programs that fit their needs these librarians dean johnson barb guzman kathy day had their fingers on the pulse of what updated materials were needed to help the students function in the contemporary world my students personally benefited from the knowledge and guidance provided by each of these educators thank you joy i will never forget the impact they made in our school thank you hi i'm terry schmidt i live at 2202 east first avenue in ellensburg i was the teacher librarian at valley
111view for the past 19 years and i just retired this fall a lot of things that could be said about some of these decisions i'm not sure which i'm a little bit more frustrated with the fact that the district thinks a paraprofessional can run a library um or this new specialist position that's being presented so first the definition of a paraprofessional is a trained aide who assists a professional person be a doctor teacher whatever so assist would be the key word there the library training is 26 hours up at central and that's not the teaching part of it that's just to run the library i don't see how a paraprofessional can continue to run the libraries buy appropriate books do even a smidgen of what our current librarians do the second thing is this presentation
112of this new position no one person can be you touched on it or maybe you somebody's asked the question how can you be a specialist in library ela science math computer sciences arts educational technology environment and sustainability there is no way this position which i had for 19 years is once a week for 40 maybe 45 minutes at third fourth and fifth grade levels and that's because i added that to my schedule i didn't i couldn't get enough in of what needs to be taught in what i had plus you want kids to check out books even though they have great classroom libraries they love library books so where the time is going to come to teach all of these areas in depth because if we need it more in depth is not going to
113happen in this once a week specialist position and is k5 so who can learn this all that curriculum for six grade levels and be a specialist at it that's just not a possibility the national school library standards that was mentioned that's there we need to use that that's what our what's your new term um guaranteed and viable curriculum across content areas that's what we need to use but focus on that let the current librarians that are already trained grow and change their jobs i don't think anybody's afraid of change now is the time with ida nation we can go back to having library once a week last year i had them two times a month how can you do anything curriculum wise two times a month and it was for 40 minutes so i just
114asked you please reconsider i do i'm glad to hear that there's the elementary is saying it's going to have a certified librarian but it needs to be across the district thank you terry i'm elise herman my address is 671 brown road in ellensburg good evening as a pediatrician recently retired after 31 years here in ellensburg i'd like to speak about the importance of reading and its lifelong impact research has shown that reading promotes brain-dealt brain development in terms of language visual imagery and the capacity to understand kids who read well are less likely to drop out of school get into trouble with the law and they have greater earning potential reading encourages imagination empathy and improve focus social skills and interactions are also improved and proficient readers technology undoubtedly is important but so is a
115balance between being plugged in and unplugged children now typically spend seven hours a day in front of a screen which is stunning to me as both a parent and a pediatrician although there's no turning the clock back on that and we all agree that tech skills are vital we do need to continue to foster child's reading and their love of reading knowing how crucial reading is to a child's well-being and to the adult they will become i would ask the school board and the superintendent to do everything they can to promote reading for our kids it has been shown that having qualified school librarians can make a tremendous difference in reading achievement as well as scores on standards-based language arts reading and writing tests our students deserve the clear advantage of a qualified librarian in
116their schools there's no second chance for these kids if librarians are removed thank you mary gordon 2720 coffroad helensburg high school graduate parent community member and school volunteer i'm not going to talk about why librarians are important we have covered it ad nauseum they're important your community is telling you that they are important i do have a few questions that i would like to have answered to me in writing please policy 2021 so regarding library information and technology states many instances of the accredited school librarian so if we're removing librarians even for a year at the middle school and high school level that's going against your policy which is in your book so i'm just curious how that works i'm also curious if having a accredited librarian at the middle school but mostly at the
117high school if that affects our high school accreditation maybe accreditation's not happening next year but in the past you had to have an accredited librarian to be accredited or to be accredited for the state i was able yesterday to talk for an hour with mark ray who was one of the authors of the future ready librarians which was part of the presentation on march 9th um we talked for quite a long time and i will just quote him as someone who helped launch future ready librarians i'm always interested to hear that the future ready librarians framework is being used to guide schools and districts in their strategic work i want to ensure that as you consider the framework you are clear about the intent and beliefs behind this initiative future ready librarians and by extension
