001There's the Guess it's on the screen, huh? Yep. Okie dokie. What's that? I can be ready. Good. I would like to call the meeting to order and acknowledge that the Tom Motor School District sits on the ancestral lands of the Nquali, Squaxan Island, and Chahalis people. I thank these caretakers of the land who have lived on and continue to live on the land since time at memorial. Please rise as I lead us in the flag salute. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Superintendent Bogodan, have there been any changes or additions to the agenda since it was published? There has been one change to the agenda. We did we received a
002resation from director beard for her role as president. So, we have added a board president election right before public comment. Okay. I have a point of order. Go ahead. Uh at the last meeting we said that we were going to move the non-discrimination policy 3210 to this meeting and I don't see it on the agenda. Why wasn't it put on this agenda? So at the last meeting uh policy 3210 non-discrimination was moved to the next meeting which is this is the next meeting and I'm asking why it's not on this agenda. There was a request to remove the condition request by staff by leadership. Okay. Thank you. Is there a motion for the updated agenda? We approve the updated agenda. Second. All those in favor say I. I. All those opposed. All right. The agenda
003is approved as presented by Superintendent Bogan. Thank you. We'll now move on to the meeting minutes review. The minutes from the February 27th, March 12th, and April 10th meetings have been distributed to the board. Are there any changes or corrections? All those in favor of approving the minutes as presented say I. I. All those opposed. The minutes are approved as presented. We will now move on to the consent agenda. The items on the consent agenda provided to the board. Are there any questions or discussions about these items? All those in favor of approving the consent agenda as presented say I. I. I. All those opposed. All right. The consent agenda is approved as presented. Okay. Now we will move uh now we will elect a new board president to serve until the annual organizational meeting
004in December of 2025 for policy 1210. I will now accept nominations for the role of board president. I nominate Darby. I second. Okay. I accept the nomination of director Darby Kikinan. Are there any other nominations? Any other nominations? Last call. Any nominations? Thank you. Superintendent Bogen will now call for a roll call vote. Peter. Hi. Director. Hi. Director Ke. Hi. Vice President Taylor I. Director Adams. Hi. The motion has passed and director Darby Kikin will serve as the role of board president until December 2022. [Applause] All right. We will now move on to public comment per R RCW42.30.240 GP policy 1400 and 1430 and board governance protocol.15. Public comment reminder before we begin I'd like to remind members of the public that if you wish to have addressed the board during public comment portion of
005this meeting you would have needed to fill out the public comment form available on the district website by 12 p.m. today. If you miss this opportunity, you are 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 website. Becky, did you receive submissions? I did. I think so. Is that good? Good one. Okay. Hello, I'm Heather Dover, second grade teacher at MTS. I'm here tonight because I'm frustrated that during one of the largest staff reductions that Tom Water has seen since I started teaching here 12 years ago, we are being distracted by the latest resolution passed. It is my understanding that it was you, Director Taylor, that decided to bring forward the resolution for approval on February 27th. At the
006following special session, you stated that this resolution has nothing to do with any laws, presidential executive orders, or JB games. Though at the same meeting, it was stated by director Adams that the board was in a tough spot because of the executive order. The timing of your choice to bring it forward is suspiciously coincidental considering it corresponds with complaints from parents and a high level of media attention. You state that the current WIAA policy that allows for an estimated five athletes statewide to compete is unfair and unsafe despite a lack of research or evidence to support those claims. I tried incredibly hard to find evidence that supports your claim that high school students are in danger when competing against trans athletes, but the information I found was sparse and only included two incidents nationwide. Since
007you seem willing and compelled to take a stance for student safety, I look forward to seeing how you handle the improper staffing allocations for next year that will increase safety issues for many of our youngest and most vulnerable students. Since you're passionate about safety for student athletes, I would believe that you and the other members of the board would be driven to do something about the actual safety issues that we face in our district with recent and provable data that show where and when our kids and staff members are getting hurt during instructional time. At the time of the March board meeting at MTS alone, there had been 32 employee incident reports filed this year for those who have been bit, hit, kicked, spit on, or pushed by students. The number continues to grow daily.
008Just today, one of our guest um staff members had a lunch tray thrown at them. It isn't just our staff members. We've had 131 write-ups for student behavior this year that are coded as physical aggression. Of those, 67 were written for a total of four kindergarten students. Each of those students has been suspended at least one time for being physically unsafe and causing classroom disruptions. You may be wondering what the big deal is because they're five and six, but keep in mind the kids they're traumatizing are also five and six. Imagine if it was your own kid. Teachers are getting things thrown at them, headbutted, and bitten on the daily. Our children who witness these incidents are reenacting them in their play, pretending to be the unsafe child, while the other radios for help for
009a teacher requested break for the student that's upset. These are what our kids are playing at school. This is not normal. They should not know how we have to radio for help. Their introduction to school has been terrifying, not fun, like it should be when you're five and six years old. Children are walking around classrooms on eggshells, terrified to say or do the wrong thing that might set off a classmate. Your staffing allocation for next year puts these students who provably need additional support daily into two and a half classes from the three they presently filled. This decision increases the risk of student and staff safety. And I sincerely look forward to seeing how you choose to rectify this decision in order to protect all students and not just the student athletes in our district.
010Yeah. Hi, I'm My name's Colette Hudson. Um, as a taxpayer and Tom Water alumni, I decided to speak to express deep concern and disappointment regarding the recent actions and inactions of this school board. There appears to be a troubling lack of transparency, accountability, and courage in how critical matters are being handled, particularly when it comes to the engagement with concerned students, staff, and community members. Your unwillingness to directly and respectfully face protesters speaks volumes. Avoiding dialogue with those raising valid concerns is not leadership. It is cowardice. It undermines trust and conveys the disregard for the voices you were elected to represent. Let us not forget that this district is currently in a financial crisis because of your guidance and decisions, putting many student programs and teachers at risk. You have we have seen time and
011time again unprofessional conduct both in person and online. A complete sign of disrespect. I'm asking plainly, what are your intentions? What is your agenda? What philosophies are guiding your decisions? And how do you justify making choices that appear to ignore the perspectives, needs, and well-being of the key stakeholders in our district? These questions go to all schoolboard members because it is you who single-handedly are pushing your own agendas instead of acting on behalf of the well-being of all the students and staff. And you have made a mockery of the Tom Water School District. If that is your goal, congratulations. you did it. Furthermore, what concrete efforts are being made to address and correct the instances of students and staff slandering that have occurred under your leadership? What is being done to ensure Tom Water School
012District does not continue to be viewed as an environment where such behavior is tolerated and silently endorsed? The community deserves more than silence, avoidance, and outlandish backstabbing and throwing individuals under the bus that we have witnessed. These behaviors are not only unprofessional, they are deeply damaging to the integrity of this district and the trust of those you serve. We deserve clarity, responsibility, and meaningful action. What happened to the integrity and courage it takes to be in the role of a school board member and what happened to having pride in the Tom Water School District? Because honestly, the actions of this school board have made this district an embarrassment and things need to change. The positions of the schoolboard members should be to highlight and uplift the students and staff and try to make the district
013a success for all stakeholders. I think as elections come up, I hope people consider those things. On a side note, I would like to know what money and funding is paying for the security guard out there because he is getting paid. And as a taxpayer, I'm hoping it's not the school district's money because you are claiming that there is no funding for teachers, no funding for student programs, and things are getting cut. And that's not okay. And if it's coming out of the district's budget, shame on you. Thank you. Um, good evening. For the record, my name is Julie Watts and I'm a parent of a student in the Tom Water School District at AG Black Hills High School. Um, a lot of folks have been speaking tonight about the resolution uh that uh would
014ban trans students from playing in in sports that you passed to direct our uh school school staff to support. um as you know that that resolution if it were put into place violates our state's non-discrimination laws. Um and that is very concerning to me and for whatever reason you decided to pass that resolution. I'm here tonight because I want to talk about the impact on families in the district of your passing that resolution. As a parent of a non-binary student who uh goes to school in this district, uh I felt less safe putting my kid on the school bus the next day because my own school board had indicated that they don't support our state's non-discrimination laws or the genderinclusive schools policy of OSPI or our own school district policies or the words that are
015in the student handbook. That was deeply concerning to me and it made me feel less safe putting my kid on the bus the next day. My student, my kid is non-binary. My kid has experienced bullying, isolation, and exclusion in Tumbwater schools. I am looking to you to partner with me to disrupt bullying, exclusion, and isolation in our schools. not sanction it and license it by directing our our school board, our our our our school staff to support policies that violate our state's non-discrimination laws. In describing your reasons for passing that resolution, many of you spoke to your own fears of being called names or being bullied. Some of you said that this is an impossible paradox. Some of you said that this policy has us between a rock and a hard place. But none of
016that is true. When reasonable adults come together, we can work to make sure that our schools are safe and our place of belonging for all of our students. We can come to be together. We can cooperate and we can work to make sure that our students feel safe and feel like they belong in our district. So, I'm going to ask you please repeal that resolution. The WIAA has that resolution has already failed before the WIAA. The WIAA already recognizes that it violates state law and that it would be unconstitutional to implement. So, give us the community some sense of healing and please repeal that resolution. Thank you. It's okay. I move it closer. Oh, okay. You can hear me? Okay. Uh, good evening. Uh, my name is Jeff Lawyer and I'd like to talk about
017the transgirl athlete issue. I believe that folks on both sides of the issue have valid reasons for being fearful. I'm here to do what I can to encourage dialogue that addresses those fears. I have granddaughters who will be directly affected by this issue. I'm also a former P Flag Pre P Flag Olympia president and a Pizza Clash co-founder. I'm not representing any organization tonight, just me. More than 20 years ago, I had a transgender mixed doubles tennis partner in USA leagues. Amy loved competing as a woman, with women, and against women. Competing in men's stubbles would have been humiliating for her. I'm a staunch advocate of trans rights, but I haven't always been. After our daughter came out, I could relatively quickly champion LGBT rights, but I didn't understand gender diversity. It was such a
018foreign concept to me until a panel of trans folks spoke at a P flag meeting. Then I started getting it. It wasn't because I was unkind or unintelligent. And I think I'm in good company. This is my personal copy of Martin Luther King Jr.'s autobiography. If you read what Martin Luther King Jr. said about gays, you may be dismayed. And I'm sure he'd initially have reservations about trans people. But he was certainly not unkind or unintelligent. I don't think the people on this board are either. But you're introducing a very foreign concept to some of them. It's like telling them the earth is round when everything they've seen or been taught says otherwise. And you're asking them to send the children they're responsible for on a ship over the edge. They are trying to protect
019their those children. I would encourage you to approach them like Martin Luther King Jr. would angry at injustice but without hate. And I would encourage you to approach them as if you were talking to Martin Luther King Jr. passionately but without hate. I'll be outside with homemade cookies if anyone wants to talk about how we go forward to make our community as safe and supportive as it can be for all of our children. Thank you for your time. Okay. Good evening, members of the board. My name is Dana Baston and I'm a 16-year veteran educator with every one of those years spent in kindergarten through 2 grade. I currently teach at Michael T where my own children also attend and receive services. I am speaking to you tonight not just as a teacher or a
020parent, but also as someone who is deeply committed to the success and safety of our students and staff. I am incredibly disappointed to see that the district is still planning to move forward with a one-two split next school year. And even more frustrating is that there has been no clear communication from the board or the district about how you plan to ensure the safety of the students or the staff involved. I'm hearing from you and from the superintendent that student safety is of the utmost importance, but what are your action steps? How exactly do you plan to achieve this goal? Have you been in our buildings? Have you talked to our PAR educators or our teachers? because from where I'm standing, it doesn't look like you have answers. And worse, it doesn't feel like you
