001all right it's a little after seven and i would like to call to order this regular ferndale school district board meeting we just finished a special meeting with the lummy nation school district and so just took us a few minutes to transition even though it's virtual just need a few seconds so first thing i'd like to do is for us to rise and join in reciting the pledge of allegiance i 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 all right next i'll call on kong nguyen to read our land acknowledgement khan we the people the fernell school district acknowledged we are residing on the traditional ancestral and seated territory of the alumi people
002the lumi people are the original inhabitants of washington's northernmost coast and southern british columbia they live in villages throughout the territory and continue to have ongoing relationship with these areas since time immemorial they have celebrated life on their waterways and on the traditional ancestral and unceded lands of their people to prove to perpetuate their way of life we honor their ancestors as we acknowledge the past present and future lumi people as the original inhabitants of this land thank you appreciate that so the next item on the agenda is the adoption of the agenda so at this time i'll entertain a motion to adopt the agenda as written or to add or make changes to the agenda i would like to make a motion to make a slight change on item 3.03 the reorganization of the
003school board comes just after swearing in our new school school board members and i think it would be beneficial to have some discussion about that and then take the vote in december as we have in the past since i think 2015 the vote has always happened in december not in november so i'd make a motion to adopt the agenda with the adjustment to 3.03 that i suggested all right any other comments or changes to the agenda then it's been moved to adopt the agenda with uh change in item 3.03 the recognition i'm sorry the reorganization of the school board to uh have that discussion tonight and then hold the vote and elections in december all those in favor say aye aye opposed all right well at this time i'm going to be handing the imaginary
004gavel over to dr kevin erickson who is the vice president of the school board and i will be leaving the meeting i'd like to say a welcome to steve chiles and peggy upfiano i think it's uh it's you're going to find it's a lot of work but it's very rewarding i congratulate you on your election to the school board and i know that you will work hard for the students and families in our community so it's been my privilege to serve on the board for about 12 years and um it's just been uh an incredibly interesting and um sometimes exhaustive learning experience i i know where we were 12 years ago and i know where we are today and i'm very proud of the steps that we've taken it's been my privilege to work with
005the administration that we have i mean we have such a great administration and they're carrying us through this year from mark being interim superintendent to dr britt and kelly larabee and of course john there's john right in the middle john fairburne and all the staff that help and support the district so i will miss seeing you on a monthly basis sometimes two and three times a month um but i know the great work will continue and so i wish you all the greatest success and thank you well thank you andrew and before i turn it over to mark i just wanted to say a few words i wanted to thank both you and leanne for your many years of service and for the leadership that you've given the board throughout those years in the district
006and also for the leadership you've given me as i came on as a newbie and learned the ropes of how the school board operates and things um how the action takes place and and instilling in me that that all important of the it's really the kids that matter and that's why we do it um certainly is not the paycheck um you know it's it's making sure that the community's children are educated correctly and so again words cannot say enough about all the work that you and leanne have done and the true dedication within both of your hearts in that purpose so with that i'll turn it over to mark well thank you um andrew um and leanne for all your years of service and i know the uh i think i speak for the rest
007of the executive ad team that uh we have enjoyed uh working with you we've appreciated your dedication um it hasn't always been the most um what's the opposite of thankless most appreciated role i'm sure that you ever played in your life but it's um you know like uh dr erickson said you always made the decision that you thought was best for kids and and kept kids um at the center of everything so we very much appreciate your um your commitment and your dedication and we know you will continue to support us from your new role as a private citizen with more free time on tuesday evenings thank you appreciate that thank you all right so jackson at this point you can transfer me over okay so that leads us to the next item on our
008agenda which is item 3.02 which is the swearing in of both steve and peggy and so mark i will turn it over to you to take care of that for us all right so we will go in numerical order so uh steve please um stand up and raise your right hand and repeat after me so i steve childs do solemnly swear hi steve childs do solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution and laws of the and that i will faithfully and impartially perform and that i will faithfully and partially perform and discharge the duties of the office and discharge the duty of office of ferndale school district 502 director district of 4. school district history director district
0094. district 4. perfect that's okay it's it's awkward this way in and for the county of whatcom indiana for the county of whatcom state of washington according to the law and to the best of my ability according to the law and the best of my ability congratulations you're now on the school board thank you very much thank you everyone so peggy sorry about that that's okay okay all right so hi peggy lupiano do you solemnly swear i peggy you piano do you solemnly swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution and laws of the state of washington and the constitution and laws of the state of washington and i will faithfully and impartially perform and that i will faithfully
010and impartially perform and discharge the duties of the office of ferndale school district 502 director district 5 director district 5. in and for the county of whatcom state of washington state of washington according to law and to the best of my ability according to law and to the best of my ability congratulations as well thank you very much welcome thank you okay sorry about that had to mute the phone um well congratulations both steve and peggy welcome to the board and to the adventure and all there is within it so um we're glad to have you on board and as i've mentioned to you in our private conversations at any point if there's any questions or anything that we can help you with please don't hesitate to let us know so with that um we
011will move on to a discussion um in item 3.03 of reorganization of the board as melinda stated in the past we've typically done the reorganization in december this november is kind of an unusual one in the way the dates fall normally the election is not certified until after our november school board but because it was certified before it resulted in the change at the november meeting as opposed to the new members being sworn in at the december meeting um so with andrew having been the board chairman and him not being reelected myself as vice president has stepped in to that role at least for tonight's meeting and then at the next board meeting in december we will need to elect a board chairman and more advice chairman for the coming year so um any questions
012discussion at this point um no but thank you for explaining why i always thought that you know this took place much a little bit later than than what's happening this year mystery solved thank you yeah about i looked from 2015 until now and about half the time it was the board members came in in november and then um the uh which might call the voting on the board chair happened in november and the other half it was they were sworn in and um the reorganization in december so when i came on it was november swearing-in and december so i was a little confused like why are we doing it so fast that's like 30 seconds later so oh and it feels like it too so well i think part of the process also is in
013historically or in the past at least in the years i think you're referring to and i didn't look back so i don't know for certain um but at that point we didn't have the chairman or vice chairman in a not being you know continuing on in their role so that was part of the the thought of reorganizing um just for everyone i know we've got quite a few people in the the audience that are watching the meeting tonight and i'm glad that we have that level of participation um just as so that everyone knows and peggy and steve have already been advised of this board policy policy that was adopted by the board years before us um does what's the word i'm looking for um does not allow for a new member to be either
014the chairman or the vice chairman their first year um basically i think the biggest reason for that at least in my mind is that when you're coming on to the board you've got a lot that you're trying to digest and learn and and get the whole procedure down um and so that is is part of that so just wanted to make everyone aware of that um so at this point um unless there's further discussion basically we'll be having our board um reorganization as part of the december meeting so i kind of like to talk about um the the roles and what we want from a board chair um kind of one of the things just to think about in the next couple weeks sure um i think with this you know this next year coming
015with finding a superintendent that's probably that is the the one main job of the school board is to hire or fire a superintendent so we're not going to be firing one hopefully no just kidding you're good mark um but hiring a superintendent i think that um there's a good argument for having a school board member who has experience doing that but then hiring a superintendent is new to all of us on the board so thankful to northwest leadership associates for guiding us through that um but for me what i really appreciated about andrew as a new school board member is that when i had a question of what the heck are we supposed to do at this point in the in the agenda what does this mean where can i go for this information that
016sort of thing he was always extremely welcoming and pointing in the right direction so i guess the board chair to me it's not just a you know calling to um calling the meeting to order and going through the agenda items while we're sitting there but there's a lot of work behind the scenes and i think pulling us together as a school board that is going to be prepared for our meetings that have our questions answered that if we're going to be asking questions in the meetings the people that are going to be called on to answer those know that those questions are coming and i think the board chair can really facilitate that so anything else anybody's looking for in a board chair or questions about what a board chair should do not at the
017moment but i'm sure they'll come and they definitely will peggy we've all been there and we've all had those i i think melinda is states it correctly is the the role of the board chairman is not just limited to leading the meetings it's making sure things are organized things get um addressed so that things are prepared for the meeting so that we can uh take care of the the business that we need to in an efficient manner and in a a well-heard manner um and definitely providing guidance and leadership for those um particularly the new members but also for everyone that's on the board um mark and i we're talking a little bit about that in the sense and we'll be talking about it later as far as um some things that we've we've talked
018about or we want to get organized as far as bringing the board together and helping because um working together we we make the most progress and we can get the most done and and trying to help deal with some of the acronyms the language the lingo the the policies and trying to figure out why some of the stuff is done the way it is because uh realistically said i haven't met a board member yet that hasn't come onto the board thinking one thing and went hey that's why they do that um it's not because it always makes the most sense but sometimes it's because that's what the law says so um definitely will be some good discussion and certainly if there's questions feel free to reach out to any of us um that have been
019on the board so any other comments okay with that we will move on to item 4.01 which is the receiving of public comment um public comment is a time that is set aside for members of the community for the audience when we're meeting in person um to share with us what's on their mind regarding what's happening in the district um this is a time when the board lists it's kind of an awkward time because we don't engage with the speaker that does not mean that we're not interested in what the speaker has to say that we're not intent on that being important um but it is a time when we just listen and the reason for this is twofold one it's part of the open public meeting act which uh the mpa is something that
020uh all school board members love and hate at the same time because it rules how we have to act and get together and and how we function as a board um and it requires that things that are not on our agenda we can't address um and that being if there's other people that want to talk about that if it's not on the agenda then they didn't know that they needed to attend the meeting the other uh aspect of that and probably one that is equally if not more important is we want to make sure that we're presenting accurate information sometimes if we're presented with items that are not part of the agenda that we've not prepared for um that come up in public comment we may not have the answers and rather than give a
021wrong answer we'd rather get the information and get the right answer so depending on what items are brought up we may very well defer those to one of the members of the exact team to get an answer and get back to the speaker or the person who's commenting we may address those in future meetings we may address those through our other avenues such as website or comments that way so just wanted to make that uh people aware of that um the as we've talked about in the past public comment we do because part of the purpose of the board's meeting is to get the board's business done that needs to be done we do limit public comment to 45 minutes uh each speaker is allowed to speak for three minutes and um i think based
022on the number of people i've got signed up tonight we should be able to cover all that for those that don't like speaking in public there are certainly other avenues of contacting us all of our contact information email addresses phone numbers are listed on the district website and people can are free to comment through those or contact us through those means and we'd be happy to listen in here that way so um i think that that is all we've got at this point i am i do have one letter that was submitted as far as public comment and because we are in a virtual format i will go ahead and read that so bear with me as i pull it up so this um and just so everyone is aware once i'm done reading that
023letter then um the people that have signed up with uh jackson for public comment we will bring them in um to the as panelists if i'm understanding correctly in jackson correct me if i'm wrong but we'll bring them in one at a time as they um signed up and allow them to speak for their their three minutes so um starting out the first email that or the first public comment that was submitted was submitted by jeff mckay and his letter reads as such board members as you begin the search for a new superintendent it is an appropriate time to consider recent actions that have caused unnecessary division and disruption in the district and our ferndale community the district implemented a mandatory vaccination policy on all its employees disregarding any normal standards of personal medical privacy
024and bodily autonomy as a result the service of loyal and valuable employees has been lost because they refused to bow to illegal mandates there are many local governmental agencies that have not imposed such draconian measures on their employees and i'm not aware that any of them have experienced unusual health problems i urge you to reverse the policy and rehire the fired employees if they are willing to return the district hired a director of diversity and equity equity whose ethical standards were apparently less than noble which led to her resignation first one must ask why the district needs to create such a position have we allowed development of an environment of inequality and discrimination in our schools that has to be corrected or is this position intended to promote one race over another i ask you
025to not spend badly needed public funds on this or any other administrative post but use it in our academic programs the robles resignation was a result of critical race theory being forced into our schools by race hustlers some are afraid to protest the introduction of our crt for fear of being labeled racist but that will not deter many ferndale parents and taxpayers from raising their voices against the this pernicious and destructive program which is designed to fit students against each other based on their racial identities in regards to racial preference and equality i am providing you with a white paper from the washington policy center the wpc's center for education director liv finn's outlines state and federal laws governing anti-discrimination and civil rights our civil rights are also guaranteed by our state and federal constitutions
026and the un's universal declaration of human rights i expect that the verndill school district board of directors will not implement or approve any program or policies that discriminate for or against any group but will treat all students as equals thank you for your consideration jeff mckay fhs class of 1964. okay so i'm gonna pull up so um the list that of people that were wanting to or that asked to speak tonight um first on the list is andrew gustafsson hi there can you hear me we can wonderful thanks so much the district has not delivered an explanation or apology for the very recent barbara robles scandal we're not going to allow you guys to memory hold this complete failure of the hr department the superintendent the school board recently fired or resigned director of equity
027inclusion barbara robles was offered a six-figure plus job in this district at the beginning of the summer while actively running for city council in ellensburg she accepted the role here was confirmed by the school board here at the end of july instead of dropping out the race she continued to campaign for public office four hours away in ellensburg she subsequently won the primary ellensburg in august beating out the third candidate who would have ended up on the november ballot had she pulled out of the race as she ethically and morally should have after she accepted the job inferno she then bought a home in ferndale in august and it was at this point that she committed fraud either committed fraud against the taxpayers of ferndale and fraud mortgage fraud inferno by attesting to her landing
028bank in the ferndale home that the furnace home would be her primary residence or she committed voter registration fraud donor fraud and election fraud by officially moving to ferndale but not changing her voter registration to ferndale indeed she remained registered to vote in ellensburg and claimed to be eligible to run for office in a town she no longer lived in if not for the voters of ellensburg who discovered all this just days before the november election barbara robus would likely still be employed in this district today while simultaneously holding office in ellensburg indeed our ellensburg friends notified the voters in ferndale the weekend before the november election and then this administration appeared to turn itself into a pretzel to try to cover up for this disaster retire first by allowing miss robles to post a
029statement on monday november 1st on the district website and facebook page saying that she had withdrawn from the ellensburg election and was committed to her job inferno then by deleting comments from that facebook post left by the voter in ellensburg who had uncovered and reported on the whole scandal in the first place and then just 24 hours later on election day interim superintendent debug posted that this district had accepted miss robles resignation this whole scandal raises several questions that this district needs to answer who recruited or otherwise championed the hiring of miss robles who vetted her who was responsible for doing the basic background check that would have revealed her campaign in office in ellensburg did the district know she was running for office when she was offered the job did the board know it
