001All right. So, um, we we didn't do any planning at all. Um, so it Melissa is not joining us this evening. She had notified us that she is, um, actually out of the country. Oh, okay. Good to know. Sorry. I I thought we talked about there was one of those. Yeah. Okay. Um, all right. And we don't know if Casey's joining us or not. I have not heard anything. He just he just popped on. He's about to be a panelist. Okay. All right. So, um I was just mentioning we didn't uh we didn't really like plan for our flow here. So, I'll just say, you know, go ahead, turn your cameras on, um unmute, you know, board members, and we'll just interact as though we were if we were in person. Um, if you want
002to raise your hand, you can do it this way. Uh, if that's easier, and we'll navigate through that as we go. So, all right. So, uh, if I could just get eyes on everyone to make sure everyone can be seen and heard. Yep, there's Casey and Ty. And Jill, do you do you have a camera? Well, I may have uh disabled it, but I am here. Okay. All right. Well, we're going to go ahead and uh get started. So, I would like Oh, there she is. Hi. I got an invite to turn on my video. How about that? Nice. All right. Well, I would like to call the meeting to order and acknowledge that the Twater School District sits on the ancestral land of the Nquali, Squaxon Island, and Shahalis people. I thank these caretakers
003of the land who lived on and continue to live on the land since time immemorial. Please rise as I lead us in the flag salute. I pledge allegiance to the flag United States of America to the republic to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice and justice for all. All right, Superintendent Bogatin, have there been any changes or additions to the agenda since it was published? No changes or additions. All right, all those in favor of the agenda as published, please signify by saying I. I. Opposed? Nay. All right. Agenda is approved as presented. We will now move on to meeting minutes review. The minutes from the May 21st meeting have been distributed to the board. Are there any changes or corrections? Seeing no reaction, um all those
004in favor approving the minutes, please signify by saying I. I. I. Okay. The minutes are approved as presented. Now moving on to the consent agenda. The items on the consent agenda have been provided to the board. Are there any questions or discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor of approving the consent agenda as presented, please signify by saying I. I. I. Right. The consent agenda is approved. We will now move on to recognition. Megan Dawson, assistant superintendent, will present an OSPI program review staff. Can you guys hear me? Great. So, I am super excited to share that the Tom Water School District um completed the 2425 OSPI program review this year. Um it we started well we really started in September um although our first meeting with OSPI was in January and um our team
005received a zero risk score with all items marked as fully implemented which is a pretty exceptional achievement. Um and I really just want to thank the hard work and diligence of every single person who spent hours in EGMS. Um, Andra Kelly Batstone, Terry Turner, Misty Hinkle, and Angie Gordley. Um, all from student learning. Uh, Chris Bergmeire, and Cassie Sutherland from special services. Allison Perkins, who oversees federal equitable services. Uh, Kira Aker, Pam Jolly, Karen Armor, and uh, they're all from our fiscal program. And then Lisa Justice, who oversees our TBIP pro program. Um and then Melissa Stucy, Danielle Longmire, Marcy Proctor, and Chris Sig who um submitted our CTE Tom Water School District um CTE portions. And then Matt Ishler, who submitted all of our CTE um programs from New Market Skill Center. Um so
006please join me in congratulating this team for their invaluable contributions to our district and our zero risk score. Outstanding. Thank you. I was trying to find the the like online clap emoji and didn't find it. So, okay. See, where did I leave off here? All right. I think we are ready to move on to public comment. So before we begin, I would like to remind members of the public that if you wish to have addressed the board during the public comment portion of this meeting, you would have needed to fill out the public comment form available on the district website by 9:00 a.m. today. If you missed this opportunity, you're welcome to sign up for the next regular board meeting or email your comments to the board andor superintendent. Contact information is on the district
007website. So, we received uh three requests for public comment. And I'm going to just turn it over to Becky Parsons to um promote people to come in. And um I assume you can also handle the timer or would you like me to do that? How do we want to do that? I can handle the timer. Okay. Yeah. Um, the first one is Payton Catherine, but I'm not seeing that name on my attendees list. So, I'm going to um move on to the next one, and that is Courtney Shreve. And let me just I think she's just listed as Courtney on my list, but I'm hoping this is her. there. Here we go. All right. Whenever you're ready, then I can start the timer. Okay. Thank you. Uh, good evening, elected officials. My name is Courtney
008Shre and I am the proud mother of a Black Hills High School graduate and both my LGBTQIA children have attended Tom Water schools. I'm here tonight to speak about the harmful transphobia occurring in the district. Tom Water's own policy 3211 promises an educational environment safe and free of discrimination for all students regardless of gender identity or expression. That includes athletics. But resolution number 92425 directly contradicts that promise by implying that transgender students don't belong on teams that match their identity. As a local representative of P Flag, the nation's largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, I can tell you firsthand the harm of these messages is real. Last summer, LGBTQIA students at Tamar High School spoke with P Flag about the harassment, bigotry, and bullying they continue to face. We've met with their principal repeatedly to discuss and
009address these concerns, including anti-LGBTQ slurs and rhetoric in classrooms where even staff have said, "We don't know what to do. That's not acceptable. Adults can learn and kids deserve safety." Take the phrase keep women's sports female recently worn by students at Tumblr Water High during school hours. While the district itself defended it as free speech, let's be honest, it's hate speech. It implies trans girls aren't really girls, which is both false and deeply harmful. Schools are not just neutral zones for opinion sharing. They are obligated under both civil rights law and court precedent to prevent speech and behavior that threatens a student's sense of safety and belonging. Language that reinforces these stereotypes or incites mistreatment is not protected in the same way that general opinion is. If a message isolates students or leads to harm,
010it doesn't belong in our schools. This is not about censorship. It's about protecting every student's right to learn without fear. And let's not forget school sports are about more than competition. They build confidence, connecting, and community. Exclusion, on the other hand, sends a painful message. You don't belong. And even those not playing sports feel that rejection. According to the Trevor Project, over half of non-binary youth considered suicide last year. One of the strongest protective factors is inclusion, being seen and valued for who you are. The truth is the biggest challenge facing girls sports are lack of funding and visibility, not trans participation. Policies like resolution 92425 doesn't just hurt trans youth. They ended up hurting all girls, especially girls of color and those who don't conform to gender norms. We must affirm all girls, cis
011and trans alike, and create schools where every student is safe and supported. I urge the board to repeal this resolution, which continues to disrupt the district. It's unnecessary. It's harmful. And it contradicts both district policy and state law. Trans girls are girls. Trans kids are human and they're amazing. I am the mother of one. And they deserve to grow, play, and thrive just like any other student. Perfect. Thank you. Okay, next we have Amanda Mahoney. Okay, whenever you're ready, Amanda. Thank you. It is difficult to read page three of Tom Water School District strategic plan without feeling a deep sense of disillusionment. The board's reference to the four pillars rings hollow in light of recent actions. These lofty aspirations stand in stark contrast to the harm this board has inflicted on students, families, staff, and
012the broader community. Let's be clear, a board that publicly dismisses or undermines LGBTQ plus students who are among the most most vulnerable in our community cannot pretend to be fostering a safe and welcoming environment for learning and work. The same board that has used inflammatory rhetoric and taken politically motivated actions under the guise of protecting children has created hostile and divisive conditions, particularly for trans students, their families, and allies. They tout culturally responsive instruction, yet have ignored the lived experience of marginalized students. They claim to value strong relationships with families and community, but have actively eroded trust by shutting down public comment, minimizing transparency, and fueling community conflict rather than building bridges. Perhaps most egregiously, they invoke a culture of excellence and accountability, quote, while refusing to take responsibility for the chaos and pain they've
013caused. The district has been thrown into disarray with staff demoralized, students walking out in protest, and state level scrutiny. Their decisions have had measurable consequences, and yet not a single board member who voted in favor of the anti-trans resolution has demonstrated the reflection or humility these pillars call for. Currently, some board members don't even look like they're paying attention. Since February, we have seen this board reject evidence-based policy, prioritize ideology over student welfare, and repeatedly fail to uphold the standards of inclusive leadership and public stewardship. Their conduct flies in the face of the mission they so proudly display that every student is known by name, strength, and need. Unless that promise is extended to every student, including the marginalized, this document is nothing more than a marketing tool for a district in crisis. Tom Water
014students deserve leadership that embodies these pillars, not just in words, but in courageous, consistent action. Until that day, these promises remain empty. I'd also like to speak briefly about the board governance handbook. It claims that the purpose is to establish an effective team, but it is one more step toward authoritarianism. I don't have all time to cover all the ways this handbook silences disscent. So, I will just remind this board how important disscent is for and critical for the growth of any organization or individual. Thank you. Thank you. Becky, were we able to to find Payton? Um, I will look one more time. No, I don't see them. Okay, I think we will with that wrap up our public comment section. and move on to reports to the board. So we will begin with Andrew
015Kelly Batstone, director of secondary education presenting on 61 6 to2 ELA curriculum adoption. And I believe Megan is going to Dr. Dawson's going to handle this tonight. Okay, you guys hear me? Okay. Um, so I am going to review the steps that Andra and her team started back in March of 2024. Um, I'm going to just review a little bit of a timeline and then I'm going to talk about Common Lit, which is the curriculum that we're going to be recommending for adoption at our July board meeting. And this is for 6th through 12th grade English language arts curriculum. Um so last year um our instructional materials committee um started looking at different um curriculum companies that make curriculum. Um there were 20 secondary teachers who met eight times two hours each and they identified
016common lit as their top choice to pilot. um common uh and then what uh they in this school year 24 25 there were teachers who piloted um the curriculum and there was feedback and checkpoints throughout the school year. Um they really were watching for student engagement um and so there was checkpoints in October, November, February, April and June. Um and then um they're recommended. The final review by the instructional materials committee was completed uh June 10th. Um and the other really good piece of news here is that the annual cost of common lit is well below what we are already paying in our current um curriculum. So um we will actually save a little bit of money. Um, and some of the highlights. I'm going to see if I can share my screen. Share. This
017one will work. Can you guys see this kind of blue and yellow um screen? Okay. Um, let's see here. Darby, do we have this material sent to us? Yes, this is the page that's in the board packet. Thank you. Yeah. And the public and um parents or community members that are watching at home, you uh this is also the link that's in the board packet. Um the nice thing about this quick three-page handout is it gives an overview of the units um from grades 6 through 12. So each grade level has um six units. And you'll see some of the common talking points about this curriculum is that we wanted to be sure it supported all learners, different um different levels, different reading levels, different writing levels. It um supports all for um reading, writing,
018speaking and listening. Um it we also were very focused on um curriculum that is engaging students with essential questions, authentic texts, um different scaffolded writing instruction. Um and really just supports students where they are and helps them build up. Um and then the third page of this document uh highlights how um common lit's been around a while and used in multiple school districts across the United States. And so that if you were to go on their website and do some research about common lit, you'd see that they have lots of data about how um school students have done in lots of diverse school districts. So um their data is showing that more students are on grade level when teachers use common lit. Um that educators saw improvement of collaboration and alignment across grade levels and
019teams. Um and significant growth for um students who had historically that were historically underserved in the past. Um so that handout is a quick um overview of the curriculum. Um, and then some of the other pieces I put in the memo is that, um, obviously teachers are wanting really rigorous, engaging content that meets students needs and gets students talking. Um, we want the curriculum to be time-saving because, um, you know, teachers um, you're teaching five classes, but those might be um, different grade levels, especially in high school. And so you need readyto use lessons, worksheets, guides, but you also want teachers to kind of um put their own um personality and teaching style into it. So it had a great balance of both of those sides. Um it also allows us to do school and