021really are trying to find them. Let me tell you what's happening on the ground. In kindergarten this year, we've had students say, "I'm going to build a gun and kill everyone in here." Others have looked at their peers in the eye and had said, "I want to punch you." We have students tell classmates, "You're stupid. I hate you. And I want to kill you." These students are having to dodge scissors being thrown across the classroom as well as many other objects. They are witnessing their work classroom posters and their teachers materials being destroyed. And our youngest learners, many of them are in their very first year of school and they're telling us they are scared. This should be a year full of discovery, play, and a love of learning. And instead, it's a year marked
022with fear and survival. Our admin are having to push in to provide one-on-one support for our most outofc control behaviors. Staff are being hit, kicked, punched, scratched, and spit on. And this was just with a single grade. In October, we had to hold an article 2 meeting just to beg for more support for our current kindergarten cohort. And now you want to take that reality and add the complexity of a split grade class without a clear, detailed plan. Let me remind you, a teacher's working environment is a student's learning environment. Take that into consideration when you assume your staff can continue to survive year after year of budget cuts, increased demands, and dwindling support. Right now, our students are learning what it's like to be an abusive relationship. They walk on eggshells every day to
023ensure that they will not set off their peers. That's an environment we're asking 5-year-olds to learn on. So tell me how an environment like that is going to help you meet your school board goal of 90% of students passing the SBA. It's not My name is Carrie Hoon and I'm a parent of a student in Tom Motor School District. The board needs to realign its actions here with our state's law and with a core belief that our children are being taught every day in our schools by our awesome teachers that we all belong. I attended the February 27th board meeting. It was my first when you heard public comments all opposed to the WIAA policy amendments and yet a majority of you voted in favor of them. I looked at the district's records to understand
024were you responding to researcher data? No. Had you received write written communications from Tumbwater parents or students asking you for the amendments? No. that would indicate that while you later uh raised concerns about things like uh safety or competitive advantage that in fact those were not your the basis for your decision. You were bing uh voting based on your own limited experiences and your personal prejudices. In doing so, the board has put our district in great legal risk because our state has already decided what its core belief is in this regard. RCW28A642010, which I'm assuming you know because probably your lawyer told you about it, says that discrimination in Washington's public schools on the basis of gender expression or identity is prohibited. In March, the state attorney general's office wrote to the WIA stating it
025violates state law to prohibit trans students from participating in girls sports. And ultimately, fortunately, the WIAA didn't actually pass those amendments. Good for us because it would have put us in violation of state law. Trans students have the legal right to be free from discrimination whether that's in the sports that they play, the bathrooms that they use, the gyms that they change in, or the classroom classrooms that they learn in. So, here we are two months later with a board engaged in the exact divisiveness that your risk manager warned you about. And you're moving meetings at the last minute, bringing in security for folks who are remote. There's four deputies on the other side of the room from Thirstston County Sheriff's Office calling police on young people. Our board should be helping students feel like
026they belong and are safe. You should rescend your support for these amendments and oppose any action that would put the district in violation of state law. So, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to keep showing up wherever you hold these meetings. And I'll be supporting board members and candidates who are willing to do the same. Thank you. Hello, my name is Ian or Mr. Mac. Um, I'm a special education teacher with the Tom Water School District and I actually went to school right here at Little Rock Elementary. Then I went to Bush Middle School, Tom Water High School. I love this community. I love Tomwater and I love teaching here. deeply love teaching here. It was also difficult to come back. Um, when I was at Bush Middle School, I had my first
027crush and that crush happened to be on a boy instead of a girl. I told my best friend at the time about it who told another person who told another person who told another person like many people know happens in middle school. And I started to get bullied and harassed. I would get pushed up against lockers and called homophobic slurs. At that point, I decided I am straight and I silenced myself. I am now older and I will not be silenced. You may disagree with me, but I am a voice of Tom Water. Um, when you voted on the policy that excluded trans athletes, it was a lot more than athletics. Um, it made a group of people who is very oppressed and targeted feel less welcome and less accepted. This is a group of
028people where more than half um are murdered or commit suicide. Um I truly believe that these kids today should not feel scared like I felt in middle school. And I also feel like no member of this board should have to feel scared or intimidated or harassed like how I felt. Which is why the main purpose of this is to encourage people to protest peacefully, to respect everyone in this room, including people that disagree with you, to sign petitions, to vote, to participate in the democratic process, because it is really important to keep everyone safe. And I want you all to feel safe just like I want trans kids to feel. And just like I wish I could have felt in middle school. So in conclusion, Tumbwater needs to grow and evolve, but we need to
029do it through peace and we need to do it through empathy and maybe having coffee with someone you disagree with. Thank you. It's Hello, my name is Gavin Pittz. Um, every day I am angered, sickened, and appalled by the bills I'm seeing passed in my own country, as well as the lack of empathy I see come from many. Today, I've been disproved by some, and I appreciate the support I'm seeing coming from our community here. As the push for restricting legislation continues and many bills are passed that help to strip trans people of their rights and dehumanize them, intolerance breeds and hate begins to boil as gender identity and sexuality based crimes continue to rise. As this trend continues, it is people like you and our teachers that are setting the mindset for our children
030and the future. TXHB 3399 is set to be enacted September 1st. This bill bans sterilization surgeries as well as gender reassignment procedures and HRT. TXHB3817 takes effect the same day and will make it a felony to make a and I quote false or misleading verbal or written statement to a government agency or employer regarding one's biological sex. These bills may sound extreme and they may sound like they don't apply here. However, all of these bills started in one place this year in Texas. TXHB1708 was pre-introduced in 2024 and is set to be enacted September 1st. It requires schools to out trans students. TXHB2339 states that colleges cannot even teach about transitioning. TXSB86 forces outing trans kids as well as requiring parental permission to join clubs with, and I quote, themes of sexuality, gender, or gender
031identity. And that's just a handful of 80 LGBT uh anti-LGBTQ bills that have been passed by Texas according to the ACLU track to track record. And these types of bills are starting to pass in Washington as well. They have been brought up multiple times. Luckily for my state, it is supposed to be a safe state for trans people and they have been shut down for the most part. These small bills have been shown to escalate to larger ones. All of these bills started in one place and that is the school systems. Jill Adams, you stated that schools must follow executive orders as we are a part of the US. This argument is inextually intellectually dishonest and made in the hope that the public was too ignorant to understand how executive orders work. You may have
032abstained, but your words still hold weight. So I ask schools are not followed to follow executive orders. I ask, would you have made the same argument in 1933 Germany when the restoration of civil service act was introduced? Thank you. My name is Susan Fabian. I'm the parent of two girls attending Tumbwater Schools and I myself was a student athlete very many years ago. Um, I am glad to see that in contrast with our own school board's vote, the WIAA continues to support equal access for trans girls in sports. In the debate about whether trans girls should be able to participate in girls sports, there's often a lot of focus on their supposed competitive advantage. I believe that even engaging in this argument is completely irrelevant in our context. Here we're talking about middle and high
033school sports, not the Olympics or the WNBA. According to the NCAA, only 6.5% of girls who participate in high school sports go on to compete at the collegiate level. And of course, even fewer become professional athletes. So, if almost all the girls who participate in middle and high school sports do not continue in competitive athletics, what is the point of girls sports? To answer this question, I consulted the website of the National Federation of High School Associations, which advocates for high school sports. They list several benefits of high school sports. Better educational outcomes, enhanced school engagement and sense of belonging, positive youth development and life skills, healthier behaviors, post high school positive results, and developing better citizens. On this list, the point of sports, I do not see anything that would be lost with transgirl
034participation on girls sports teams. On the other hand, if we exclude trans girls from those teams, we deprive them of all of those important benefits, including my favorite one from the list, which is a sense of belonging. I would like to thank director Beard for her clear arguments in favor of girls partic trans girls participating alongside their peers. I am very proud to have voted for you. I was however deeply disappointed that another board member who promised in the voters's guide to support educational equity voted against equity for trans girls. I voted for this member based on their promises, including their commitment in the guide to advocate for historically marginalized populations. And yet, they fell far short on those promises. I'm here tonight because I believe in this issue and also because I know that
035someday my girls will look back on this difficult time in our history. And when I do when they do, I want them to look on me with pride that I stood on the right side of history. I hope that the board will also consider how today's students, your own children, and your grandchildren will reflect on your choices here and that in the future, you do all that you can to make them proud. Thank you. I'm being joined by Christina Delh. Hello, I'm Heather Kulie, PSC Union President. This is Christina Dworth, TOPA president. PSC TOPA, TEA, and TAP leaders have come together recently to discuss Twater School District's decision to hire a new administrative position for assistant supervisor of safety and transportation. and we share some concerns. To begin, Superintendent Kevin Bogatin sent an email to
036all staff on October 11th regarding the district's current financial statement. In that email, he stated, "As of August 31st, our general fund cash balance was 5.44 million, down from 9.34 million at the same time last year. We expect the September balance to be the lowest in at least 5 years. These figures mean we won't meet the school board's minimum fund balance policy. To address this, we will be implementing the following measures: budget free, budget review, hiring freeze, no overtime or extra time unless pre-approved, no new out of district travel, and new guidelines on food and beverage purchases. Since Mr. Bogatin's October 11th email, TSD submitted two reduction in education program plans. one at the January 23rd schoolboard meeting requesting board approval to cut 27 positions including assistant supervisor transportation and safety and security manager and
037another at the February 13th board meeting stating the need to cut 36 additional positions and 91.7 PAR educator hours. At the January 23rd school board meeting, the school board also authorized a TSD to draft a $4 million interfund loan from capital projects to cover payroll and other expenses. On February 6th, Assistant Superintendent Ben Raric sent an email to union leaders stating for January before leveraging the interfund loan, the cash balance in the general fund is negative $176,852. On April 10th, Mr. Raric sent an email to union leaders stating monthend results reflect a cash balance of 2.06 million. Remember, of course, that is propped up by a $3.6 million loan from the capital fund. So, the true adjusted balance, if you will, is minus 1.53 million. The very next day, the district sent out a new
038job posting for assistant supervisor of safety and transportation with a starting salary of $104,229. This new position appears to be a combination of two positions which the school board voted to cut at the February 27th meeting. This leads union letter leaders to several concerns. Where is the money coming from to cover this new position? What happened to the hiring freeze that Mr. Bogatin mentioned in October? How can Twater School District justify adding a new administrative position with a cost of greater than 104,000 while telling district staff that it's necessary to cut 50 plus non-admin positions due to a budget crisis that necessitates taking an interfund loan to cover payroll. The district operated without a transportation assistant supervisor until the 2018-19 school year. According to OSPI, in the fall of 201718, the year before, Tumbwater had
03956 contracted drivers and buses transported 5,668 students. In the fall of this year, Twater had 46 contracted drivers and transported 4,873 students. That's 10 fewer drivers and 795 fewer students. Carry on. Good evening. I am Gabriel Glenn. I am a st I am I am a student at Twater School District. Um I have come up here to continue to fight for the fresh program. But before I continue, huh? Oh speak. Before I continue, I would like to mention how as a student, I am disappointed that I am up here speaking to you guys about your decisions, actions, and how you go about these actions. But I don't want to waste any time on that. Um, to the people in the audience, please stand if you are here in protest of the board's decisions. No. Okay.