030when they approved her hiring in july did the district and or the board have an agreement worked out with miss robles to allow her to run for office in ellensburg and hold office there had she been hired while simultaneously working for the school district in ferndale was she paid she was paid for several months under false pretenses how much of that money has the district clawed back from miss robles how many other recent hires has this district hired without a comprehensive background check with the claimed budget challenges how was the district able to fund a brand new administrative level equity position in the first place how many para educators could the district have funded with the approximately 120 thousand dollars that she was being paid this district owes an apology to the voters uh for
031the scandals hiring and uh that's what our expectations are in the coming weeks thanks thank you andrew so our next uh public comment comes from dom falm and kent selby kevin as they are coming in would you like me to keep time that would be great thanks kelly sorry i forgot that part jackson are we oh there they come oh geez zoom was taking a little while to promote him no problems thank you dom you're on mute just in case you are speaking okay uh is it working now yep we can hear you now great thank you uh good evening my name is dom farm my topic is about the cobit policy on washington children since the drastic shutdowns began in march last year in most states the public has been constantly pestered with a
032lot of rhetoric about the threat of the wuhan virus to people's well-being and safety especially children in fact furnace schools didn't return to full-time schedules until more than a year later based on the claim that the virus is so contagious and deadly which is filtered down from top levels of government thus i believe it's only fair to examine the validity of their claim my online search finds only one reference to the death of a child less than 10 years old in washington state since early 2020 according to a q 13 fox news article on june 2nd here's the direct quote the spokane regional health district confirmed the death but they haven't determined yet whether the child had underlying conditions or other complications they also haven't released much if any additional information about the child assuming
033that the the unverifiable unverifiable report is correct that's one death out of 1.7 million children from birth to 17 in 20 months compared with the flu fatalities of six for the same age group for the 2019-2020 season the last season of which flu deaths were reported one can fairly conclude that the wuhan virus poses far less of a threat than the flu virus a side note i understand the scant release of information about the child's death because of hipaa however if this privacy rule applies to children why does it not apply to adults like us why are we coerced into testing if we experience any symptoms at all why do we have to tell you our vaccination status or risking or risk losing our jobs since when did getting sick become a crime and a
034political issue let me turn the table and ask every one of you this question can you tell me if you have recently experienced any symptoms of dot dot dot you could fill in the blank whether it's covet diabetes high blood pressure or even std etc would you answer it truthfully or just say no it's none of your business what makes the wuhan virus so special that we have to relinquish all of our rights is it because it has been exploited as a perfect excuse for the president and many governors to act as if they are tyrants in order to issue extreme measures and mandates but that that's the first half of my remarks uh next mr skin mr ken selby is going to deliver the second half before i yield i would like the board
035to know that the transcripts of my three sets of remarks and one exhibit were sent to you about an hour ago please look for them in your email box if you haven't had a chance to do so thank you and kent again you're muted at this point if you're speaking okay am i on now you are on now all right thank you very much well i'd like to just continue on with some of what dom was referring to and first of all it seems to me that the government has recently began pushing the vaccine policy on our children and it seems that it is with or without the parents permission and the question is to the people out there are you gonna let that happen it's not yet a mandate but based on the way
036that other campaigns have gone it's just a matter of time before they attempt to make it mandatory for everyone now i seem to have noticed a disturbing pattern that has emerged during these challenging times it seems that politicians have completely absolved themselves of their duties and responsibilities to the people that have elected them they are totally relying on so-called health experts to make their decisions now our system of government was not designed to be governed by unelected bureaucrats that are more often concerned with lining their own pockets than their concern for society it looks like politicians have turned a blind eye to the conflicts of interest over financial motives that involve many of these so-called medical experts now i'd like to remind everyone that during world war ii there were many doctors who were so-called
037experts but they were involved in the systematic extermination of the jews they were also involved in gruesome medical experiments which included forced injections of experimental and often lethal drugs does this ring a bell with anybody or is it just me and we seem to have forgotten that highly educated people who are not guided by a clear conscience or moral compass have become some of the most evil and prolific murderers in history now i hope that you the board will think about some of these things and i pray that it will help in making the correct decision of what is best for the ferndale community the district staff whose jobs are on the line and most importantly what is best for the children you have sworn to protect and in a nutshell that's where i'm at
038thank you very much for your time thank you kent so next on our list is jennifer suspects and jennifer you're awesome oh there you go there we go all right can you hear me okay we can all right great thank you hello i am jennifer sufsik and i am presenting mr fomm's response to mr d box termination letter number one the legal justification upon which these forced vaccines and firings by mr debac is the governor's proclamation 21-14.1 a proclamation is not on equal footing as legislation which is passed by the legislature and i don't believe you have to be a constitutional lawyer to be able to distinguish between the two and by the way there was breaking news just a few hours ago a federal judge issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against president biden's vaccine
039mandate for health care workers so school districts could very soon find themselves on this same bench number two mr d box says that the district granted you a religious exemption from the vaccination requirement i beg your pardon but i have certain unalienable rights endowed by our creator they are granted by god and not by the district or any politicians as a vietnamese refugee whose native language is not english if i can grasp this basic principle upon which our country was founded i expect mr debac to be able to as well number three additional safety measures that unvaccinated staff must endure title vii of the civil rights act protects employees and job applicants from employment discrimination if there are additional requirements for those who receive the exemption then that is no exemption i highly object to
040singling out bullying segregating and persecuting the nature of this requirement new data suggests that the vaccinated and unvaccinated carry several similar viral transmission loads because of this some medical facilities are now testing the vax and the unvaxed so either do all or none please number four a rushed meeting with union representation i was not given sufficient time to decide whether to attend and all the facts had already been clearly presented number five mr debac referred to a reprimand email on november 5th that he presumes that i had received however he convened conveniently forgot that i did not receive it because my district email account was locked sometime the first days of november this gag order is unfair and authoritarian and is a common where open communication poses a threat to power he made an unfounded
041accusation that i came to work with covet in late september in a zoom meeting with mr fairborn on october 5th i maintained my position that i did not suspect covet because i had not contracted it before his reprimand implies a false and deceptive narrative that covet is equally deadly to children as it is to the elderly and those with underlying health conditions have we forgotten there is only a one percent death rate and mostly in those that are over 65. i'm urging you to consider my side of the story to end these illegal and immoral mandates in the district and to stop discriminating against honest and hard-working district employees namely for bus drivers who simply love their jobs and their children thank you thank you jennifer so next on our list is pat rogley can
042you hear me we can okay hello everybody first of all i want to um say welcome steve and peggy i'm thrilled that you've joined the school board the next thing that i'd like to say is i i disappointed that we did not have uh in person as well as the virtual tonight i know that the weather is an issue but for somebody like myself i could have made it perfectly safe i would have liked the opportunity to be in person on cam on um at vista sorry i missed it for a meeting and i think i'm not the only one i think it's important that we have choices normally we do the virtual as well as the in person and i don't know why that could not have happened tonight so with that being said
043i will turn it over to somebody else thank you thank you pat so next we have paul rosser and paul you're on mute at this point can you hear me we can excellent the policy being used to subjugate and eliminate five exceptional senior bus drivers bad policy wrong-headed and a waste of taxpayer funds these employees judy rudy dom kent and julia combined commercial driving experience represents 58 loyal years driving for the ferndale school district they each have been driving the same contractor routes for many years and have built strong bonds and relationships with students parents faculties and the community they have earned their seats and demonstrated loyalty to the district and during a furlough working reduced hours with uncertain aabb scheduling for the 20-21-year school year maintaining seating charts and most important more most importantly
044keeping kids safe at the beginning of the school year transportation was flushed with enough drivers to meet mission when the unconstitutional vax mandate came into effect onerous religious waivers were granted for 12 of the 13 drivers requesting one was denied to caveat the religious waiver the fsd installed a moving goal post of sorts a discriminatory clause originally the fine print and the waiver made reference we may require you to be tested that was changed to you are required to submit testing two times a week when dom kent judy and julia questioned this thinking especially after the fact recently vaccinated people can infect others and catch covet they courageously stood their ground asking why they were being singled out by speaking truth to power these four employees demonstrate a high degree of moral character which was
045not reciprocated by the ferndale school district leadership instead actions were taken for their removal there is no there is now a critical driver shortage in the fsd staff morale has been crushed and all it is at all time load the dispatchers have been required to drive and reroute we work schedules to meet mission the mechanic mitch quit friday prior to thanksgiving holiday he was put into an untenable situation to be both a school bus driver and a mechanic with enthus with equal enthusiasm he voted with his feet it takes a special person to be a school bus driver and they are hard to come by especially in a national shortage excellent competent mechanics are hard to replace as well it costs approximately twenty five hundred dollars and requires thirty to sixty days to properly train
046a commercial licensed school bus driver it takes it will take fsd six to 12 months to fully replace seven employees in the meantime transportation teams gonna continue to grind it out not for the ssd leadership no they will preserve they will persevere because they do not want to let their families down with this mismanagement and squandering of taxpayers monies as demonstrated above how can the ferndale century continue to support the district's levees people's livelihood and careers should not be destroyed over cobit thank you very much thank you paul next we have jeannie rosser go ahead can you hear me we can okay good evening congratulations to peggy ubiano and chris childs and a sincere thank you to all school board volunteers for your dedicated service to the ferndale community my name is gene rosser as
047a burndale homeowner taxpayer mother and wife of the former fsd transportation department director my professional background as a teacher board member board chairman non-profit executive director public policy analyst investigative journalist consultant and small business owner allows me to confidently offer the following observations and suggestions sadly i am here today to acknowledge a failure in fsd's structural leadership and to suggest at a minimum that the new school board elect to both protect the taxpayer significant investment by reinstating all wrongfully terminated transportation employees and subsequently move to request mr devock's resignation while the outgoing superintendent could have averted many problems that came upon the heels of her departure it is mr deback her interim superintendent who might have thoughtfully led his entire team to success instead however under the guise of kobig 19 mr debac chose to
048demean harass intimidate and arbitrarily and capriciously take away valued employees jobs at the community's expense while mr debac ably demonstrates expertise at passive aggressive shaming and blaming those he clearly dislikes and or with whom he may philosophically or otherwise disagree his blatant disregard for due process of law and for certain members of fsd's hard-working dedicated staff is regretfully and shamefully obvious tragically reflecting negatively upon the ferndale school district as a whole moreover mr debac's penchant for twisting facts and making mountains out of molehills lacks the maturity suitable and appropriate to the requirements of his current responsibilities in all honesty this matter has nothing to do with covid or so-called mask mandates case in point while attending an off-campus fsd administrative social function everyone including mr debac was not wearing a mask yet shortly thereafter mr
049daba hypocritically singled out certain fsd employees to harass and intimidate some who had served fsd faithfully and well for over a decade and apparently only due to their beliefs using his discretionary interpretation of health guidelines as an excuse for either his inability or unwillingness to reasonably communicate and take positive steps to lead his entire dedicated team to success mr debac instead opted to engage in open hostility this environment embarrassment reflects a loss to the entire community and is wholly out of step with fsd's mission statement as pertains to character building in children which first must be modeled by adults many fsd transportation staff remarked that my husband was the best director they'd ever had given paul's previous 30-year career as a highly decorated now retired colonel with glowing records i believe them what really happened
050then ferndale's future if not integrity is on the line thank you gene you're welcome next we'll hear from natalie chavez and natalie you're muted at this point can you hear me now we can hello my name is natalie chavez i'm going to read a letter that was written by ferndale school bus driver dom vom this letter is addressed to all of you also you should have already received a copy of dom's antibody test results and if you have not yet received that then a copy will be forwarded to you after this meeting dear board members the screen capture above shows the result of an antibody test that i took recently at peace health the picture indicates that my antibodies the wuhan virus are more than 45 times the reference value of one after my initial
051infection in late september one can see the attempt by the medical professionals to downplay the significance of a positive test result in the first paragraph my response is if the test is really unreliable and indefinite why do they still offer it in the first place i strongly believe that if you truly follow the science and care about the well-being and safety of people including children then this evidence of my robust immunity level is all you need as a confirmation of my health condition to operate safely in a transportation setting for ferndale school district even the cdc itself admits in a november 5th response to a new york attorney's freedom of information act request that it has no records of anyone who never received a vaccine recovered became reinfected and transmitted the virus to someone else
052the cdc letter is attached for your reference that is the conclusion of dom's letter and now i would like to make a few statements of my own i had an antibody test taken at labcorp in bellingham and my results also came back as positive for antibodies i have since been exposed to both vaccinated and unvaccinated community members over the last few months who were very sick with proven i have made house calls to help community members made pharmacy runs delivered medications supplements and nebulizers to them and got them going with covid home treatment intervention protocols i was in some of their homes for one to two hours without wearing a face mask and i still continue to help community members who need it and i would do the same for all of you i have
053never gotten re-infected never again shown any signs or symptoms of illness and i have never infected any close contacts or family members as a healthy asymptomatic individual asymptomatic individuals do not spread coven period there is no scientific evidence that shows that asymptomatic healthy individuals are diseased super spreaders and a threat to society natural immunity is far superior than any vaccine-derived immunity and i am proof of that as are many other community members this is true no matter what the evil doers try to brainwash you into believing thank you thank you natalie next we'll hear from molly gandy and molly you're muted at this point hello i want to welcome peggy and steve to the board and thank you guys for stepping up um i'm going to talk about the non-vaccinated students today that are being
054required to test twice a week to participate in their extracurricular activities um as we know that kids with covid or that are vaccinated do get coveted and do spread covet and they're not being tested if they're in contact with somebody who tests positive they can go right back to their sport the very same day if a unvaccinated student is in contact they cannot um we're putting all of our students at a risk right now by not testing our non or our vaccinated students as well as our non-vaccinated students um the studies have shown that everybody can get it the vaccine is maybe 50 effective at lowering your symptoms but not on spreading it so by not testing everybody you need you're putting your students at risk um if we're gonna do some we need to
055do all you're segregating the students you're making them feel like they're not good enough um and that they're just not fitting in and it's not okay and it's the same with our staff members it's same with our students they're getting pulled out they're getting just discriminated against and the same with the masks teachers are walking around without masks on and they turn a corner then they put them on and they yell the students for not having one on it's not okay they're not if if you're gonna have rules have everybody follow them or otherwise don't have them it makes no sense whatsoever thank you molly next we'll hear from sarah latrell hello you can hear me we can okay um hi i i was gonna read for somebody if they needed me to and they