020district-wide data tracking. Um so our administrators can have insights about student performance. Um, and then from my perspective, like the best part about adopting one curriculum for 6 through 12 is that you have vertical and horizontal alignment of instruction so that you know that students are going to progress on their skills. Uh, they're not going to be repeating skills. There's not going to be gaps in their instruction and you know that like as they move up 6th through 12th grade, um, they're going to have um, increasingly complex content. Um, so that's just a basic overview of Common Lit 6 through 12, uh, English language arts curriculum. And at the July board meeting, we're going to be asking that the board formally adopts this curriculum. Do you guys have questions? Questions? No. All right, Jill, are
021you Jill's might be talking but her micro off. I found it. Okay. Sorry. Um so question I have is uh when I was involved in curriculum adoption a while ago uh there was a way where the board members could uh kind of look at the curriculum get to experience it um that sort of thing before we make a decision in July. Is there like a way we could get on site or do you have a presentation place we go to the district office or something and can can look at it? What what's your process for that? Yeah, I could either um send you some materials online that you can look over or I can um find some of the actual like items um and you can look at them in person. Um I to tell
022you the truth um it's it most of the material is probably online. Um but I can that that's what I was wondering if we could go online and look. Yeah. Do you want me to send you some links? Yeah, that that would be wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. So I can get kind of a indepth idea of what's Yeah, this what I included in the board packet is only three pages, but I have another document that um I think is like 20 to 25 pages. So I can send that to you. Okay. Yeah, Megan, just to just to be clear on the the four it's a four-page document. Did we just The fourth page is kind of blank or blurry. Is that just an accident? That was just an accident. I am so sorry. No, I just
023wanted to make sure it wasn't missing something. No, this page is intentionally left blank. So, it should say on that page. I had a quick question, Megan. So, 2020 policy 2020 calls for uh um it needs to be available, this curriculum needs to be available for public review. How are we going to go about that? Um, that's a great question. Like, do we normally post it on our website for parents to look at? No, I I thought that process already occurred, Megan, with Andrew, this this this winter. Like, this is um It's It's highly likely. Um, I can I can go back um and check with her and then maybe delve deeper into like what was the process that we went through to be sure that all the materials were um viewed by parents um
024not just the parents who were piloting it but any parents who want to see it. Yeah, I think it would be nice to repeat that maybe. Yeah, this speaks more to being available for public. I took it more as the parents versus maybe some feedback from a a group during winter. We I would like to see this uh uh available and promoted and we can communicate about this so the folks have an opportunity to review it. That's something maybe Lori can put in her notices that that it's available for uh parents and students themselves to look at. Ready, John? Any other questions for Megan on the curriculum? All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next report, we will have Chris Bergmeer, executive director of special services, will present a special services year in
025review. Good evening board. I hope you can all hear me right. Yes. Okay, good deal. I am going to share I believe you guys have the PowerPoint in the packet but hopefully this will work as well. All right. Does everybody see that PowerPoint? Let's make it bigger at this point. You guys can see that. Okay. All right. Good deal. So, this is kind of a year in review for what we do in our special services department here in Tumwater. Here on our last day of school is kind of bittersweet time to get to do this. But as you know, our special services department is really about the services provided to our students with disabilities. We're not a different room. We're not a portable outback. We are embedded in services across all of our buildings across
026a continuum. And I'll tell you guys a little bit about that. In terms of special services, there's often a question of how a student might be receiving special services. Um, it's called kind of a threeprong test for special education. It would first have to be a student with a disability. We serve students age three to age 22 here in our district. We also work with agencies who serve the birth to three in our county and transition those kids up to the age three services that are in our preschool. but prior to that they received services in the home through the county. Those individuals with disabilities also have to have an adverse educational impact. So that means that the disability must be impacting their learning in some way. And that impact shows in a need for
027specially designed instruction. So they have to meet all three of these requirements in order to have an IEP and receive one of our many special services that we have. In terms of our students, we continue to grow a little bit every year. Our highest point this year was right under a thousand kids. Um 986 students in Twater School Districts receive some type of special services. Our largest categories at this time are our students with autism. Our we also have a large category of our students with developmental delays which are typically our preschoolers and early elementary school students who receive services. And then we also have a very large category of students who have a specific learning disability which would be like a disability in reading or math or writing. We do serve students in all
028of these other categories that you can see down there but those are what we would call low incidence disabilities. I don't want to point out the numbers because those are the ones where there might just be one person in one of those categories and so I don't want to make a point of who that might be. In terms of where we serve kids, as I said, we are about the service and not the place. So we have an entire continuum of where we provide services all the way from we have some students who need a specially designed classroom that is self-contained and very small numbers of students lots of adult support all the way to what we would call indirect services where our providers are able to provide services to a classroom teacher to provide
029the support to a student in the general education classroom. Overall, we have students across this entire gamut of services. I I know it might be a little small to read. It should be in your packet as well. Everything from that self-contained to the indirect services. What I'm proud of is we have gotten to under 10% of our students with IEPs at this point in time in the most restrictive environment. That means the the environment where they are in a self-contained classroom for the majority of their day without general education peers being the most restrictive. It is less than 1% of our entire population in our district. And we are really moving away from that exclusive model to a much more inclusive model of services for kids. One of the statistics I I'm bringing a lot
030of graphs today. Sorry, I like graphs a lot. One of the great things that we did this year is um my assistant director put together a study of where are our students receiving services. She looked at all of the IEPs across our secondary buildings and added up all the different types of services, all the types of minutes and got this great graphic of where the distribution is of our services in Twater. As you can see, this is grades 6 through 12. The huge majority are in a pull out resource room model in terms of where we have been serving students for their specially designed instruction. That's typically a replacement model of service where a student receives maybe their ELA services in a resource room model and does not go to a general education ELA. We
031are doing some push-in services where our teachers go into the gened and we are doing some co-e but we still have the majority of kids receiving some type of a pull out go to a resource room for a period or two type of model. We do services in a lot of different areas. I'm going to come back to the information in that previous graph in a minute, but I just want you to know kind of what kinds of services we're talking about when we're adding up minutes because there's a lot of different things that we do. Um, many people think that special services is all about just making sure kids can read and we do much more than just academics. We also work on social emotional learning. We work on behavioral learning. We work on
032motor skills. We have some kids that need lots of motor and sensory supports. We do those as well. We also have early childhood services in all of the developmental areas to make sure kids can get prepared for going on to kindergarten. We have transition skills where we work with our young adults in being able to transition into independence and adulthood. So they may be working on adaptive skills like cooking or they may be working on job-based skills. And we also have things like communication as well where kids may be getting some help with speech. they may be getting more help with vocabulary. Some of the data, and I apologize, our faces are right over my graph. Um, some of the data on where we're at. I pulled our state data and our T water data.
033And you can see that our graduation rate is almost exactly the same as the state graduation rate. And that is a four-year graduation rate. I think the more important piece of the graphic though is the IEP dropout rate because you can see that in the state of Washington a little over 20%, it's about 22% of students with IEPs end up dropping out of high school somewhere along the road. Here in Twater we are at about 8%. So that means while we may not all graduate in four years, we do hang on and stay in high school to get to that end point at a little better rate than in the state. As you can see, our testing scores are pretty similar to what state expectation or state levels are. We continue to try to work
034on this. We also know that across this state, this is one of the hardest measures for students with IEPs. Our ELA rates are right right similar to where the state achievement rates are. Our math rates are a little bit stronger. And then where you see the alternate ELA and alternate math for students in a self-contained classroom, there is an adaptive version of the assessment. and we are doing better on those, but that's adapted for those kids in those particular areas. That is less than 1% of all testers and le less than 1% of our IEPs. So, it's a very small fraction, but it gets measured out separately. One of the things we also look at is our restraint and isolation data. We have to submit this every year and you can see it's it's a
035little difficult to see, but the big blue line is our enrollment. So don't panic about that one. That just means how many kids are in that building. The red line is the numbers of restraint and isolation. And then the yellow is how many different students that was at that given building. So you can see that pretty pretty much across the board it's it's a pretty small fraction of the population in terms of what we see for restraint and isolation. This is the 2324 data. We don't have this most recent year's data until it all gets collated this summer, but you can see that during that year, we had a very large amount of restraint and isolation at Tamwater Hill Elementary. We do have some special programs there and really had a chance to look at
036what this involved and why. We did this year implement a new deescalation program called crisis prevention and have trained out our special education staff in in CPI. We have five trainers and we are really happy with that. We will do some retraining in that and have seen these numbers go down. We want to continue to see our restraint and isolation numbers decreasing. Our after high school data is much improved. I think we had a accounting error last year is part of our problem. But you can see our five-year data of engagement for our students in Tumbwater post high school compared to Washington state. We have pretty much run similar to state levels except for last year we had a large gap and we had some errors in how we collected data. I believe um last
037year which we the data we collected this year this year for the 22 23 kids who either graduated, separated or dropped out um 80% of them are engaged in something post high school. So they are either going into a trade school, they are going into work, they're going into competitive employment, they're going into college, they are out there doing things, which is what we want. We want them in our society and in in the work. Couple of the things that we did this year in special education is we focused on writing in our curriculum and we have been able to implement some writing curriculum that involves a variety of mediums and support and have seen great support with that. We've also implemented a new life skills curriculum across all of our life skills classrooms that
038has really taken off and done really well. We also this year were able to support kindergarteners with some of our behavior techs and have them out in our elementary schools to support the school readiness. And we've also participated in the street data. And I'm not going to go into that because I know that John Neil talked a little bit about that with his TMS presentation. And our big work for next year, if you think back to where we're serving kids, is we are doing a lot of prep work and training on co-eing in order to do that at the secondary level and help move our kids into a more inclusive environment. And we're also going to look at our math alignment for the coming year. Safety net is always a fun one. Um I think
039when I got here my first year, we were excited that we were at about 600,000. We went to about a million. Last year we collected 1.4 million. This year we've requested 1.5 million. That number just keeps coming up and that just means we get reimbursed for the services we're already providing kids and hopefully we'll only continue to be able to get that money recouped so we can do what we're doing to support our kids. I think the original version of this presentation, my last slide was to invite you today of champions but we already held it back in May. These are a few of our many athletes. We had about a hundred students participate and almost about 80 volunteers across the board. We partnered with Special Olympics this year who helped bring us some volunteers
040to support us and and kids had a wonderful time. It had a number, I believe we had 12 different adapted versions of engaged activities for them to rotate through. And every activity had alternate adaptations. So any child in a wheelchair or with vision or hearing issues, everyone could participate in all 12 events. So, hey Chris, they're going to get to see your video um during my superintendent report. Okay, awesome. Great. And I think that is all I've got. I'm going to stop sharing. Are there any questions about special ed? I could talk endlessly, but I'm sure you don't want to hear it. So, I have a question. Um, on your special ed stuff, uh, do those figures include the dyslexic students on IEPs? Yes, th those students fall under that category of specific learning disability.