040Or raise. Okay. In my hand, there are letters from the people who are more familiar with our program. Some of these letters are from students who have whose voices have been ignored. Fresh is a farming program that helps students get back on track from graduation while also teaching us civics, science, and the importance of agriculture. At your meeting on February 13th, you discovered you discussed your expectations and how your graduates would have the support they need to graduate. Not only does taking away fresh take away that support, but also takes away a safe environment from them as well. In those letters, you will hear of students who have struggled with many issues that you guys have turned a blind eye to. Some of these issues are racism, bullying, trauma, and so many other things. We
041students may not know the full thought of your decisions, but we have realized that you have refused to be transparent, as you guys like to say, about your plans with for the budget issues. We are also aware that you guys aren't planning on communicating since you have made every decision so far last minute and behind the behind closed doors. For the past few months, we students have been trying to ask you ask you guys what we can do to help keep our program, and you have not been working with us very clearly. We continue to lack any answers to the questions that are continuously asked. The point of public comment is so people can voice their opinions, concerns, and help you guys decisions. I genuinely hope that these letters and speeches tonight get actually get
042heard and thought of in your future decisions instead of being waved off. We students do not want to continue fighting you to make the decision decisions rights for our future. Thank you. All right, thank you everyone. We are now going to move on to reports to the board and we're going to begin with John Halverson, Tomwater Hill Elementary principal will present a school improvement plan. He's online. [Music] Can you hear me? Okay. I think I'm appearing. Yes. Yep. Okay. Good. All right. Well, hey, uh, thanks for having me to talk about our school improvement plan up here at Twater Hill. Uh, it's great to be here, Superintendent Bogatin. Thank you for welcoming me and and board members as well. And and board members, thank you for all the things that you do. I know that
043you do a lot that that we see and also that we don't see. So, thank you for that. Uh, before we get into our school improvement plan, just a little bit about our school. It's good to get to know us. Are you seeing my presentation? Okay, I just clicked on to my next slide. No, it's not sharing it. Okay, do you have the the presentation there with you with your laptops? [Music] Can you see it now that I'm sharing? Yes. Yes, we have it. Okay. So Tom Water Hill, there's a little compass that's kind of behind our core beliefs. And the reason I put it there is because that guides us. You know, when we have our tough decisions that we have to make, you know, our core beliefs are we all belong, we all
044learn, and service makes us stronger. That's kind of who we are. Also, who we are are 401 students, 62 staff, 629 families, and about 27,000 community members. And we're a very diverse school. That's something that we're very proud of. We're the most diverse uh elementary school here in the district. Uh 54% of our kiddos are white. About 11% or two or more races. 21% of our kiddos are Hispanic Latino. About 4% are black African-American. About 9% Asian. And then we have a little sprinkling of American Indian and Native Hawaiian as well. That's who we are. So when we're talking about what we want to do for school improvement, we have to look at our data, right? And so if we look back at last year's SBA, we can see that all of our students uh
045scored 47 point uh 47% passing on on the ELA section of the of the Smarter Balance Assessment, 44% on math, and 63% on science. And if you break that down by male or female, 52% for ELA, uh 47% for math passing, and about 63% for science. And then for our males, about 43% were passing ELA, 44% for math, and 63% for science. And we always want to look backwards to see kind of where we've come from and where we're going. So if you compare it to the year before, we had about a 7% increase in math. ELA stayed the same, a slight decrease, about8%, and then science had a big jump of 14%. Then we look even deeper into our data, right? we disagregate it. And so there's a lot of numbers here. I don't
046have time in the 10 minutes to go through it, but just to give you an idea that that's something that we do that we look at, but just a couple of notes here since we started talking about our different race and ethnicity. For our Asian students, 46% were passing the ELA, 57% were passing math. For Hispanic Latino, a little lower number, 30% were passing ELA, 27% were passing math. two or more races was 48% for ELA and 48% for math and 58% for science. And then our white students 53% for ELA, 48% for math, and about 67% for science. So, another piece I want to show you that we look at is trend data. And if you look at the Washington school improvement framework from the uh OSPI report card, it's really nice because we
047can take a look at years past kind of where things have been and where they're going. And you can see our different groups classified and kind of some are going up and some are going down. One of the groups that we looked at this year that was going down slightly was our Hispanic Latino students. And so we saw that slight word downward. So we talked about what we wanted to do about that. And I just wanted to share some of the interventions we decided on. So we always want to lean on our ML services here, right? Um assessment support. That's a great place for multilang multilingual to help. That's one of the ways that we leaned into our students this year. Uh for uh language development, we did some training and some work in IMSE.
048Fancy way of saying multiensory education for our kindergarten through 2 grade students. So multiensory that'd be like audio tapping out the sounds of letters or tracing the letters with fingers or movements for vowel sounds with the mouth. Really some good research there and some great uh things that we did this year. We also did all staff glad training which is an a language acquisition uh thing. That's something we do for all of our students but that was also something we thought might help our uh Hispanic Latino kiddos. And then of course we wanted to lean more into just establishing relationships with families and embracing culture. So those were some of the steps that we did in response to some of that downward trend. Now all that led up to us deciding okay what are our
049two main school goals for the school improvement plan. We know school board says look reading is really important. We want to have our kiddos reading by the end of third grade. So we uh uh in the area of reading comprehension, we said, "Okay, look, we want to take our kids that are one grade level below, we want to increase at least 10% of those kid kiddos to passing at grade level." And then in math, we decided to go with numbers and operations. Looking at our data, same goal of taking 10% of the kids who were at one grade level below and moving them up. Well, we don't have the SBA results yet this year, but what we do have is we have our ready math and our ready reading data. So, if you look at
050the number of kids who were passing in math uh for numbers and operations in the fall, 24% of our kiddos were on grade level, but at winter, 44% are at grade level. So, we are surpassing our goal right now, which is great. And I have every reason to believe that that trend is going to continue. And we're going to have a lot of kids quote unquote in the green. Yeah. At grade level in numbers and operations. Super good news for our reading comprehension as well. Uh uh in the fall our kiddos were scoring 31% of them were passing in comprehension on grade level. And in the winter our data was great. 56% of our kids were passing. So we had a big jump there. And I think that's just going to continue way on up.