056didn't need me to so hopefully this will come together nicely um i would like to thank everybody for being here and giving us the opportunity to talk um i wish that it would have been person i felt like the flood excuse was kind of just laziness on on the city's part but um i'm just hoping that maybe you guys will take some time to reflect on the real issues here right now um you know we have layers of a government for a reason we have our federal government our state government our county our city and school boards to protect us from one person making a decision for everybody and the purpose of you guys is to be our voice and to be there for what we want as parents and what the students need and
057if you don't want to fight for us and you don't want to do the hard road that it takes to stand up for what's right right now then you should really consider stepping away and letting somebody else willing to to do that for our kids um you know we see all the time where the they come in and they give surveys to the kids about you know drugs and all this other stuff well why aren't we doing a survey about how these kids feel with wearing a mask to school every day how their mental health is i mean mental health has gone out the window all of a sudden it's all about covet nothing else matters and there are so many kids that don't have parents to step up for them who school used to
058be their safe place and it's not that anymore and it's so sad to see i mean have any of you gone to the schools and talked to the kids and said hey how are you feeling what's going on how do you feel why you wear this mask all day i mean really get in there and do what you're supposed to do which is to be a voice for them and be a voice for us um you know all those kids who lost these bus drivers that they loved that was somebody that they felt safe with that they could connect with you don't know you know if this bus driver was the one person in the student's life who they could feel connected to and and what kind of you know safety opportunity that gave them
059and now that's taken away i mean why aren't we asking them that if we really really are making this about the kids ask them get in there give us the the answers so that we can have the reassurance to knowing that we're making these right decisions for the children um i agree with molly as she said you know the vaccine doesn't prevent the spread so if we're going to have one kid test because they're not vaccinated if it's truly a concern of covid then they should both be tested all of them um you know and i also have antibodies and i've been exposed and been around people who are infected of covid i was at what they called a super spreader and me and my brother and my sister-in-law all who have had covid are
060the only ones who didn't get coveted we've had it we haven't been vaccinated everybody else there who was vaccinated and masked and everybody who had never been exposed to covet all got it but we didn't i mean that's my personal experience of the science um you know furthermore on the masks in school think about your own life do you really not have your friends and family come over do you wear masks when you're not at school do you wear masks when you're around the corner thank you sarah thank you kelly so next we'll hear from susan crosser and susan you're muted at this point can you hear me now we can can you hear me yes okay thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight i am
061here in support of the constitutional rights of district employees to make their own medical decisions that i am in support of the right for each individual to choose what is right for themselves health decisions are never one size fits all as the vaccine mandates suggest forcing anyone to get the job to keep their job is illegal and unconstitutional forcing anyone to get the job in order to keep their job is in violation of the school district policy against harassment intimidation and bullets bullying this policy indicates that the board is committed to a safe and civil educational environment for all students employees parents legal guardians policy indicates that actions taken by the board should not substantially disrupt the orderly operation of the school forcing anyone to get the jab is also in violation of the school
062district whistleblower policy this policy encourages district officers and employees to report improper governmental actions furthermore this policy protects employees from retaliatory employment actions for reporting improper governmental actions the vaccine mandates are illegal and unconstitutional and employees reporting these improper governmental actions are protected under this policy another policy of the ferndale school district ensures that there will be respect for all this policy indicates the district will work with staff and community partners to prevent her harassment and to foster settings for all students families and members to get the job against their will is against this policy forcing anyone to get the jab is in violation of the nuremberg code which stipulates that individuals must be fully informed regarding medical procedures and that they must not be coerced among other things it is not a defense for
063you for just doing your job under the nuremberg code you could be charged with crimes against humanity and held accountable if you go along with these illegal and unconstitutional mandates you should know and understand that the claim vaccine is not a vaccine however these substances are unproven gene-based spike protein-inducing serums the claim vaccine is experimental the claim vaccine does not stop the spread of the disease there are many adverse reactions to the claim vaccine including death there is no legal recourse against the manufacture of the claim vaccine people that think for themselves in question information that does not make sense should be honored please consider the following if master warned then why the experimental jabs i mean if masks work if the experimental jabs work then why the mask if the experimental jab works why
064are jab people afraid of those who are not jab if the jab was truly a vaccine why are these people still getting coveted why the jab mandates if the recovery rate from covet is very close to 100 percent why are medical professionals being restricted from giving second opinions against the job the school district website indicates that the compliance officer's main duty is to ensure that district policies are adhered to i see that the compliance officer is here tonight and i want to know if they will uphold if he will uphold his job duties and end this harassment and bullying against these professional and valued employees the united states constitution the washington constitution and your own policies guarantee individual individual liberties and freedoms please vote to keep these valued and professional bus drivers please do the
065right thing thank you for your time thank you susan next we'll hear from beth perry and beth you're on mute at this point hello yeah um i just wanted to reiterate that i spoke last month that making some accommodations for the students that can't wear masks all month all day long for the asthma and eczema students that are having actual difficulty from wearing those masks i want to make sure that i'm on top of you guys for making decisions on that that we can provide accommodation i also want to reiterate i'm not going to go over what a lot of these other people said because they're great that coaches and teachers should not know the vaccination status nor the testing status of any one of their students that is a private medical issue it should
066not be shared at all with a coach at all with a teacher unless the parent wants them to know i don't ask you about your personal medical decision i don't want my people to know if my kids are circumcised or uncircumcised they shouldn't have to know that okay third of all um i'm a mom who helps fill sandbags and he's writing her notes you guys can't see it right now but on the same piece of paper that my menu for the week is written on please don't turn me into the doj please i'm not a terrorist okay and these zoom meetings kind of suck i just want to say that i'm not going to take up your time this week but please be on finding accommodations for those children with the asthma with the eczema
067that cannot wear masks all day just like we make accommodations for the kids with peanut allergies that's all i have to say thank you beth did we lose kevin no there was a bit of a glitch of zoom he's coming back okay don't know what happened there but um i had you guys but you didn't have me for a moment so my apologies um so that concludes the list of people that had signed up for public comment um as of the last list that i got from jackson um thank you to all of you for voicing your concerns and your opinions we appreciate that and definitely will take them into consideration um some of the items that that were talked about um will be discussed further later tonight and i invite you to stick around
068for that as well so at this point um next item on our agenda is item 5.01 which is to receive information from dr laura lynn on the since time and more time memorial curriculum and um with that i'm she joining us jackson or mark oh it looks like there she is so welcome laura and i will turn it over to you to tell us about how things are going and what the current status is with the since time and memorial curriculum great um thank you very all much board member ericsson and to each of you uh thank you for this opportunity to be with you all this evening and to share um information and updates around the since time of memorial tribal sovereignty curriculum um first i want to say my gratitude to each of
069you for your service um to the students and families and community um and just also as part of my introduction i'd like to share that my name is dr laura lynn i am the daughter of grace elizabeth cusick and kenneth lee rohr my mother's mother's people are descendants of the chickasaw people also of european ancestry um i am a descendant but not an enrolled citizen also my mother's father's people come from the eastern european countries and my great-grandmother is of jewish ethnicity my father's mother was laura anime said that's whose name i share and she her mother was of european ancestry her father came to these lands from syria from the mid east my father's father's people also came to these lands from syria um when we make our introductions uh we always begin by
070sharing with you with with with with um with you um who our people are um um also i'm joining you from the ancestral lands of the shumish people um i'm here with my mother um on the central central coast here in california um and i just want to also send um our our loving thoughts and prayers with you all um as you're facing um the this time with the with the flooding and and all that you're needing to respond to with within your community um i serve as the program supervisor with the office of native education with ospi there are five of us that serve in the office john claymore is our executive director joan banker serves as the program administrative specialist has been in uh native education for many many decades and also shandy
071abrahamson serves as our cte tribal specialist and megan baker serves as the administrative assistant and our responsibility within the office is to ensure educational opportunity for the over 64 american indian alaska native learners who attend schools in our 295 public schools our seven tribal compact schools in paschal sherman which is also a tribal school and we do our work through a consultation with the federally recognized tribes of washington state also through collaboration with our tribal partners and educational leaders and partners such as yourselves so i know that's kind of a long introduction um but in our ways we want to just uh ensure that you all know the other thing i would just share about myself i've been in education for um uh this is my 40th um entering my 40th year as an educator
072a practicing educator and i had that opportunity because of my student teaching practicum which was in the ferndale public schools so i uh did my student teaching practicum with joanne denellen um way back when so please say hello to the family and i just wanted to let you all know that um i i came to i came to you all through you all so thank you um so um if i may i'm gonna practice my screen sharing here and just share um a few a few comments about um some updates with the curriculum and then uh you know share just kind of high level um how do we build upon the strengths and successes of the work that you're all doing in the district right now and then maybe spend some time if there are
073questions that you have of me in term in terms of how i can be of assistance in in this good work that you all that you all are doing um so let me try the screen share here in jackson i want to thank you for helping me to kind of get this all set up um are you seeing my screen okay everybody yep thanks for the thumbs up see that so i'm gonna uh as we open um i just this opening slide just begins with a reflection for each of you to kind of take a moment to think about your experiences with um tribal history and tribal sovereignty um and just for a couple or about four questions here just to kind of consider on a scale of one to five how how connected you
074feel to these questions um you know the lummy nation of course uh hosted the canoe journey in 2019 uh maybe you had a chance to to participate as as part of that work within your community um and uh then we think about understanding the impacts of tribal sovereignty we understand you know thinking about what our knowledge and experiences around the bolt decision that continues to impact all of us today um and then finally to knowing what the rcw 28a requires these are all questions that are part of the since time the memorial curriculum and that last question of course is the is the is the code that requires the implementation of the since time immemorial curriculum as of 2015 districts are required at the time of social studies review and adoption to integrate the since
075time memorial curriculum in collaboration with the tribe that's nearest so that would be the lummi nation and then for the bonus activity it's taking these questions and considering our understandings in relation with with the lummy nation and their specific history that way which is helpful for us to know as we as we work on issues that we that we share in common and that really is the intent of the uh since time immemorial curriculum um it's an opportunity for all of our students to have um that understanding of tribal sovereignty tribal history um treaty rights and tribal governance structures in order for us to work on issues that that we do have in common um and to understand the uh the distinct and unique relationship that tribes have as sovereign as sovereign nations in in
076the work that we attend to so the curriculum itself um is a place based curriculum um that and really what that means is that we learn first with the places that we are of and we learn in collaboration with the tribal nations and tribal people who are here now and have been here since time immemorial this is an inquiry-based um curriculum uh we'll in a moment share the essential questions um and the curriculum itself is really intended to engage us our students in a way that allows them to develop um both their critical thinking skills and also to be taking informed action around issues that impact the well-being of of the community um the curriculum centers tribal perspectives and it certainly situates tribal people in a contemporary context it intentionally is is um addressing erasure
077um that we find in our our curriculums the curriculum considers real life issues that require understanding and multiple perspectives that includes the tribal perspectives and finally as as as we shared it's also is required to be implemented in our elementary middle and high schools in collaboration with the with the lummi nation um so and again i'm just sharing just a couple of highlights in terms of of tribal sovereignty just to ensure we have just some foundational understanding as as we move into this into this work of the of the the district's work with the curriculum um so tribal sovereignty um again uh begins with inherent rights of tribal nations to self-govern in order to ensure the well-being of their citizen lands and resources through the government-to-government relationships we want to recognize the implications of tribal
078nations as sovereigns and we're honoring the centennial accord agreement which the lummi nation is the signatory of and the centennial the centennial court and the millennium agreement excuse me that the lummi nation is a signatory of lastly in serving our american indian alaska native learners really recognizing that our tribal students are descendants and and citizens of tribal nations and that their sovereignty continues as part of their education experience and that has implications for all of us as leaders and as educators in terms of the decisions that we make and approaches that we have in our in our school systems um some of the um features of the curriculum um and i'm going to spend just a couple minutes with the curriculum so we've talked about its place based it's inquiry based um it's intended to
079be integrated into existing curriculum this is a standards aligned curriculum currently we've aligned with these standards that are the state standards around social studies english language arts environmental sustainability education and social emotional learning in the times that we're in now um with the impacts of of the pandemic that lasts that social emotional learning is really critical also because this is a place based and inquiry-based curriculum although it's intended to be integrated specifically into all social studies history courses including washington state history u.s history contemporary world problems and civics it lends itself to interdisciplinary work at all levels and so i think that's a just a pathway for us to include also that these standards um uh are the standards that that that we've aligned to however it will also align to other standards we just
080have not done uh completed those alignment processes yet um so for example um there's work with next generation science standards um this curriculum um can be integrated that into our science courses um work within our arts areas also within our health and fitness areas as well as mathematics when we consider what some of the content is especially around the science and environmental science lessons these are the five questions um that the entire curriculum is developed around all lesson resources from preschool through high school um are addressing one or more of these questions and the intent of the curriculum is for our students to have opportunity at every grade level to consider these five each of these five questions and then there are of course outcomes for elementary these are found these are foundational outcomes that
081they'll have opportunity to build upon into middle school where students are are going into more depth in terms of um concepts of that are impacted by tribal sovereignty including the treaties and the work that we do in treaties as well as understanding addition additional dimensions of of of tribal sovereignty and then within high school again our students build their knowledge to a place where they're now considering landmark court decisions and legislations that have affected and continue to affect travel sovereignty and they have opportunity to consider governmental structure of the lummy nation and to again understand um uh you know the work that goes on the collaborative work government to government work at the local level uh the state level and the federal level in cloud in collaboration with the tribal nations so i want to
082just take a pause here and are there any questions so far before i navigate the curriculum that i can respond to um let's see hello hi hi didn't know if you could hear me or not um so this is an awful lot to absorb um will the will the slide presentation be available um after the fact absolutely yes um and i've i've sent it forward to both faye and to um uh jackson um and uh so yes okay um and peggy we can get that attached so it's part of board dock so that everyone in the audience can see it at some point as well that would be great um i mean there i have like a massive ton of questions the one that flashed up most immediately in my mind just because it was
083the last thing that popped up on the on the screen was um you know some of the standards that they hope to achieve by the time they graduate from high school and and one of them said uh you know students should be able to recognize landmark court cases that affect tribal sovereignty and i'm thinking i don't think a lot of kids recognize landmark court cases that affect i mean you know things like plessy versus ferguson i don't think if you went out and asked your ordinary average high school kid that they could answer some of those things so it seems like a really tall order to expect it's just an observation you know that i don't know that that's a is that a realistic standard that's a really great observation peggy and i'm thinking um
