February 11, 2021 VISD Regular Board Meeting

001i assume toby's going to be here in a minute uh so um let me just check okay so if i have a motion to approve the um can i uh hold on a moment please submit sorry i there are two um presentation materials from sources of strength and the counseling team that we've added into the agenda so their powerpoints from both those uh both those groups and so i would like to recommend that you that we amend the agenda by adding those power points and that the board would approve the amended agenda okay so i would like first of all i would like toby to come in ah there he is okay background i'm sorry about that i'm not anymore so um then i would uh bob or s uh reagan spring um would anyone

002like to uh propose a move we amend the agenda to allow for the powerpoint presentations as noted thank you thank you okay all i was in favor aye and i approve we adopt the agenda as amended one second that all those in favor thank you oh my screen is very small tonight okay so um we are off and running with a public comment so we have gotten many letters and i want to thank everybody because um clearly um as we all know i'm stating obvious but there's a lot of opinions and anxieties about what's happening in the world and specifically on this island and specifically in this district and i just want to take a second to appreciate and thank everybody who wrote in because i know it takes time to do that and the

003letters were really thoughtful having said that because we have a lot on our agenda um and we um this is our only meeting in february we are going to um we're going to adhere to the 15 minutes uh 15 minutes for public comment and three minutes per letter so this is um so i'm gonna be timekeeper slade will read um toby can you keep overall 15 minute timer going yup well i'll do the three minutes so i i realize this is not ideal but we have a lot to get through so what i'm going to do is i'm going to just raise my hand like this hopefully toby you'll i mean slade you'll be able to see me all of these letters are now public record and so everybody can see them and read them

004at their leisure uh at any time so just because we're not reading them out loud doesn't mean that they are not impossible to any member of the public um and they are all great letters and i recommend reading them and we always read them we are the board reads them oh and uh slade is going to read them in the order that they were received okay so first in uh so that's all right so timekeepers um we are off and ready whenever you're ready slade all right well uh thank you everybody for coming this evening and submitting these public comments uh february 2nd 2021 this is from brenda and rob walls hello first of all i applaud you and the entire staff of educators during this really weird time we are living in you have

005all done really well under the circumstances i am sending this email to you today to urge you and your staff to get teens back in school asap there is a lot of talk about the younger kids going back to school but it's the older teens that are suffering the most mentally we all know high school for teens is more about friends than education younger kids are perfectly happy at home with their parents and the same cannot be said about high schoolers i am sure you have looked at plenty of studies that show teens are suffering and having more suicidal ideation than ever before during this pandemic they are missing out on so much of what is to shape them as adults by staying out of school the younger kids have more time to catch up

006i know there are many parents that do not want kids back in the classroom and that is fine they can stay online those of us who trust that mass and social distancing will keep us safe can choose to send our kids to school i know there are many different facets you have to consider and this is just one of them my husband cc'd on this email and i are very concerned about what this is doing to our teen and her peers so we had to reach out to you to let you know our thoughts thank you again for all you do sincerely brenda and rob walls the second public comment i know they're february 28 2021 i know there are people families that really need school to restart but it comes with a risk to

007those families the school staff and the community at large in the 29 states reporting data there have been 643 610 cases in k-12 this year in some states as much as 75 percent of these have been symptomatic just since school restarted this year the number is 250 000 cases in k-12 please consider that the reason the coveted rates on the island are so low might just be because the school's closed and have stayed that way thank you david stone kids in third and sixth grade i'm attaching photos of some tweets that can guide you to the data i'm quoting i'll just show those quickly tweets by rebecca jones supporting the information that he shared in the letter the second public comment comes from anna waldman february 10 2021 dear school board i want to voice

008a strong desire for an in-person option in our schools for the sake of my children a ces preschooler and a first grader with social delays where time in school means valuable opportunities connect with peers opportunities he's missed out of these last 11 months for the sake of my teenage clients and their peers as a mental health therapist at the bisd neighbor care clinic i see how much teens are missing the connection and structure of school in this time of unease and stressors at home and diminished supports and for the sake of our community i care deeply about visd staff i respect admire and rely on them i believe in the strength of our school community and that we can safely return to school using procedures that we know work and i remain hopeful that we

009can work together in kindness and mutual respect staying strong in our values of racial equity and trusting in science it must be possible to find a solution in which teachers and staff who are at risk can continue to work remotely serving families online please let's find a way to return to school for those who need it in the spirit of working together anna waldman as a bet it looks like i'm having a pretty good time a decent time of keeping up with the uh three minutes and so but i don't have anybody on screen it's difficult for me to read the comment and have someone on screen so toby you'll have to let me know when 15 minutes is is coming maybe a 30-second warning yeah you're good you got it yeah i know i

010just was letting you know you're back thanks public comment by deborah king february 11 2021. dear slade greg rebecca and those of you serving our school board first of all thank you for your service i am the parent of two boys who have been of on in vashon schools all their lives my oldest 19 and now and is now in college my youngest is 13 in eighth grade in family link and mcmurray my children's teachers and staff have made a huge difference in their lives both have disabilities related to neurodiversity and have had complicated lives their needs are unique and i have had such gratitude for the ways i've witnessed their teachers and staff going above and beyond to help them not just learn but to understand that they can learn and be part of