051So what is some of the work behind all this? Well, I put up some of the things that we're doing in our school. There is a lot that a lot of people are doing. I don't have time to talk about all of them, but I want to highlight a few. If you look at student intervention, one of the things we're proud of is our win time. Win is what individuals need. That's every day there's 30 minutes set aside in math and 30 minutes set aside in reading where kids get that extra what they need. So if a kid is lacking a certain skill, that's where teachers or extra support can go right to that student in a small group or individually for that specific skill where they're getting where we know about it from our
052data. Okay, let's say a kiddo has the skill too. That's another time of that that every day where that kiddo can move above the curriculum. So we're really proud of that. We're always looking for extra supports. We know that maybe we don't have enough to serve our kids, so we have to go out there and get it. We're proud of a partnership we made with South Puda Sound Community College this year where we have we hired two students who are coming in and they're working 20 hours a week with our kiddos and Sher Floric and I our uh lab teacher, fabulous teacher. We sat down and we looked at what are some of the skills that kids are missing? What are some of the specific things that we need to do? We we have these
053college students that are working with those kid kiddos. We've trained them up on district curriculum and we're just targeting those. How is it getting paid for? Well, we have a grant that's a federal grant that's through South Puget Sound. We're really proud of it. We're trying to make it bigger next year, not just for our school, but also for our district. Um Wendy Brmley was great. She helped with this this year and so we're hoping to continue it next year and make it bigger. Uh data analysis protocols. So every Friday we get together. Super valuable time for our teachers because they look at the data and they see what where the kids are and what we need to improve, who is benefiting, who is not. It's a great great way to track growth and make
054make sure things are going. And one other area right there in under service, we service is big at our school. We have a fall service day for kids and a spring service day. But you can see our volunteer hours there. I asked uh teachers, tell tell me how many hours you've got this year. And so far we've had 686 hours uh of people coming in helping. And that's something we work really hard at. Okay, that's the work. But who's doing it? Well, there are a lot of people doing it. It's team Tom Water Hill. And there's I'd love to name every single staff member at our school. I can't, but I can talk a little bit about them. They're amazing. They do magic. Our office professionals, pair of professionals, lab team, students helping students. PTA
055leadership is amazing here. family volunteers, custodians, cooks, nurses, our specialists, counselor, grade level teachers, special services team. So much magic going on by so many wonderful people here at our school. And that's what we're doing with our school improvement plan and and what we're after. Thanks for letting me share any questions. Thank you. Any questions for Thank you. Thank you. Why do you think the science scores so high? You know, it's a great question. Uh we we do uh we have been doing a little bit more mystery science, which is interesting because our district is going to be, you know, we adopted that through the schoolboard process, but our district is actually moving to that district-wide uh next year. So, I'm wondering if that's not one of the things that has made that happen. So,
056I'm going to be curious to see if that's going to kind of spread and and uh help out districtwide. Other questions? All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your time. You bet. All right. Next, we will have Misty Hinkle, director of elementary education. will do the school improvement plan for Black Lake Elementary. Sorry. Okay. Can you guys see me? Okay. Yes. Oh, good. And you can hear me, too, so that's even better. Okay. So, I'm gonna go ahead and share screen here. Let's see. We're gonna do this one. I believe I'm on the correct screen. We'll find out here in just a minute. And let's go like this. All right. Can you see this the SIP plan screen? Okay. Yes. Okay. Perfect. Well, good evening members of the
057school board. Thank you for the opportunity to share an update on Black Lake Elementary School's improvement plan. My intention is to walk you through the data review that Blacklight conducted in the past, the resulting areas of focus for the 24-25 school year, and the steps that they're taking for ensuring that students continue to grow academically, socially, and emotionally. Okay. So, similar, you're going to see some some consistencies to Tom Water Hills presentation that they did. It's great to see all the information that Mr. Halverson shared and it's kind of exciting to look at how that overlays with Black Lake Elementary. So first to inform the school improvement planning for this year there had to be a review of data trends from 2022 23 school year in into the 2324 school year to then last spring
058make some plans. So as you look at this data over here it tops starts with all students and related to their SBA scores. So in English language arts scores on the smarter balance assessment remained consistent generally overall for all students when you look at the all students category. In math there was an encouraging increase in the proficiency for math rose from 48.6% 2223 to 52.4% in 23 24. So then examining growth on this gray column examining growth from fall to spring of 23 to 24. So last school year when you looked at that growth the you can see the scores related to English language arts and math. You'll see the fall score for each of the grade levels and then their spring score. So you can see there's some pretty incredible growth. For instance, kindergarten
059went from a score of 24% proficient in the fall to 92% in the spring, which was great news. That's in ELA specifically. And then in math, they were doing pretty well in the fall at 70% in kindergarten and ended their year at 95%. And you can see as those grade levels go across, kindergarten on the left, first grade on the right, and then down the scale, second grade, third grade, fourth, and fifth. So looking at that, that was showing some positive gains for the students from fall to spring in really both ELA and math. Okay. We also took a look at student performance by race and ethnicity. So, Hispanic Latino students made really significant gains. This was great to see this. So, in the area of ELA, there was a growth percentage of 25.8% growth.
060Then in between those two years, again, 22 23 to 23 24. And then in math, it was 21.3%. So, the growth for the Hispanic Latino students was pretty significant. Students that identified with two or more races showed a 14.7% decrease in ELA and a 9.7% decrease in math. So this data kind of highlights both celebrations but also areas that needed some further inquiry and support. looking at other key subgroups when similar to what you saw from Tom Motor Hill. The two areas that are uh easily to be seen, easil more easily called out, low-income students in that subgroup, they showed a 1% increase in ELA, but a 4.4% decrease in math over those same two years. And then students with disabilities experienced a decrease really in both areas, 11.3% 11.2%, 2% excuse me in ELA
061and 5.5% in math. So those trends emphasize the importance of targeted interventions and equitable resource allocations across all of the student groups based on that information. So what does that mean for this year's school improvement plan? Well, as a result of the fall data review, school improvement plan for 24 and 25 really focused on two primary goals. The first being continued growth in ELA across all grade levels. Number two would be a deep review of math resources and instructional supports to ensure that the school is meeting the needs of all of the learners. At Black Lake Elementary, they've continued with several successful strategies. Walk to read and walk to intervention continue in grades K through five. That is really admirable because the staffing there in terms of resource and interventions is a little on the
062lower side, but they have continued to deliver that level of intervention across all grade levels for quite a few years. Additionally, there's additional reading support that's being provided for grades four and five. So, kind of a double dip on top of their initial intervention time. In math, though, we have to say that we recognize continued need. There's low resource levels in terms of time, materials and personnel and that does make it an ongoing area of focus and still a challenge. So the implementation we believe in being intentional with strategies. Some of the ways that Black Lake is doing this includes the similar to to Tomwater Hill using a data analysis protocol for both reading and math. Reviewing short cycle goals, uh setting those goals for, you know, four to six weeks, coming back and reviewing
063progress and making instructional changes. There's progress monitoring that goes on for students and using that data also to inform instruction and working closely with the student intervention team to ensure that students are being served appropriately and effectively. We do know that strong instruction begins with strong professional learning. That's a really big portion of the the puzzle. All certificated staff and classified staff at Black Lake Elementary uh in grades K through two and the pair professionals that work with those students have been trained in the science of reading practices through the institute of multiensory education which is we call it IMSSE. This includes work in phmic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. And some other things staff continue to engage in professional development in ready math attending you know different district level trainings. The student the
064staff there are also training similarly to water hill in guided language acquisition and design or glad strategies. And most recently this year across our district, so it's not just unique to Black Lake, but Black Lake teachers did participate. Cluster model teachers that that cluster the highly capable students attended the National Association for Gifted Children convention to better support the highcap learners as well. Black Lake is also grateful for the many ways that their community supports them. For instance, there are a inordinate number of volunteers that work at Black Lake Elementary side by side with classroom teachers supporting interventions and often that includes in math trying to sort of fill that hole. They also partner with WISE for wraparound student services, Care Solace for mental health support together for basic needs assistance and Black Lake MLAN
065fire department is actively involved as well to participate in major school events. So the 2425 timeline when you look at how this year kind of played out there's fall data collection and then a review of that October of this last October 24 winter data collection and review February of 2025 spring data collection and a review this coming May will be that next round and then there's kind of this endofear review with site team May June 2025 usually in the spring there's in that time frame there's some time to put together an outline of the school improvement plan for the fall based on your most recent data. But I'm going to say that probably in this situation that may be postponed a bit into August or September with uh working with the new principal, the incoming
066principal Kyle Grinfelder. Staff there are very excited to have him join on and I know he's got some great ideas about how to move these things in the the positive direction. This is this year's data. So, looking at ELA and math for specifically all of those grades, you can look there's the fall side is the first box, then followed by the box next to it is the winter data. There has not been a spring data collection yet. There will be soon in May, but these are the numbers. And again, you can see pretty considerable growth. So, kindergarten are evaluated on foundational skills. That's the data that's on here for fall and winter. First grade uses uh I Ready and foundational skills fall and winter. And second through fifth grade is using I Ready for their
067measure for ELA and math across all of the time frames. And you'll notice things like kindergarten going from foundational skills at 19% in the fall to 84% in the winter, which is a huge uh growth and improvement. And then, you know, some of the other grades are are pretty impressive as well. I will point out that in the the upper grades, you can kind of see a trend where, you know, we don't have particularly in math, we don't have that ability to or those resources necessarily right now to intervene at math. And so that starts to show up over time. The further up the grade levels they go, it does tend to show up that way. And then I'm going to give you a chance for questions. But before I do that, I also just
068want to take a minute to recognize the strong and steady leadership of Linda Oannessy, who stepped in this year as an interim principal during what was absolutely a challenging year. Her work has been instrumental in ensuring a smooth, positive transition for staff, students, and families. Black Lake Elementary remains deeply committed to serving all students. They're proud of the progress they've made, the professional learning that's been embraced, and the partnerships that help everybody do their best work. there's a clear plan, a strong team, and a supportive community, and I am confident in the direction they're headed. So, thank you for your time and support. I appreciate that. And I will end my slideshow and hopefully be able to take off my screen share. Then you can see my face. Any questions? Thank you, Misty. Any questions