084as if you if i could um uh maybe open up a couple of the high school lessons just to give a sense of how we approach that within the curriculum and it's not going to be all landmark decisions um there's going to be you know selected decisions that um have had significant impact and continue to have significant impact with tribal nations today okay i just i'm just wondering how that weaves in you know with other history and other court cases and and it just it just surprised me because i was thinking well i mean uh a lot of times you ask people you know um kids even don't even know who our our state representatives are and so this just seems very ambitious to me yeah yeah well in i what i appreciate too about
085your question is that this can also be a jumping off place for further inquiry as well um in across across the curriculum okay well i'm sure i'm going to have a ton of questions are you available to answer questions if i if i email you and absolutely yeah and the peggy just so you know and other members the last slide has our contact information okay thank you we're part of your team anytime okay thank you very much yeah i have a kind of question observation looking for advice as far as the place based um part of it and this is kind of coming from a personal experience when i was a kid we moved around every two years so to get a grasp on a very specific place and then move to another place etc
086um would have been more difficult i guess i don't know um but then also as an adult coming here because i did not live here um i have through being on the board and seeing what ferndale school district has done the last few years with the treaty day and the land acknowledgement i do feel like i've learned a lot more about the people that have been on this land where i now live since time immemorial than i ever did about any other place i ever lived um do you have advice suggestions of ways where we can make this accessible maybe to people who are either new to the area or who are coming through the area and won't be here like the lummy tribe has been here forever and will continue to be here forever
087what about people who are passing through well i'm i'm wondering about um how and this could actually maybe pose it as a project potentially for um our high school and middle school and even potentially elementary depending on how it's formed um that uh there's a in the community there's there's a there's a welcome packet of some place or a welcome place of some place how might i pose this as a question to our high school students maybe how might they i mean pose it as a problem like within our community we have people who are coming to visit how do we share about who we are how do we share about um the the um uh the land that we share how do we share about the history that we share um as part of
088their since time of memorial curriculum work yeah so i mean it's a way for them to to develop a a place-based project an inquiry-based project that's meaningful to the community and so when we talk about the taking informed action that's an example of taking informed action um that's that's supporting the community itself so that would be a possibility there and that can be also satisfying uh civics uh uh civics required uh credits as well and could potentially um support some of the classroom-based assessment work that students might do as a product um to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding i know the district has a good relationship with the chamber of commerce already and seems like that would be a great partnership or way to incorporate thank you right and that would be the district the
089lummi nation and and the chamber of commerce coming together to do that with student student led um yeah i i have another question if that's okay um uh it's always um i i've always had this question about this particular phrase what does time immemorial actually mean what kind of a time span are we talking about i love that question so um the term time immemorial and you'll hear this in tribal communities um it it what it means it's the time of our ancestors and what this represents is thousands and thousands of years of known and lived experience that the lummy people um you know have a story of origin that begins right here with the lands that the people are of they're not from these lands they're of these lands um and and um and
090yeah not from these lands but of these lands what does that mean um again it comes to the the people's the people stories that that their people are are of these places um and have been and they will use the term since time and memorial um and ago that's the inner connection now of history um and culture and the teachings of the of of of the culture and it comes to what it means to be lumi or what it means to be chickasaw or what it means of of the of the of the people because we are of the lands and places that that that's that's who we are it's part of our identity okay i mean um and how does this how does it or does it even integrate with with anthropology going way
091back you know like anthropological records and and um you know um the concept of the migration of humans and crossing land bridges and and things like that i mean um yeah just just uh right so there i think there's a couple of perspectives i would offer one is that again this is a place where um we we have opportunity to understand ways of knowing um and multiple perspectives around ways of knowing um and also for us to understand more deeply about what it is meant by theory what theory is is meant in terms of um uh what theory is and is not i guess um and then i think too that increasingly there is also um uh what i would say the science itself is coming to um support that these story the traditional stories
092and teachings of of of tribal peoples as well um uh there's another resource that i would maybe recommend too that's part of the curriculum um there's a a video that's shared by roger fernandez who is a citizen of the lower elwha calallen tribe and he shares a an introductory video around the relationship between storytelling and science and he does a really beautiful job of explaining that these are uh two ways of knowing um that have purposes toward understanding its intent of understanding is differentiated but also supportive of each other um so and i can i'd be happy to send that to you if you're sending me yeah you yeah actually i'd really like that yeah thank you yeah okay thank you very much i just want to be really mindful of your time too if
093i may uh share just really briefly the kind of the curriculum um uh and maybe make a just a what i've what i've learned i want to just thank faye for kind of sending and sharing uh the superintendent's report that that you all reviewed in march of uh 2021 um and from that just um what makes sense in terms of just the continuing to build upon the strengths of the strengths and successes um the ferndale school district is what we call an early adopter of the since time a memorial tribal sovereignty curriculum and it's a matter now of you know how do we continue to strengthen um and and move that work forward um are we okay time wise for me to do just that okay let's see one thumb up okay all right so
094i'm going to share screen again and uh um and again um i'll um i'll also send forward the the link this is this is the curriculum itself is a web-based link and i don't know how many of you had a chance to kind of spend some time within the curriculum itself but uh i'm more than welcome to come join us for we have a december night introductory training and please please join us if you if you are available um so the curriculum again um these are um the lessons are all online um we have lessons um from early learning for elementary school we have k3 lessons washington state history lessons fifth grade lessons and now for those of our educators who are teaching ancient civilization we've developed tools to integrate tribal history as part of
095ancient civilization also world history resources and world geography resources for high school as well um for our middle school again we have um the sixth grade ancient civilization and then seventh grade washington state history um and there's a resource on here to help integrate the synthetic memorial as part of the year-long washington state history courses that are also being developed and then the u.s history for eighth grade all of the units for 4th through 12th grade align with the ospi identified social studies units as well so our curriculum is completely aligned to the to the uh to the states to the state's work not only are the standards aligned but also um the the curriculum resources so that any part of history that our students might be studying they have opportunity to learn um tribal
096history with with as part to as part of their course work um and the way we did that is we developed these resources in what we call levels so that you can teachers can choose to implement anywhere from one or two class days all the way up to a full unit and completion of a classroom based assessment again for high school we have our world history and world geography resources and i'll just click into this real quick so that you can see here are the um this is the timeline that can be used by by our as a tool for educators and then we also have a series of teacher teacher videos that we've developed with other educators sharing their approaches um to doing this work so we can learn together and then they've also
097shared additional resources and i think you might have noticed this too that we have also developed spanish language resources across the entire curriculum so if you have um bilingual um or excuse me dual language and or multilingual classrooms within the district the since time of memorial curriculum can also be integrated as part of instruction in classrooms finally i would just share this is a national curriculum that was developed by the national museum of the american indian um which is part of the smithsonian institute and um our curriculum team helped to write two of the inquiries that are specific to the pacific northwest this is um state of the art curriculum um it's uh it begins with a compelling question why do the foods we eat matter you know think about our high school kids that's
098a great question for them why do the foods we eat matter and then we have grounding resources which um these are videos this is an interactive map um there's a an essay here's the teacher's instructions student work and then there's a series of supporting questions which are case studies um and so why is the salmon important to native people nations of the pacific northwest notice it's in present tense it's not in past tense right so it connects today when you show these resources our students in some instances we're going to see family members they're going to see friends they're going to see relatives in in this curriculum because this is uh this curriculum was developed in 20 2018. so they they'll see their connections and it's not uncommon for our kids to say they just
099call out hey there's so and so right in the middle of their their instruction right um uh so and then another supporting question how do threats to salmon impact native people and nations of the of of the northwest and again it's a series of case studies um there's also um at the end or as part of each inquiry notice this is the action taking in terms of what native nations are doing today this is also an opportunity for our students to be engaged in this work around a famine recovery um they can be involved in all kinds of uh work that that's that's really matters to our kids um in terms of of their of the lands and waters that we're all that we're all sharing um finally um there the case study for this
100inquiry is focusing on the food sovereignty work of the muckleshoot people however the lummi nation is also doing food sovereignty work so there's really opportunities for us to to learn um of you know the work that's going on right within our within our community um so i again thank you for the time to kind of share that and um also encourage you to this is the fish wars um this is the bolt decision this is a landmark case um and it's a through line for the entire curriculum so you'll see salmon introduction of salmon habitat and lifeway all the way from early learning pre-k until we actually unpack this this case as a as a as an inquiry itself um so um i i hope that was helpful there are other resources here in the
101website and i'm happy to you know help connect you with um with these resources um but the final i just would add in terms of um you know continuing to build upon the successes and this is really from a review of of of the report that was shared with with you all in march um just continuing to engage and strengthen consultation with alumination and i believe you might have had a chance to meet maybe and if not hopefully soon um and part of that is to continue to establish um and and meet and celebrate um shared implementation goals specifically around the since time immemorial curriculum um i think that the treaty days treaty day video work is really really powerful i'm a big impact so then it becomes what more might we do what's next
102for us to collaborate together to develop um i know there's honoring the salmon is work that i saw across um all levels um in the report that that i read there might be some work that can be done there too um in terms of the district's implementation plan um i think uh an update of the plan uh because there has been time because of other issues that that that we've been dealing with in the last couple of years eh so but there's an opportunity to update the plan also there's new resources within the since time immemorial curriculum itself that can be that can be added to to the plan and then the communication across the district with that and developing a feedback system for teachers students and families to continue to strengthen the work and
103of course always if this ongoing professional learning and how do we develop capacities for sustainability um uh over time and one way maybe we find ways to develop since time of memorial coaches to help with that with that work is that something that can be done to sustain um district the district's work that way um the ideas are are limitless and uh finally just wanted to invite you all to an introductory webinar on on december 9th please come join us um and uh we just we spend time going through the history and unpacking the curriculum with our educators um and it's just amazing work that we get to do we've we've worked with um nearly 7 000 educators with this training since uh uh may of 2020 um with these new resources that are part
104of these ready to go and uh teacher webinar resources okay i'm gonna stop sharing i see peggy did you have a question um yeah for the webinar i mean is that to be available at the ospi site is that where it's going to be or where where do we get the link yeah so um let me just do a quick and i can send this out again um as part of oh did i miss it i'm sorry oh you probably didn't but let me well i don't think let me do uh let me do a let me get out of my screen here um thank you for your patience with that so right here on the sti website okay here where it says the fall and when you click on that that's there's a registration
105link um and uh scroll to the second page pardon me if that's making me dizzy um right here is the registration link once you register okay send you a link to the to the webinar and we have capacity for 500 people so come join us and that's it four o'clock right you said yeah four o'clock on december 9th okay thank you very much yeah and we share um all of the resources we share the web we share the slide show we share the [Music] you know other supplemental resources with our educators you put as much to the site as we can because we just it takes all of us to do this um and if i just may you know conclude with the sharing of this vision statement because i really believe this is how
106you all are doing your work i have so much gratitude this is a vision statement that was shared from a report that was issued to the state legislature in 2008 and it begins that um all children um are identified as gifted and talented um that's one of the teach one of our teachings since time and memorial and um and that we recognize that each child has a skill and ability that contributes to the health and the vitality of our communities for our communities to thrive we must cultivate and identify these skills and abilities and it really takes our whole community to do that um and that our elders are entrusted to oversee um this sacred act of knowledge being shared our elders guide us and i think that many of the people that you're that
107you're collaborating with you have opportunity to collaborate with elders in not only in travel communities but throughout your community and that's still our vision for indian education today and this is our contact information for our office and again jackson has the slides and i'm available anytime to support and collaborate with you all just want to say we raise our hands to show our gratitude i raise my hands to each of you um and uh thank you for your good work and for this opportunity to share um are there other questions that you had bef before you move on in your agenda laura thank you so much um for all of your work and especially for um yeah i know you and i went backwards and fours and i really appreciating you taking the time to
108look at the work we've done that that's really cool so thank you thanks for being here tonight and for your patience in uh jumping in in our agenda here so i'll hand over to kevin and mark i just wanted to say that thank you be well thank you laura appreciate the report so at this time um i know that i've noticed that mark and wayne have been on and if there's no objection from the board um i'm going to ask that we jump to 6.01 and do it before 5.02 just so mark and wayne don't have to continue hanging on while we're doing stuff um so is there any objection from any of the board members okay so then with that we'll go ahead and jump to item 6.01 which is the focus group report
109from northwest leadership associates so um i don't know if mark divock if you have anything or if cecilia is coming on or who's introducing them but if we can turn it over i see wayne popping up so we can turn it over to them and let them present their information yeah i think we will just turn it straight over to uh mark wayne and let them present their information thank you well hello everybody mark will be on here with video in just a second um nice job tonight you have a lot a lot of ground to cover and a lot of content and uh heard a lot from your community so you you're to be commended we also want to congratulate the new board members and certainly also join you in honoring the the outgoing
110board members so a lot of service a lot of years of service and a lot of service time ahead of all of you mark's going to take the first portion of this and then i'll join in after he shares the focus group report with you thanks wayne uh and uh my congratulations to to peggy and steve on your uh membership in the school board it's a very important job and the most important job you have is hiring the new superintendent so here we are tonight okay so uh let's talk a little bit tonight about the three days we spent in your district back in early november and we spent we were here the 9th the 10th and the 12th and uh met with everybody including school board members and provided two reports those reports first
111of all are just general comments from each group and i suggest school board members read those particularly read what the students had to say we always look forward to that meeting that we have with the students but we had 19 different groups we met with and almost 100 different people that provided input into this report that we're gonna give tonight and i know you you've been here since five o'clock so but bear with me we've been there waiting i've been there we know what you're going through so we're gonna try to make this pretty quick and and to move on because we're at the step in the process where we we were gathering input we're being transparent we've got really four ways for people to be involved and we really stress that with every group
112we had the online survey the focus groups the preliminary interviews and then the finals when the finalists come so all four ways and so nobody should be able to come up to you after and said i didn't have a chance to give any input you will be getting a lot of input and uh that'll be this is really the first part of that and uh as wayne will talk about this drives the formation as we put together the brochure when we talk about challenges and characteristics this will help you as a board to put that together you work with wayne he'll talk to you about that but as we move forward here each group we went through the timeline with we talked about northwest leadership and and uh you know basically what we do as