011community in their own ways my understanding is that 87 percent of these remarkable teachers do not feel safe returning to the classroom before they are vaccinated but that the decision has been made to reopen my understanding is also that the teacher's only choices are to return to in-person learning taking an unpaid leave of absence or quit including those with disabilities and medical conditions that make them more vulnerable i feel the need to speak about this on many levels to me this violates the values i want my children to absorb from this community we talk a lot on vashon about creating a culture of consent but we are not respecting the depth of what that means when we demand our own convenience be served at the expense of other safety in the end the teachers are

012not just concerned about their own safety but of their students the families and our community the data shows that children do not do get covered 19 and are less likely to be symptomatic so it may go undetected we also cannot ignore that vulnerability to and adverse outcomes from this pandemic are not equal black and brown communities those experiencing scarcity those who are undocumented and those with disabilities have very different statistics including children having higher rates of both infection and complications we have not taken the steps to center our most vulnerable in a responsible way especially with the new strains rising i understand and appreciate your concern about the student's need for contact services and mental health and the parents need needs for help as a single mother who has been running up and down the

013stairs between work and home school for nearly a year i fully understand these concerns on a personal level but i also understand my own family's particular vulnerability we have very different risks more than a more conventional two-parent home in the worst case scenario my children will not have a parent capable of caring for them i am very much in need of help and i understand and i also understand the risk of returning too soon my ask would be can you consider waiting until we have a way to be accountable to the disease risk of those most vulnerable can we find a way to serve those most in need first and simultaneously be accountable to the teachers and families who will be at risk three minutes was complete on that record thank you very much deborah

014the next public comment is from amelia lincoln february 11 2021 hello i'm concerned about the speed in which the district is moving to return students to class in the survey sent out months back i chose the option to return my student to school when officials deemed it safe i trusted that the decision would be made in concert with medical professionals and school staff and that is not what i'm seeing right now i see that an overwhelming majority of teachers don't feel safe returning to class and that the mrc has been public and saying that it's a risky choice aside from these safety concerns it seems strange to put students through such a huge transition period and a lot of big changes right at the end of the school year especially by the time that mcmurray

015and vhs students are back in class why not finish the school year out in a pattern that the students have come to know and understand all the while keeping our bsd staff and the whole community safer the vaccine is in sight by september far more people teachers as well as at-risk vst families will be protected a return to school could come with the fanfare of a new school year with new backpacks and new classrooms knowing we put community first i for one regret my survey response and i'm not able to change it now perhaps there needs to be another survey to gauge how many families feel safe now in the current circumstances and not how we hope things would be when the call to reopen king i am sure i wouldn't be the only one

016wanting to change my answer basing a big decision on old data is inaccurate and unsafe please consider caution we really are asked risking a community outbreak right near the end of the finish line what a shame that would be thanks amelia lincoln the next public comment is from talitha carlton thank you talitha february 11 2021 hey there my name is talitha talitha carlton mom of alice second grader and c at ces and j lee eighth at mcmurray i am extremely worried about the safety of our beloved teachers and staff and also the safety of my children and the entirety of vashon island reopening before teachers are fully vaccinated at minimum would be hugely irresponsible we have a duty to keep each other safe and that is the most important thing i believe we should have

017fitted nr95 masks for everyone and have teachers be fully vaccinated at minimum before opening or construct a fully outdoor small group model thank you for your time talitha carlton thank you talitha mary o'leary february 11 2021 to vi school board i like all parents want nothing more than to see our students back in the classroom however i disapprove of this being done when the coven numbers are still too high when we have a new and more contagious variant making its way through our state and when our teachers have not been vaccinated i am hearing about teachers all over the state and especially on this island not feeling comfortable with returning to the classroom before they have received the vaccine i do not support them being forced into taking a risk with their health and the

018health of their families nor do i support the risk opening schools backup could pose to our vashon community all because our governor is too impatient to wait for the vaccine to be more widely available if it is so essential to send students back to school teachers should be considered essential workers and be given priority for the vaccination please listen to our beloved teachers protect them from this virus and give them the respect they deserve thank you for your time mary o'leary thank you mary david hackett dear board of directors the question of whether to reopen schools is being debated everywhere around the island except before the school board in an open public meeting isn't this ironic rather than an agenda item for the board to decide the merits of reopening schools this board is instead

019poised to adopt resolution 789 which formally seeds the board's authority to decide the crucial reopening issue to the unelected superintendent this is directly contrary to what board president tibet mccomber told me in a january 21st 21 email the decision that went to move to hybrid learning will be made by the board resolution 789 reneges on this promise and yet again abdicates the sports responsibility worse in violation of the open public meetings act resolution 789 codifies this board's practice of communicating essential information through private meetings with the superintendent emails and other means outside public scrutiny through a recent public records act request it was readily apparent that the board uses these informal mechanisms to pre-decide issues and bypass the requirement of public debate in open public meetings you expect the public to trust the school district

020when the district does not respect the public's right to transparency and open decision-making processes these are not just procedural niceties better decisions are made by following the rules we entrust important matters to our elected board not to unelected bureaucrats who work for the district by continuing to defer the district's key decisions to the superintendent you are violating the trust of the public that elected you not that anything about tonight's meeting actually matters to the reopening decision but is my view that reopening the school before all teachers and staff have had the opportunity to be vaccinated as both reckless and ill-considered reopening schools in the midst of a pandemic with new variants and too many unanswered questions transforms our schools from a safe place into a daily game of russian roulette is it good for the