041Um, in the state, that's that's the category. It would be a specific learning disability in reading. So did I, excuse me, did I read your slide right that only 15% of the kids in the program of the 980 kids go on to higher education? Yes. Okay. Yes. And by higher education, that means like a two-year or four-year academic college degree. That doesn't necessarily mean like a trade school or community college. That's a different program. So, does do you have a percentage figure on the uh students who go to a trade school or um I can get it I have a different I have a different set of slides with that information on it. So, I was just curious because Yeah, I can get that to you because if we add those two percentages together, that
042gives us a better idea of the kids who, you know, can have uh job skills. And many of our kids also go into employment. Mhm. They can go into there's two different categories of employment. They go into either a supported employment or a competitive employment and we we go into that. Okay. Thank you very much. You bet. Just jumping in. I saw um Director Taylor had his hand up, but just a a quick clarification on that last question. That survey is just for um the year after they exit high school. Correct. It is. And it but it's for all students the year after they exit. So if a student drops out at 16, the following year we still survey them if they have not engaged in an alternate education. If they've engaged in alternate education,
043then they get picked back up into the education system. But if they have left for a year, then we still survey them. So it's always, you know, there there there will be more students that enroll in higher education. Just not everybody goes the first year after they exit. So yeah. Yes, that that is that is a catch we have all the way across the state in all honesty is many many of our students choose a gap year or they choose to engage in in employment before going into higher education and it does stunt our numbers a bit. Thank you Darby for clarifying that was uh that came up after Jill was asking her questions. I was a little stunned that almost a thousand of our kids was only at 15%, but now that kind of
044maybe explains and tells the whole story. So, thank you. Um, yeah. So, my question uh Chris has to do on the the data for restraint and isolation. It most mostly makes sense to me uh across the board there, but I do have a couple questions specific to Michael T and Little Rock. Michael T and Little Rock seem to not show any um of those. And and while Little Rock is probably one of our smallest schools, that I get it. But we've heard stories and public comment and we've received emails from staff members specifically from Michael T that have addressed um what they've categorized as serious behavior problems and disruptions. Um are is this accurate? So we're having those serious My question is we're having it seems like we're having serious disruptions and it is a
045serious problem. No other school has come and given public comment around this or sent emails. How come it's zero there? Is there a story behind this or or Great question, Director Taylor. So that data is we collect that data in August. So that data that you saw in the chart was one year ago's data. So I do not have this year's data from Michael T until it gets collected this August. So much of the testimony we've seen has been related to this specific school year. And I would expect that we're going to see some numbers coming out of there that look like higher than zero. I would agree. Yes. Okay. That's and and I did see it's 2324. I just thought it was I mean it's still at zero. So to go from zero to
046Well, we're going to find out eventually. That was kind of a a shock to me. So um maybe when we get the data we can look at it and then we can talk about it more uh the next time we come around with that. So thank you Chris. I really appreciate the information. No worries. Any other questions for Chris? All right. Thank you very much. Uh presentation. We we always enjoy the data. So, thank you. Thank you. Okay. Next, we have Kira Aker, director of financial services to present a financial services update. All right. Can you guys hear me? Hear me? Okay. Awesome. Share my screen. Right. Just trying to get it bigger in a full screen, but it doesn't seem to be cooperating. So, I'll just scroll through. So, good evening everyone. Um, tonight
047I'm going to be doing the um the May financial statement report and then our June um enrollment report. So, our final numbers for the for the year. Here we have um the normal chart that we're used to looking at and we're here for June is our our final numbers at 5772. Um you can see that that is a um that's for 2425. So for June um we had 5570 which is a decrease of uh 20 um which 5590 from May um and then you can you can that was for K12 um and I won't read off all of the individual numbers you can kind of read those from there but um keep in mind that each month this is we're going to be looking at in our budget update we're going to be looking at
048um average enrollment for for budgeting And each one of these numbers is um for individual months. So um the numbers are going to look a little skewed from from what our budgeted numbers are, but again that's an average for the whole year. So I just wanted to point that out if you noticed a difference in the two two reports. Um here is our May financial report. Um, just to point out, we did receive quite a bit of um 1.3 million in levy, an additional levy collection in May, which was a little bit more than I expected. I I expected about um a little less than a million and it was up above um 1.3. So, that that was good. We're continuing to collect those those tax dollars. Hey, Cara, can can you go up to
049the the plus button and just make it a little bit bigger up on the very top there? You see plus like right above the slides. There you go. Can you see that better? That's better. Yeah. Thank you. I tried to put it in presentation mode, but it didn't seem to want to do that. Um, okay. So, our our our ending fund balance um in in May was at 3.1. Um, and again, that's not our cash ending balance. That is with the um the help of our inter fund loan. And we'll continue to talk about that in our next presentation in the budget budget update. It's just our numbers by by program, our expenditures by program. Um that balance we're at 75% um of our spent program expenditures. Um this month we did 8.2 million in
050our salary and benefits. Um which as you can see that's one of our that is one of our bigger months. Um and we it will continue this month and next month is usually one of our bigger months um with our cash outs. July 2 kind of trickles trickles into July for our um contractual obligations in salary and benefits. Our sal our uh material supplies and operating costs right at 1.2 million. Um and um that you know that wasn't it's actually a little bit lower um a lot lower than last year. and um and you know it continues to the trend is is about right on on trend as far as when our our bills are coming in and when we're getting things paid. Here's our capital fun our capital projects fund um sitting right at
05116.4 million. We did receive just under half a million in our in additional levy payments um in capital projects and our debt service fund um at 8.9 million um really not a lot of activity going on there. We we also received um some additional tax payments in um in the debt service fund. And then here um with ASB um we're going to talk a little bit about ASB and our budget update. And so I wanted to point out our ending fund balance here of um 864,000. It is down just a little bit from last month which is which was up at 9 over 9 million. Um and it has I'm sorry 900,000 and has been um sitting right around 900,000 for a good portion of the year. And then our transportation vehicle fund um right
052at that 1.3 million. Um I have have word that we have a couple buses that have been ordered. They've been on order for the whole year and we should be receiving those next next month. So that balance will be pretty much taken up by those those buses that we purchased. So is there any questions about our enrollment or May financials? Seeing that, I I have a quick question. Oh, go ahead. Uh, so you mentioned that with the loan, uh, we have $3 million fund balance. Um, and then weren't we supposed to pay the loan off in August? Um, yes. So, we'll pay the loan off in um by the end of August. By August 31st, we'll have that paid off. Um, but we will receive I'm going to go back up to the to that
053slide. We will receive So, are you worried about the balance there, Jill? Yeah. Okay. So, we received larger um aortionment payments in um in July and August and so that will increase um that fund balance and allow us to pay that back. Um, and then we'll um, you know, we'll have to reassess for next next fall as to whether we're going to need to get that. We we project needing that loan again moving into next fall. So, just to be clear, uh, we're going to pay it off and then essentially probably turn around and ask for it again. Yes, most likely. Yes. Okay. But we're yeah we're required to pay it off by the end of this the school year. Um and so you know that we it's just the you know the process that
054we have to do and then bring it back to you and have you um reapprove another loan and it could likely based on our projections and our enrollment could be a different amount. So um having you you know look at look at that and vote on a different amount is is going to be a process that we'll look at in the fall. One one piece of good news on this is I I think the legislature took action in this session that that we do not have to pay interest on these loans. It's true. Yes. We no longer have next year, next school year, we won't have to pay interest on the loans. So, um that will help the general the general fund quite a bit next year not having to pay that. So, I'm still
055worried about the decline in enrollment because that translates into less money coming in. Um, so we're down about 200 students. Um, we budgeted 5763 and you said the figure was 5570, right? Yes. Actually, we're going to work on that in our next presentation. We're going to um fill you in on a on some other pieces in enrollment and budget. So, um talk a little bit more about that. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I have Mr. Raric here with me. Um he's going to I'm going to be his driver and he's gonna we're going to talk about our now our budget. Can you see and hear both of us? I'll kind of probably zoom out. Okay, there we go. And we can sort of Yeah, depending. Okay. Well, you're going to get your fill of
056budget this evening. Um so what you just heard was a presentation on the financial statement. Now we're going into a different space which is to talk about uh next year budgeting. Okay there is a little bit of overlap and we delve into some of the issues some of which came up here um about the loan and about question about enrollment. So the purpose here is that we're sort of in the home stretch of budget development. By the time we get into early July, we have to send a budget for technical review to the Educational Service District. So, tonight's presentation gives you a flavor for the basic assumptions of that budget. Once it's going to go in for technical review, then it goes in for technical review and we bring it back to you all in
057August for two public hearings and then consideration of the board for adoption. So, we'll go over that a little bit and we'll also talk about, you may recall, I think maybe two board meetings, three three board meetings ago. We were talking to you about the various budget projects and the things that we're delving into. Uh Kira mentioned the ASB budget earlier. So, we're going to talk a little bit about the relationship the general fund and the ASB into the next budget and a few other things, but let's first go into budget development. Uh this sort of gets to director Adams's question here. So uh by now I think you've seen this graph several times. The graph is looking more or less how we expect it to look. That sort of yellowish um colored line um
058reflects what the cash balance would be without the loan. And the and the black dotted line reflects the balance with the loan. So there was never a question. We always knew we would be fine in April and May, but those are cashrich months, right? So the next big milestone for the district is where we land in June. Um for most of the year we were sort of feeling like we were tempting fate like are we going to end negative in June without that loan? So I think right now we sort of expect to end narrowly negative which would mean that we would have a minimum of four months where we relied upon the loan like we needed the the loan to make our expenses. Next slide please. Okay. I appreciate director Adams bringing this up
059um because this is a concern. So this is depicting the relationship of enrollment this year to enrollment last year and it goes by month. So you'll see in the fall our enrollment numbers were coming in more or less equivalent to what they were last year. In fact in in December they were you know four students different 4.71 students different. As we move into the winter and the spring we've seen a pretty dramatic change. Um, now remember these numbers exclude Running Start and they exclude New Market skill center. So we're looking at the number of kids in our sort of bricks and mortar school structure. Okay. And every month into the spring and culminating in June, we've been lower and lower and lower each month relative to last year. And you see June took another another
060significant uh drop. So, we're 78 students less on June count day this year. Again, excluding Running Star and excluding New Market as compared to last year. And that is a that is a concern for us. Um, and we're sort of factoring that in as we think about our realistic goals for next year. Next slide, please. Okay. So what Kira was getting at earlier is the you know the difference between a a FTE and a month. So if we could go back to the previous slide for just one second. So these numbers reflect right when we show you June June is typically and historically one of the lower months right so you don't want to compare June to the AFT which is the 10-month average. Okay. So, what we see on the next slide is reflecting
061those 10-month averages. And the takeaway here is that we are projecting slightly less enrollment for just the K12 total portion. You see that subtotal there halfway through the page. Okay. And then slightly more students when you factor in how many we anticipate going to Running Start and AL. And I believe uh director Kakin has mentioned before like you know uh running start is an exploding program underbudgeted for it in the past. So this projects even more growth beyond sort of that post postcoid bounce that um that running star has seen. Next slide. Okay. So the next two slides we're revisiting with you. Um, remember we sort of gave you a preliminary look of revenue and expense. Not going to go line by line, but now OSPI has finally come out with their their tool, their
062F 20 three three their F203 tool that was essentially the calculator for districts so that they can figure out and we were pretty close. So, um um I would say that we still have a goal of adding roughly speaking between 2 and a half and $3 million to the general fund uh next year, the fund balance. Now, that would be slightly below the target of being in two years fully compliant, but pretty close. Pretty close. So, I think we're arguably on track if we don't keep losing students. I think is maybe a good way to say it. If we continue to see the previous slide manifest into the next year, we could be in a situation where, you know, it's sort of back to the drawing board. Okay, next slide. And next slide. Okay. Now,
063I'd like to bring you up to speed on a few policy conversations. I believe I brought this we brought this to the board probably in April and um so we want to bring things back to you that we think you know you might hear about you might get community comment about um because there'll be underlying assumptions in in the budget. Uh the first is that the board in the fall had asked for sort of some revisions and some clarity on food and beverage policy. We have done that. So, our plan is to essentially attach a new food and beverage district procedure to your budget adoption. So, you have an opportunity to review it, ask questions. Not all that would be part of adopting the budget for the following year, but we have it in draft
064form. Now, um we're taking a real close look at substitute costs. The Tom Water School District spends a lot on substitutes, not just teachers, but also administrators. And so a lot of time is going into looking at under what circumstances we call on substitutes and the rates we pay our substitutes. Um I believe uh if I'm not mistaken it one of the board members and I don't remember which um was asking about printers and how many printers and what how many what what is the protocol for maintaining control in the printing environment and Miss Aker has led a team that has basically reviewed quite literally every printer and copier in the school district. Um, and that has led to some fairly significant uh changes in the way that printers are purchased, but also deciding where
065our copers are going to be, which budgets they are attached to, and how they're used. And finally, it probably seems like a trivial matter, but it turned out that it wasn't. That uh our burglary alarm policy of all things in the district uh was uh triggering a lot a fairly significant amount of overtime. uh getting a lot of burglary calls after hours at night and during holidays and that triggering OT for staff who have to respond to those probably doesn't sound like all that significant issue. It turned out to be rather significant. Um and so we have uh rewritten that protocol to try to avoid uh needless um needless OT calls on that. Next slide please. Uh, another major project here, um, and Miss Aker deserves all the credit for this, um, is really taking
066a deep dive look at the relationship of our ASB fund relative to the general fund. Uh, I believe it was, um, oh shoot, I can't remember who it was. Um I think it was director Taylor who in my first meeting was pointing out that the ASB fund balance um was was increasing and so we undertook a fairly detailed look at that um and indeed it has it's it's roughly doubled um since 2017 and uh at the close of last year it was close to a million dollars. At one point there was more cash in the ASB fund than there was in the entire general fund of the school district. And the concern I have about that as your assistant superintendent is it's it's a messaging problem. So the ASB fund is a mechanism by which
067we raise money from our community. And so if we're raising money in a fund and the fund continues to grow, then the implicit message there is that we're raising money to pat a fund balance. and the money that we're raising is not going to present day activities but some future day activities to different kids different act different you know a whole different set of assumptions and so I'm not okay with that I've communicated that to my colleagues here and we're committed to a new policy and so one of the things we're taking a look at is what are the things that the ASB fund pays for uh relative to the general fund and informally there has sort of materialized a set of circumstances where um revenue gets directed to the ASB fund, but the commensorate