113retired superintendents and didn't do a very good job of retiring um and uh we we tell the people that are involved this is all confidential uh it's not going to be a tribute to any one person what they say so as you see in in the comment piece uh if anybody wants to see this this is an open public record that this requested they could see it but as the comments go through each group comment nothing is attributed to anybody individually and we had some great cooperation from the leadership team selena did a nice job really nice job of putting this all together and and i i have to tell you we're really enjoying working with her again we probably know we work with her when we did the mount vernon search a couple years
114ago so um we're pretty uh pretty jazzed about moving forward with this and getting it going and working from here so uh i don't know if you have this document jackson did you if you have the common threads or you should have that somewhere in front of your school board to to look at i hope you've had a chance to take a look at those um i know you can read so i'm not going to spend a whole lot of time reading these to you but i do want to emphasize that we asked three questions we asked you we asked what were the celebrations or the positives about the district what were the challenges the new superintendent is going to face when they come into ferndale on july 1st and the third one is what
115attributes are you looking for in the new superintendent so i want to i'll do the celebrations first because i think that's really this important to start off in the positive this is a great place to live and work and it came through throughout from the students to the staff to the community to the community leaders we met with uh it's a great place to work it's got a great location you know except when the northeaster blows it's really a nice place to live you know it's i've lived in watkins county so i know what that means i think you do too steve so uh if you live on the other side of the smith road uh it still has a small town feel to it it really does and in that that's really i think
116a selling point for us the other part is the community is very caring involved in supporting the schools there's a lot of pride in your schools here there's also strong teachers and administrators and staff and strong leadership in the district there's a real value with the relationship with the lummi nation and i know you just spent a lot of time on the curriculum but people really do think that is important also there's a lot of positives with your coveted response and you're covered how you've navigated through that and going through that your cte programs your special ed programs your ap courses your fine arts all those are really uh you need to be complimented uh also mentioned a number of groups that the former board really worked well together so i guess that's you know
117as we move forward i'm sure you will too and they were very supportive of the equity equity work that you've done in the district the new high school of course there's a lot of pride in that there's a lot of people that are very uh positive about the bond passage and the construction going on and the final thing is that your schools are really the hub of the community they are really the center of the ferndale community and that's really important that's important for candidates to know and it's important for you to brag about when you talk about your district so the second part is challenges what are we gonna face if i'm your new superintendent when i walk in on july 1st well we heard two terms trust and transparency trust and transparency and
118this is uh from the district in the community we we have to uh going to have to work on that folks uh covert re-entry that's always in people's minds you heard it tonight there's a lot of a lot of people talking about it out there a lot of people are concerned uh passing the levy in 2022 is a challenge even though your new soup will not be here yet that's still a challenge if it doesn't pass facing the new superintendent uh there's frustration and divisiveness in the community i know i'm speaking to the choir here and politics seem to be affecting the district a lot more than they did in the past uh the board must come together as a challenge they basically have two new board members and you've got a lot of board
119members that haven't been on the board uh real long time and the governance model needs to be addressed and what kind of a government's model are you gonna stick with your old one are you gonna come up with a new one what's that gonna look like social media as a cause for uh creating distress frustration and division in your community a uh challenges diversity of your student population you have a very diverse student population in ferndale a lot more than it used to be another challenge is understanding the history of the district and understanding that as they come in uh the equity and inclusion work to continue that is a big challenge and supporting the relationship and continuing to build a relationship with the lumi indian nation and other minority groups as well in your
120district and finally the challenging facilities you know you've got to get that new high school built hopefully on budget i know there's been some delays but once that's built you've got aging buildings you've got buildings that are going to need to have some sort of work done on them and down the road you're going to need a facilities plan and a way to address that so finally the attributes what are people looking for in a new superintendent well i'll go back to the challenges someone who's can build trust and have a collaborative and open style that's really a common thread throughout understands your current challenges and can deal with the covet re-entry uh visible involved in the community interacts with schools they're at activities they're at plays they're big band concerts they're basketball and football
121games they're at the ferndale parades they're visible in your community a good communicator a good listener and listens to all groups of people can lead and communicate and have your trust have the school boards trust that's really key i can't overemphasize that how important it is to have a superintendent and board partnership and how you have to be able to trust each other embraces and understands the history of the district and values a smaller rural district values and promotes diversity equity and inclusion promotes and grows positive partnerships i mean with we're talking here with the alumni nation and with the city there's some real positive partnerships going on with the district in the city right now somebody is transparent genuine humility in other words they walk on water successful experience in education that was a
122common thread somebody who's been a teacher a leader administrator someone who wants to stay here wants to live in the district and invest in the community and is a good fit excuse me somebody's personable approachable courageous energetic and a visionary somebody has experienced some bond and levy campaigns and construction projects and finally but not last but not least an instructional leader somebody who raises the standards who's a team builder who can coach your administrators and can understand and support good quality instruction so that's a quick kind of go through of what we came up with with the talking points or common threads throughout the three days we were here we got some really good input you can read the whole narrative when you have time or maybe you've already read it but certainly uh we
123felt really positive after having been here for three days we felt positive about the input we gave people gave us we felt that people were open and honest and weren't afraid to speak their mind and that's all we can ask for so this information is your information now and then i'll turn it over to wayne and he'll talk about how we work from here all the way to the 25th of february when the job closes and then we work to the next step where we decide who we're going to interview and hire so go ahead wayne okay thanks mark so as you can see you've got lots to celebrate you've got some challenges most of the challenges aren't unique to the ferndale school district and you've got some key attributes that you're looking for um
124in your next superintendent and there's a was a high degree of agreement on all those themes that the common threads were pretty common uh from group to group and that's a good thing and it's also good that they were common uh board members knew what the issues are in your community and what the strengths of your of your instructional programs and and all of that so that played out just about the way it should have so we're right on schedule in terms of finishing up the focus groups reporting to you in terms of our timeline our next big step is to take the information you just received and use it to develop an electronic brochure and we've got a good start on that already um i roughed out some of the pieces of it selena's
125provided some content about the district a little bit about the community and that's to have at least one level of review i believe by your administrative team or or some of your administrative team so that should be pretty close and ready to go so uh our thought is i would work on that um and i'll get that to our get the draft of the brochure to our desktop publisher and we're going to shoot for giving something back to you she's pretty fast and since it's almost ready to go um i should get it to her tomorrow or the next day and she'll probably get something back to us by the end of the week and what we typically do is um send it back to the contact person in this case that's selena and it'll
126all look pretty familiar to her because she's written a lot of it and then um and then the board the board will figure out how they board members want to review it uh mark will be in the loop on that um you know anybody else that you want to have eyes on it um and we want to get it right for you it doesn't go out till you say it's right and then we'll pass it back and forth a few times if we need to our target is to have it out uh in for distribution on december 6 and we should be able to make that kind of depending on how much work it needs uh going back and forth and we got a weekend in there that kind of thing but we should be
127pretty close to that so we're in a good spot in terms of getting it out to potential candidates and out on our distribution list and then mark and i once it's ready to go we'll get a pdf of the document to your district many districts put it on the website you might have some key people in the in the community or the district that want to see it and it's available for that it's not really designed to be a tabletop document but you know it can it can lend itself to that if you need it too and then mark and i'll use it in our targeted recruiting we've got a pretty good running list of potential applicants for this position and we'll tune that up a little bit and then what we do is we
128divide up the list and we send an email to each of those candidates probably 50 60 people maybe more um with a copy of an application form that's tailored to your district and the copy of a p of the document a pdf of the document and then we you know let them know that we're available and that we're the contact and the the brochure tells them what the instructions are for the submittal of their of their application they need to write a pretty big writing prompt to the challenges and the opportunities and the attributes that you're looking for in your next superintendent so we'll be doing that you know after you sign off on the brochure it gets kind of quiet from your perspective it gets very busy from our perspective through december and january
129and then as we hit the closing date we start zeroing in on what the what the next steps are we'll do a mid search research report for you half at the halfway mark we have that on the calendar and um give you an idea of what the applicant pool is likely to look like kind of not who by name that we're hearing from but a profile of of the kinds of people we're hearing from where they're from and what their levels are what size districts whether they have their doctorates any diversity that sort of thing give you a sense of it and we'll zero in on the interview screening and interview processes that come at the end right as you're reaching getting ready for your selection uh questions about the brochure you've kind of seen
130samples yours will look pretty close to that of all those colors and photos and that kind of stuff which we have from selena so we're ready to go on that questions about the brochure or the use of the distribution of it in looking at your experience with other boards um you know today's the 30th you're talking having that out and you know trying to have that distributed by the sixth we're talking basically a week do most boards get together have a special meeting or do they just kind of consensus just just general consensus and remember the target audience is um the applicants so it's not you know something that um i mean it's important but it's not necessary that we live or die over every comma and that kind of thing um we're talking about
131we're concerned about the content uh the the challenges and opportunities are very important we want to get those right because the applicants are going to write to those in their writing prompt and that gives them a heads up to how to prepare and what they should should be thinking about as they as they research the district and all of that but no it's usually not a meeting it's usually kevin you and you know maybe mark and selena kind of looking it over if you have suggestions run it back to us we'll get it take another run at it and maybe you can get it to the board and you know maybe it'll be ready maybe not if people want to spend more time with it we can do that um i think it's as important
132to get it out as it is to get it beautiful i mean it'll be beautiful but you know getting that out it's very important um but we'll spend as much time with it as you need if we don't make december 6 we still got plenty of time so we're okay we're okay there okay other questions so when would you think that it would go out to all of us as a board because you said like we don't have to worry about the commas i'm somebody who worries about commas and grammar and stuff i don't want this going out with any grammar mistakes i'm sorry i won't everybody it won't have any it won't have any grammar melinda the rules about calm is always changed you know an awkward comma i'm okay with but there's some
133times where if you repeat the word the twice or something right after each other it drives me free i see nobody we would we would send it to probably kevin mark and selena by thursday or friday and how you process it internally is up to you and if it takes more time it takes more time um we're not gonna we're not gonna be concerned about that i won't tell you how many drafts some districts have done because i don't want to set the bar very high so i'm just like i've done very few drops i will tell you that but we'll just see how to see how it goes we want to get we want to meet your needs on this so we're not going to we're not going to rush it thank you so
134it should be next coming shortly watch for it and then kevin you can take the lead how you share it with the board we um okay and then the other kind of behind-the-scenes uh effort that you need to be thinking about is as we get down close to people thinking about applying which is going to happen you know right after the first of the year we need some kind of a ballpark number on compensation and um by the time the job closes we need to be pretty well ready to go on what the contract is going to be so now that's that's one that might take a little bit of a work session with uh you know with the board possibly with your attorney looking it over if there's some things that you've been thinking
135that you wanted to address in the new superintendent's contract that might differ from dr quinn's contract then this is a good time to do that we can help a little bit with that if you want some salary comparisons uh esd's been involved in that with some districts if you're requested or your business office you know can request that kind of material too so that's something kind of for you to have uh in mind as we go forward it gets pretty important when candidates are on the bubble thinking about applying or not thinking about applying well what's the compensation going to be and they they can figure out find out what mark's compensation is but they don't know if how that's going to relate to the new superintendent's compensation so you know there's just some work
136to be done there that we don't want to leave to the last minute and then have you have to rush russia it's kind of better to be thinking about that and sometimes that takes a few conversations those are the two big ticket items now in your um on your court and then mark and i'll be working on recruiting as we move forward questions that number by like beginning of january or when fairly early january first week the second week of january yeah melinda we we need when we reach out to people when we get comments back they ask us two questions usually the first one is what's the board like which is really really important if i'm looking at ferndale school district what's the board like and they've probably seen you in a board meeting
137already if they're really looking or they will and number two what's what's the compensation you know is it is it competitive i mean you you have and we can certainly show you you have districts in whatcom county in skagit county in sohomash county uh similar sizes to your district where i i think you'll be surprised about how much the superintendents are making now it it surprises wayne and i it's a lot more than we made i can guarantee you that but you got to be competitive you've got to be competitive to attract good candidates and there's there are other jobs open now too so and there there's some competitive salaries out there so we we would be happy to help you with that speaking of being competitive i know last year there was like a
138third of the superintendents in this esd that retired do you know what it's like this year well not i do know i can tell you what it's like right now or yeah like right now how many are how busy is it with the superintendent searches out there well well we have in our asd we we have three going on right now just wayne and i do in this esd and and i'm trying to think is there any others yeah you could have marysville to that so that's four right in resd yeah um and room the rumor mill has another three or four and there's 36 districts total right 35 but yeah yeah 35. yeah so it's it's uh you know there is some competition out there let's be honest but you guys are ahead of
139the curve you really are your timing is really really good to get a good pool and to get some you know to get some good fruit off that tree uh and a reminder is you only need one you only need one and uh and and you there will be some good candidates but but we need to you know we just need to kind of get our ducks in order here it's no no real urgency although you know this if we have a general idea on the salary that the sooner the better i guess i'll put it does that make sense yeah yeah okay other questions for us all right well i think you're about halfway through your agenda so good luck well welcome to the school board steven peggy those will start at the high
140end of the range they can't all be like this come on come on they're not all like this so yeah haven't already gotten the school board appreciation month yet so hey that's that's january right exactly you'll feel a lot better in january we'll be sure and share that with you in january yeah well we appreciate you in december too so and it's not even december yet it's an end of november so thank you for your time tonight and being patient with us okay thank you both gentlemen and thank you for being patient with us as we work through the earlier part of the agenda we'll be looking for that brochure and we'll get on that and get back to you as well as having starting to have some discussion about the salary portion of things
141too so thank you thanks kevin thank you good night everybody have a great night okay with that done we will go ahead and bounce back to item 5.02 which is the receiving of the monitoring report for results policy 2.6 the arts um for this i'll turn it over to faye and kelly but just a reminder to everyone these are the monitoring reports under our governance policy or our coherent governance policy that we get uh typical protocols we get one uh report presented to us each month that report we will have time to read and then discuss the following month and then the month after that so two months later it shows up on the consent agenda to approve um with the changing of the the board somewhat we have both report um the monitoring for