021mental health of teachers staff and students not to mention their physical health to expose them to a communal setting where the virus easily spreads and the daily lesson is to fear school we all crave normalcy but you cannot pretend normal and abnormal times david hackett this next letter is uh from various yeah about 30 seconds left thank you toby february 11 2021 to slay mikshihi and the vashawn school board we believe our vashon island school district visd teachers and staff are heroes and deserve our support always and especially during this unprecedented time we maintain that the safest path is for teachers and staff to be vaccinated against coba 19 before we reopen our schools for in-person learning our school district and district families have been through a very challenging 11 months we know there are

022no simple solutions that address the myriad concerns and needs of our island families when it comes to remaining safe and healthy while fulfilling visd's educational mandate thank you hey excuse me sorry thanks again to everybody who wrote and i appreciate the sort of awkwardness of this um we don't comment on these um we hear them and but we just we're gonna keep moving on uh so superintendent report yes uh once again i just like to welcome everybody to tonight's meeting um there is a lot happening in our only february board meeting i'm going to go directly and try to get to as much information as possible but i'm going to start my superintendent's report with the land acknowledgement the people people lived here long ago before and during the colonization of the americas and the

023westward expansion of the united states we recognize these indigenous people of the salish sea their displacement dispossession and continued presence as we reflect on the past and move to the future let us be reminded that our school district sits within the traditional lands of the pure people i would really like to welcome one of our all-stars uh peggy rubin ellis who is with us tonight with uh her students and is going to provide us a presentation on the sources of strength program and so welcome peggy and welcome students thank you um can you hear me okay um well so we i think we might have had to have some of our students leave because they had to go do homework or something and um so we'll see if they're here or not um and we

024have a group called sources of strength which one of our students is going to tell you about and we're having a contest and we wanted to tell you about the contest so um what our focus is is the contest is called what helps us and instead of um we spend so much time talking about like how are kids doing and they're not doing very well and kids are isolated but we don't often talk about what they do to um what coping skills they have and so we're going to talk to you a little bit about our group and so we're going to start off with um cecilia who is hopefully here and is going to tell us about sources of strength hi i'm here um okay so uh sources of strength uh we're basically just

025like a group of students and adults and we're just like a community a loving community and we believe that you know life has a lot of ups and downs and good times and bad times um and we just want to make sure that when kids are you know not doing okay um they don't feel so like helpless and alone that they want to give up um and so yeah our mission is just to make sure that everyone is doing okay to help them if they're not doing okay and to just um try to stay positive during the hard times okay you can go to the next slide oh right uh so sorry i forgot about that we have a wheel um that basically represents all the strengths that we have and um we uh people

026people could read it on their own if they want yeah or go so basically this is the real of like eight things um that we've like like the eight categories that of strengths that we have um and so it just kind of shows that i guess perfect okay so now we have um talis and he is going to tell you a little bit about what it's been like for him to be um to be at home talis are you here yes i'm here okay so what it's been like to be in a middle school during covet it's very weird because we're not physically in school and we don't have to like walk between classes and talk with our friends so it's definitely different some things that are like harder for most of the middle schoolers

027i feel like is like not able to talk to your friends and teachers face to face and uh missing like not being able to socialize some of your friends because not everybody has like a device they can communicate with you and then the hands-on work is definitely different yeah thank you is that that you're good i didn't interrupt you okay so now um we have um sebastian and he's gonna tell us a little bit about our what helps us contests that we've been having contests everybody loves a good competition okay anyways um so basically or what helps this contest is fairly self-explanatory what helps us i don't know what does help you um but it's the goal of it is to share your talents and to connect on a friendly level i guess and it's

028um yeah there are five categories pet photography visual art music writing and live which includes sports dancing tick-tock um and uh judging will conclude probably tonight tomorrow morning the uh the thingy the winners will be announced tomorrow morning and uh yeah there are some cool prizes money okay and is addie i think addie had to leave is she still here yes i'm here can you guys hear me oh thanks okay go ahead okay so um my name is addie i'm in eighth grade um my pronouns are she her and i something that helps me like during chroma is getting exercise and like getting outside with my family or friends um and anyway so it was pretty impressive we got 110 submissions for the contest um and so here are just a few of the like

029submissions that we got because maybe that's where parents are right so this is a dog named waylon and abby l submitted it they just have no idea there's a little statement there about why he helps her what's the big deal right what's the big deal you know what i mean like people in the freaking and then this one is by brian s uh it's called cat love as you can see yeah um and i think it's his cats then he put a statement saying like why they helped them five years ago i guess they quite saw this and this one is from the art contest um it's by stella n and it's a portrait of her sister that she did this thing yeah those are just a few samples oh and this one is by

030kyla um she does wood burning and she calls it under the sea it's a turtle so yeah peggy you're muted um so we would also just like to end by telling you that um this contest has been great it has been so heartwarming we've had so many submissions and it's just been such a nice thing we've had slade voted and zabet voted we had some community voters we had some teachers voters and we had some student voters and um so yeah we're thank you for listening to our speech and we also want to tell you that i am from varsa and but i'm part of the school as well and um our funding for joining sources of strength strength which is a national program comes from um the vashon foundation so we just want to

031give kudos to all those people so thanks for listening everyone we really appreciate it yeah thanks students for coming uh wonderful to hear from you love your backgrounds for sure i have a few of those in my house too and peggy you know your commitment to this program and to the kids what a you know what a spotlight okay so i'm going to give you a shout out uh personally myself and i was able i judged the pet photography contest hoot what did you judge oh i scored i got to judge the the live one and cecilia your ring the ring i'm like i'm a new fan i'm a new fan i'm gonna make rings for every birthday party present now forever because you explained it so beautifully it was great great and our pet