068expense does not. Um so there'll be a few changes. Uh and I'm going to re review a couple of them here with you if I might. And I imagine you might hear about these things. And so that's the sort of you know for you to get some emails you you'll have a little bit of the context. Um the first is that we're we're gonna we're going to try to emulate I think what is a sensible policy that we see in neighboring communities which is for athletic contests where uh they're occurring within county uh we will not we will try uh to avoid incurring the cost of a bus taking kids four miles. Um there's plenty of situations where school districts um find ways to get their kids to play a high school that's across town
069without uh engaging the services of a of a full yellow school bus. We're also going to really take a strict look at how far our teams are traveling um and set an expectation that it needs to be less than 50 miles for, you know, your standard sort of league games. Now, we understand state tournaments, you know, there's some special showcases that some of our top teams like to do and that we're not saying that we can't do those things. It's that um there needs to be an expectation of what the district's going to fund relative to what uh ASB boosters or fundraising may contribute to. Um so, we want our kids to, you know, have those opportunities to travel to a different state maybe and participate in a high-profile match. Um, but that might not
070be something that the general fund is expected to fund year in and year out for every sport. Um, we also uh spend quite a bit of money on helmets in this district and and I think most districts do because of the the safety issues that have really evolved over the last decade. Um, and it is by far one of our largest expenses in the athletics budget is helmet reconditioning. Um, we remain committed to exempting our free reduced price lunch eligible kids from fees. They won't be charged fees, but in the case of helmets, the district is spending, um, tens of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars on just on the issue of helmet reconditioning. And so, um, we're going to be asking the board to adopt a helmet fee, um, that will be part
071of the the, uh, the schedule, uh, published and adopted here later in the summer. Again, free introduced students will not be asked to pay that. And finally, um there will be some changes in ASB protocols. Uh we think it's appropriate that things like uh ticket proceeds go to the ASB. That's what the ASB is is, you know, fundraising that's generated from some of these activities. So, that's that's totally fine. What we do need to see though is that the costs that the district incurs in allowing that u fundraising to occur need to be reimbursed and historically for as far back as we have seen we we're not seeing evidence of that. So it's more and more revenue to the ASB, more and more expense to the general fund and then you just see a widening
072gap uh the longer that goes. And uh so the pay-to-play fees for example that the district has charged which are charged to defay the cost of offering those activities um most of those expenses reside in the general fund. And so we'll spend the year sort of piecing out very specifically um where those expenses should reside, general fund or ASB. But for now, all of those proceeds will go into the general fund. Um I am not concerned about the balance in the ASB fund. It's over double what it was seven years ago, and it is uh I it's on track to be over a million dollars at this point. So there's going to be a year of reset where we establish a best practice space in terms of how we utilize the ASB fund in this
073district. And uh next slide, please. So what you can expect at this point is that we are we're sort of in the home stretch. Um I had a just kind of a quick question or maybe more of a comment about your your previous slide um on the ASB. Um, so th this has kind of been the case for a couple of years and I I've always found it it strange. Um, like you mentioned that discrepancy between the revenues and expenditures was something that um I found really interesting. Um, even coming into like working on PTO boards and and such. Um cuz when my when my husband was active duty, I was the you know like the family readiness group leader and so we had very very strict rules about fundraising which was you had to
074develop your expenditures and say this is how much money that we think that we will spend and the only fundraising you were allowed to do was for that. You were not permitted to carry a balance of any kind. So, and we've tried to talk about this in the past, like even last year with the ASB fund. And as a parent and a parent of a football player who pay pays a lot of money, a lot of money for the paytoplay in addition to fees for everything else that has to come in, it it's just been really strange to understand why is it that the fund balance is so high in ASB yet the paytoplay hasn't hasn't moved. Like that cost hasn't gone down. And so families are still continuing to pay the same amount. And
075so if I understand kind of this here, it is looking to to balance what the general fund is responsible for, but ultimately it looks like I mean families will still continue to have to pay exorbitant costs and and now there's going to be a helmet fee rental that will be passed on to families and all of that. Yeah, it's a fair question. It's a fair question. Um I think to your first comment um we're definitely no longer talking about it. This will be the year of doing um mostly out of necessity. Um and I think what I would say about next year is there is still some uncovering to do in terms of where is the appropriate permanent home for certain types of costs between the general fund and the ASB. I don't think that
076we've fully understood that. And we talk about the ASB as a full fund, but we're talking about different high schools, different middle schools, different activities. Like it's this is sort of a summarized conversation, but each one of these things has a a certain texture to it that's that's different. You know, certain high schools have larger sized ASBs than others. Uh middle schools spend their ASBs for very different things. So, you know, we're not taking you through the full journey here, but I think it's a totally reasonable thing to say like at the end of this year, if we're still seeing like an increasing fund balance even with these changes, I got to beg the question of like, well, how much is the ASB card? You know, what are we asking families to do? So, that's
077really the whole purpose of this. Mhm. Um, but before we make before we make that judgment, we have to make sure that we've got some confidence that we've sorted the fund expenditure profile out correctly. Um, and I think that's what 2526 is going to be about. Okay. Thank you, Director Keel. I'm sorry, whoever does that. Yeah. I don't I don't know if you want to open it up to questions now or finish your presentation and then open it up to questions. I don't want to get I don't want to get you off track. Yeah. Well, I'm serve the pleasure of the board here. So, um I can keep going and then you can we can leave time at the end. Um well, it's whatever you guys want to do, but if you want to ask
078now, that's fine as well. I think I'm almost done. Yeah. One more slide. Why don't you just finish up then and then we'll come back to questions. Yeah. So, so where we're at is um we're, you know, literally right now in the compiling stage of the budget. Um and we will uh produce a a technical budget for the ESD before July 10th. Um in reality, we'll probably send it to them before the uh the 4th of July holiday just to get it off to them. um they will sort of run it through their standard protocol of technical analysis. Um then during the summer we will put it up for two hearings. Um and we made some adjustment to this because we kind of learned like what the protocol is for the summer meetings. I wasn't
079aware that we're going to have a meeting on August 14th. So that's that's good. So we'll do the first hearing on August 14th. This will look a little different than the calendar you've seen before. So um and then the second hearing August 28th which would in which the budget resolution would be on your agenda. Um the reason we do that is because we don't like to hold hearings on the same board meeting that the board is asked to take action because it seems a little inauthentic. It's like if you want our input right like you know it gives enough time to hear it and then make any sort of decisions that one has to make before having to make that action. So that's the reason for the two hearings. Um and so one last final
080comment is that you all um spent a lot of time on a recovery plan in January and February. We had that meeting where we talked about our priorities. Um we have tried to faithfully eth execute on those priorities including the targets that you all set. One item for note is that and I just want to say this for the record just so it is clear. Uh you took a resolution um uh educational program resolution. Some of those positions have become the subject of grievance hearings. Some have been uh adjusted as a result of like unexpected retirements and things. There are there are some adjustments and I think I just want the board to understand that. Um, I think an example would be the athletic director position that has been the subject of an ongoing discussion
081between labor and management. And so, just know that the resolution is uh the preponderance of it will be reflected in the budget, but there will be some small changes to reflect the fact that there have been developments since that time. Okay, that completes my presentation and happy to field any questions. Um, yeah, I've got a couple questions if you wouldn't mind going to the previous slide. That one? Yep. So, um, the North Thirstston County travel rule. Yes. I just want to be really clear. Are you talking about having students drive themselves to games? Typically, it's not that, my understanding. Typically, it's more of an informal network of families. Um, and there might be some exceptions to this, Director Keel, but in some cases, you're talking about um middle schools or high schools that are not
082very far from one another. And uh I I understand that like as as it sits right now, if the C team plays at Olympia High School, Mhm. Black Hills or Tumblr, it doesn't matter. That's less than 10 miles. You're saying there's no longer going to be a bus to drive the C team soccer team over to Olympia High School. I guess what I'm saying is we would not engage a bus unless there was an extraordinary circumstance that required that we had to like I'm not I'm not going to draw bright line about it but our expectation is to try to adopt a policy that other districts are adopting as well which is that you don't you don't bid and rev up a big yellow bus for very small local trips. But that's what we do
083currently. Correct. In all circumstances, is there any circumstance right now where kids drive themselves to a game? I didn't. Yeah, you clicked in out there. Sorry. Is there any circumstance right now where kids drive themselves to the game? So, yes, I wouldn't necessarily be able to site a specific example, but I believe there is. Yeah. So, if a kid drives five miles across town to a different high school and crashes on the way, who's liable for that? Well, I suppose it has something to do with the parental consent in the situation. Like parents have are empowered to take their kids at any time, right? And often do. Um, and so, you know, that would be part of we would have a we would have a risk management plan associated with this. And my understanding, Dr.
084Ke, is this is not an unusual practice for school districts. Okay. I'm I I get that. I'm sure I'm sure it it happens in other school districts. I'm just trying to clarify that this hasn't been how it's worked in Twater. And now we are going to make parents potentially pick up their kids at if their fresh if their kids don't have a driver's license or a car. You're going to make parents pick up their kids at 2:30 in the afternoon to drive them to a 3:00 game at a North School District school or something. Yeah. To be fair, I think that's probably an a somewhat unlikely scenario that every single parent would come and pick up their kid. I think more likely there's informal networks of families that um get these kids to games. Um
085and that not every parent has to be idling outside at 2:30 to get their kid to a a JV baseball game over at Capitol High. Yeah. I mean, I I have four kids. I know how car pooling and swapping parent pickups and stuff works, but um I I just feel like there's going to be some significant blowback from this. uh something that was Mhm. a school district thing that the kids were just taking care of and they got from A to B to now it's up to the parents to uh the parents or a co-op of parents if you will or car pooling schedule to get kids to games even if they're close and uh let's face it 16 17 18 year old drivers are not good drivers either. So, I do have a concern
086with kids that can drive driving themselves or getting piling three or four kids in the car and driving over to Olympia High School uh to a game and doing something not responsible in their car or whatever it might be. Um, so I I feel like there's going to be a lot of push back from parents and families on this. Whether this is how it's done in other districts or not, this is not how it's been done here. So, um, I anticipate hearing quite a bit about this. Maybe I'm wrong, but um, well, I suspect you're right about that, which is partly why we're talking about it this evening, you know. Um, I don't want this to be something that you hear about before you hear about it from me. But you know, it's like when
087we're talking about a situation where we have reduced over 20 teachers, we're increasing class size. It's like there's no part of these budget reductions that are convenient or that haven't generated concerns from our citizens. But it's more about how can we follow the sort of prioritization and the guidance that the board gave us in the winter, you know, like in terms of the order of priority of this thing. Yeah. And so I think it's it's a it's a not unreasonable um expectation. Um what what about using the ASB funds to pay for the the buses and bus drivers? that would that that is that is a possibility. I would not want it to be like a all orno thing like I wouldn't just want to pass off transportation completely to ASB. I don't think that
088would be a great policy but granted yep I I think there's going to be some a little bit of case by case in this. you know, we've talked about it um with the transportation department, with the athletic directors um and you know, I sort of anticipate that there might be specific situations that might necessitate um the district getting involved, but having sort of a default position, I think, is valuable, and this this would establish that. And then my last followup and then I'll let Jill and and um Casey go here. But um the new 50 mile travel rule, I I understand that there's exceptions. Uh both Tom and Black Hills high schools play in small leagues with only I think five teams or something. um they have to rely on a lot of outof out
089of league uh opponents for a majority of their schedules or maybe not a majority but a a large chunk of them. Yes. Um you're putting even more pressure on those coaches and those athletic directors to find closer games. And maybe it's not possible, maybe it is. I don't know. Um I Yeah, I know that there's going to be exceptions. So it's not a hard and fast rule. Maybe maybe it's just you mentioned ASB for example. So then in what in what scenario would ASB play a role when there was a diire to play a contest in you know Pasco or something? Um so it it it's less about whether a contest can occur and more about who will pay for a contest under certain situations and parameters. If that makes sense. like we have no
090objection to kids being able to go experience a really great tournament in Walaw Wala or something, you know, like those are great experiences. Um it's more like putting this in a proper context with the other reductions that are happening in the district. Okay, thank you. Yeah, great discussion. I really appreciate all the feedback. This is why we put this up here. So, um, would be happy to take any more questions. Taylor and Jill will have questions. Okay. Am I the person that called on people or Sure. Look like Casey's unmuted, so go for it, director Taylor. Okay. Thanks. Uh, thanks for the information, Ben and Kier. Appreciate it. Uh, have we talked to athletic directors about this at all prior? Yes. Okay. And we talked to coaches as well, too. No, just athletic directors, transportation,
091and um just personnel. Talk to them in a sense. Are there do are the athletic directors for this? Um I don't think they're for a lot of reductions. I think we've talked about the range of possibilities and what's more or less reasonable among those range of possibilities. How's that? Yep. No, that's a perfectly acceptable answer. I'm uh I like the idea. I like the uh creativity um and kind of treating everything the same way, Ben, of kind of we need to reduce across the board. U I'm wondering though if just putting these in is going to create kind of a legit like the athletic directors are spending more time tracking down games or trying to stay within the rates or just the churn of getting a kid to Olympia High School for their competition. Um
092there's it's a pretty quick burn rate on hourly. So I don't know how much we'd end up saving here. I don't know the numbers. So that's a concern of mine. My next question though has to do is this and we say athletics, but is this is this band? Is this orchestra? Is this choir? Is this drama as well too? I mean these are all those are all WA events. So yeah, some of these are ASB. Some of these are athletic. So the So my question is are we having the band kids have to transport themselves? to if a drama is going to a competition, are they going to have to transport themselves? Um, no. We have we've talked about um I think the the issue in athletics is the frequency of the travel. So, um
093I think to kind of create some common sense standards of if there's an activity that has one, you know, one or two travel events, um we might look at that. So, these reductions only apply to athletics? No. So, the the the travel, excuse me, the pay-to-play revenue is exclusively an athletic thing. The the management cost issue is not uh I'm sorry, I miss I may I gave you the wrong impression here, Ben. The first two around the travel I guess is what I'm specifically uh Yeah, let me think about that for a sec. Um I think we have only talked about those two in the context of athletics. That is correct. All right. No problem. Uh my next question then is then this applies to middle school as well too. Yes. Okay. Um so I'm
094going to kind of repeat what Tai said. I think this is um this is going to create some conversation for certain. Um, if nothing else other than what Tai mentioned is this is not how it used to be. Is this the way it could be? Uh, sure. I'm open to that potentially, but um I see I see a lot of potential issues here and then, you know, kind of going worst case scenario. Um uh I I'm concerned about you know you're going to have what the students writing with parents and then other parents and maybe they don't know these people and then parents are going to wonder who their kids riding with potentially. Uh there's a lot of logistics and coordination that we're putting on people for this. Um can they handle it? Uh likely.