142the operational expectations policy four and then this report that we'll receive tonight that we'll be discussing at next month's meeting yeah melinda we also have the social studies one too so we have three yeah there's three sorry i forgot about that one yeah so we'll have those so at this point i'll go ahead and turn it over to kelly and faye um to present the monitor report 2.6 thank you kevin um we have uploaded 2.6 on board docs and um we will have jackson if you need a hard copy delivered we will have jackson deliver it for you um but if you have any questions or need like i said need help getting it delivered to you let me know we'll get that taken care of on the same note um for this now that
143we'll have three reports in hand can we maybe not have one for december like maybe we discuss two of like one of them in two weeks at our december meeting and then the next two with the next one or something like that just we've got three reports to look at by the december meeting now and december is um the succession plan i can't remember the number policy number oh it's a short little one yeah okay it's a short one and and hopefully i know it's a lot to go on but hopefully if we can keep ourselves on track because kobe did con and put us a little behind um but the succession one should be fairly uh a little less if we get that one in december we discuss succession in january i'm kind of
144thinking of what we're going to be discussing in two weeks in december because each of these reports i think are like at least 13 pages not counting the appendix right so if we do all three of them which is fine i'm just saying start reading now people yeah don't wait till the night before right it would probably it would probably be pretty reasonable to have the discussion of 2.6 in january yeah maybe that would make sense to do the social studies and the oe4 next month and then do the results uh the 2.6 and the secession january yeah let us get get keep the reports coming but allow you guys to kind of catch up more gradually yeah no i i'm all for that okay so any questions for faye or kelly it's not speaking
145our you know forever hold your piece you can always contact them at any point if you do have questions actually i have a question for you if that's okay um so i'm looking at these packets that we had for the the other items um and like their checklist they're things that papers that we have to fill out i have no idea how you go about doing this who do i come to to uh find out how you go about filling out one of these forms the as far as on the the policy reports that we just got um you can certainly i'm happy to answer any questions about that um as i'm sure melinda would be um or even jessie um but yeah not a problem at all and if uh just talk to me
146at some point and we can set up there's nothing else we can meet and do it as long as it's just two of us and not more than that just to go over the process okay so for kind of like public knowledge though as far as these big long reports you've got your cover sheet that has your commendation recommendations other notes like things that you see like might be a problem or you need to um put more attention to or something that oh my gosh you guys are doing a phenomenal job on this you put that all on the cover sheet and that's what you turn into the chair and then they consolidate them and then it's put into the minutes the next month and that goes in the consent agenda where we say we
147accept those things okay all of this stuff on all the other pages whereas there's the little box next to it yeah that's kind of your personal notes to keep track of do you think it met expectations or not didn't meet expectations so that i put my exes on things i highlight stuff i write notes and then when i'm putting my synopsis together it only is the front sheet that anybody else gets firsties okay and so essentially we go back and we watch the previous meetings when they presented the the reports and we take notes and we fill out these sheets and then we break well there's not really a presentation of the report they give you the written report like just they said here you go okay and you read through it and make your
148notes on the cover okay thank you and then we discuss it next month and so then if there's anything that came up that you're like i want to talk about this why are we going to play or whatever then that's next month okay thank you and in it as you go through it and i don't know if you've had a chance most of it is fairly straightforward in looking at do we meet the expectations in the interpretations um and then again we will have the full discussion you know at the next meeting um basically it's just to give us some time to look at it and if there are certain questions then we can ask those at that time okay thank you cool good any other questions okay then we'll move on to item 6.02
149um which is resolution 15-2021 which is an emergency declaration related to the atmospheric river event um all the rain that we've all been enjoying um i am a native washingtonian i love the rain but even i'm getting to the point where i think we've had enough um and certainly based on the reports i'm hearing um the school's had enough and so with that i'll turn it over to mark i think yeah so we've had more than enough um so the um this is in response to um conversations with our insurance company and um our uh as soon as we when we had the first initial atmospheric river flooding event um we had water in the cte building um quite a lot of it um more so than we ever had before it's it's um that
150building has been susceptible over the years for um you know seasonal flooding if we get really bad rain um we will get some water in the the first few classrooms on the north end of that building this particular event we had water throughout the entire um the entire building uh in fact the the contractor that came in did the assessment um so about 95 percent of the building was actually impacted by uh impacted by water so maintenance crews ever they did a great job cleaning it out getting the water out of the building bringing in the fans the dehumidifiers and drying out the carpet on the floors and kind of taking care of things but there is the potential that there is some moisture behind into the walls in the first bottom three to six
151inches there is some the the drywall is still testing with some moisture so in order to stop any secondary problems as in you know eventual mold growth or more extensive rot we need to get that cleaned up so we would like to start that process um quickly as soon potentially as as early part of december um probably week after next um since tomorrow's december in order to do that we have to we you the board needs to authorize an emergency uh declare an emergency in the district um you're able to do that because the uh welcome county has actually been declared an emergency because of the flooding and what that allows us to do is actually bypass the bidding rules the bidding laws the bidding policies of the district which would delay the process at
152least six weeks um and depending on what's happening in the area potentially even longer than that with the other local contractors that will be um doing cleanup work um throughout the county so basically what this does is it authorizes us to bypass our bid policy in order for the work to get done started faster than it would otherwise if we went through the bidding procedure now the good part about that is though we're actually this is covered under our insurance policy so we are actually working with the insurance company to um uh secure contractors and pay for the work so we've actually we've also been in contact with fema and we'll be filing a fema claim for things that aren't covered by the insurance along with the rest of the county so we've got a
15325 000 deductible that is our responsibility for the first part of the work um the other million to million and a half that the projection is that we'll cover that it will take to to clean up that building will be covered by the insurance company so this is basically a expedition an expediting process that we're asking you to go through to be able to get this done faster so what questions do you have about that hey mark i have a question yeah so you stated that uh historically there's been issues with flooding occurring in the past and so my question would be um um is there any work going to be done about mitigating this ever happening in the future you're talking about cleanup i totally understand that but what are we doing to mitigate
154this to ever happen again that's a super question so we actually um prior to um this event actually did some mitigation um uh took some mitigation steps um in order to kind of secure against flooding this winter um due to uh construction or just natural seasonal seasonal flooding so we put a little curb across there we cleaned out the drains we put in a larger pump in the area in front of the door that normally floods um which was working brilliantly up until this last event so the 73 gallon a minute pump that we installed couldn't keep up um with the water just because it was so extraordinary and the rest of the building flooded because we've never seen anything like this or was coming from other areas so what part of the fema process
155is that we can actually apply for funding for mitigation to prevent future impacts so we will be going through the process of seeking funding in order to [Music] uh be able to do some mitigation we've also just from a practical standpoint we've been talking to the architects and the contractors about when we re-slope that area from the noose with the new school going in um how we can do so to kind of uh keep water away from the building and try to make it flow a better direction if at all possible one of the other things that's going to happen is the the utilities for the cte building are fed from the boiler room that is across the little parking lot area between the it's on the back of the of the gym or the
156back of the library the old gym um and there's a underground utili door that basically feeds the cte building when we um break that tie right we're going to stop using when we demo the old vein and that boiler room then we'll basically seal off that utility so that won't be a source of water anymore which is one of the kind of the major culprits that we're having right now uh because that filled with water and then had an avenue in the building so there's a few layers of of mitigation that we'll try to try to put in place one of the the big things is that building is no longer going to be used for instructional purposes after the new school gets completed so we want to get things cleaned up we want to
157make sure it's safe we'll make sure it's usable but we probably don't want to go to heroic measures um you know for a once every 200 year flood for a building that we're not planning on using for really much other than storage didn't we vote a year ago to use it for golden eagle academy yeah so my concern with that is we okay so they made the plan for the new high school and at that time they thought that building was going to be gone so the new high school goes on what used to be a field which would soak up water and now we're going to be using this building for not forever but we did kind of commit with that vote for a golden eagle academy firm right we do have a few
158classrooms in use there yep so i would really like to know that the designers of the building not just like a sloping and everything but is this going to need more like drain underneath and because you've got a whole field that's no longer there soaking up water well yes and no i mean the drainage is going to be far superior to anything we had there before in terms of because that now i i agree with that but that building is going to be there and when it was originally designed it wasn't designed thinking that that building was going to be there so now i mean my as what's the word where you tell people like conflict of interest potentially my husband works in brown water type stuff and i asked him the other night does
159that change things if the building's now there and he's like yeah the drainage you design potentially differently so just like that somebody to look at that to make sure they are we've already had conversations with the architect and the contractor about that okay they had their engineers up looking at it while it was still flooded so they could understand the scale of the impact yeah i don't know if it's going to be every 200 years so it's like just please don't happen in the next 10 years or whatever okay other questions regarding that i mean yeah and i think you know part of it there's definitely some water but if we can get better drainage i know at least part of what we've been dealing with at our house is just everything is so saturated
160so whether there's a building there or not that field wasn't going to absorb any more water because there was just no there's nowhere for the water to go but i think it is important that as part of that process we do everything we can to you know and it sounds like those steps are impo are are going on another question my other question that i had um because there's nine classes that are in the building now i think or something like that okay and i both went and looked yesterday and and talked um to some of the teachers that were impacted and one of the concerns that they had had was the insurance had said that they're going to have to stage and kind of do it in a third of the building than a
161third of the building a third of the building and this is a pretty stressful event obviously and some of the classes have a lot of equipment like the biology class or the um you know that computer design class we have the holidays coming up but that's only two weeks so i was wondering how we're going to stage classes where they get to go where it won't impact the learning for the students and then also be as stress-free as possible for the teachers who have to move their classrooms or feel like they have to move out and back in this and everywhere so the logistics we had we actually met with the um contractor uh today um this afternoon um to go through kind of the plan uh or at least the rough outlines of what
162they have as a plan right now we're still waiting for the results of some additional testing before we can fully say what the plan will be their best thinking right now is that it would be a phased approach and what that allows you to do is only impact only impact four or five classes at a time versus the entire building so they were looking at three phases um i think four classrooms and two and five in one for four to five weeks and this it's a big cleanup job um but that's also one of the reasons we're doing more testing to find out what the situation is we've got some more research to do um to find if we out if we can time things in a more um uh a less impactful way yeah
163i think the communication of i mean we don't know the answers right now and it might take a little while to know the answers but the communication to them of like this is what we know and because some of them were saying you know like i can teach around that i'll just do a different you know chapters or whatever at this time but i can see how it would be stressful not knowing what's coming and exactly and that's why we're actually trying to gather information so we can present facts to them and give them actual information versus people working from partial or incorrect information which unfortunately is the case right now people have got a little bit of information or some information that isn't fully accurate which never helps the situation so we've asked for
164some additional information we've asked for some additional testing um we're gathering more information we've got plans to gather up the information touch base with the high school administration um share the information find out what the impacts would be what our options are um and then we will be sure to communicate with staff and involve them in the conversations i don't think if if we have to do this cleanup during the school year it's going to be disruptive there's no way around that it's it's just how it's going to be yeah and yeah and i would assume it would have to be if we're going to be doing it during the school year rather than wait for summer right well that's that's part of the testing we're doing to find out and talk to the the
165hygienist who came through and did provide the initial report you want to get some follow-up information to find out to confirm that yes that is indeed true that we need to do it sooner than later and and we can't wait till um you know and space it out over winter break and spring break and then you get to find the contractors because everybody else is replacing right and that's one of the reasons for working quickly and that's the our insurance company has got somebody on board that can do it oh yeah but it's just a matter of of uh getting all the information coordinated and figuring out what it means because there is also part of that building you know the age that building was constructed it has asbestos in the in the in the
166building so there's going to be some asbestos mitigation that is going to take place um as part of the as part of the cleanup so that complicates things um even more so it's part of the part of the additional testing to make sure we're knowledgeable about where all of it is and what materials contain it so um yeah there's still still information being gathered to make sure we protect everybody's safety and this we've been talking about the cte building but this um res or resolution declaration i can't remember what they're all called declaration it covers for the performing arts building as well yeah because it's like carpet yep the the recommendation at this point is carpet cleaning from the from the hygienist is is what they've come up with for testing there um the auto
167shop had a about a six foot drywall section um that needs to be uh needs to be addressed there um and the um uh some uh redoing of the of the flooring in the um aquaculture but that's a non that's just a it's a paver flooring that just got buckled um that can get corrected and fixed it's not a other than a trip a hazard it's not a any other safety concern mark will the um well the bids come back is time materials or will it typically be a a yeah it's going to be um it's going to be billed on a time of materials basis um does that worry you at all or you know i'm an open checkbook kind of thing well kind of and you know the only thing that makes me
168i feel a little bit better about it because our la our cost is capped at basically the cost of our deductible um and the insurance companies typically watch their dollars pretty tightly and i think they have a relationship with the with the contractor so um it's kind of a social agreement you know they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them um so i think i know one of the one of the items that they were getting costs on they the insurance company said they wanted two bids from the contractor that they're hiring so they're monitoring the dollars pretty closely still even though it's a it's a time for our deductible is that something that if fema did grants would fema cover the deductible or is that like we're applying it for that yes
169yes it's it's an allowable expense now our experience with fema is you work really really hard um and get a fraction of what you um put in 30 000 of work and you get 15 back that would be great so yes we're going through that process we're going through the fema process we're submitting everything um and we will um hope it works out for us and the like the deductible that comes out of our reserve fund or we have something in the general fund that is for insurance deductibles or where does that money come from yeah we've got a we've got a uh money for insurance in the budget thank you yes any other questions and if not the chair will entertain a motion i just had one question yeah i just had one question
170okay so the only thing that needs to be done in the performing arts building is the carpet cleaning because that's what they're telling us okay because i mean obviously you know the bond includes upgrades to that building too and i just was wondering if if it was something that would be better you know replacing the carpet at this point i mean is it you know if there are things that are going to be covered under bond work would it make sense i don't know i just was wondering if that if there's any overlap of the carpet's not in the bond and it's actually fairly for by district standards it's fairly new carpet okay so yeah and that was the only issue there yeah so most of it was the cte building okay all right thank