069for kind of I can't hear you very well. You kind of answer the question about the math the math question and well actually I want to go I also please give our appreciation to Linda because she has come in and done a great job. So thank also I noticed that about math as they got into you guys come up with a solution for that. So it really the if I understood what you asked Melissa because I can sort of hear you but not very well. It sounds like you were asking about solutions for math. Does that sound okay? I just want to make sure I'm addressing the right thing. I think that unfortunately what's happening right now uh districtwide, not just at Black Lake, but districtwide, we don't have an intervention curriculum necessarily yet for
070math. So, that's something in my new role um as an elementary director that I get to help facilitate that and and look into that more so that this isn't just something that's used at Black Lake, it would be used across our district and that might answer a lot of those those challenges. Thank you. Yeah. Any other questions for Misty? All right. Thank you, Misty. Thank you. [Applause] All right. So, for those of you in the room and also online, we're we're going to pause for just a couple of minutes because there is a disruption that is happening that's making it very difficult to hear the presenter and for the presenters to be able to hear us when we have people come up and and sit down here. Um, that's going to make it a lot
071more difficult. So, see if we can do something about this. Thank you. [Music] All right. Thank you everyone. I appreciate it. We're gonna move on now to Angie Gorley Assessment TOSA will present on dyslexia screening. Angie's online. Okay. Okay. Angie, if you're able to hear us, we need you to unmute your mic. Oh, there we go. There we go. There we go. Sorry. No problem. Thank you. Okay, let's try this again. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes. And can you see my slideshow? Yes. Okay. Perfect. Sorry about that. It's been a while since I've done a Zoom presentation. So, good evening and thank you for inviting me to share about the dyslexia screening in the Tom Water School District. My name is Angie Gorley and I am the current assessment TOSSa for the district. I
072provided a memo to the board before this presentation. For those who aren't aware, my education and experience make me uniquely qualified to provide this training. Not many assessment directors uh probably have the level of experience that I do in helping kids learn how to read. I'm excited to share my experience with everyone in the room and I'm happy to any answer any questions you might have. Before we dive into the specifics, let's discuss what dyslexia is and isn't. Dyslexia is a lifelong learning difference that affects a student's ability to read, write, and spell. They struggle to connect sounds with letters to recognize words quickly. Dyslexia is not related to intelligence or effort. We follow this RCW to guide our processes for screening, intervening, and notifying parents about our screening findings. Since the 21-22 school year,
073districts have been screening and sharing screening results with families. Districts are unable to formally diagnose students with dyslexia. The RCW also states that we must use evidence-based multi-tiered systems of support. Finally, interventions must be multi-ensory structured interventions provided by a trained teacher. You're going to hear more about IMSSE. You heard about it from with uh in Misty's presentation and in John's presentation. And that training meets this requirement. So how are students how are we assessing them? So students are screened in phological awareness, phmic awareness, letter sound knowledge, and rapid automatized naming or RAN. Students in grades K2 are screened during the winter testing window. New students in grades K5 are screened and received intervention or enrichment based on their needs. New second grade students are screened for dyslexia within their first four weeks in our
074district if they arrived after that winter testing window. Students in grades 3 through 5 can also be screened at the request of a teacher or parent. So what are some changes we've made to our practices? Here are the changes we've made. We've moved from rapid automatized naming RAN in Ire to purchasing the RAN RAZ which included rapid alternating stimulus. The RAN RAZ allows us to gather more information for families. We've also changed our messaging across the district. This is my second year back in the Tom Motor School District. I started um my teaching career here in 2022. And when I met with the LAP and title teachers to discuss how we were sharing it, everybody was sharing it a little differently. And we decided that we needed some consistent information going out to families. So
075I created letters with uh review from our title and lab teachers and our K2 teachers. Uh we started collecting information about family history. Dyslexia can be hereditary. So knowing the family history when available is helpful for teams to have. Uh, I created some talking points for teachers to use to help them facilitate the conversations with the letters that went out to families of our watching and our at risk students. I also cleared up misconceptions around identification. Some teachers felt that the RANRAZ was the sole method for identifying students. While it's an important part, it's crucial to consider all of their data for accurate identification. So, here's our data. So, uh this is a visual of what our data looks like this year. When screening students, we place them into three different categories: at risk, watching,
076and not at risk. Dyslexia typically affects 20% of students. When I look at our data, it shows the importance of early intervention. We are closely monitoring 27% of our students, but only nine are showing significant challenges when it comes to learning how to read. It's important to note that this does not include students who are already receiving special education services in reading or are multilingual students. How did we make the decisions? So, first I reviewed the data for each student in grades K2 and made the initial decisions. I then shared my decisions with the title one or learning assistance program teachers for their review and suggestions. In the end, classroom teachers were given the final say before I created the letters to send to families. How are we responding? We're responding in many ways. Over
077the last two summers, we have used carryover funds to provide IMSSE training to our teachers and paras in grades K3. This training is described as transformative by the participants. The training is intense, 30 hours for teachers and 18 hours for paras. It walks participants through how students learn to read and provides multi-ensory strategies that are beneficial to all students but are designed to be extremely effective with our mo most at risk students. Teachers provide daily intervention outside of core instruction. Some students receive a double dip intervention that is intensive and focuses on one area of weakness. Students are progress monitored through formative and summitive assessments, exit tickets, and short cycle goals. Grade levels must complete a district assessment protocol twice a year. Teachers are identifying designated supports such as text to speech for students where
078where appropriate. Teachers participate in PLC's weekly and intervention team meetings are being held weekly in the buildings. So I apologize that you can't see the form real well, but this is a picture of what our DAP looks like. So in the DAP, teachers identify the standard or skill to assess. They identify the intervention materials that they're using. They decide when the cycle starts and when the cycle ends. They identify a smarty goal. A smarty goal is strategic, measurable, ambitious, realistic, timebound, inclusive, and equitable. They identify students who are most ready to benefit. They discuss the strategies ahead of time that will be used. Then they come together and share the results. They reflect on what worked and what didn't, who benefited, who didn't, and they identify next steps. I had the pleasure of attending a
079first grade PLC meeting at Black Lake where they were discussing the results of their first district assessment protocol. Their goal focus was phone segmentation. Their goal was that they the percentage of students meeting the winter phone segmentation fluency benchmark goal will increase from 31% or 23 students out of 75 to 65% 49 out of 75 by 12424. So again their initial data 31% of the students met that benchmark. They had 69% of the students who did not meet the benchmark. Their post data showed that 91% of their students met the benchmark. By including their lab teacher, they were able to move an additional 42 students who were not identified by classroom teachers to focus on. The lab staff implemented the same strategies to their students during their intervention time and were able to support with
080a double dip opportunity at a different time in the school day. 9% of the students did not meet did not meet benchmark. That is an incredible amount of students that they moved. What was more powerful was the conversations that they had after analyzing their data. They talked about that one student didn't benefit from the instruction as much as the others. So, they were going to move forward with a student intervention team meeting. One teacher identified a vowel issue that a student in a benchmark category was having and they decided to administer the full randraz and monitor that student for memorization. They discussed options for their next goal and then they planned to focus on the 9% of students until the next round of testing. Next steps, what do we need? We need to train our
081K2 teachers who have not been trained in IMSE. Then we need to begin to train our 35 teachers in IMSE morphology. They are begging. Some of our third grade teachers have had the first IMSSE training and they are so excited for the next round of of uh training which focuses on multi-elabic decoding. We need to adopt reading materials that closely align with the science of reading. Our tier one and tier two or our tier 2 and tier three interventions need to be realigned and we need to think creatively about how we support teachers and understanding the data and using it to complete short cycle goals. Are there any questions? Thank you very much. Any questions? I had one question. How many students were the 9%? How many students the number of students did that represent?
082I don't know off the top of my head, but I want to say it was between like five and eight. Okay. So, a small enough group where you could manage that followup specifically to whatever they Yes. Yes. Thank you. Anything else? Thank you very much, Angie. That's a wonderful result. I really appreciate the level of detail um as well in terms of the assessment and then kind of the next steps and evaluating what you learned from it. So, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me tonight. Next, we have uh Ben Raric, assistant superintendent, will present the QBAD midyear report. [Music] Becky [Music] as we're getting set up. If I can make one announcement. We've had a staff member that just today fell ill that was going to do D. So with
083the board's indulgence, if we could defer D um perhaps to a future board meeting and uh obviously he have the documents. Oh, sorry. 07D. Yes, Madam Chair, just let me know when you're ready for me here. Maybe I should start and then we'll pull them on as I get after the first two slides. because they're not needed for the first couple slides. So, I'm gonna go ahead and start as we're finishing up um bringing some of our uh online presenters, let me introduce my myself. My name is Ben Raric. I'm the assistant superintendent for finance and operations. And it's appropriate that you just heard about a school improvement plan because in the same way that schools have key performance indicators to track their progress to a goal, so too does the operations team. Um we
084spend a lot of time developing and tracking indicators to measure our progress. And um tonight is, you know, we we've had a year where uh the financial data hasn't always told a great story, but tonight there are some successes and celebrations in this data. And I want to take a moment uh even if they're not quite on online just yet to call out uh the team who will be available for questions as these slides go forward. Since I'm here physically, it's easier for me to present the slide, but they're um they're going to hear any comments that you have and are available to answer any questions that you may have. And that includes um Mel Murray, uh Brian Hinkle, Buildings and GR pushed there. How's that? Test test. Okay. And now that Bob can hear
085me, I want uh just to rec recognize Bob publicly for the work that he did in helping us advocate for all of our schools to be part of that program. Um the next few slides um highlight where we're at with our child nutrition program. The first slide shows the one-year change in breakfast and lunch served. You'll see that we're up 43% in breakfast and 16% in lunch. That's a huge jump and it's not altogether surprising given that this was the first year uh that a lot of kids could eat for free in that program. The next slide um a slide I don't have them numbered but it's the next slide after there you go. Thank you. Breaks that down by school and it breaks it down for lunches and then it breaks it down for