095Um will they get through it? Sure, I guess. Um, but it could be tough on some a lot of different types of uh folks and families. Um, so I do have concerns about this. I'm just going to I'm going to kind of put it out there. Well, we thought there might be some robust discussion on this. So, uh, that is why you're seeing it now and not uh, August 26. So, I think we can dive into this maybe deeper for sure. I'd like to, you know, like and it's going to be how much does it cost for a bus? What does it cost for a bus to go to Olympia? um these, you know, can we I'd like to see some of those type of things. Ben, show me some data to this. I'm going
096I'm looking at Darby a little bit too. This will I can make this decision if you can show me some data that supports this and we feel like we can be successful at it. So, if we can try to work on that over the next Oh, we got two months, I guess. But, um don't but but football comes up quick. So, um the the the some of these are going to be pretty significant. Don't we come back in July 24th? I know on your last um it is a preliminary budget meeting. We have you you mentioned the hearings on August which were in our plan. There's a July. Yeah. No, I would like to see it in July. Yes. That we need to dis or or we can do it offline if you can you
097know provide information offline. We might not need to take up I think we're scheduled. I would like to have some transparency though potentially on this as well too. So it might just be easier to put it in the meeting so people can see and be part of the discussion if need be. Uh were you double checking that? Do you have like you have preliminary curriculum or preliminary budget conversation in July? Kevin, could you can you repeat that question? Well, that July 24th, we have that as a regular meeting with preliminary budget. I didn't see it on your next steps. We had the budget hearing that is in August, but there's a there's a and you're submitting it for technical review, but we do our first review with the board on July 24. Um, I'm seeing
098hands raised, but I don't know who to call next. Oh. Um, sorry. I wasn't ready. Go for it, Joe. Yeah. Okay. My turn. Okay. So, um, I guess my thinking is is that, um, this is a really pretty big issue because you think of all the kids that participate in sports. So, I I think it's really important that we are transparent on this. Um, it's much better to be transparent as you go versus having the parents and the students be surprised. Um, so I would vote for keeping public discussion, not, you know, behind the scenes. Um, this is different than what I think was originally brought to our attention. I think there was some discussion that with some of the the teams that have like like golfing that might have only six participants or something.
099We were going to investigate whether we could do a van coordination, not have to use a full-size bus for six kids, that kind of a thing. Um, I I'd like to see, you know, I'd like to know whether we did that or not. I also think it's really important that the procedures for the transportation stuff, we need to make sure that the there are procedures so that the parents and the students know ahead of time um that we're just going to all of a sudden we're going to say, "Oh, well, we decided that uh this sport uh we're we're not going to take the bus, so you got to figure out parents and students how to get get to the game, whatever." Um I think also that we need to explore since we've had a
100good ample amount of ASB funds. We as part of our procedure that we develop on this transportation that it should include when might we use ASB funds for transporting athletes etc. Um and then one other thing that we had talked about when this was first brought up is maybe coordinating some of the stuff with inner city transit. I know that they still have a lot of vans and stuff that are underused. Um, so maybe that's something rather than having the parents just try to uh on their own coordinate getting their kids to the games and stuff, maybe we could help coordinate something with uh inner city transit for some of this stuff. So that's all that I have on that. the the raised hand feature on our screen is sort of hard to read. So,
101if you've got your hand raised, can you just let us know? I think I see Director Keel, but I don't I can't. Yep. Go for it. Yeah, just a another followup. Uh, I don't I don't want this to come across as just because we're talking about athletics, it's like this holy grail that we're not allowed to touch or it's it's not it's not higher than any other out of um extracurricular activity that our students do. Uh I'm perfectly fine with if we need to cut money and save money that everyone needs to do their part. I get it. Um so that's that's not what this is about. This is about to me this is about um potentially some safety issues and uh a pretty dramatic shift in the way kids get to um games and
102stuff that that is going to be what I think is going to be a lot of push back from from parents and and coordination there and and logistics. um uh totally uh uh up for debate on on other opportunities too to help um athletics have their share of of um eating some of the cost of this budget for sure. Um I want to be clear on one other thing too. Uh the the payfor-play revenue has always gone into the ASB. um or is it so so the idea of the paytoplay was to offset the cost of the sports but if I'm understanding correctly the payfor-play revenue has just gone into the ASV fund and then it just sits there and build so kind of like what um Darby was saying earlier it's not actually being
103used to deflect the cost or defer you know to to adjust the cost of the actual sport. It just sits in a fund. I I don't I wouldn't be comfortable making that big of a sweeping statement about it. I think it does go to defay some of the costs, but again, I want to go back to the big issue, okay? like the big picture which is that if this money is going to the ASB and in total ASB just continues to grow even if some of this revenue does pay for the cost of athletics right even if it does go to defay some of the expenses of athletics in the big picture if we just continue to grow the size of this fund some adjustment is warranted especially uh when the general fund can't pay
104for the basic operational expenses of the district so director K I wouldn't be comfortable saying like this money is collected and just sits there. That's not that wouldn't be a fair statement for me to make. It does go to defay some of the expenses of these programs in part because some of those expenses do reside in the ASB fund. Okay. But in the big picture, the fund keeps growing and you know I we don't know where it's going to land this year. Maybe it'll be flat from the previous year. I don't I don't want to overstate the case here. But we're not hurting for revenue or fund balance in the ASB fund. And that's that's really the conclusion here. Yeah. And I'm perfectly fine with with uh well, maybe more discussions needed, I guess, but
105uh I'm totally fine with the conversation going that we need to earmark some more of that ASB funds to pay for deferring some of the cost of these athletics and some of these programs. For sure. Um, like like you said earlier, I don't I don't like the idea of parents parents and the community and family and stuff paying into this ASV fund and it just builds and then it doesn't really it's not used for the kids that are even in the sport right then. Mhm. Um so yeah, and just again just so that um I'm not overstating the case, I don't want people to leave this conversation feeling like none of the money raised in ASB goes to support these activities because it definitely does. It definitely does. What this shows is the rate of
106that fundraising is exceeding that expenditure in total pretty consistently over a period of time. Do you have the uh any kind of data that shows how much of that money goes toward deferring the costs? Yes, we we have a a chart that shows that. Oh, wait. You said that last part. You said we have a chart that shows the size of the ASP fund over time. We were just kind of sharing that this week, actually. Um I think you actually went on to ask a different question. Yeah. Um, like let I'm just making a number up here, but let's say sports athletics cost $1 million for the year. Is the ASB fund of that fund is only 20% of it per year going to deferred cost. Do you have that number? Yeah, probably pretty something
107that would get close to depicting that. Yeah. Okay. I'd be interested in seeing that. and the effects of if we shift some things over like you're talking about um to the general fund um how much that changes that percentage. Yep. And I want to reiterate again that this conversation is sort of a whole summary of ASB but really it operates by school. So the situation might be different at different schools. I I I do agree with Jill as well on u making sure we have some procedures to follow. I worry that um for example, one high school's bigger than the other um to make sure that we don't have any kind of um inequity where we have to water kids getting buses to different places because they have a bigger team or more students and
108then uh Black Hills has less students involved in athletics or whatever it might be and so they don't get a bus. Um, I believe you're going to run into problems with that as well if if you base it purely on on a number because Black Hills might not ever get that number to attain buses and then they don't ever get buses and then Tumb Water does. So I think you're going to run into some in some equality between the high schools issues there as well. Um, so uh and I think that that could negatively impact Black Hills families and their students more often than Tumblr water students. Yes. Yes, there's sort of there's multiple layers to this conversation, but the first layer is in some cases you're not talking about whether something should happen. You're
109talking about who should pay for it. Correct? So, when it comes to the conversation about transportation and all that, it might be not so much whether transportation should occur, but what the um local levy of the Tomwater School District should be paying for. Then there's another layer where it's like okay what should be happening independent of which fund is paying you know so a lot of these slice along fund it's really sort of redefining the role of the general fund relative to these uh programs and activities rather than saying that things can or can't be done. I think we want to make sure too that we maintain an equity among all of the groups too in ASB and that's part of part of the work in we receive we do receive other revenue sources for
110ASB cards um and you know different groups can request um request uh revenue from that that whole group. And so we want to make sure that there's a process in place that everyone's being able to request what they what they need and that the funds don't just come and sit and it's not spent. And um Dr. Kick and I know that you mentioned that earlier just making sure that that there's a process in place that we're um that they you know there doesn't become an equity in between um all the different programs as well. So there's a lot of layers as we as we mentioned to make sure that that that's um that those pieces are all covered and looked at so that the money can be um dispersed evenly too because athletics is the
111biggest and it's the most expensive but we have other programs as well. Okay, are we ready to wrap up the budget development update section? Any last questions? Okay, great. Thank you both very much. Um really appreciate your time this evening. Okay, next we're going to move on uh to we have uh we have one action item. Um Misty Hinkle, director of elementary education, will present highly capable endofear report. Okay, I think I've got it on there. Can you all hear me? Okay. Okay, perfect. So, good evening. I'm uh here to present to you tonight some updates about our highly capable services for Tom Motor School District that we had over this year. I have already shared a summary document for you or with you rather of all of the highly capable services for this school
112year. That is a document that we provide to OSPI in our district plan survey. It's really lengthy. Uh a lot of it doesn't make a lot of sense because a lot of them are yes no type questions. But that document that I provided you is is really a summary of the whole thing with a little bit of added interpretation for you. So my intention really is just to give you a very brief overview of what is a much larger document and then after we're done give you the opportunity to approve that survey and plan that I'll be submitting to OSPI. So just a few points from that document. The first thing is kind of what's been going on with our highly capable program this year. Just to let you know, this year our highly capable
113program K through 12 supports students who show advanced abilities in academics, problem solving, and we served uh 240 identified students this year across all of our schools. While the elementary level provided services with a couple different models, one being self-contained placement at Michael T. Simmons, the others being cluster modeling in the students home schools. 6 through 12 provided services via like advanced class placement and a variety of pathways for study which included college in the high school and running start as some of the options. So we are making some changes. Some of them have been pretty exciting to better serve our students. We had a task force this year, parents, teachers, uh some administrators that came together to review what our current highcap services are and then to discuss possibilities for future years. This group
114of people, I'm happy to say, has also said they're willing to continue meeting with me next year to kind of continue this work. So, they're a dedicated group of people. They show up pretty regularly, and I'm pleased to work with them. Our program, you probably already know this, but this is just a reminder that our program will be transitioning, will be phasing out the self-contained classroom model after the 2526 school year. So, this coming school year, we'll have one more self-contained class. It'll be the last one and it'll be a fourth and fifth grade split class still housed at Michael T. Simmons. And while that's happening, we're trying to expand our cluster classroom models where the highcap students learn alongside peers with some enrichment opportunities. So enrich speaking of enrichment, there are some more things
115that we are adding as far as resources and we're hoping that in the future we'll be able to add an enrichment teacher that would travel to all the schools to advance learning. But this coming year, we'll be adding Beast Academy, which is a math problem solving, depth of thinking u program for our students that are identified as highly capable. And we'll be adding Bird Seed TV for multiple content areas, social studies, science, ELA, art. Uh there's a whole lot of different opportunities within that. Both of those programs are designed for enrichment of highly capable students. So, one of the things we did differently this year, tweaked it a little bit, uh, was identification of students. We're trying to really look at equitable and fair ways to identify our students. We made improvements this year and
116found that that's providing an opportunity for us to support more students. As an example, we added new tools like the Kled Scale. And the Kled Scale is for culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse students to help us identify advanced learners from all backgrounds. We used the Kogat screener and other assessments to paint the whole picture of the students. So, it wasn't just one measure. It was one measure, the Kogat coupled with academic performance. And as a result, we have 38 additional students that were identified this year. We're very excited about that. We universally screen all of our second graders and all of our fifth graders. fifth grade identification and screening really just started and uh I believe this year might have been last year but at any rate we were really pleased to see a larger
117number of fifth graders who weren't identified in second grade but then were as fifth graders so they'll have those opportunities for services as they go to middle school. So we were pleased that that's that identification number is continuing to rise. Speaking of equity, like I mentioned, we have our whole grade universal screening for grades two and five. We're providing information to families in their home languages. We're supporting students who are learning English, experiencing homelessness, or are twice exceptional. And one of the things that I'm really excited about is with the cluster model, we're able to include nonidentified students in challenging lessons to spot hidden talents. Those are all ways that we can bring people people in and and really work to meet the needs of all of our kids. One of the things we also
118did this year is um I feel like we worked really hard to offer some support and training to our teachers that are our cluster teachers. I'm fortunate that we have across our district I believe it's 36 cluster teachers across the six elementary schools and they have been actively involved with PLC release time where we get together. They have an opportunity to meet and discuss challenges and and celebrations and that kind of thing and share ideas. In addition to that, we've worked with Jennifer Flo from ESD 113 to uh do some enrichment strategy, professional learning. And then this year, we sent 11 educators to the National Association of Gifted Children, the convention that was in Seattle. It only is around every 30 years. We were really lucky it was in Seattle. So, we sent 11 people
119to that. And our intent is to send about 19 educators next year to the Washington Association of Educators of the Talented and Gifted. That is a conference in October. I'm very excited about that. And um we're going to continue to support social emotional needs of advanced learners. And again, we're going to continue next year to offer PLC release time for our cluster teachers, allowing them to share all of those struggles, successes, and and good practices. Just in summary, what we're doing is working really hard to make our highcap program more inclusive, engaging, and responsive to student needs. I am incredibly proud of our Tom Water School District teachers that have worked so hard to provide instruction that meets individual students where they're at. I'm very excited to continue working with those educators moving forward and