032photography is going to be up somewhere we don't know where yet but you'll be able to see it because all of them are special it was hard to pick three i'll tell you that was definitely it was impossible was that yeah terrible i can't believe you got made us do that peggy yeah look forward to it next year too okay thank you great so uh next is the school year update and so this is a bit on our healthy start plan returning in personal learning i'll just give a few statistics today in terms of covet activity we were 160 out of 100 000 and if you remember the department of health toolkit this would fall under the moderate range with the high range beginning at 350 and the low range being at 50. i was

033on the eoc's sit rep today and they determined that the rate for the island or a local level was 6.7 out of 100 000 and so uh thank you to the eosd of course for providing uh those statistics um and then of course the mrc for providing the ongoing uh vaccinations that we've seen uh happening this week that's been very exciting and so i know they're they were excited to get those especially tyler young at the pharmacy and i know our nurse sarah just everyone's excited to see when we can have more of our community vaccinated uh regionally uh we have 18 districts who have who have moved to uh k-5 hybrid and 16 districts have k-5 and some of their secondary schools so 24 out of the 35 districts in our region have have

034returned to some type of opening right now you know planning is continuing uh following the doh that's department health and the labor and industry recommendations and guidelines and the reopening tool kit and uh several considerations from the mrc leaders as well the uh some some new news just today um i just got this in an email but i thought i would share it with the board this evening as a component of house bill 1368 this is the one that directs esser funds sr2 relief funds which is part of the cares kind of two or cares part two was passed by the legislature on february 10th 11th and i'm just reading directly from the email all public school districts tribal compact schools and charter schools are required to submit an updated reopening plan to ospi by

035march 1st 2021 the governor is expected to sign the bill next week districts will not begin receiving their federal sr2 relief funds until their plan has been submitted to and approved by ospi and so uh this will probably be a similar template as i understand which will be out to districts and um i'll just have to i'm not sure what the board approval requirements are but i will you know get those can get that communicated to us as soon as i find out um we have made connections with the uh with dash and l and i they're going to do mr chan one of their workers is going to provide a consultation on february 23rd of for all three of our buildings in the bus barn maintenance of time permits and that is meant to

036be a safety audit kind of a in addition to some of our other practices and procedures that we're putting in place bringing in l i to provide a a third kind of lens uh focusing on hazards and items related to covid as regulars as well as regular safety hazards as well we are glad to welcome dan chan to district on february 23rd and he'll at the end of his day will provide verbal results to us in a written results as well that will be available to the public and to all staff and you know lastly uh not lastly a couple couple more items bhs and mcmurray so the high school and the middle school are continuing to work through their hybrid scheduling options with staff and so they were hoping to get uh surveys out

037to parents for indicating their interests and providing some more context on what the scheduling might look like as they've been working with staff they find that it's not as as simple as simple as we had originally thought and so you know they are continuing to work with their staff leaders and their staff as a whole and they've also reached out to enumclaw which has returned their high schoolers to in-person learning so enum club right now as as all their students are back k-12 and our you know they were i'm just really thankful that the leadership team was able to meet with our leadership team who walked away with a lot of new thinking and is going to be sharing that thinking with their staff what that means for parents uh from those two schools is

038that you should expect hopefully some type of survey uh in the week or two weeks following our break we would have liked to have given you more information it's not that we are aren't working on it but it's proving to be um you know difficult to come to some consensus around scheduling options so and just want to uh give a thanks to the health services team vesp and ve leadership they have been partners kind of all along in this work we've been meeting regularly with them having very open honest and candid conversations they have i know been supporting their members day in day out of the pandemic and so we are lucky to have them and so we're going to continue to work with them on conditions for in-person learning and i'm i'm hoping to

039have updated information soon to families and hopefully as early as tomorrow to our elementary families who are uh kind of wondering what's you know kind of what's what's next what's gonna what's gonna happen for our kindergartners and then the rest of our elementary students so that's my kind of shorter brief update on on healthy start reopening but i certainly want to take a pause for any board questions or or comments or wonderings i have a question slate the enumclaw is back k-12 do we get a sense of what percent of the students are in attendance is it right i believe that i i can't speak specifically but i can you know i've spoken with uh sean carey the the superintendent there um but i i saw greg just kind of flip on his camera and

040so maybe he has more current information than i might uh yeah we we uh danny and gus and i had sorry about that we had a webinar and a zoom meeting with the principal at the high school principal at the middle school and i believe the director of teaching and learning they said about 80 percent chosen person and about were remaining in remote great thank you nice to learn from others yes yes absolutely so you know kind of kudos and shout out to sultan and then now enumclaw as well as bellevue and and issaquah and peninsula as well who've been working with us um any other uh questions or wonderings by the board before i just kind of move on to updates yes spring oh um when you say updates what are you are you

041on other topics or just um i was thinking about that's really helpful information i appreciate it um and i was recalling you know the letters from the public and one of them i believe cited um some data or statistic about the number their understanding of the number of teachers who um from our district that reported they were not comfortable returning to in-person or hybrid um learning and i just wanted to check in with you about that perhaps seek some clarification i think you know and another person astutely pointed out these surveys and that data really when we have to be clear at what point in time we're reporting that so um i think if you could just provide some clarification about where that number maybe came from that percentage that was stated and then what