086breakfasts. You'll see a similar trend uh for both meals and that is you see huge year-to-year gains at the elementary level and more or less flat at the secondary level. Again, makes sense, right? because now you're seeing the impact of that state program that provides uh free meals and next year we would expect to see even more growth now that all of our schools are able to participate. Some schools like East Olympia, Tumbwater Hill uh for lunch, they're they're they're not quite double, but they're in the ballpark of double. So, it's been a pretty profound uh impact to the program. And again, kudos to Bob and his team for getting all of those meals served. Uh the final slide there um shows the financial impact of all of this. So as we're serving more and
087more meals um it shouldn't surprise that we're bringing in more and more revenue, right? So more more meals generate either more revenue from state federal government. Um and it shouldn't also surprise that we have more expense because we have a greater food cost. What we're looking to see is whether the greater revenue outweighs the greater expense. And indeed it does. So that $130,000 figure on that slide indicates that it isn't just that we're serving more meals, which in and of itself is a benefit to our kids, but that actually the program is eating into its deficit, no pun intended. Um, and and getting into a better uh financial uh situation. Again, thank you, Bob, for all your work this year on those indicators. Now, if you had any questions for Bob, uh now would be
088uh a good time to ask him before we get into transportation. Bob's not on. Okay. Um, speaking of people transportation, I would like I think this is the first time you've ever seen this slide, that one there, um, might be a little bit visually complicated, but let me walk you through it because it does tell an exciting story. Um, the line that you see that is contiguous to the dots is current year bus ridership. Okay? Then you see certain points where there's isolated uh dots. You see those? They almost are always below the continuous line. Okay. What that's showing you is the first line is day-to-day wrership all the way through the dates indicated. The dots are what the wrership was on that same day last year. And the exciting thing here is in almost
089every case, not every case, but almost every case, um this year is higher and sometimes significantly higher. So just to give you the most recent example, um we took the March 7th counts and you'll see that at the very far right end of the graph and wrership for that particular day uh was 11% over last year's count number. So as consistency of scheduling and arrival and routes has improved um we're seeing an improvement for writership. Um, and I want to acknowledge the work of of Dana Jordan as well as I believe we have some transportation staff in the audience here today. Um, who share in that achievement. Uh, the next slide is one that you're familiar with. I think you'll all remember fondly our first encounter in which we were talking about our goals for
090uh, not having late routes. And yes, it's fine to have one week, but why aren't you know, we're on day 119 of no scheduled late routes. Does that mean that a bus has never arrived 7 minutes late because there's an accident? No, that that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a situation where we have enough drivers to take all the routes so that we're not looping back as we were last year to deliver students 90 minutes two hours later. Um so, um and I would just like to acknowledge just how much work that took for Miss Wendy Bramley and the HR team to to hire up to the it's it is a hiring game at some level to hire and retain, hire permanent drivers, hire substitutes. Um, that's a huge part of this
091as well as the work that Dana is doing um with the program. Um, I want them to to be acknowledged for that work. Dana, are you there? I am here. Okay. Any questions for Dena uh at this time? If there are none, I will move on to facility use. One of the things that we keep an eye on is both the frequency of facility use and the revenue associated with facility use to make sure that we are recapturing the costs associated with making our facilities available to the community. Um there is a lot of facility use in tong water and people like our buildings and ground supervisor Brian Hinkle uh are up at crazy hours in the morning and sometimes late at night uh to make sure uh that our facility use users uh get
092the best um uh customer service. Uh this basically shows that we have three very high volume facility users in our district. They're up in the upper leftand corner of this graph. Tom Motor parks and recreck, our TCF football group and South Sound YMCA. Um we're at $116,000 through um February. Uh in terms of external facility use, but the next slide I think is even more interesting because we think of external facility use when we think of facility use. Um depending on the month, we actually have more internal facility use than external facility use. And so the pressure that this puts on our hardworking custodians um to cover all of that, all of those events, for Brian and Robert and his team to schedule all of that um is is really quite an endeavor. I think
093people don't realize the sheer volume of facilities that we have in Dwater and we're proud of that because it's a way that we serve our community. One of our growth areas and we're very clear about this is custodial attendance. um our custodial stance is still too high. We're aware of that as a team. But one small victory here is that it has been declining ever so slightly. Um we're down from our high point of October and December uh through February. And I believe the March numbers also go down slightly. This is nowhere near where it needs to be, but it is trending in the right direction and remains a focal point for the district. Um, with regards to energy use, I don't remember which board director asked this question, but it did come up, I
094think, in a budget work session where we were talking about our ability to save money with regards to energy. And this was the slide I was referring to at the time. The story that this tells is that the district is using less energy which you see on the far right graph, but the cost of energy per unit continues to go up. So even as we uh conserve our energy use, we continue on a nominal dollar basis to spend more just simply because cost of energy is going up. something we've probably all experienced um in our household budgets as well. The next slide um yes that one um shows uh illustrates some capacity issues at our buildings. One of the things that Mel keeps close eye on is okay what is our capacity for students in
095a given building? How many students do we have in those buildings and how many students do we have in portables in those buildings? Um and we're seeing a consistent trend no matter what month we look at which is that uh we continue to have a lot of untapped capacity at Black Hills High School. Peter G Elementary and East Oi are the two schools where they're uh up bumping up against capacity in some cases over capacity and making use of portables um uh to alleviate that capacity pressure. Uh next couple slides are some budget slides. This one pertains to our legal expenses. Thank goodness I took this in February. I'm not sure it would tell the same story today. Um but uh there was a very concerted effort to bring down our legal expenses this year
096and uh through February we were down almost 80%. Um we have incurred some legal costs here very recently that um just in the interest of full disclosure I don't want to you know present this and and and make it seem like that would be true today probably isn't true today to this extent um but it would still be down and it does reflect a um intentional effort on the part of the district to be very mindful of um picking up the pone for a for a purpose. be intentional rather than having, you know, weekly phone calls or things that we don't necessarily need to use private attorneys [Music] for. The next slide um pertains to our certificated staff and looks at two types of costs. Um one is our substitute costs and one is our
097extra time cost. So I think the board is familiar with the difference between extra time and overtime, right? So in this case, this is like perdeium hours that are being paid to certificated staff. And I'm happy to report that in both cases, we are down year-to-year. Not hugely, but but we are down. So the first bar represents the current year of 2425 through February. And the bottom bar represents through uh same same period of time, one year earlier. And this starts to break down a little bit um our overtime. So you remember that we went out in October with some um directives to our teams about overtime. Um, you know, we talked in earlier in this presentation about situations where, for example, facility use, you know, if if there's not a sub available or if
098somebody's out sick, um, it's not practical and in some cases uh, not consistent with the contract to just say no overtime because in some cases overtime is the only way by which that service is provided. But there were ways that we could be uh, more intentional in this space. The one place where we've seen a huge difference is what you see there in the middle of the page, which is transportation. Uh transportation is down over 40% uh year-toear. And again, I I I would like to um acknowledge the fact that a great deal of that is the human resource side of transportation, right? being fully staffed, um having the ability not to backfill, um is is one of the ways in which you avoid overtime. And so that that completes this presentation. Um for all
099of the members on the team that are on Kira Aker, Mel Murray, Brian Hinkle, Robert Dina Jordan, and Bob Gibson, this represents a tremendous amount of work on their part. um to get this up and going. Um and in each case, they each had a positive story to tell. They all they also all have growth areas, but that's the power of this process to be able to um be tracking exactly what we're doing and find the ways that we can help the district achieve its strategic plan goals. Happy to take any questions that the board may have. [Applause] [Music] is not doing a financial update. So, we're on to uh policy 6220 bid or request for proposal requirements. So, that's [Music] Okay, I am completely prepared for this. Um, okay. So, as has been the
100case this year with several other WASDA policies, um there is a memo in your in your packet that explained this, but um there are a number of finance policies that need to be updated for the most recent WASDA model. So, I think you've been getting a study flow of these in human resources, for example. So, uh the one that jumped right off the page is 6220. anytime we get audited and they see that our current policy is not the uh not the not in in concert with the most recent laws model policy, they basically give you a little time to do that and then they come back and check and say, "Well, if you didn't get it done, then we're going to issue a finding." So, we're in that period where they pointed it out
101and they gave us a little bit of time. So there are no changes that are proposed in that that are not simply um reflected in Wazda's change of 6220 reflecting uh current state and federal law. And that's all my those that's my full comment on it. Thank you. [Music] Okay. Um Okay. I'm just going to give you guys a couple um brief overviews of each policy. 3122 is excused and excused unexcused absences and it's removing outdated language that was related to remote learning and COVID circumstances. Um it incorporates references to how we enhance our support systems for students such as re-engagement services and connecting them to community resources. Um and basically just provides proactive measures Um policy 3207 is prohibition of harassment, intimidation and bullying of students and that this is our first revision since
1022021. Um it emphasizes that this policy is for students. Um there's a separate one for staff and other other individuals. I think prior to that they were the policies were all mixed up a little bit. Um, additionally, it introduces important distinctions um, if somebody makes a false allegation um, versus those who make um, reports that are in good faith. Um number three is policy 3241 which is student discipline and that aligns with um state you know all of our WASDA model policies um any revisions at the state level um for administering discipline communicating our standards to students staff and parents and it just really encourages us to have um positive school climate to maximize our instructional time and it allows us to address unique student needs and strengths. And then the last one is policy
1033520, which is student fees, fines, and charges. Um, this was last updated in 2018. Um, it says that um the superintendent or designate can establish appropriate fees. Um, if property is lost or willing willfully damaged, the district can withhold a graduation diploma and arrangements can be made for a waiver to to reduce fees for students whose families um have difficulty paying the full fee. Um, and the district can also provide a program of community service for the student in lie of the payment of monetary damages. question. Looks like the Yeah, I can look that up and email you. That's a really good point. That's probably essential. Thank you. I don't think there's too much to report necessarily. We take our last schedule of school winnings and next year. So, this is a draft for you
104to be able to have we're not proving this tonight. Just want you to be able to have at least a good month to review uh future schoolboard meetings and work sessions. And so, kind of any conflicts that you might see. So, if you can look ahead at your calendars um in the coming weeks, we will come back and revisit this and if there's certainly any additions or changes. Um I know one of our our goals in this always is to not move meetings and meeting dates if we can. And so I think responsibility of um the district and and all of us on as board members is to uh try to block or change and make that as much public as possible. So that's that's really again not any substantial rest or stay on Thursdays.