171you okay so again if there's no other questions then the chair will entertain a motion i will move to adopt resolution 15-20-21 immersion emergency declaration for the atmospheric river event as attached here and made a part of these minutes okay it's been moved to adopt resolution 15-20-21 the emergency declaration atmospheric river event is attached here and made part of these minutes all those in favor say aye hi all opposed okay resolution is adopted thank you that then takes us on to item 6.03 which is a report on the capital projects bond and for that i'll turn it over to mark so we're building a new high school i had noticed that yeah i saw that building that you were talking about you know looks like it's going gonna be taller than the old one it's
172a little taller than the old one so it's um you know we've we've lost some um days of uh productivity um or the due to the flooding and and the crew's inability to get here or to work safely but they're still moving along um they've actually got concrete on the second and third decks uh um not completely uh completed yet but it's it's um pretty exciting um nice view from the fur third floor it's uh pretty cool uh they're making make it headway the um the the uh gym and the um locker room area the kitchen the steel is all up there as well um they're putting the steel across the um in the commons so the the uh frame of the building is actually really taking shape it's you can really kind of get
173a good sense for um uh the scale and and what the building is to look like so um the beam uh raising sorry that didn't work out for those of you that wanted to attend um they kind of got uh jammed up with the weather and trying to keep schedules as tight as they could they kind of needed to hang that on the on a short notice so uh some of the kids were able to get out and watch and it it actually looks pretty cool if you're able to uh look at the website and see the pictures um you can see the the beam was painted uh blue and gold and has a flag uh flying from it and you can see all the all the kids cited so a little bit of fun
174um around that so i tried to get my son to go down and sign it because he does running start and he couldn't get down there and i was like please for your mother you wouldn't do it yeah okay sorry any questions for mark okay well thank you and thank you for the weekly updates that you're continuing and always appreciate the pictures and such involved with those and letting the community know what's going on with that the project and where we are at with it so okay so that takes us to item uh seven which is the sharing and first on the docket is item 7.01 which is student board member sharing so for that kong do you have an update for us or things to tell us about hello um i would just like
175to welcome this um piano and mr child to the board and um yeah today i don't know if i have a lot but there are some questions that um lots of students are asking i mean i think this is like one of the questions that we've all been asking um will there be school tomorrow um yeah so uh if mr d bach can answer me that or someone can answer me that at this point i cannot tell you 100 for sure but um we're sure hoping so that's good um the next thing is on the currently what is happening at the heart of current heights the high school is that we are decorating for christmas because it's coming soon the holiday so we just want to get everyone's spirits like you know up and lifted
176before the winter break so uh another thing is oh i was i want after going to the wasa conference one of the things i've learned from talking with the other school board member from the other districts is that um their student representative like having um non um non-dining advisory votes which i did not know um and after reading our websites about you know the roll-ups to school boards and all of that stuff um our suit like the role of student representative also have that so i would just you know bring it out here and just bring it up about like when you guys vote for policies like maybe me and jazzy the other student representative can also like vote on it it's not like an official vote but just you know have the student's voice
177be heard so and uh one of the things that i wanted to talk about um that i've talked with well i went to an equity conference in wasta and i you know talked this with like the other two school board members is that with student voice um it is important to you know be at the school and just talk to the students like um because i know for a fact that um i have no idea who were my school board representatives were until i joined the school boards and i and i can tell you that most of the student in our school have no idea who you are so um so like for like policies or what you were wondering if it has like impacted those students i would say like to just go into
178the school and ask them about it if the you know the policy even is active or like how has impact them um for me like as a student representative i can only represent so much of like the students i can't represent everyone so um it would be you know really good to you know just go in have some fun conversations with students especially with like you um your like new school boards um come and you know get familiar with the student our culture and you know with everyone so yeah um yeah commenting on that kong because when i was elected to school board in november 2019 like four months before everything went to yeah went away um i got to go to a couple schools or but like my dream of going into you know
179the classrooms and visiting and such it didn't really happen because of covid and now that we're moving beyond that and we can maybe start introducing those sorts of things i guess i would ask like the administration team or um teachers or whatever i would like to come um but you know i don't want to i don't want to pick where to go type of thing it's like where am i needed you know if somebody if somebody's like you know what i'd like i'm available or something i can make myself available we actually you know the board actually used to have um scheduled visits um to the schools so we would actually pre-arrange to um everything has to be pre-arranged you can't just show up at the schools i won't i promise so we would pre-arrange
180a a tour and the principal would come and and do a bit of a presentation talk about what they had going on in the buildings and then go out and tour a couple classrooms and and kind of see things um underway so that is probably something if the board is interested in in reviving something and putting something in place i would suggest we do a um a bit of a work session on that and come up with a um an idea that would work yeah i mean historically and i can talk historically because now i'm the old person on the board um we used to have experience not old kevin experience yeah that's it mature or something like that um it used to be that we had reports from basically each school throughout the year
181and we would alternate between a report from the school and going out to visit schools and you know with the change of the coherent governance and with some of the changes in some of the other reports and looking at looking more globally as opposed to hearing what skyline was doing or what cascadia or vista or horizon or you know you name the school you know now by looking at the the reports we're getting the goal was to get a more universal um look at what was going on you know from start to finish as opposed to hearing about what was going on in the elementary schools for reading and then there was a disconnect because you didn't hear what was going on at the secondary schools um so i i think it would be a
182good thing to have a a a study session to kind of go through how can we put the big picture together and because it it was always a good opportunity to go into the schools and kind of see hands-on first-hand what was going on what was happening and how the education was happening yeah and i don't think any of us have a student who's on campus every day so i think it's pretty important we get there yeah and and i've i've heard from a couple of teachers that they really miss having that that they really invite that to happen that they want board members to come through and not in a herd but to actually sit down and take some time and see what's what they what they work with in the classroom so yeah
183i think it's a good idea yeah um because one of the things that has happened when with like the super and um when um um the superintendent was like interviewing uh not the superintendent the the people who were fighting the superintendent were interviewing the students and also the communities um you know i was in that pool of students who were you know giving inputs for the newest you know finding new superintendent and do like everyone who's been like talking like most of those ideas i have like i was like shocked that i have never thought of that before because everyone has so many different ideas and every student is like their own individuality that like you know they they have ideas and also things that they get inputs and like that's like just amazing like
184you know as like in a per like as a student like when you talk about um you know we're here to like just learn and you know to be in the future to like input from society but like one of the things that i know that i learned from you know being in awasta is that students are smart and i i know that um so yeah so you know just go into your schools and just get familiar familiar with like the students and the teachers um taught there um the the last thing i want to talk about is um about um the the stuff about masking and also opportunity for students because i remember from last um school board meeting we were talking about how um like what are the ways of like the school
185to provide the students like you know um time to like be unmasked and just you know have the time for like themselves and not be you know controlled by you know wearing a mask or something and we were talking about how like um they're like mass time or like free mask time like during class period and all that stuff um like for that issues alone what um the high school is experiencing is is it the lack of not giving the students the opportunity to you know having a you know free mass period or just go outside and you know just relax but is the fact that when students go outside and not wearing the mask some students leave the school campus and yeah that's just one of the things that have been impacting our high
186school it's just student leaving during class hours or you know since they're outside they just kind of um i don't know don't want to go back inside and like lots of issues either happen like i don't know um like if we could have you know something or like a policy or like um something going on to help like the student like to help like the teachers like have a guideline to like when or how student would you know behave during you know those situations where um they are allowed to have the opportunity you know to have free time and no mass time but you know actually go back in and have actual education time if you know what i mean or so so the kids are going outside with for their free mask time and
187instead of going back after you know 10 minutes or whatever the time is they're just leaving yeah okay like that's a policy already it's like you're expecting me so yeah and also there are many students who are nowadays coming late into classrooms and it's just like when parents are talking about you know how do you have you know student you know having free mass or like have no you know have freedom to have you know their choices like when like i want to ask you know the parents too like when the school gives them that opportunity give student the opportunity um so that should be responsible for it you know like instead of you know when you have the opportunity and responsibility to you know have a free mass time it's not that you're allowed
188to just leave campus so yeah i wonder how much of that is the attendance because this year's attendance has dropped and how much is there no i don't know it's a big one and i i know that can the high school administration have been talking about those exact things so what are the consequences for people just taking off i mean what happens um currently from what well i've been working oh well i wouldn't say i've been working but like i've been talking to you know the principals and you know many of them administrators and um they have been keeping track of you know who are late who are arriving you know or um who are riding late who aren't showing up and who are like ditching schools and most of the time um they're just
189going into the office and talking to the principals like finding out what is going on you know why are you uh like why or does that student behaving this way or like uh someone's like situations that was going on and one of the things that i heard from um the principal is that like she found it really weird and you know shocking too is that the students that are like super behaved like behave well to schools like throughout like last year this year like nowadays are acting you know like those students just you know like misbehave and we just want to find out why is that happening like it's just like our high schools just have been like upside down lately and i don't know like that just happened weird like i'm in the same
190boat i'm like what is going on with the students i think a lot of it's just coming back after kofi i mean this is kind of a national thing that is happening and there's been a year where school was so different and a lot of kids just really didn't have the connection to school or maybe it was digital didn't have a connection to school and so they kind of lost that tether and this year you know we've got it back but it also is kind of maybe some kids have had last year whether the tether wasn't as strong and so they're like eh it doesn't matter we know it matters but it's going to take a while to to build that connection and that tether back and you know hopefully it'll be stronger after we
191have mtss the multi-tiered systems of support which we're using esser funds which we're supposed to be used for you know coming back after covid and putting it towards something that can help kids come back and hopefully i mean i would think the whole time you were talking about you know they're talking in the office and saying why is this happening i'm like i bet you the mtss coordinators are all over this so let's support them yeah um yeah that's all i have for today it's just everything have been like weird and busy at the same time so okay well thank you kong so we'll move on to the elected board members anything to share as far as go ahead melinda so i'd like to share as you guys know the wazda washington state school directors
192association conference was not last weekend but the weekend before um i want to say that my kind of takeaways from it this time i had two and the first one is after we've heard kong sharing and everything that he says kang and i carpooled down together and so we had you know two hours down two hours back and he was at the conference as well and you know we saw each other during the conference and i was in the same um heard that thing about student advisory votes at the same time he did and i think both of us were like yes because having student school board members a lot of times through the agenda they can be you know it's pretty quiet and then at the sharing we get you know a whole bunch
193of information and sharing from them it's very useful but i think that advisory vote before we take a vote on something to just turn to our student school board members any of us can do it and say what do you think about this how would this impact kids or you know what what's your thoughts on it i think would be fantastic because let me tell you kong has a lot of good ideas and a lot of good insight and i learned a lot from him my second takeaway from the wazda meeting was when i went two years ago and i was a new board member our whole board was there and i really felt like i got to know people a little bit you know who's who and got to know some names and it
194i really missed having the other board members there i mean i know you guys we were there like all virtually and here and there and i did text or called and talked to i think each of you during it maybe not you steve i'm not sure um but uh i really missed that so you know hopefully next year we can have or throughout this year it doesn't have to be wozza but just a little bit more you know building a team together so anyway that was my takeaways well i'm really sorry i missed the the thursday i really wanted to be down there for the boot camp but the powers that be didn't cooperate with me at all things just didn't work out so and then and then i was wondering about you know you
195guys traveling even down there after all of the rain um but you didn't have any problems no when we saw this slide on i5 it was pretty cool oh thanks yeah okay well my son my son got delayed by that had to go around checking that drive so it was not cool no not cool at that time not cool at all no and then and then his then his bus got hit by a truck yeah it was it was a yeah he was um he had saved up and took a trip to germany because he had a window of opportunity that he could use that he would lose because he had a friend over there he could go around with and so he he went and had his dream vacation you know and then when
196he got back he took the airport or shuttle back up and it was right after the landslide so they had to turn his bus around i think he said they routed it down checking it drive so he was already an hour hour or so late getting home and then he was like okay you know you come and get me because i'm almost there and then it was like a text a few minutes later it's like no we just gonna hit my truck so that's when you learn not to ask how can this get worse yeah yeah yeah don't even yeah so so i'm glad you didn't have that kind of fun so anything to add steve um i could just say that i was inspired by the inspirational speakers that spoke um they had a
197lot of good information to share and and experiences and stuff it was um it was a lot of information to take in probably overwhelming um it would be something that you would probably want to go back to and go back through i'm understanding that they provide a lot of training courses and and provide videos of what took place down there that would be probably a good thing for a person to review some of that because like i say they throw a lot of information out and uh it's it's tough to absorb a lot of that but no it was it was a good experience i'm glad i attended unfortunately it was virtual uh because of uncontrollable matters for me but um i i don't regret it and i would recommend it to anybody and i
198look forward to reviewing some of the information so anyway that's that's about what i got to say well i would definitely have to echo a lot of what's been said one in the regards to melinda you know having experienced it with all the board being there it's definitely a team building beneficial time and um feeding off of each other as you hear those things and interacting about them and just experiencing the energy of it um so it is it was disappointing that just the way it worked out it wasn't that normal experience but it was closer to normal than the year before um so we're making progress back um i think in regards to the student voice comments definitely before covid hit um we certainly i think had more of that we didn't take any
199official student votes or anything but certainly there was a lot of that questioning what do you think what do you think on this how do you think this will affect students and would be nice to get back to that um it was interesting to have video somewhere of our student board members a few years back i think before melinda and jesse's time even where they became sort of the they weren't the presenters at a meeting but they sort of overtook this one school's presentation because everyone was asking them questions and they became the uh center of the attention of the after and the discussion time so it's quite quite fun to be kind of like proud board member parents or something you know you're watching your student members uh interacting and answering everybody's questions that's
200kind of cool um as far as the board building uh definitely as we go into our superintendent search and as we go into the new year mark and i've already been talking about some of the laws of possibilities of getting us together and doing some team buildings and kind of onboarding and correct me if i'm wrong mark but we were talking about having jackson send out a doodle poll is trying to figure out a date um where we could probably get together and looking at schedules and looking at december being a short month because of the holidays probably the first part of january so be looking for that in your inbox and and definitely be responding so we can kind of find try to find a date that works for everyone to get together um