118future ready schools recognize and promote teacher librarians as essential leaders and partners working alongside school boards school directors superintendents district administrators and principals i have this full letter if you would like to see it he was very sad to hear that we were that we were talking about something that he authored and at the same time talking about losing school librarians i think that what i'd like to leave you with that's been the biggest question for me this entire library issue has been such a dumpster fire for the community and the presentation that there's books everywhere is wonderful but we're also just moving people around and reassigning people and we keep talking about the budget if we really really need to save money there must be a way that we can save it without dealing
119taking away individuals who work so closely with kids and in so many different ways and i would really ask especially the three new board members as you come onto the board please just do your homework don't blindly follow i've been really upset in this whole situation about our inability to have conversations with you and um i would hope that that could change thank you hi i'm alison carpenter 870 game farm road former teacher and parent of two kids who graduated here i have two questions and one comment one question is about the timing of the whole decision that on february 8th we had a levy election and then after that on february 25th pat dowdy and kathy day were informed that their positions were being eliminated after everyone had already voted um and then on
120march 9th elementary librarians were being told their jobs were being cut that they could reapply for the steam positions but this was all before the legislature announced their legislative their um spending decisions and before we knew of staff resignations or retirements um so my question is why was the decision made at that time before all the numbers were in also at the last board meeting the superintendent mentioned that she received a four percent raise in 2019. but she did not mention an additional 10 raise in the late summer of 2021. if the district knew about a looming budget deficit why would they give the superintendent a significant raise at that time my comment is about restorative justice um this district prides itself on the adoption of restorative justice in fact a few years ago i
121remember a meeting where carly clark brought her sixth graders up and they had a community circle discussion for the board meeting in the library and the kids were amazing and what they the idea behind it is the kids have circle discussions right from the start of the year where they build rapport they build trust they learn communication skills so that if conflict happens they have a way to right the wrong and to restore the person who is wronged i was never very good at it i didn't take the time in the beginning of my classes i felt like i didn't have time to do community circles so then when a crisis happened i would try to do restorative justice and it was too little too late because we didn't have that basis of communication and
122trust and i kind of feel like that's what happened with this district that we're trying to form they're trying to form a committee to talk about what happened but the harm has been done and i don't know if we have that trust um so i do have faith however that it could be restored that going forward if uh the district would sit down with the librarians and talk with them sit down with parents with students with other teachers who are impacted that we could start that restorative justice process thank you thank you hi kathy hopkins 3192 cove road i'm addressing the board with a couple questions and my feelings to our publicly elected school board why do you think defunding our already accredited librarians is a solution to the budget shortfall secondly did you consider
123any other possibilities defunding the librarians is a very short-sighted idea i see harmful and depressing impacts on our students teachers and other staff members this is a public school and you are not only responsible for our students and teachers but also to the community of taxpayers basically a healthy learning environment is a win for all of us thank you and leslie i think this will be the 10th person so i think we'll take this person and then we'll we'll see if there's anyone online okay there's one mixture marco mccary 752 robinson canyon road i think some of the things i say will be repetitions but i wanted to go to the idea of courageous conversations which is something that actually we dealt with in a book study on inequity ginger ginger and jen you know
124used the term i liked it because i think it talked about basically good collaboration and family and professional relationships that aren't always easy but we don't want to be dysfunctional family we want to be a family that deals with difficult subjects together and comes out with the best results this obviously it's it's maybe beating a dead horse but this process has lacked collaboration through and through it's been mentioned that at the last meeting it was clear that there was no collaboration done meaningful collaboration with those involved staff librarians or community and it was really reiterated today through jason's questions either the answers were really no the answers were non-answers or they were vague librarians were really not part of that and i can tell you firsthand from talking to some of them that they were
125not included and that not all principles were for it um i don't think there's any objection to the evolution of the librarian or media specialist position but why no collaboration why not keep the present librarians in have the conversation with these incredibly qualified dedicated and experienced people not after people are you know complaining and saying why wasn't this done but why wasn't this done already we can certainly go back and do it now other staff weren't included community members weren't included and that's why they're here today courageous conversations are not easy they're not comfortable and they don't owe us lead to possibly unilaterally and predetermined results but they do result in the best decision they re result in the best thought out decision the best staffed position the best supported decision that was mentioned earlier