105I believe it's really the first uh available Thursday or the first full week Thursday of each month generally. So that's kind of how that's worked. Okay. Anything for Kevin? Okay. If you have any feedback, connect Becky or myself. Sounds good. Right. Next, Wendy Bramley, executive director of human resources, will present calendar proposals for the 2526 school year. Good evening. I'm going to speak from the PowerPoint here. At some point today, I printed it out when we were getting set up. I lost my hand copy. So, I'm going to look u look up here. So, um, from the presentation today, uh, we're last time, let's see, I guess it's been two months ago, I brought the calendar and, um, I know we were excited to get an early jump on the start of the calendar. Um,
106and what we found was that there were some questions, um, that I had both received via email about why are we still um, you know, doing a two-week conference. I know um, Dr. Taylor, you had asked that. Um, that's just kind of, you know, what it's been, right? And I appreciated the opportunity to, uh, take th those comments and we went back to the staff and we surveyed all of our, um, TEA members. And so what you'll see in the presentation is there's a calendar A, which is our um, two weeks of the conferences, which has been the traditional. So, nothing changed from the last time that I came. Um, as far as the uh start of start of school, the end of school, when you know when winter break is, spring break, none of
107that changes. What the what I'm bringing back is proposals on one or two conference weeks is really what the proposal is. Um, and so what you'll notice here, change the next page or the next slide is kind of a comparison of the uh some of the the pros that our principles all spoke with their and you know had staff meetings and talked about these and these were developed through the pros and cons. Um, and so what you'll notice the the one of the pros to moving to one week was there there's increased instructional time, right? And so um it aligns with semester which is uh you know very timely then for for some uh discussion to then look at and especially for the secondary to say these were this is a review of previous um
108semester let's plan for second semester. So there's some of that um minimizes that break in that academic by having two you know on time having two different early release weeks and then also just helps to maintain routines. Um, some of the cons for that the staff said was it could create schedule challenges for our families that you know Tom Waters has traditionally always had two weeks. That's what they depend on. And so that was some of the some of the feedback um reduces the intervention time because you know it's um even though you know we're hoping that our our teachers are always reaching out and and stuff it's just that face-to-face communication that they felt was really important that they felt like they would some would lose that contact. Um and then it could reduce
109the time for those in-depth conversations again face toface. Um they feel like at the elementary is really really powerful. Okay. Um so that was calendar A. So you'll notice that the survey results um which uh we did a a lifer scale kind of a one to a one to five. Um and so what you'll really notice is that um 55.3 wanted to overall wanted to reduce to one week. Um, and this is our elementary teachers with um 44.7 wanting to keep it at two weeks. Um, you know, 29% were like, we could do either way does, you know, really very neutral. Um, and then you'll see that, um, of those that said they really, you know, want conf uh, kick conferences, 38% um, it was very important decision to them and then 37% considered um,
110it to be important to reduce. So kind of uh you know it's it's yeah it's very close there. Um so then we talked to the middle school. This is their um this was their feedback. One of the things that um you may remember is that uh is that some one of the uh middle schools would like to do strong starts. The other one does not want to do strong starts. They have um some other traditions they do. So strong starts came out on um you know was part of that inter that survey. And so what you'll notice though is that really um 38% was just were very neutral that they could go either way. Um and then 40 uh let's see 44% felt it was important to stay with two weeks while the um 18.2
111felt it was important to reduce to one week. So you you kind of you know there's not a lot of just it was really overly um overwhelming that it was going to go one way. Um and then and if you'll remember right now only our elementary and our um only our elementary and middle schools do conferences but the the law around um around the high school and beyond plan says that there has to be parent involvement. And so one of the the things that are discussions that really came out from student learning was that it's really important for um our to add one week. So, what you'll notice is that in either of these calendars, um there is a one week that's added for uh at the high school levels just so that families can
112be involved in those plans of that that um that high school and beyond plan and can have that face-to-face conversation um starting in nth grade. So, that is and so are you there um about conference week? Yep. So some of the conversation around that was um you know state the state law requiring that parental involvement um helping families to stay engaged um that you know that face-to-face conversation is still really critical and then of course some of the cons is some loss of instructional time um you know all of these are proposed is a half that half day not full day obviously. So um and then you'll see where the the data showed on that whether um really supportive, not supportive. Um you know, 43% said they don't want to have conference week. Um uh
11327% neutral and 30% are in favor. Um it hasn't been traditional, but I think really for us to really meet the the letter of the law to be able to engage families, we feel like it's really important to to add that time period. So, um, so we're hoping that by presenting both calendars to you as an A and a B, um, A being the two weeks of conferences, our traditional one, um, or the B being one going to one week that, um, you know, are that we'd be able to have you, uh, help us make that decision. both. So, both of them did include that high school. Yeah, that that was a pretty strong recommendation from our um our student learning department. So, that's in either calendar. Doesn't matter what the right survey was. Correct.
114we're we're still going to say that that's we we need to meet um our our obligation in that and we haven't. Um the other piece that I'd really mentioned is that um I was all through all of the strategic uh strategic plan development was on the uh quite involved with the secondary what's next phase of that strategic planning and this is where that was really talked about and I feel like it's in alignment with the with our strategic plan that you will see that we've been developing that how do we get kids really ready for that next um for that next chapter after high school. And I think having, you know, parental involvement in that from um at the high school level and helping and having really intentional conversations, I think is um going to
115help support that. Do do other local school districts, their high schools have conference week? Yes. Yeah. And then I um like Olympia does um kind I think I think I I want to say I believe Olympia does like a hybrid one week and then two weeks. Um so it's kind of all over the um like they do two weeks for their elementarymentaries and then one week for their um high school I believe. And then is is there is there alternative options besides a conference week to meet that recommendation from the state? Yeah, there I mean it's it's a little harder to get parents in because you know you got to have them sign and be part of that. So you send something home, it doesn't always come back in somebody's backpack, right? Um and so
116it's you know from somebody who came from the high school for many many years that was you know it was in a high school. um it it can be a very powerful tool to get a to get a family in there and talk about um pathways and what's the ne you know what are those next steps and have those individual conversations with the family and the kids. So I would um I also would recommend it just from my experience in high school administration for many years. How do you how do you deal with homeless kids that don't have families to come to that? Absolutely. So um what we always do is make sure that we have a supported adult they u whether whoever it is they've connected with at the school um you know and
117that's often the case you know there we I've seen conferences at the at the secondary ran in all kinds of ways really from student led conferences which I think are you know is a great model too where the student is preparing and um and showing their work and really leading that conference but at that age um and so often um you know they've worked on this they want to be able to share And so what trusted adult do they have that can come? Is it somebody at the school? Is it somebody, you know, outside of their life that's not a parent? So, um, always invited. I don't have a question, but Wendy, thank you very much for doing this. This is exactly, I think, what we wanted to see. Maybe there wasn't an easy answer
118that fell out of the data. That's okay. But I I really appreciate you taking the time to just reanalyze. Hey, why are we doing this? Um, and what are the benefits and the pros and the cons? I think you've done a great job of that here today. So, thank you. Thank you. I apologize it's so late in the, you know, in the year. I knew we were trying to to get a jump on that. I also wanted to monitor that process. So, this is presentation. This isn't an action item. Are you are you looking for feedback? effect. I was thinking it was Yeah, I guess I Yeah. Well, I was looking at Becky because I was thinking that it was going to be a vote. So, we're guess I think our goal was at this
119point because we had a skip the missed meeting. I think that it was going to be presented there and I think we just sort of so it did it ended as an action item. I think the board certainly has the option to taking action on if you're comfortable with that or we can bring it back next month. I mean either way I mean in the end I think we have this public at this point. um what you have again some of the big the big things for parents oftentimes are start start of the school year end of the school year we've made that pretty public and so um neither of these really fundamentally change that so I think you don't have to decide this today I think you know again I think there might be
120a preference to do that so if if you would like for this to be an action item can you give us staff recommendations so we have something to put right back on you yeah I I think internally Our team would would go to one week. Is everyone? We're ready. I second. All those in favor of adopting calendar B, please signify by saying I. I. I. Any oppose? Say n. All right. Okay. Thank you. All set. Thank you. We will now move on to our other action items. Megan Dawson, assistant superintendent, will present second reads for the following policies. 3115, students experiencing homelessness, enrollment rights and services. Policy 3116, students in foster care. Policy 3205, sexual harassment of students prohibited. and policy 4210, regulation of dangerous weapons on school [Music] premises. Um, okay. So, I have
121I have all of the um strikeouts and edits of these, but I don't think I have my summary of each one. Um do you want me to do you want me to read the summary of each one? Okay. Are there any questions? [Music] So I move that we adopt policy 3115, students experiencing homelessness enrollment rights and services policy 3116 students in foster care policy 3205 Sexual harassment of students prohibited and policy 4210 regulation on school. Any discussion in favor? Thank you. All right. So, as Becky pulls that up, she's gonna pull that up. And I'm going to start with um just acknowledging that Wednesday was administrative professionals day. And as she does that, I just it's a a time to honor all of our professionals in all of our schools who keep our schools and
122offices running smoothly. Their professionalism, care, behind the scenes support is essential. I want to especially thank uh Becky Becky Parsons, our executive assistant, one to the board and to the superintendent. Her attention to detail, unwanted commitment to our governance team is greatly appreciated. So, so thank you and I hopefully we uh appreciate her well, not just on Wednesday, but every day. uh we appreciate her work. It is uh National Volunteer Week this week. Um I was excited to hear John share just like these, you know, se almost 700 hours of volunteer. Um Director Taylor was sort of whispering like, "Hey, I'd like to see volunteer hours across our district." And I'll see if I can get that for you to see really the number the incredible number of volunteers we have in all of our
123schools. And we don't often celebrate that enough, but this is a week that started back in 1974 for National Volunteer Week to to recognize and celebrate the impact of volunteers, not only here in Tom, but across the country. We are incredibly grateful for all of their support um that they come to our school with. And so they make a huge difference. The more connected our community is, the better off we are. And so, thank you for making a difference in Tumb Water. I do want to acknowledge that April is the month of the military child. um realizing um they have a a a theme each year and this year is realizing reconnection through resilience um that honors the unique experiences of children and military families navigating frequent moves, adapting to new communities, and staying strong