201i can just note that i have actually already sent that a few people have responded but yeah definitely if there's multiple days because it makes it easier to try and coordinate between everybody's schedule um and then we're having to coordinate potentially with laws to their their people's schedule so okay and we have to come up with a salary number two yeah that we'll be working on that'll probably be part of the conversation as well so mark do you have anything to share the only thing i've got is the um we are in the process kind of a one of the strange um uh rules that go around with uh running a uh ballot initiative um we are required to solicit folks to write the pro statement in the voter pamphlet but also the con statement
202so we have been [Music] advertising on our website we've put notices out we've emailed folks written statements in the past and so if the folks that are still listening or anybody who views this later or is interested in writing the con statement for the voter pamphlet please reach out to uh selena or myself um so we can get you uh listed for that so that's all i've got on that one okay anyone from the admin team i'm seeing heads shaking no so no just a welcome to steve and peggy as well thank you just um just a 30-second um thing we had um for the new board members back in june we submitted to ospi our academic and wellbeing recovery plan um we'll give you a little more information at the december meeting but um
203no the end of november beginning december is the phase two report which is an attestation from the superintendent um so we'll that's due by december 17th so we'll give you just a snapshot at the next meeting okay thank you fave so then that brings us to the consent agendas portion of our meeting the consent agendas um for everyone to know are essentially routine items that the board has been provided information with there's the superintendent's consent agenda which are items that are delegated to the superintendent um to take care of but do require by policy board approval the board consent agenda has items that are under the board's jurisdiction and these are items because they are routine and have been provided to the board ahead of time um are things that we can proceed to vote
204on in one package deal as opposed to voting on each individually um just as for steve and peggy's benefit if there are items on there that at some point we need to take off and discuss individually that can certainly be done as well but most of the time they're routine um and i always feel a little weird saying that because for those of us have been on the board they're routine for you guys they're new and and exciting um certainly all this information is also available to the public on board docs where you can see pretty much most everything that the board sees short of employee information and so at this point the board will entertain or the chair will entertain a motion to either accept the consent agendas or if there's any discussion i
205will make a motion to accept both the superintendent consent agenda and the board consent agenda as attached here too and made a part of the minutes okay so it has been moved to accept the superintendent and board consent agendas as attached to here and made part of the minutes all those in favor say aye aye all opposed okay the consent agendas are then accepted so at this time the board will convene into a executive session for approximately 30 minutes to discuss personnel matters no action will be taken during this session the board will reconvene into open session following the executive session to take action on the items from the executive session um so as a instructional thing for our new board members um this does require us to leave this meeting and jackson sent you
206another link to the executive session which um we will then join this meeting will be left open we'll go into the executive session once we are done conversing at that the getting the information that's being presented to us at that then we will exit that meeting and come and rejoin this meeting okay we'll help walk you through that if there's any issues or concerns but at this point um we can go ahead and leave this meeting and we will joining each other momentarily in the executive session any questions before i leave out do you have to tell how long we're going to be i said approximately 30 minutes oh i didn't hear that i'm sorry that's okay no problem okay i will see you all in executive session if i can find the appropriate email
207here jackson wake up just kidding is this where for those of us that are old enough we go welcome back i'm not that old john i like it when there's nine boxes and i can pretend that we're the brady bunch i see john and i see kevin oh i'm about that old that's romper room travel six okay so it looks like we're just waiting for steve we're going on six over six hours i'm sorry about that no no no it's no i'm okay i like your questions i love your questions i like having the discussion so don't feel bad about it and you know you'll do it one month for you ask more and then i'll do it the next one so we'll go ahead and come back into session and so that brings us
208give me a second as i pull up our dogs so at this point the [Music] um we are back in session and discuss discussing the term potential termination of six employees and so is there any discussion we had a lot of discussion and executive i think it's fine if we discuss it here do we do we give reasons for our votes or do you just vote i mean this is the reasons make any essentially at this point i think it's important that you know as far as for those in the audience that are listening that we're not privy to the executive session one of the hallmarks of the executive session is we can discuss these things we can discuss um all the various items and the reasons or and against termination but we cannot take
209a vote no vote was taken in executive discussion no votes are taken into account um and and partially the the talk i'm doing right now is both for peggy and steve's benefit but also for those that are listening in the audience because we do have some of the people that were speaking tonight still with us but part of it is important to have the essentially to reiterate some of that discussion at this time you know so that people understand what our thinking is and what our reasoning is as we move forward to make that decision um i think it helps them to understand and understand you know i'm fine starting out the conversation in the sense that this is a no-win situation you know we're sitting here with being put in a position that none
210of us ever dreamt or wanted to be put in where we've got opinions and arguments on both sides of the spectrum that make a whole lot of logical sense depending on your perspective and depending on how things are interpreted and there really is no black and white answer um and that's what makes it difficult um you know and so there you could sit and make an argument for termination against germination um but unfortunately we can't sit there and make both arguments we have to come as a school board we either have to you know uphold the decision or go against the decision that was made by the administrative team um and the guidance that they were given and the decisions that they made based on that guidance that they were given so um so don't
211everybody talk at once well in executive session we had a lot of different opinions um i am comfortable saying that my opinion on this is one of the speakers tonight said that the bus drivers have 58 years experience cumulatively together with the ferndale school district and i don't take that lightly at all these are i spoke with one of them earlier this week and he has been a bus driver for ferndale school district about as long a time as my kids have been in the school district so that's i thank him for his service as a bus driver but i also take very seriously keeping the work say the workplace safe for our staff um i know there's a lot of talk about what cova doesn't affect kids etc in my opinion i'm only speaking
212for myself the vaccine mandates and the choice of a vaccine or an exemption where just about everybody almost everybody who asked for an exemption got one those choices are to reduce risk for our staff and to keep our sac staff safe um it these employees had it had a choice that i understand is extremely difficult for them and they did not want to make to have to make that choice but i myself am thinking i need to keep the staff of ferndale school district as safe as possible and so that's my thought on it and there were other thoughts that other people had that were different so yeah um uh i thought that i had was you know we keep coming back to we're supposed to do what's in the best interest of the children
213and i think you know we're all thinking physical safety you know um but there's also the idea that you know if this is an issue of personal freedom and you want to model um the strengths of your beliefs and standing up you know the the the modeling of of character is also an important thing you know for children and and then in this day and age and and the way you know the crazy world we live in i almost think it's of an extremely important thing that needs to be preserved is it in the best interest of children to you know to knuckle under when you hit adversity and you know i i don't know um this is where i'm coming from and and also also you know um i do believe there is an
214element of fairness to it and and and you know where do you put your priorities okay if if we don't test everybody because of cost and because we've decided well this is less of a risk than that well i mean i haven't seen the risk quantified so i'm not comfortable with that and i do think there is a fairness aspect to it too and um i think you know maybe you know we all want all these wonderful things for our kids but but could could the testing of everybody be a priority in order to make things fair and that that's another thing i'm looking at thinking you know um because i i don't believe it's quite fair that's my personal opinion um and i don't i don't um you know uh i don't like the
215awkward situation that anybody's had i mean if i had my druthers i'd be saying okay you know go address the health department with this you know don't come to the school board to go address the health department however it's brought to us because we're the first i mean you know they elected us to do this and so um and and we'll have differences of opinion and well i think i think with that you know i agree peggy i think they should you know people should express their concerns to the health department but i also think they should express them to their legislative representatives because part of the part of the dilemma that this stems from is the whole legality of the mandates and such um and you know there are certain stipulations for mandates to
216be lawful under emergency situations and the pandemic certainly initially wasn't a an emergency situation but after you know almost two years has there not been enough time that the legislature could get together and come to some sort of an agreement as opposed to it being a mandate but actually legislated kind of rule um you know that's i don't want to get into the politics of it that it seems like they've had enough time that they could do that um and so to put the the school boards you know across the state we're not the only ones that are yeah you know putting being put up to this challenge um and i i feel like our some of our other elected officials whose actual responsibility is in some of this interpretation and deal are kind of
217kicking the can down the road to somebody else's camp um and that's you know no more fair to us than it is the decision that we're making about these people and their jobs i i echo piggy's conversation what she's saying um and there's no winning opera you know option here this is a no win-win situation for anybody this is so um and they say we're faced with very limited opera options and the kevin's point um the health department you know they're they're responsible for handing down these rules that we're supposed to abide by they suggest yes i stand correctly sorry it's okay um like you say this this is not it's this is not a comfortable situation we put in but anyway um i'm here to support the other members of the board the community
218and whatever is decided it's in the best interest of the children i believe well and and certainly i want to you know i appreciate those that have come and voiced their concerns to voice their opinions the challenge being you know and the part that's always hard is you know we are elected to represent the community but there's another aspect of the community there's you know of employees you know we've got less than one percent that have either had you know questions or problems with the the process of you know accommodations and testing and everything else um you know and so i think we have to you know we represent all those 670 people are part of our community too and we need to represent all of them you know um and and it's not you
219know the loudest voice is not always the majority um and so that i think we need to take into consideration as well so at some point or at this point you know if there's further discussion certainly happy to have that otherwise the chair is open to emotion um do we have any more anyone any more thoughts steve peggy uh i mean this totally sucks you know um yeah i think that sums it up best welcome to school board well yeah i knew it was going to suck there there are better times than this too there are yeah i will make a motion to accept the termination um suggestions as attached here too okay is this can can i can i ask a question i sorry i should have asked it earlier let's go ahead okay
220since this involves the terminations of several different people um you know i mean is this on an individual one by one basis or is this on a i mean or is it a package deal um they're all individuals if you have the same answer for all of them if that's melinda's recommendation you can do them as a package um if you have different answers on on them then you we can split them out do you want to split the mouth peggy we could split them out uh yeah i would like to split them out okay um i will make a motion to can i say the names john okay i will make a motion to accept the recommendation for discharge for ms bergman okay it's been moved to accept the recommendation for the termination of
221miss bergman all those in favor um mark do i need to do this by actual voice or can i do it by voice or do i need to do a roll call vote only for split okay well let's start we'll start with just a voice and then we'll go to a roll call vote if we need to so it's been moved to accept the recommendation for the termination of miss bergman all those in favor say aye aye opposed okay so motion to accept the recommendation for termination ms bergman passes okay so for the remaining five do we want to split or do we want to keep those together i could go either way but given that those all are of the same reason it seems like it would be strange to say yay to some
222and no to the others well but we can i if anybody wants to split is there any reason to split okay um i will make a motion then to accept the recommendations for termination for mr shapin ms greenwood um mr pham mr selby and adams i can't oh shoot ms adams i'm sorry okay so it's been moved to accept the termination of mr chapin mrs greenwood miss adams mr pham and mr selby all those in favor say aye aye aye all opposed and abstentions okay so motion carries so to quote the words of a fellow board member this sucks um you know and i wish there was a better way of getting around it at least there was a different solution um and it's not you know it's not a decision any of us you
223know have taken lightly by any means um so i think at this point um you know i wish i had the words to say but there aren't any words to say um so if anyone has anything to say feel free and otherwise i'll adjourn the meeting uh i do have a question because i'm not really even sure what just happened um does this mean we vote at a later date because we were tied or when there's a termination proceeding his determination the vote was two four one against one abstention so essentially in that situation the majority rules and the termination follows through understood so no is it possible we could revisit the idea of everybody testing at a later date because that was my main reason um i i would have to defer that to
224i i'd have to look because kind of becomes a we can certainly discuss it but it becomes a matter of of the the board's actions again the division of board duties versus administrative duties um and it starts to get a little sticklish there as far as you know uh as we as they talk about an orientation you know we are the the what we are the the reason the the administration is the how and so that was sort of stepping into the the how but you know yeah it's a safety of fairness it fits within our you know the interpretations of our um policy okay if the situation were to change hypothetically would we hire these people back they would be eligible for rehire there's nothing that would prevent that okay in in the case
225in the case of the five of terminations related to the cobit you know i think that that would would hold true i mean you know the the other termination had other reasons behind it so i would say that that's probably not the case but you know from what john told us it doesn't sound like there's any issue and what was the the verbiage used in non-disciplinary termination you know it's based on the fact that they're no longer qualified for the for the job so if the qualifications change like the vaccination changed no longer required i think at some point in time that that's a very possible outcome hopefully yeah well and and who knows with with what's going on right now as far as some of the legal challenges with some of the mandates and
226testing it could very well change but or with omicron yeah it could go either way they could go yeah things could get worse things get better you know so my concern is going forward from this point in time i mean are they going to start treating influenza like this is every is every respiratory disease every easily you know communicable disease going to be treated you know using the same protocol are we going to be masking and distancing for the rest of our lives let's hope not there that that's the biggest challenge i think that's a question a lot of people are asking you know there's also um i'll throw it out there there's also the whole aspect of you know what if we come forth with a mandate for kids five to twelve to be
227vaccinated we're not talking about that tonight no we're not talking about that tonight because i don't want to go there and yeah yeah i know um but hopefully that bridge will be moot before we get to it hopefully very mute but i think that's where again a different group of elected officials needs to step in and start making some some group decisions as opposed to mandates because that's i absolutely agree with you kevin so i would encourage you know i would encourage those that you know that have expressed concerns you know talk to your legislators they're the ones that need to hear you know because they have the power to do something about it we you know our hands are somewhat tied for every like complaint made you know facebook or to a friend or
228something send one to your legislator as well it takes just as much time and whether it's a complaint or support whatever side you're on yeah like that's where they need to hear from us from everybody so all right do we have another meeting in another five minutes probably just yeah thank you everyone um i wish we were ending on a happier note um [Music] thank you steve and peggy for your attending your first meeting i will hopefully the future ones will not be this heavy and um will be full of more light things well there's only one way to go and that's up right from here this is the start at the bottom of the barrel god that's yeah i'm going to tell you from experience just hope for better but don't say it can't
229get worse okay yeah it's probably true yeah that was very true who would have expected words of wisdom you know last with it last christmas or the christmas before when the train derailment by custer happened i remember getting that text from dr quinn and man oh it's a trendy realm it's just a train crash because of everything else that had happened that year so it it's got to get better it's gotta get better it'll get better so okay well with all that i will declare this meeting adjourned and um thank you everybody appreciate the discussion appreciate all the hard decisions had to make all thanks