042you can share with us about the position of teachers in our district today or whatever the most recent data is we have as far as teachers and their comfort readiness to return so i i can't i don't know the um you know the origin of that number specifically so you know we we have not you know that has been a vea survey and so um i know that they surveyed their members um gosh maybe better those folks might be able to help you know they were surveyed originally i know probably a couple weeks ago or two or three weeks ago or maybe even long i don't know but but some time ago um you know we've been in kind of regular communications since then i know there was a recent survey out i don't have

043the exact numbers and so i don't want to speak you know it's it's we met today with vea and they shared some of that with me but i didn't you know i don't have that information right with me so uh but the there's there's still um you know there's not a consensus that is something that i remember from our conversation today um and so um you know that makes you know kind of again this is it feels like this is what we see in our community there's not a consensus um there was some consensus when we originally surveyed parents to you know whether they wanted in-person or remote learning in terms of 65 but that's it's not an overwhelming consensus but it is you know a majority and so that's that is kind of where

044i understand it right now but i don't have the exact um the exact numbers or data that was shared with me today does that help spring or yeah i it it does help i guess i'm i think just trying to capture you know since that can feel like a moving target since numbers are changing all that you know i think rates covet rates and on the island and so i just think it's it's always helpful to have the the most recent information that we are able to obtain and um and and we know that this is just being discussed pretty much daily really really regularly and so i think just helping our families understand that too um is critical and and when numbers get put you know i think data shared we just want to

045make really make sure that we can cite where that's from and make sure that it's um it's accurate so i appreciate when when anyone writes in and shares where they learned that that information from and perhaps date stamped it a little bit for us um so yes i i think just reminding people sometimes not everybody knows what vea is right but you're talking about you're talking about the union that's representing our our our teachers right and so counselors and investors and staff and right now while we haven't reached a majority consensus about returning to school in person right that's what that's what i'm hearing you say um we and so there's not there's not a definite decision because we haven't yet arrived to a place where we feel there's enough of of consensus is that

046is that what i'm hearing you say are you are you we're still working with with the educational association so yeah um right so it's a it's a it's a little tricky to talk about it right now since we're in the midst of negotiations or okay oh sir we can absolutely say that yes yeah yeah so it is it can be complex for people so because there's a lot of different players involved so um yeah i i think it was clarification thinking about just wanting to make sure if other people had questions i think it's clear to me so thank you but just um hopefully that's also makes sense to anyone else who's participating in this conversation and hearing that and and i'm sure they'll follow up if they do have questions about the this process

047absolutely yeah and you know our our our labor leaders have been very intentional you know in terms of how they work you know how they've been reaching out to those to their members and that's been really critical you know when we come together and meet you know to share feedback with each other to share you know kind of what's happening and and that there is i will say this the the consensus lies in that we we all want very similar things we want our students our staff our community to feel safe we want to return students safely to to our buildings we all want our students you know mental health and well-being to be you're kind of front and center so um you know that's where that's where we find you know broad consensus uh

048you know amongst our you know when we're in these meetings it's really clear that we're very passionate about you know how do we get you know to those to those outcomes it's the best sorry i cut you off that's okay i just also want to just clarify sort of following spring's lead here on um that if it's my understanding that if a a parent has said yes i want to come in and then they change their mind for whatever reason they can come out and say or not and same thing like if a parent has said no way i'm not going to send my student in and then circumstances change and they want to that's also an option is that correct right every every building is planning uh contingencies so that if the family makes

049a decision or wants to change you know their position that they can either uh opt back in to uh in person or or continue to be distance learning so yes okay one more question thanks i had a question i'm i'm sorry do you have a follow-up swing go ahead spring um well it was just about something that that i think is was is important if we can um address it just because i think it's a really valid concern you know is something that what can you share in terms of what maybe it's something that's still really in in the process of being negotiated in terms of options for our teachers you know we was about i think you were this you were mentioning options for families and our students so um i know this is

050something we've talked about before but is there anything that deshawn you'd like to add in terms of the options that our our teachers and our staff are going to be able to consider in the spirit of ensuring everyone's comfort and safety and health because somebody that that was mentioned and anything you might share that's helpful for everyone to understand sure absolutely so at the beginning of the pandemic when we went into closure uh each uh vespn va uh worked with our leadership to i think write a very significant mou which really safeguards the the rights of our of our of our staff uh and so there are sections um you know in those mous that are specifically designed to address all types of leaves and assignments and they're very extensive uh the different scenarios uh

051and and and how a person may be impacted during the pandemic so i won't go through the i think 10 or 11 different scenarios um but that does exist in the mousse and so what we do when we are and what we have done as we as we continue planning is um our hr you know amy and our principals and labor leaders makes make sure that we provide our staff with as much information as possible regarding different options for them and then we work individually really on a case-by-case basis to determine you know how a staff member may be impacted and then there is different options and different laws and in the cba which kind of govern the option you know the different outcomes for for a particular staff member so but those are all

052taken into consideration and really done on a case-by-case basis but if you'd like to spring i can share that mou with you later and you can kind of see um you know there's so much information and so many documents i know all of you have seen these before but that is you know very explicitly governed through that through the mou i'm sorry if i um so i heard i've seen reference to an mrc report is it a report is there an actual document that the board members could read i've been trying to get my hands on it but um to no avail is does does it exist as a document that is shareable i believe i've shared it with you okay we got it okay yep it was here when it when is when we