120continuing this work. We're going to continue to refine services to students and build professional learning opportunities for educators that are also going to enhance the experiences of all of the kids. So with that, thank you for letting me present. Are there any questions related to this before you vote on whether or not to accept the plan for OSPI? I just had uh one question maybe comment um you know regarding the regarding the high school programming. So, I think I remember hearing in the past that um ultimately when students get to high school there there isn't any specific type of of programming available for them or special services because um obviously non- highcap students take running start and college and the high school as well. So um is that is that a pretty common you know
121model wi with highly across other districts you mean? Yeah. Yeah, I I believe that it is. I think the the thing about the high cap identification that is I mean we're always first of all we're always going to try to refine services and for me the learning I grew in the world of elementary that's my wheelhouse. So for me the space and place I need to continue to develop an understanding in and just continue doing more work in is secondary. So 6 through 12. Um, and my my really large sort of push about that is when kids are identified, same thing for middle school and high school, and this is common across all districts, when they're identified, they get the right to opt out of those services, choose in or choose out. In some cases,
122kids that are not identified don't even get the opportunity. So, it's really making sure that if they're identified, they have that provided to them. they have that opportunity to say, "Yeah, I don't think I'm going to this time." Or, "Yep, that sounds great. That's something I really want to focus on." And the same can be said for when they go to those upper level high school classes that they get consideration because of their identification. But I also say um we also really our responsibility around high is around providing appropriate rate and level for their identified area. So if you're ELA and you're in you end up getting placed or they choose the accelerated honors and like advanced placement. So it's not just running start opportunities. Those are additional but in ELA it's probably ELA and
123math specific where we make they are they are grouped together in with kids that kind of accelerate and and learn at the same rate and that is ultimately the the legal responsibility we have for them. It is and we and we're really lucky we have um this year we have honor science which is also at the middle school level which is also really great. Uh the kids are pretty excited about that and um I would say the other thing that we have done in the past and we've continued to do and I'm pleased to see that happen because I I do think we have a responsibility to educate kids where where they need to be educated at. And um our fifth graders, we have a a number of fifth graders who actually tested into middle
124school math and our district provides the opportunity for them to be at the middle school, take a first period math class, and then come back to their home school. So it's not a huge number of kids, but it's significant enough that there are kids that have those needs, and we're going to meet them where they're at. So happy about that, too. Casey, I see your hand up. Yeah, you just uh Where'd you go? Oh, there you are. Sorry. You just uh sparked a question out of my mind with that last comment about the fifth graders. How do the fifth graders get to the middle school? So, currently, right now, what's in place, and this will change, I think at some level, we're going to have to do uh some problem solving around this. Currently, kids
125that are identified get dropped off at the middle school like in the morning. Instead of dropping off at their home school, they get dropped off at the middle school. And then there is a bus that takes them from the middle school back to their um home school, but that is currently that's only offered at Michael T. So in order for those kids to get that transportation back, it takes them to Michael T. Um we've got other situations where some parents are willing to if they needed to transport both directions, but really we want to try to figure out a plan that's going to work to not have any barriers in the way. And especially when our self-contained program goes away and the kids are all housed at all six of the elementary schools. If we
126have two at one school and two at another, we still need to find a way to make that happen for them. Thank you, Misty. You're welcome. Jill, I see your hand up. So, I have a question. This is more just uh ignorance. Um, if somebody doesn't make the high cap program in fifth grade, do they have a chance to like maybe make it in seventh grade or something like that because they might be just a little um sometimes people are shy or they're just developmentally a little slower in in those uh areas. That's not ignorant at all. That's a really good question and and I would say yes, they absolutely can. So, we only universally screen, which means all students, we only universally screen at second grade and at fifth grade. However, kindergarten through 12th
127grade, they can actually go in for testing on a referral. So, parents, teachers, whatever can recommend that these kids are referred and tested even on those off grades. So, they they can and we tested a senior this year at the beginning of the year. We tested a senior. So, thank you. You're welcome. Ty, are you are you coming off? Do you want to let's ask a question? Yeah. Yeah. Um I I I already know the answer to this, but I just want to make it clear to the listeners and people who watch this because I've got I' I've received questions from folks that say, "Hey, this is the last year of Highcap at, you know, of uh at Michael T. It's not going to be around anymore. Uh we're just changing the format and kind
128of the structure of the program. It's not disappearing. I just want just to be 100% clear to people. Uh can you confirm kind of that? Yeah. I what it is that I think that people are speaking to is that self-contained class. Yep. So we have one well previously go way back we had at Black Lake Elementary when I was principal there we had a fourth, fifth, and sixth grade self-contained class for the district housed at Black Lake. Sixth grade went to the middle school. We shifted down to third, fourth, and fifth grade. Those classes then went to Michael T. It's much more central than Black Lake. So, Michael T has had third, fourth, and fifth grade for a while. And then as time kind of went on, the the program had some challenges. The self-contained
129program had some challenges that were hard to deal with. A variety of different things and and people really kind of wanted to be in their home schools. And so, we started getting less and less enrollment. So then the third grade uh group last well this school year I say last year now not because today's the last day but this school year uh third grade was no longer self-contained at Michael T. We had a fourth grade self-contained and a fifth grade self-contained and then the plan being to sunset. Um then next year there would not be a fourth grade class. There would just be fifth grade. So that group of kids that were self-contained would finish up being self-contained and then head to middle school. So that's what's happening. we didn't have a large enough number
130um in just a single grade. So it would have been just fifth grade. Didn't have a single large enough number to maintain even that class really. So we went ahead and put in the split class and offered fourth graders who previously were offered that self-contained class as third grade but that it vanished. We offered to them to be part of the split class and that's how we filled it. So we now have a full class of fourth and fifth graders ready to participate in self-contained for next year. And then the following year just the self-contained model will be done and then we'll be clustering similarly across all of our elementary schools. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions? Okay. Okay. Well, I appreciate everybody allowing me to to be part of this and talk to
131you about HighCap. I could talk more about it in the future if you ever have questions. Great. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So, um, we do need to take action on the highly capable capable end ofear report. So, I will now entertain a motion for action. Are we approving it or making a motion for action? Yes. I make a motion that we accept the high cap end of year report for school year 2425. I second. Great. Moved and seconded that we uh accept the highly capable end of year report. Is there any discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor, please say I. I. I. Any oppose? Nay. Great. All right. Highly capable end of year report is approved. Um, so I misspoke. We do have another action item. Um, the strategic plan. So, uh,
132Megan Dawson, assistant superintendent, will come back in and present it to us for action. Thanks, everybody. Um, I don't know if you know this, but on Zoom when you become a panelist, you kind of like go into this like void like you can't hear anything for a while. So, it's kind of scary. You're just like waiting hoping that you pop out the right place. Um, so yes, I am here to um present our most updated version of our Tomwater School District strategic plan. Um I thought what I would do is share um the bigger document first. Um I can see it in two places. So let me just Oh yes. Um can everybody see this screen? Okay. Um, so this, um, this document's pretty long, but I just wanted to point out a couple slides
133because it tells a little bit of the backstory of what we've what we've accomplished this year. I think we have met with the school board four times to kind of give you updates about our strategic plan. Um, so you're familiar with, you know, how it looks and what we've done and how many times we've met. Um, but I did want to just highlight um the different groups that met this year. Um, let's see. Right here. Um, we've had 26 planning sessions, over 2,000 students, staff, family, and community members contributed their voice and their time. So, I'm very appreciative um of everybody who um took the time and met and met again and had these discussions about um what does Tom Water agree upon and how do we want to move forward with our um strategic
134plan. These are all the different groups that met. And then this document um this is the link that everybody can see in the board agenda if they wanted to go through slide by slide. Um it lists every member of uh the core planning team, the student voices. So these are all the um sixth through 12th graders who gave us feedback. Um this is our instructional focus team uh made up of teachers and educators in our district. Our alignment team, these are our community members in Tumbwater and Thirstston County. And then our leadership team and our school board. Um so you can see the number of people who have put their um voice, their opinion, their fingerprint on our strategic plan. Um this just kind of describes how a strategic plan works and then it gets
135into the the main portions of the strategic plan. Um and I'm going to go through these pieces in just a minute. I'm going to use the four-pager to go over that. So um this is the part I wanted to highlight here is that for every goal um there are measures of student progress. Um so this is how we're going to know as a district that we're meeting the goals of the strategic plan. So each one of these goals um has between three and five measurements um which will be part of our dashboard that will be on our school website and it'll be able to show people month by month how we're um working towards these goals and achieving these goals. Um and then there's this whole section um u Mu from Performance Fact calls it
136the the second circle here the right here this blue circle. Um so we are working on all these um important parts of our instruction. So, we did a whole um deep dive into our priority standards. Um how we assess students in Tumbwater. Um what is our curriculum? When do we need curriculum updates? Um what are our instructional practices? How are we investing in professional development for our teachers? Um and our instructional materials uh and then our interventions and our PD and collaboration. So um th that entire portion is implemented through our student learning team um our leaders in our buildings, our teacher leaders and then obviously the teachers in our classroom, the people who have the greatest impact on our students. Um and so the empowering infrastructure is that third circle and that is the
137four pillars about how what's the research behind like when do strategic plans work? um effectively and when do they um become just part of our language and a part of our everyday thought. Um we have seen school districts that have done strategic plans incredibly well. So we know if we do these portions of it um it just becomes a part of our everyday language. Um so these four pillars um if you uh if folks um are at home or community members wanted to dig into um Tom Water's four pillars um they're on slide 38 and then uh it dives deeper into our signature strategies which is what do we need to do well in order to achieve each goal. So you'll you'll see four slides. Um this blue one is goal number one uh which
138is our foundational readiness for our youngest learners. Um the orange uh slide is goal number two which is like um social and emotional support. Uh up here it's called safe, supported and empowered. Um the kind of brownish tannanish page is goal number three which is our continuous academic goal. Um continuous academic growth goal. And then these um two different colors of green that slide is our readiness for a changing world. So that is our graduation um and post-secondary success for students. Um and you know if you plan the work and work the plan uh it the your dreams you can make your dreams come true. So this next section is like what do we as a district need to do for year one implementation um to be sure that this strategic plan isn't just something
139that we did and we like wrote down and we came together but it's actually like part of our discussions our meetings um when teachers are talking to students um about the portrait of a graduate um that it just becomes a part of our everyday life. Um so that that document it's in the board report it's called presentation. Um that really gives you everything um about the process that has gotten us here with our strategic plan. Um so I think I'm going to try to stop sharing. Um and then um I wanted to talk about the four-page plan which is the shorter document and I think you guys um dug into this pretty deeply in during our work session. Um uh this is the document that is going to to become the familiar document that parents
140have are it's going to be in our front offices of our schools. Our businesses in our in Tumbwater are going to know about it. Um, it's going to be very fluent and familiar to to be looking at this four-page document for our teachers, our students, and our families. Um, so I'm going to pull Let's see if I can pull that up. Okay. So, share So the four-page plan is um gives a great snapshot of our mission, our promise, and then portrait of a Tom Water graduate. Um so this is the part that's become um going to become most familiar to teachers and students. Um, students are going to be like, well, I'm trying to become a collaborative communi communicator and so this is um the state standard I'm working on in my ELA class or
141I'm becoming a curious and creative innovator. So, I'm taking initiative during the science experiment. Um, this is the kind of language that gets worked into lessons and teaching. Um, and then on the next page, it gives a very clear overview of our four goals. Um, and you might remember that we talked about how the the blue is kind of the early learning goal, and then the orange is the um social emotional, the yellow is our continuous academic growth, and the green is like making sure our kids get to graduation and have success post-secary. And then the third page uh gives an overview of our four pillars. Um and our back page is just kind of like an overview um of our students. How many uh what percentage of our students are in those categories. Message
142from Superintendent Bogatin. Um and it lists all our schools there. Um so let me stop sharing here. Um so we are excited to move forward with implementation. Um I I thought it w it's great that um you know you guys are all becoming school district finance experts. So you understand the situation that we are in and other schools in our state that we as we trans transition into our 2526 school year. Um, this document will help guide our financial decisions, our key initiatives, ensure that we have sust sustainable and equitable funding allocations to be sure that we're meeting the teaching and learning um of students in the Tom Water School District. Um, what you'll see in year 1 implementation is um like at leadership academy um that is five days that we do from August
1436th until the 12th with our principles and our leaders. um the strategic plan will kind of be the framework for um how we jump into the 2526 school year. And then we have Tum Water U which is um two days August 25th and 26th for all staff with lots of breakout sessions. Um and we're designing Tom Water U to be aligned with our strategic plan. um our school improvement plan template will be slightly um tweaked so that um the portions that schools are tracking and the data that they're gathering is aligned with the four goals of our strategic plan. um when we have ad council meetings and principal meetings um we'll be weaving these discussions and these topics into our agenda and then of course um you as a board will get updates at board
144meetings on um different portions of our strategic plan. Um, so I think we're now this is like the the fifth meeting where we've been talking about the the journey of our strategic plan, the work that our community and our teachers um and our parents and our students have put into it and um we are respectfully requesting formal approval of the Tom Water School District strategic plan. Um the board's adoption tonight will mark an essential step toward ensuring the success of all Twater students and our greater educational community. And feel free to ask questions now or if you wanted to ask questions during the discussion section of the vote. Any questions for Megan? Okay. Well, with that, um, I will go ahead and entertain a motion for action. We'll make a mot Oh, go ahead, Joe.