124through the separation of loved ones. We're especially proud to recognize the military families within our own Tumbwater school community, including one of our own school board members whose spouse currently is serving. your dedication and sacrifice do not go unnoticed and we thank you for all your schools. I even wore a little my purple up today. So, uh even though today was not that official day, so April 15th and I know our schools did a lot of um some some stuff across our district. I've been meaning to bring this update to you and I am thrilled to announce that Melody Hackworth and Lorena Slaughter, their students at Black Hills High School, have been recognized for their exceptional academic and leadership accompl accomplishments with the Pacific Lutheran University President Scholarship. Their scholarship award is worth 304,000 per
125year and is one of PLU's most competitive scholarships. Out of more than 400 applicants, only 133 of them were selected for this honor. So, I just want to congratulate them. Um, this reflects their outstanding academic performance, leadership, skills, commitment to service. Um, this year's presidents or scholars have an impressive average weighted GPA of 4.05. Um, so underscoring the caliber of the students that are chosen for this recognition. So, congratulations to them. As you know, each month we've been doing employees of the month, recognizing both certified and classified employees who really demonstrate outstanding service to their schools and to our school community. And so, I know I haven't missed a couple months here, but in February, our awardees uh in in uh for our classified employee of the month, Isabella Orbella Hajes, she's currently at Tumbwater
126High School. And our certificate employee of the month for February is Casey Ankors from Bush Middle School. our March certified winner, award winner, our speech language pathologist at Black Lake Elementary, Bridget Giri. And we have yet to meet with our classified employee of the month for March. Um so stay tuned for that. I know he's going to be Oh, I already gave away. He's going to be really excited for that honor. So um my next one, you know, it's been a little bit of time, but you've heard uh our new Black Lake Elementary. I don't think Kyle's here today, but Kyle Grunfelder is selected. I couldn't help but put up the picture of him uh as a youngster. Um and I think that's in our Tumblr school district and he is back to serve in
127this community. And so we are super excited to have him join uh the Black Lake team and they are excited to have him. So um you know next year if we have Black Lake presentations you'll be seeing him and I I do want to acknowledge Misty for coming in today and stepping in for Black Lake. I know they're just that transition this year and her having her ability to step in and provide some data is appreciated. So, congratulations to Kyle. Congratulations to Black Lake. I think they chose a pretty good one. In February, the Boys and Girls Club had their annual Youth of the Year. Um, and we celebrate that at the North School District each year, and clubs from across the region compete in leadership development program, equipping our young people with essential skills
128like communication, goal setting, and teamwork. This year, the Twater School District had one of the five finalists. Ian Arsel is a seventh grader at Bush Middle School and has been a member of a club for the last three years. And so Ian presented his speech and participated interview panel with the other finalists. While Ian didn't really win this regional award this year, we are super proud of his success and look forward to him grow and thrive as a student leader in this year. Um we are confident Ian is going to be a leader in this community. Last week, Matthew Johnson, a student at Black Hills High School and part of our powerlifting club, broke the all-time deadlift max record for Black Hills High School, lifting 455 pounds in a single rep. Previous record was 410
129pounds. Um, set by a former student who was in the 240 plus weight division. Matthew did this weighing about 220 pounds. So, great job to Matthew. These are just examples of some of our clubs going around across our district. And so just wanted to like I saw this announcement. I wanted to call out Matthew and his work and I definitely know I can't give a 450. Um that is a lot of weight. And Tumbwater High School and I know we may get this group in front of you at a a future meeting here, but I wanted to announce our high school dance team, Tumblr High School dance team for their outstanding achievement at the 2025 WIA state championships in Yakama. For the first time in six years, they secured three titles or state titles in
130three categories, hiphop, palm, and jazz. Um, in an incredible trifecta victory. Our our extended our heartfelt congratulations to these dancers, coaches, and supporters who contributed to their success. Your commitment and passion have brought pride to Tumblr High School and our entire community. So, congratulations to them. And lastly, I want to congratulate Black Hills High School. They recently wrapped up a remarkable wrestling season with 22 athletes competing at the MAC Classic State Championships in Tacoma. Both girls and boys teams earned eighth place overall finishes. An outstanding accomplishment reflecting their hard work and commitment. A major highlight of the weekend and you see it in the chronicle there is senior Sloan Krueger completed an undefeated season 48 and0 became the first girls state wrestling champion in girl Black Hills history. A milestone achievement for the program and
131for the school. Our other state placements um were Izzy Steinbeck, Bella Shannard, and Maddie Payne. And the boys team had Rob uh Roberto Rivera Jesus, Cash Boost, and Porter Nicholson and Ror Foss. So, congratulations to these athletes, coaches, and staff. Incredible season representing the water with some pride. So, that's it. A lot of good news going on in our community. So, that's my report for tonight. Thank you, Superintendent. All right, we will now move on to board member reports. Uh, director bear, do you have a legislative report? The only report is that session is supposed to end on Sunday and the budget should be coming out tomorrow. um that we really excited about in specializing that [Music] that's excellent because those were kind of the big ones in our priorities, right? So yeah, that's great.
132K12 is the number one cut. So it's noted everyone else. [Music] All right. Um so board goals update. The only thing I was just going to throw out there real quick is um I'm recommending we continue our discussion on our governance goal. uh following the discussion that we started at our last work session on adjustments to our our protocols and um specifically starting to take a look at some of our policies around like public comment and aligning things and and looking to to build on what Director Beard had uh introduced about a month ago or so to try and increase the ability for people to participate and work on that. So hopefully we can put that on the schedule for our next work session. All right, thank you. Uh we will now move on to
133board comments. Please keep in mind each person has approximately two minutes to speak and we're going to self select order. Would anybody like to go first comments? It should pick it up. Mine's two sentences really quick. So, I recommend the board consider repealing the resolution discussed over the last several weeks, 092425. It is time for us now to focus on student learning broadly and include everyone lawfully. Anyone like to go next? Go next. Okay. Uh, so I've had the opportunity to attend a lot of great events recently. Uh, Heather Stokes at Tom Water Hill puts on a great concert. Had a couple date nights. um listening to Muppets and Sesame Street concert and her Ode to the '90s concert. Um her next concert is May 2nd. There's a performance at 9 a.m. and another one
134at 6:30. Uh you can go dinner and then go listen to some kids play Mima and sing. Um at the end of March, I attended the senior presentations at Tom Black Hills High School. Uh encourage everyone here in the audience and listening to attend um those presentations. Sign up now and you'll get an email for next year. I always write down a couple of quotes from the students and I wrote down two. Um the big thing about relationships is learning about others. And another one was um their theme for this year was gratitude. Um this week I spent some time watching fast pitch at Tumbwater and soccer at Black Hills. on Tuesday spent the evening at Peter G um with the students and staff or spent the evening with Peter G students and staff at
135the MC teachers night at Tom McDonald's and then headed over to Tom High School for their um career and college fair. Um I also wanted to share my feelings of gratitude to all the people who have reached out to support or disagree with my opposition to the resolution passed by the board in February. I've learned a lot from those who have taken the time to voice their disagreement with me and I feel like we have found many topics where we agree and frankly this is the best part of democracy is voicing disagreement and learning from each other. Finally, I want to say something that I feel is important for everyone to hear. Being different is okay. Being different is okay. I definitely didn't fit in in high school and it was uncomfortable, but as I've
136gotten older, I've learned to embrace differences because it is these differences that make a team stronger. I'm a different leader than the rest of this team and when I institut instituted the presidential ro rotation I believed it was a good opportunity for people to learn from a variety of leadership styles. As a member of this team I promised to focus on the positive traits of my fellow board members, accept them for who they are and do what I can to be a good team member because the students of our district deserve our best work. [Music] Just want to thank the district staff for the job they did tonight, Wendy, Egan, Ben, and the crew that came online uh as well as John. And uh special thanks to Misty for stepping in. And I'm sure it
137was somewhat easy for her to do that, but again, she hasn't been the principal there in a while. So, thank you Misty for jumping in and presenting that information. Um, and then, uh, I think that's all I had. Thanks. Oh, good. Um, just wanted to say, um, I'm excited we finally made it through a meeting. Um, it's been a while. I appreciate everyone that came today. Uh, everyone that came from from any spectrum of of what they were here for today. I appreciate, like I always say, all the public speakers for coming here. It takes a lot to get up in front of everyone and speak. Um, regardless of what you're you're talking about, I it it's it's pretty important for the community to come through and come out here, and I appreciate that. Um,
138as always, I like the uh the SIP reports from the principles. I think they did an excellent job. I like all the data points. Um, and I thought they did an outstanding job. um uh having two young kids in the district that just went through the dyslexia screening. Um I thought that was a very interesting um report by Angie and I thought she did a very good job. Um uh learned a lot of information about that that I just wasn't aware of. So, um I want to thank Ben and and the team that put together that report um with all the uh kind of the savings and the and some some good news mixed in with with uh all the stuff we've been dealing with lately. Um some of those budgetary things that we've been
139able to save this year. Um exciting news. So, um I don't think I have anything else. Uh just want to thank the staff for uh all all the support they've um put with the board members and everything they've done to to help us over these last couple months. Um um appreciate it and uh thank you. So I'm going to read my comments that I had prepared for the February 27th board meeting. Um, so they may seem a little outdated, but this is the first opportunity I've had to to really go back to it and they're important. So, um, first I wanted to acknowledge all of the amazing accomplishments of our Tom Water District students over the month of February. Um, we heard about the great performances that the Black Hills High School band had at
140the solo ensemble event and the large group that were moving on to state. Was told that competition pool include all schools, not just 2A. So, that is extra impressive. And I have on my notes, look forward to hearing how things go in April. So, that's a good followup for finding out how things went. Uh, next, huge congratulations to all of our wrestlers who competed at state place, especially Sloan Krueger for her undefeated season and state championship. This is a super tough sport and and so to have so many state placers from the district is great. Plus, team eighth place for both boys and girls from Black Hills. Want to give a special shout out to all the wrestling coaches as well. There's a lot of emotion at the state tournament. Plenty of happiness and joy,
141but also lots of heartbreak and tears. And the coaches are always right there not only to share in the celebration of success, but to give hugs and words of encouragement when needed. Great job, everyone. Finally, um I wanted to thank everyone uh for their advocacy and sharing their thoughts and perspectives about current issues and the things that you all are passionate about with the board. However, most of the big issues people have come to talk with us about at least in the five years I've been on the board typically related to state law. Whether it's about sexual health curriculum, emergency school closures, mask mandates, vaccine requirements, gender equity, financial regulations, all derived from a state law and decision makers that are beyond the purview of the Twater School Board. Um, this one is definitely out
142of date as the legislative session is wrapping up soon. But either way, I still uh would like to encourage people to tune in what is uh happening in Olympia on the hill. Get involved and take that passion and energy and use your voice to advocate for things that are the most important to you um specifically to the state legislature. All right. No further business coming before the board. We are adjourned at 8:27 p.m. Thank you.