053share with me bob i sent it to all the school board okay slade you're you are you done unless anybody has any questions you have upcoming events just upcoming events right this is you know kind of how my super my board report always wraps up as we know next week is a midwinter break february 22nd through the 27th is our district's first black lives matter in schools week of action which is very exciting i will be sending out the uh the timeline and and activities for that week of action uh in in an email tomorrow to our families and i send it to our staff i believe yesterday or tuesday um i'm excited we'll talk a little bit more about it when we get to the resolution but i our equity teams in the buildings

054are just an outstanding work this this month as well they're just all extensions of what they've you know kind of been engaged in this year and and their commitments february 23rd board i'd like to remind you 5 30 to 8 p.m we'll be with mary fertacus in a board workshop that really combines racial equity work with strategic planning and then march 11th and 25th are our board meetings uh and then march 9th 5 30 to 8 pm is this set part 2 of that board workshop which again is focused on racial equity and strategic planning with mary fertacus so i appreciate toby and zebette for um kind of being a part of that planning process and i'm looking forward to to the 23rd and the 9th it's going to be exciting so and that concludes

055my report oh great thank you very much okay so um board uh board member remarks let's start bob let's start with you is that payback for something i hate going first um i just wanted to say uh thank you to uh all of the people who showed up tonight and um gave us their cart their comments i know their heartfelt comments um and i want people to know i think i speak for the board that we all hear them and hear the pain and the difficulty with all the variables that we have to consider um we shouldn't have to choose between the health of our our educators and our staff and our elders and our kids um and that regrettably is the world in which we find ourselves um it stinks and um i'm i

056just feel terrible for every for all of us um i think that um i just know that all of us i want everyone to know that we are all wrestling with all of the very valid and critical points that people raise we don't dismiss them and uh we have to to balance all of the factors and i and i think that i i trust that we have the wisdom to make the right decisions here so thank you thanks bob uh toby hey everyone happy to be here tonight i wanna try to share a picture this is an image of an orca stencil that are these are getting put up at chautauqua at six feet apart to help guide the students and create a an environment where it's really easy and natural to be aware of

057your surroundings and and separate i thought this is super creative just wanted to celebrate that i also am really excited to see lines of cars uptown around the back of the movie theater and into the parking lot as people are getting vaccinated and now i actually know more people who are vaccinated than people who got sick and so i i find a spirit of hope and light at the end of the tunnel and i'm excited about that great uh thank you it's funny the way i'm the way i'm going through my screen tara vanzlo you would be next but i'll skip you and go to reagan i don't have anything tonight thanks okay uh wait spring where are you spring um i just i want to echo i think bob you you put it really

058well um those sentiments and i i was really um so delighted to hear about sources of strength and um have learning more about peer support and i think for our young people our students and um always looking for those um those those bright spots and and the helpers and um these challenging times so i really appreciate everyone coming them coming tonight and sharing with us and learning more about what they've been up to okay thank you um i don't have much to say other just um really um filled with gratitude for the amount of work that everybody's doing um you know every the thought that people are putting in people writing letters and contacting us the staff every i mean everybody is this is just it's right it's very remarkable and it's about we all

059appreciate the work that everybody's doing um okay uh ella and me yep thank you thanks jenny ella and mead you guys draw straws who's going first yeah i think i'm going first tonight hey i'm good i'm good it's been a week it's been a week but um we're almost there almost there um all right first off i just want to start with addressing a couple mental health updates which is obviously a pretty big topic right now but in the past week there have been two mental health surveys sent out to all the high school students one of the high school one of the surveys was from the high school admin itself and one was from the riptide newspaper and the both surveys asked high school students about their own personal mental health but each survey

060had two very different sets of questions and the two mental health surveys generated significantly different results regarding the mental health of students on top of that which i think that the counseling team might go into depth more right after this um but it's clear that students mental health is a concern right now but i think overall many students consider much of the problem out of their hands of the hands of the administration as long as we continue to attend school online um and then regarding the riptide's mental health survey um hallie wyatt and savannah butcher are both members of the editorial board of the riptide and they are taking that data and writing a feature article on that uh covering students mental health of the high school um and this article will put will potentially

061be reprinted by the beachcomber as well probably by the end of the month hopefully so that's that on that um secondly on a lighter note many seniors are interested in a graduation parade similar to what happened last year um after like the in-person graduation was canceled due to covid um and even if there is a potential for an in-person ceremony a lot of seniors think that doing um a parade like last year would just be a a big hit and it could even become a fun tradition for the high school um for many years in the future so that's all i have thanks mate okay hi ella hi um i have like a general update on kind of the student experience right now at vhs um so the big like exciting thing right now i

062think is that sports started and you know at the track uh there's just like a very positive like kind of excited atmosphere and the possibility of competitions is especially exciting because it provides people like goals to work towards and kind of more high pressure events that they haven't had in like over a year and i think like that will bring out the best in people and improve mental health um another adjustment is the quarter three schedule for the high school is different with a longer lunch and slightly shorter periods and i think the shorter periods are definitely a benefit i know for myself and just people i've talked to just like less time on the screens and it's easier to engage for a shorter amount of time it's like that the amount of time we're

063in class becomes more productive um and then something that's kind of close close to home for me because i'm a senior and other seniors that i'm friends with uh and how we're kind of feeling about leaving the island next year everyone i've talked to seems pretty ready to leave and hopeful for the year ahead but i mean there's like everything right now there's a lot of uncertainty as to like what next year will look like what colleges will look like um so that's like a concern but also a hope and i think that's all i have thanks ella board questions for our members yes i think the parade is a great idea just my thought any anybody got questions well i will just say that it was wonderful seeing all the uh kids out there