145Thank you. Um, how about if we do it together? No, I'll second it. You can, but I'll let you drive. So, I move that we approve the new strategic plan for the town school district. I second. All right. Any discussion? Okay, hearing none. All those in favor of approving the new strategic plan for the Twater School District, please signify by saying I. I. I. I. I. Any opposed? All right. The strategic plan is approved as presented. Thank you tremendously, Megan and Superintendent Bogatin. To all of you. Okay. Okay, next we are going to move into uh few superintendent reports and we're going to begin um with the resolutions. Uh so I will read the names of all these wonderful things just resolutions 142425 to water high school girls 4 by 200 state champions resolution 152425
146to water high school boys 4 by 100 state champions and resolution 162425 to water high school men's triple jump state champion we'll get the name when we do the resolution. Do you want me Do you want me to read them or are we What's the next step? Would you want to do that? Um, if you want to Yeah, if you want to just kind of briefly run through the the key points and each of them um highlighting the the individual students, that would be great. I can do that. I will also um so you're seeing me um on two different screens because um I heard my audio wasn't very good on the other one. So I'm going to try to to do this with this audio if that looks better. Um so we have I'll
147d the resolution up there. I can make it a little bit larger if folks want to see a little bit. I do want we'll start with the 4x2. Um so I won't read this but I do want to say this is the fourth consecutive state title for the girls 4x2 relay team. Um, Cassidy Hadin, Reese Harford, Ashlin Huana, and a Eva Ava Jones demonstrating determination, grit, and competitive spirit. Our seniors, Ava Jones and Ree Harryford, have won this event at every level, four consecutive years. So, I thought that was important to note in this um that this is not just their first uh rebate championship, but their fourth in a row. I do want to um acknowledge coach Jordan Stray, his compassionate, hardworking coach who relates to each athlete and knows how to bring out
148their best. And of course, we can't do this without acknowledging the incredible parent fan support. Their enthus enthusiasm, encouragement are invaluable through this very busy track sess uh season. Our 4x 100 relay first uh first in state with a time of 41.78. Xavier Bun, Cash Short, David Malroy, and Blake Kirkpatre have demonstrated their determination, grit, and competitive spirit um to win this 4 by uh so I say 4x100 relay. All runner, all four runners competed in individual events earlier in the same day, which also shows just their tremend um to win this relay. Again, acknowledgement to coach Stray. And finally, the we have uh Xavier Bun on his first place state championship for the men's triple jump. His uh first place in the state with a score of 40 feet 45 feet 5 and 1/2
149in. This was his personal best by by I don't know if you needed to catch this um by over one foot. I'm sorry I didn't change these over when uh I'm kind of focused on reading them and I didn't give you the other ones. So, we'll go to the triple jump. Um there it is if you wanted to see. But yes, uh, one, but this was really a big upset um, at the state meet because he qualified going into the state finals as the 16th kind of ranked athlete out of 20. Um, so for him to end up at state champ was just uh, something the school was super excited about and I am guessing he is even more excited. So um, congratulations to both him, the coach and this Tumblr High School track team
150this year. Excellent work. Awesome. So, we'll get those um signed at some point and sent over to the the school for Yes. those wonderful athletes. So, thank you. Um All right. And superintendent report. So, I do have my superintendent report and I'm going to share to a different one here and slideshow. So, again, I want to acknowledge a few things. This this is a a a photo of our retirees that came to our districtwide event at the New Market Skills Center to celebrate our 21 retirees. Our 21 retirees uh contributed years of service to the Tom Water School District. A huge thank you to our HR team for organizing and setting up this event. And then we had um great guests who shared their thoughtful and heartfelt tributes to each retiree. So again, congratulations to
151all of them. Thank you for your years of service to the district. Um you will always have a home here in Twater. This last week, we uh sent out our class of 2025, both the Black Hills High School, uh Twater High School, Cascadia High School, and New Market High School. So congratulations to all of those seniors as they go out uh into um the world of work, to our two-year and four-year colleges, and off to the military. Um, so we are super proud of this group. Um, some great graduations went hitch-free. Um, and so again, thank you for everyone who helped organize those events. Um, the weather cooperated for the most part and uh, we had a a great time celebrating our class of 2025. I'm excited to announce the Brandon um he goes by
152Todd um King so he'll be principal king or assistant principal king has accepted the position of assistant principal at Michael both Michael T. Simmons and Tom Water Hill Elementary July 1st. Todd's an experienced leader with a strong background in K12 education specializing in um student support systems, instructional leadership, and multi-tered systems of support. Todd joins us from the Bethl School District where he's been serving as assistant director of MTSS and behavioral health. He has extensive background in special education and working with students to support emotional and behavioral disabilities. Um he will be a great asset to our schools and so uh we're excited to have Todd King join the Tumbwater family. I'm not sure I think there was quite a few of our board members who had a chance to attend East Olympia's Fiesta. Um,
153so this is an event that's held, I think it's been held now a number of years in a row um for kindergarten through third grade who participate in a year-long Spanish um and ASL classes with teacher Eron Novak on May 29th. This event was held um a little rainy in the morning and it turned out to this is the picture from that evening. Um a beautiful evening where people could sit on the grass and enjoy um this um songs and cultural activities around the area. Um, I want to acknowledge um the Ramirez restaurant. Um, they provide a great uh dinner kind of dinner for all of the attendees. There was over a thousand attendees who came to this event. So, I apologize to the neighborhood for the parking and I think there's just cars parked
154everywhere and on the grass. And so, again, it turned out to be a great event. I somehow missed this event. I think I there's a something else scheduled for that evening. So, I was super excited to be able to attend this. Um, and they were just amazing. each month I think you've seen this year that we've done our employee of the month and so we have April and May here to celebrate and again I just want to acknowledge that these are um acknowledged or uh provided their nominations not by district office but by folks that work directly with them and are um in their schools and so they get a great write up um of their nomination um sometimes it's multiple people who have nominated them making a huge impact for both our students students
155and staff um their exceptional dedication to our student learning to to creating inclusive classrooms and continuing to our schoolwide initiatives. So this month um that for April I want to acknowledge Kylie Harper. She was our certificated employee of the month and uh Debbie Center our office professional. So Debbie at Cascadia High School and Kylie at Michael T. And in May we have Randy Nickel. Uh he was our classified employee of the month. He was our buildings and grounds. Um he our electrician and so uh super excited to to get his award to him this this month. And also did I have them both April? Yeah, I did. Um April, April, May. Um Casey Reeves, also Cascadia High School teacher. So we recognize Casey um as our certificate employee of the month. So congratulations to both
156them um or all four of them um for their service and their great work. Uh, I did give you a little preview of Dave Champions and so I'm going to hope this works. Uh, we'll click play. So, uh, let's give it a whirl. All right. So, we're going to pass pause pause on that. Um, and we'll move on. See if I can get to the end of it. Sorry. And move on from day of champions. But that was awesome. So, one of the things I do want to to recognize, um, last Wednesday was the culmination of a quick girls flag football season that included six regional teams. Each team played four or five games in this quick season that started May 12th. And Black Hills scored uh the championship game by winning the championship game
157by a score of 42 to7. So, Principal Myers was there to support this. Um and again, just like he does with our football team, boys football team, our flag football team, he does push-ups after every score. I think it was like 140ome push-ups that coach, our principal Myers ended up doing in front of a really goodsized cheering crowd. Uh huge thank you to coaches Lauren Furu and Lisa Summers, Tom Spray and Herb Guscott who stepped in to learn this sport alongside their players and they are a direct reflection on the improvement of each player and the success of this team. We look forward to providing further opportunities in the coming year as WIA has officially made flag football a WIA sanctioned sport with a state championship playoff next spring. So once again, congratulations to Black
158Hills High School. I do want to recognize, you know, um I think I might have played a video in the past, but um Twater Hill, they have uh been doing some their MIMA. So, they typically have gone to the Saturday market um or Sunday market in Olympia. This year they did a Tomwater uh kind of mima picnic on the hill up at the high school. So they had a beautiful morning on Sunday, June 1st where director Heather Stoker um play had these awesome magicians and they played a lot of performing some pop tunes to a great crowd and they also had Sweetley's ice cream and Subzero freeze-dried candy and snacks and they were amazing as usual and also received more over $700 in donations for that event. So they were super excited to have that
159event and um I think she looks forward to having it again. So be looking for that next June. come see all those MVMA players playing. So I think that is all my report for today. Um I did want to just note um I'll stop sharing this that as we did our strategic plan. So now that we have that approved really this just begins the work um how do I yeah that this just begins the work of us putting our kind of initiatives the the what are the strategic initiatives and implementation that we'll do that are connected to that. And so we'll be putting a multi-year what are the activities and actions that will be happening in this coming year and what metrics do we expect to be impacted by those. We'll be looking at all
160the metrics but we will be putting that plan together. Um we'll be looking forward to having um our new secondary director and both our elementary secondary and our student learning team will be doing a lot of work this summer and then engaging as we begin the fall to really fine-tune those with our administrators and begin that work. So yeah, we're super excited. Glad you passed that and we will begin kind of kicking that work into high gear here in the coming weeks. All right. Thank you, Superintendent Bogatin. Okay. So, our next um agenda item is a board discussion item related to our board governance handbook. Um just the one section 2.15 on public comment. So, at our last regular meeting, this came up as we were talking about uh policy 1400 and a few others.