126and the best decision for our community and in the end for our students so we there's no reason we can't reset it obviously a lot of this stuff is fluid and it's just kind of happening why don't we make it happen correctly and finally thank you guys for your service so i don't agree i am highly thankful for what you do in the time you put in thank you okay so leslie we're going to switch over to zoom so those of you that are tuned in to zoom and we had one person sign up but please if you are interested you need to sign up now so do it asap so that the leslie can catch you and we can get you included we want all those in the time limit to be able to
127speak leslie who do we have first hello can you hear me yes go ahead judy all right my name is judy nikolai i live at 510 north mount stewart drive in ellensburg um i was going to read a long statement i had prepared but i'm getting too tired um basically what i want to say board is i know that you talked about equity a lot and we all strive to have equity for our students and the librarians help bring that about they help take students from where they are and bring them to new and amazing places we know that not all students students learn exactly the same way but it's a trained certified librarian that can reach a child the student where they are get to know them get to know what they need how
128to help them individually and bring them to amazing new places i worked with kathy day at the high school for over 20 years i can tell you she understands technology um of course we can always learn more there's always more to learn um but not only does kathy help students she helps teachers she helps administrators her understanding of how to access information um is phenomenal and how to reach different student groups is phenomenal what she has brought um that library to be is a welcoming safe place for students and board i just want to say to you please pause take a break think about this we're talking about our students getting rid of a librarian especially somebody like kathy day i can't speak for the other librarians in the other schools but i'm sure they're
129equally amazing it's like cutting off an arm on a body you will handicap this school if you do that so that's enough um i hope you consider this seriously thank you thank you do you have anyone else all right so josh welsh hello thank you uh my address is 903 east spokane avenue i just have a question based on some of the information we've received tonight and that is this it sounds like we have a slightly higher average of students we're producing that need some remedial english help when they go to college if that's the case how can we justify cutting any of the literacy resources we have in the high school or the middle school or any of the other schools thank you thank you for anyone else from okay all right so we
130will switch to okay yep so we'll do one more we have one more person signed up and then i think we have no one else listed okay okay good yeah because i was going to say you still have time uh we did a lot an hour so if you are still wanting to speak with the board does want to hear from our community okay and the link is in the chat so if you're with us on zoom please try to do that if you can't figure that out or you're getting frustrated raise your hand and we will try to address you there we do not want to miss you okay yes [Music] the hairs on my neck went up i felt like i was listening to paul anka or frankie avalon singing primrose lane a
131song i remember when i was a little kid in the late 50s primrose lane life's a holiday in primrose lane just a holiday in primrose laying with you we kind of heard from a couple of speakers the setting of this evening how not having librarians is an okay thing in the elementary schools and high schools specifically elementary schools when i taught at lake washington high school in kirkland of quad a high school of 1500 students a young lady came in one day jennifer it was her name i had her in elementary school when i was in elementary library and she said mr bates how you doing i said jennifer it's great to see you a wonderful girl who did very well in school uh high school cheerleader very popular very kind outgoing and i said
132uh how's everything going it's great she said you know what mr bates i'm so glad you're here i remember in second grade when you always put out during winter time that pretend fireplace you know the kind the logs that have the red light in it they twirl around it makes it look like a flame and i'd say okay boys and girls let's sit down and get warm and listen to a good story and we'd talk about the book afterwards it was educational by the way but that girl who was 18 remembered when she was a second grader and it warmed my heart that she the most meaningful thing to her from her elementary school experience was listening to books read by me in the peter kirk elementary library with that fake fireplace i want to
133remind the board somebody else addressed it here earlier you're sitting behind that flag our nation right now is in deep peril not everyone behind me might believe it but i believe it i'm 72 years old and i've lived through a lot in our nation we are in deep peril and one reason we're in deep peril is due to the fact that we are becoming an ignorant society people who are not read well people who use facebook as their news source i find that frightening to eliminate librarian positions is an abomination you board are the people that run the school district you have a manager who runs the school district the superintendent mrs haber but you are the decision makers not the principals not the teachers not the union you are the elected officials i know