064on monday uh i saw the article in the beachcomber today um just kind of spotlighting that and it it's weird it's fall season you know right but we're in the middle of a winter but honestly it felt like fall and and it just had kind of a friday night lights kind of feel to it and um i was just happy to see like a ton of kids out for cross country football um you know volleyball you know to see you know elizabeth gleb out there with her you know toddlers trying to trying to coach cheer um it's a real it's a real bash on experience so um anyway i i just encourage if the board has ever a chance to get out there it's it's it's a lot of fun because it's it feels like

065that's what we're there for you know when you see the kids so anyway thanks mead and for sharing your experiences with us um and of course you're welcome to google go finish your homework tonight and get ready for break all right yeah thank you both it's really helpful to hear your perspectives i'm looking forward to seeing those articles in the riptide oh great okay uh counseling counseling is that right why mental is not right where we are counseling mental health services presentation yeah hi thank you everyone thanks for um thank you for having us here tonight and for the opportunity to talk with you about how our youth are doing we can go ahead and go to the next slide um it feels appropriate to just start with a moment to kind of honor the

066magnitude of the times that we're living in right now um and just honoring the collective hardship that is uniquely impacting all of us um as we're seeing on the news and in our personal lives and reading articles about how people are doing right now um and just seeing the the jobs lost the magnitude of lives lost and the fear of our safety and the safety of our loved ones and our students that we serve and the anxiety of living with living with such uncertainty and an unknown and coping with the increased isolation and loneliness of everything as time goes on um i'd like to invite you all um if you feel comfortable just take a brief mindful moment with me if you feel comfortable and um open to it just feel free to close your

067eyes and tune into your breath don't feel the need to force a deep breath or anything the goal is just to just to notice how your body is feeling and to kind of drop into out of our heads and into our hearts and bodies a little bit after all this time on the computer and as you breathe just kind of notice what you're feeling right now if you're holding any tension or discomfort or noticing any sensations maybe you're feeling your breath on your nose or your feet on the ground maybe you're feeling some irritation that i'm asking you to do a mindful moment that's welcome too and in this space i invite you to think of a time during the last 11 months when you felt supported by a member in this community and i

068really encourage you to try to get vivid with it and see if you can recall a specific moment and person who has helped you and made you feel supported during the last 11 months and see if you can visualize their face what did they do when they say and just kind of tap into how that makes you feel and if you can pinpoint where in your body you feel that and then you can gently just think that person and tell them goodbye for now and um if you feel comfortable just bring your attention back to this meeting back to the zoom that we're in together and feel free to open your eyes maybe look around your room a little bit just to get oriented and that always helps me kind of signal to my body

069that i'm safe in this moment and can be fully present um thank you for for allowing me to take you with that at that moment with you i'm finding that um it's it's a lot harder to stay and feel connected to each other through a computer screen um and it's really disregulating for our nervous systems to do so much directing through a computer and um even in person when we do get to see each other to to have half their face covered um so our poor nervous systems need a lot of help and care right now um and i find it helpful just to to do mindful moments to drop back into my body um to be to be present um and remember that we are still connected as a community in this way um

070i just wanted to start um our our counseling team just wanted to kind of begin with a spotlight on when we first started meeting to kind of pull together our data and pull together this presentation there was this feeling um of just a like kind of major success in this community it really is obvious that this community really prioritizes mental health and wellness and the whole student and whole child and whole person-centered services and it's very apparent that we all are working really hard to to show that we care about each other and we just see that it feels really successful that all this kind of collective efforts to normalize um mental health and normalize getting support and reaching out for help when you need it is really paying off we have a lot of

071students who are reaching out um in support of themselves but also mostly in support of each other um people who are reporting to us and just reaching out about their friends that they're concerned about and just also spotlighting the opportunity that we've had with parents and families due to the necessity of increased parent engagement and involvement right now it's allowed us the opportunity to have really powerful conversations with families at home about how they're doing and what their needs are in an individual way that we haven't been able to have before and most importantly we really wanted to spotlight our teachers they are have just been incredibly attentive and part of the cat but attentive and just beyond hyper vigilant about staying seeing with students and noticing um not just when a student is having

072um struggling to engage academically right now but um who they're really noticing any changes in um and their social behaviors or how they're appearing in class or if something's changed or if they just get an intuitive hit that something's wrong um they've been incredible about advocating for students that they're concerned about and there's just this sense and this feeling that um everyone's working really hard to make sure that nobody who needs help right now is slipping through the cracks and that just felt really apparent we were all um kind of connecting about our experience um as counselors so um thank you for for letting us be here and just kind of wanted to shout out the power of our personal relationships in this community it um it really is special and it is unique um

073so we're going to go into a little bit of a presentation about what we know um we're kind of going to give a little bit of snapshot for data for each school and how folks are doing right now what our roles have been um this year and beyond what we feel is coming next and also end with some good news as well so we can go to the next slide and i'll throw it to tara and paul to kick us off with our what we know thanks kaley so here's our data points from three schools i'll start with the high school um the virus of course as you all know has really impacted us and impacted all the schools the grade reports that we have those are probably the most clear data points that we

074can really point to and we have it listed there and you can read it really some pretty high numbers we're not quite used to that in recent years the d's and f's that have that been reported from the first semester um the 121 or excuse me 127 f's compared from two years ago when we had i believe was just 35 failing grades during that time frame excuse me 71 would be that two years ago 27 of these were 9th graders and who had the 47 these nets combined and our concern is that that's a real indicator ninth grade is such a critical time for student success especially uh when you correlate that to graduation um we're going to have to really tara will talk about this bit more in a bit but when the students