161And um Director Beard had asked about this and so um not realizing that she wouldn't be here tonight um we might want to, you know, h have this conversation again. We can certainly talk about it now and what what we're thinking about in terms of the the 30 minute um thing because I I think that that was really the context for it was just some questions about um how do we make sure that we are providing enough time and space for everything that needs to be covered you know during public comment. Um but we do have this protocol of 30 minutes um written down. And so that was really the the point was to talk about is there are there adjustments that we want to make? Is there some language that we could put into
162our protocol that would just make it a little bit easier to be more flexible um in the future. So I don't know. I'm going to kind of turn over to Kevin as well because you you developed that memo. So if you want to talk Yeah. just kind of quickly, you know, one of the things that I just did a quick search and just saw the first um I had heard that Seattle public we I brought this up to my superintendent group and just like what do other districts do and they almost all said that we have limits. So we were not doing anything that's out of the norm. Um I think maybe one of our neighboring kind of does a little bit more extensive and has less limits but for the most part across our
163region and across like our ESD13 they do. And then I was pointed um so um Superintendent H. turned in, our ESD superintendent is connected to that Seattle area um previously. And so he was like, "Hey, take a look. Seattle um does some of the things that we were talking about." And so I just pulled this is not anything I created, it's Seattle public schools, their procedure, and it does mention a bunch of the things. And I just one of the things that I'll just note that if you if you haven't had a chance to look at that in any detail, um is one around, you know, they prioritize students. And so that was an interesting um a little bit of tidbit around if students sign up they they kind of bump to the top of
164the list. Um and again that's just something that we really hadn't talked about in any kind of previously. Um but again some of the same limits and some of the same thing that we had talked about are all the time limit about when do you sign up? All of those things are included in um our biggest school district in the state of Washington. Yeah. And that's that's interesting because um we've you know we also heard just not too long ago um with respect to should there be um should there be a similar kind of priority if we have uh you know somebody from one of the unions that wants to come and and speak and and and trying to figure out how to how to honor that within the roles that we kind of put
165our put ourselves in here. So, um I mean we'll we'll just we you know we'll just say that one of the things that we that we absolutely can do and what we had planned to do if we were to get more than 10 people um signed up was uh to to just you know entertain a motion to extend. Um that's a it sounds like that's a pretty common practice um that we can do. There's nothing outside of the policy that we have or the norms. In fact, I'm pretty sure 1400 does actually address that. Like there's nothing to preclude being able to add time on agenda items. Um, so I don't know. I'm going to kind of turn it over to others and see if anyone has any thoughts that they want to share about
166possible adjustments to this protocol. Yeah, I mean I I' I I'd like to have had Melissa as part of this conversation. So, if we can add this again, um, uh, I I do believe if there's an abundance of need to have additional comments, um, and time, um, that's fine. Like you said, there's nothing in our protocol that doesn't allow us to make a motion to extend public comment time. Um, I have been prepared the last two meetings to ask for a motion to extend, but there's been only I think a combined three and three um the last couple weeks um or the last couple meetings. So, uh it hasn't been necessary. Um, nothing that we have done I I think it's also worth noting that nothing that we have done or discussed with any of
167this policy has done anything to hinder people from signing up. We are literally just having less people sign up the last couple weeks. Um what we talked about the last meeting was uh this this new um governance on on public comment about uh having agenda items go to the top of the list. You can still sign up for non-aggenda items. Correct. Yeah, that's correct. And if there's not more than 10 people, then theoretically you would be able to talk about whatever you want to talk about. Yeah, I think you saw that play itself out just even today, right? That there there wasn't a direct link to an agenda item. So, I just I just wanted to say that out loud. That's all. Any other thoughts? Yeah. So, I do like the idea of uh making
168it formalized somewhat that we can have a motion to extend the uh comment period. Um I think that's important to do. And um then I also think it's important I I think we've started to do this now too that again if a person doesn't get in on the comment period we do greatly encourage people to send the board emails you know to communicate with us via that too. Um and I don't know if we need to make time whereby we might allow to comment on stuff we received an email or a report or something on that. I don't know what the uh steps might be or the consideration of that might be but that might be something to to look at too just so people if they don't get in the 10 or even after
169a continued motion to have greater time um that there's some kind of a more organized way whereby people's viewpoints can be uh seen by by us. Director Taylor or any uh yeah, sorry about that. Um just want to make sure everybody spoke. Um so we've already the the ability to make a motion and extend public comment has been there for the entire time. We don't need to formalize that. That's a mechanism that's available no matter what. Um we've informally done that some of the meetings previously as well too. People weren't ready or were not there. We've gone over the 30 minutes. We've allowed people to go past their time. we've we've extended that period informally at least on one occasion. Um so I I think we're already doing that to a degree. I like the
170idea of hearing about the action items first and and then everything else at a separate point in time in the meeting. Uh if there's enough time in the very beginning, we knock it all out. And that's been the case for the last couple months now with just two today and two or three last time. I can't remember. Um so I again I think Ty said it too. I'd like to get Melissa's input on it. She's the one that wanted to discuss this. I thought we were going to discuss this previously as well, too, but we might have got sidetracked in there for a while. A few months ago, we're supposed to do this maybe, but um yeah, I I think it's worth discussing. Again, we've kind of summed it up that any motion can be
171made during the meeting and and we have quite a bit of flexibility to do that if we if we choose to. So, just my input. Okay. Um well yeah I think the the big the big concern and and I will acknowledge because I I tend to I tend to want to stick very tight to the rules. This is just the way I am been this way for all my life. um just making sure that we are being open and transparent about you know what it is that we're doing and because we have this other process that we can do if we get into a meeting and um we do have more than 10 people that are had signed up and I and I think that that was part of what Melissa was concerned about was
172because we don't know how many people we're going to have until right before the meeting and if we weren't clear on that. So, it sounds like we're clear on our abilities to do all of that. And so, we can we can bring this back and and talk about it at our next um regular meeting um when Melissa's here to join us. So, Oh, go ahead. I I forgot one point. I I I did like the uh I would like to I believe the Seattle one has this um but to uh so we can better prepare Derby as you mention it. We do day of I think the Seattle one says the day before. So, maybe doing the day before maybe potentially trying that if we're seeing too many people missing that. Um I would expect
173we would the first meeting or two for sure and people generally know that it's noon or you know the day of if we did it the day before. We might have to some leniency there or some grace potentially but I did like that day before it gives a little better preparation time mostly as you mentioned too. We need to manage our time in these meetings and you know we're not doing a spectacular job tonight but I think we've had some great discussions for sure um that were needed. So I I'll go ahead and mute now. Oh go ahead Ty. Uh I I know we spoke about um about some of the the new I don't want to call them rules I guess but just the guidelines as far as public comment goes. Uh we talked
174about that a couple months back. You referenced that at the last meeting uh Darby uh about doing that in a work session. Um Kevin, can you just confirm kind of for us uh who put that together the the actual documents that were that we're going off of? I I'm I'm not sure you're referencing the the protocols or the Yeah, the new protocols for the um public comment where we're doing agenda items first and stuff. Oh, who who actually Well, I think we began um so this began a conversation I don't exactly know. It was sometime earlier this year and it was um I know director Beard um at the time she's president had started having conversations and I think part of this was around when we were starting to get a longer list and some
175public comment around and wanting to make sure and I think we were starting to get I think I was sharing with her some frustrations that I was hearing from you know just through emails around um frustrations about not getting to be able to sign up for public comment and there was a few of those that were directly wanting to speak on action that the board is taking and I I think again that so that was what prompted um some of those conversations and some desire by uh director beard, president beard at the time to start like kind of putting together what are some ideas and so I think I put together maybe that I was shared is um just some ideas that we had and that was ultimately shared with the whole board. So when
176we had that work session um that brought that brought us together for this original discussion it was president Beard and yourself had put together the guidelines. Is that correct? Yeah, I might have shared it with some other board members at the time. I don't recall. It wasn't anything really official that I think, you know, again, because once we, you know, kind of get some of those ideas for to have more of the board weigh in on it, it really needs to be on an agenda. We don't do that outside. So, yeah, there there I might have shared it um with a couple on a one-on-one basis. So, um some board members and director Kikin might have been one of those, you know, we kind of maybe talked about it, but the the whole board seeing
177that was um at that that work session Okay, thank you. All right. Well, I think we are ready to uh wrap things up. So, we'll go ahead and finish up with board comments. Um, anybody like to jump in and go first? Trying to keep it to two minutes. We can. So, I can start. keep it keep it really brief. I guess one thing about this it's to me it's kind of monumental that as I understand this was the last day of school and our meeting tonight really brought to kind of a climax a lot of these things that we've been working on all year and I think I want to thank so many of the staff and the directors the assistant directors um assistant superintendent the different staff people and for all their hard work
178this year. It's amazing how much um we've come including the highly capable program, getting that updated, the curriculum for uh English language arts, the special services, how much progress we've made there. Um the financial report, although the news isn't good, um it is good that we have a darn good handle on it now. um our budget and stuff. Um the also on the strategic plan, I think that is something where it's it's an optimistic type approach um that it's a good way to end our school year and to get ready for the next five years. All right, next. Um yeah, thanks for you uh wow all our staff uh students, parents, what a great year. It's been uh really great for sure. Well, thank you all. Enjoy your summers. Um it's a busy time of
179the year for for district staff as well as building staff, board members, you know, uh attending graduations, awards ceremonies, elementary walks, choir and orchestra performances. It's been fabulous being able to be a part of those events. uh specifically to today's meeting, I want to call out the OSPI program staff. What a great job of um getting that from OSPI and and that we are in full compliance. So, that's great to hear. Thank you again. Um and then a shout out to the uh Black Hills girls football team. Very excited to well, very excited for what they've accomplished. And then also I'm very excited to see what happens next year when there's a state championship and we'll be uh eagerly following the Black Hills girls to see how they do in that. Um and then the
180uh the Tomwater track team folks uh that triple jump Xavier Bun um they called it out, but if you're 16th out of 20 and you come into the state championship and win it, that's that's a huge huge accomplishment. It needs to be recognized. Um what a day I imagine not only for Xavier but his teammates and his parents and his coaches as well. So they something to be very proud of. Um also the 4x1 uh relay team for the boys from Tomwater. Um I will be honest I I knew I I know I knew every one of the 4x100 meter relay team members that held the school record previously and I will it stood for over 30 years and I didn't think it would ever be broken. So, congratulations to that 4x1 uh meter relay
181team. I I know dang well they had that record in their sights and they broke it. So, again, congratulations. And then the uh the girls 4x200 relay team from Tom Water. What an absolute accomplishment. Four-time state champions are are extremely rare. Um to be able to call yourself a four-time state champion is truly an accomplishment. um they've done it with different teammates. Um they have getting great coaches and a great staff there as well too. So congratulations to those girls and what they've done. Uh two quick points uh that I want to also add about was uh uh community partners that I've had conversations with uh over the last couple weeks. Uh, one of those was a uh, facilities mitigation issue that Kevin and Ben and district office staff, Brian Hinkle, Mel Murray, uh, and
182Nikki Nelson also is, uh, part of this to troubleshoot, come up with an idea around, um, utilizing the facilities at Black Hills High School for our community partners of TCFL and the Black Hills Wolves as well as the Black Hills football program. There are a number of capital projects going on at Black Hills High School and the the initial thought was that um some of our community partners would be impacted by that facility use. And I just want to call out the great work the district team did and coming up with a resolution around that, working with our contractors, working with building staff uh to come up with a solution for these great community partners. And so um without impacting our local levy dollars at work, we're we're going to we're going to work around
183that. Um and I think the next step now is communicating with those partners so that we can be highly successful in that. And then the other community partner I wanted to call out that I've had some interactions with is the Tom Police Department and specifically Lieutenant Jen Cole. Jen's in charge of the SRO program in our district and she called to talk to me about the SRO program and uh provided some some some good news that they are eager to renew this program and they would like to get on this as soon as possible and their city council has also indicated that they are eager to renew this SRO contract and this partnership. So, we'll be uh looking at this and probably bringing back some information and data at the next board meeting so that
184we can give folks a chance to review this what I feel is the absolute best program in the entire state around school resource officers and then of course work to get that contract renewed here uh in the next few months. So, thank you everyone. You want to go next? Sure. Um, just to kind of echo what uh Jill said, I just wanted to thank uh Megan and and really everyone that was involved in all those different committees for the strategic plan. Um, so many hours and so much work went into all that. Um, truly a team effort and some great leadership putting that all together. Um, great job, great effort. Thank everyone for all of that. Um, also thank you to all the presenters and the public speakers tonight. I always make a point of
185of trying to tell them that it takes a lot of guts to to do that and uh um to get out and and say their piece and move on and uh appreciate that. Um uh I took in my first Tumblr School District graduation in 20 years uh this last week. I went to the Black Hills High School graduation. um sat right on the stage with my face on the screen constantly because I sat right behind the presenters. So that was a little bit too much spotlight for me. But um it was a great ceremony. Some very talented people um that that uh sang and and uh uh just really really good uh production they put together over there for their graduation. Very impressive. I did not get to go to the other graduations. I was
186out of town or it was my son's birthday and I had 15 uh 10-year-old and under kids at my house and couldn't leave my wife at home with all of that. Um I did go to the East Olympia um fiesta. Uh like um Superintendent Bogen said it was it's it's a huge deal. Um easily a thousand people there. um 330 kids I think in grades one through three performing. Um really a cool program to be able to teach kids um Spanish at the elementary school level like that. Um not not all kids in our own district get that. So it's really cool that they that they get that there. So um two of my kids were involved in that. So really cool to see all that. Um and how much community comes together at that
187event. Um, yeah. I guess the only other thing I have is trying to piggyback on the SRO thing. Um, I got to meet at the Black Hills graduation, uh, SRO officer Roman, um, a great guy, kind of come full circle. Apparently, my dad was one of his teachers, uh, in Tomar School District 30 years ago, um, roughly. and uh he is moving on uh from being an SRO um which is I I would say a loss to our our schools because he's done such an amazing job in that role. Um but it was really cool to connect with him and talk to him a little bit and uh just wanted to thank him for his service so many years um working in our school district. Very cool. Um uh and wish him luck on on
188whatever he's doing now or uh whether he's patrolling or retiring. I'm not exactly sure. I just know that his role as an SRO is is over at this point. So, um yeah, anyway, that's all I got to you Darby. All right, thank you. Um so, lots of piggybacking on what others have shared. Um so, I uh you know, again, big big shout out to the Black Hills girls flag football. I was actually able to get to one of the games at at Tumblr High School. Um it was it was fascinating. I had no idea, you know, the rules and the size of the field and kind of how everything works. And so that was that was really exciting to see. And I know that was a really big deal for um for girls flag football
189to get approved as a WIA activity uh next year. So that's um that's really exciting and I look forward to that. Um I went to the state track uh championship u meet up at Mount Tacoma. It was really, really incredible. It's like the state wrestling meet where you get to see all, you know, 4A, well, sorry, not all. They did split it up into, you know, like 2A, 3A, 4A, and then I think maybe the 1A and areas were different spots. But, um, I went on, so that was during the full meet, but I went on Saturday, which was all of the championship races. Um, so it was it was really, really something. So, I got to see um the relay teams. I didn't see um the the triple jump. Um but lots of lots
190of events and you know Tom Water High School just doing an incredible job and once again a huge congratulations to them for um all of their hard work. Um and so finally I I also want to you know send kudos out to all of the district team members and everyone who participated in the strategic planning process. Um but you know first and foremost or more than anyone I really do want to give a huge shout out to Superintendent Bogatin. Um so this the strategic plan is one of the superintendants goals and so I you know been doing this for several years now and one of the things that's really challenging about um being a school board member is it's very very very part-time. So, you only really get involved in board meetings and you know,
191you you come to board meetings and you talk about things and it's you try to make plans, but then when you can't follow up on anything and get back into that conversation until like a month later, it just it makes it really hard to get things accomplished. And I definitely saw that being a big big struggle the first few years that I was on the board. um just trying to get some momentum and movement and some of that came along with just overall accountability for um strategic planning and uh leadership coming from the you know the superintendent and so it was um this was a really big deal. This was rolled into not just the superintendent's goals but into our board goals as well. Um, if you kind of recall when we adopted the student
192learning goals, ultimately it was and what we our expectation is the strategic plan that addresses all of them. And so to see it go all the way through to uh fruition to get it to this place is huge. Um, I wouldn't I don't know if I'll say that was the easiest part, but the real work obviously will begin next with the implementation. So, um, once again, great job and thank you to, uh, to you and your entire team for all of that tremendous work. All right, with no other business coming before the board, we are going to adjourn at 8:48 p.m. Thank you all.