134you're volunteers but it is your job to make wise decisions okay i asked you earlier i emailed all of you and i said please read information power put out by the ala american library association i want to ask you to raise your hands if you read it or not i hope you did if you don't i hope you read it i will keep pounding you until you do thank you very much thank you all right so on zoom tim sorry you're being unmuted hello school board uh and superintendent hubbard thank you for entertaining this opportunity for us in the community we really appreciate that and we appreciate the hard work that you do in making these tough decisions i live on eight zero east tacoma avenue i'm coming to you as a cwu faculty member
135i work both in stem teach that's in the department of science and math education as well as chemistry department and half of my world being in the stem education there has been a an obvious push to put the arts in stem i commiserate with uh lee bates just now the arts have brought a lot to stem not just in supplementing the importance of well-drawn mechanisms that you might see in old architecture or some of those other components that are technical but um just that a supplement the arts stand alone the arts and humanities music theater painting and the case for tonight reading a big point of that being the creativity where stem and the arts and humanities over cross one another is that level of creativity if it weren't for human creativity we would not
136make those inductive leaps to make those fantastic stem findings we wouldn't make those beautiful music musicals or paintings that are hung all over the world this creativity component i get a lot of the high school students either coming in the summer time or coming up to cwu to take the chemistry 100 series and these students currently make excellent evidence-based arguments they cite their literature they're very well prepared i know that the science teachers do their part in the educational school district here but i also know that they have their partners with the librarians to make that happen um i would i would really worry a great deal if those science teachers didn't have a say in uh pulling their librarians and having them to help supplement their curriculum um so i i really am pushing
137and hoping that you uh consider this importance the librarians are not a supplement they are a standalone and they deserve their space alongside of all teachers in the curriculum pk20 not just pk12 thank you very much thank you my name is nancy kasparia i live at 1718 north bluegrass lane in ellensburg i have written multiple letters to all of you and i wrote one recently about my disgust of what's been happening in our neighborhood and with other issues it's amazing to me that you could build four elementary schools in ellenberg due to the covet and loss of students you lose so you lose your budget cuts or you get budget cuts and repurpose your librarians passing your levies without disclosing this information to the public until the levy passed because of you had been transparent
138you know that levy probably would not have passed maybe you should have not built ida nason until you had a clear picture of the needs of the city look at all the money you could have used to improve what you have already instead of ruining quiet neighborhoods designed and deceived by only one road in and none out of ida nation causing a log jam and safety issues not sure who all got paid under the table or what deals were made but i find it appalling to say the least as i said in a recent email to school board and the city council shame on all of you i also heard the librarians are also going to be cut at mount stewart and ida nation as starting as of next fall widening i noticed is a
139helena we were told helena wasn't going to be widened for quite a number of years also there was to be a road put from um cora through to island through to helena for safety issues and to have an egress for again safety issues uh and we were told at last meeting that this is not going to happen for six years and possibly even longer than that that is just unacceptable and again for the safety of our our community and our families a gate was put on our trail at um on the john wayne trail two gates were put on there neither one of them were the right size so no car could even go through them so they paid extra money to have them ripped out and new gates put in so you could actually
140get vehicles and service vehicles and emergency vehicles in that area that would have saved you a lot of money right there if that hadn't been done so again i say shame on you thank you nancy [Music] all right this is the last call i don't think we have anyone else [Music] and i am going to close public comment ginger is there any clarifications okay so next our agenda is proposed items for future consideration um sometime in the future maybe at our border cheap i would like to have that discussion about peer districts so we can start looking at the numbers a little bit more and the comparison and see where we stand you get that okay perfect i know you were shifting and i wanted to make sure okay board any other proposed items for
141future consideration okay so we're not going to adjourn to a closed session tonight is that correct okay um move that to next okay all right and then signing the official documents do all board members have things to sign all right so board members don't run away uh make sure you stay to sign the documents anything for board calendar okay nothing for board calendar uh clarifications and next steps there are no clarifications and next steps so i would entertain a motion to adjourn [Music] a motion to adjourn a second all right for the record mike motion to adjourn and tasha seconded we are now adjourned thank you again for everyone who joined us tonight foreign