075get back in the building and we're going to have to really put continue to put some significant interventions in place for them as they roll forward 51 students were funneled through our student support team we meet weekly as a support team that's all of our admin counselors nurse our labor care therapist and our school psychologist and uh we have is basically a tier two and a tier three intervention team and we also have a ninth grade intervention team that meets weekly all the ninth grade teachers meet with tara and me and we go over a list of ninth graders that need interventions um so no student is uh left disconnected or forgotten everyone is accounted for and reached out with interventions and multiple interventions at times even to the point of home visits over to

076mcmurray i just wanted to add one quick thing to that sorry um yvette about our the mental health data at the high school um two sources that we typically use for um kind of engaging our students mental health are the healthy youth survey and historically we've used the gain um this would have been our year to administer the healthy survey but that was um cancelled because of the coveted closure and then we are in transition between using the gain and using um a program called check yourself that they've started using at mcmurray um but so we at this sort of it's sort of a perfect storm um during this kind of critical time we are missing some really empirical data about how kids are doing we have tons of anecdotal um data but uh but

077just to highlight why we're missing some of that um social emotional data okay thanks so if mcmurray we've been um busy as well obviously and um uh this year alone we've had over 130 students be identified as eating intervention level support through the counseling team this year so um and that of course involves student intervention but also connecting with families and working with teachers to support social emotional well-being but also academic success um looking at the data from this school year we've um needed to complete over our 33 suicidal ideation screeners with youth in our building this year just for mcmurray which i think is substantial um and of course that involves communication and work with families as well that to access additional resources and support um a data point we want to bring out

078is that we've we have 14 students currently at mcmurray who were supporting through transgender support plans um and this is just at mcmurray alone we do think that this is an important data point because what we know is that this population is often um the risk of mental health and suicide is relatively high when you look at his um like data across the united states and we're really pushing hard at mcmurray to continue to keep the messaging around inclusiveness and um support for all of our students in the forefront to support um this being a safe time for students to transition and we were just celebrating with our gsa club today uh during their lunch time they showed up even during a snowstorm they showed up on their own time um we were celebrating the

079fact that we have so many brave youth who are really um have um made it um for themselves wanting to transition in school that it really is empowering others to be become their true selves and we feel like this really supports um mental health and suicide prevention as well so 14 just for mcmurray this year though that we're supporting um and another piece of data that we use in our school is the check yourself screener connected to our expert neighbor care mental health in the schools model program services that we have we're currently working um our neighbor care middle um expert counselor therapist is on maternity leave has been on maternity leave so she was with us for a little short flip of time in the fall um and we were able to to do

080screening with our um check yourself screener on our seventh grade cohort and um with hopes of doing it for you know the rest of our cohorts as she transitions back to us um but out of that data i think is a important data point that we pulled out is that of the seventh graders who did complete that 45 of those seventh graders of our seventh graders um in october were reporting um really having um challenges with worrying thinking that they just couldn't get to stop at least multiple times a week um and this was before this was in october this is before all that has happened in the last three months and so we what we just know is that um we'd expect this number to be higher obviously when we transition back in um

081to school so yeah and christina do you want to take it for chautauqua sure um i'll start out by saying that we also um are doing some screeners but they're new for us this year with the fastbridge saber screener and um it's a little trickier introducing a new screener for elementary students because their understanding of the questions we're a little concerned about so i'm not going to report that daddy here but i can tell you that about 34 percent of our students came out as flag in there as some concern there's two categories low concern and some concerns so in the most recent screener so just as a a bit of information um for that um at chautauqua we're really focusing on trying to reach as many students as we can and provide support to

082students in this context that always involves parent involvement um because of the age of the students so um with you know each of those students you can imagine then rep is represented um by contact um we i have myself as the chautauqua school social worker have um interacted with over 100 students and student over 100 students families that doesn't include what lisa radford our student support specialist and behavior interventionist has done in addition to that i just want to give a big shout out not only to lisa but also to sally adam our ecap family support and latino family advocate and in those roles sally has supported over 75 children and their families um in many different ways i'll get to our roles in a minute but we i just want to reinforce what what

083my colleagues have said about um it really is a team effort in the community and i know we're going to reference that later but um when when i say teachers i mean all of our staff every one of our esa's educational staff associates as well as our paris i consider teachers and everyone is keeping a really close eye out for students and we're really working hard to communicate and work together to um to spot when they are losing their shine um and then we also created um rebecca initiated an academic engagement team at chautauqua which i led and we threw that team and as 504 coordinator we supported 76 students and continued to do with some of them to try to help them not just be part of school but in be engaged in school

084and just initially to solve really easy well not easy really straightforward issues like let's get them a hot spot for connectivity but then getting into the the trickier bits going forward so i'll stop we can go to the next slide i think that's yours too christina yeah it is i just wanted to pause there um i had a couple questions about that slide do you want me to wait till the end yeah let's wait till the end and we'll have time for questions at the end thank you we don't have too many slides we'll get right looking get to it and my next piece is quick i think um my name again is christina meller and i'm the school social worker at chautauqua many of you are familiar with what school counselors and what school

085social workers do but just in case provided a very busy slide with a long list of some of the things we do to support students families and staff in the community and the community in action um people have asked us how is our role different now than it has been previously with the coving closure and although this year we've had to change the how of how we do our work the what of our role is the same we continue to build relationships to partner with students community family and staff to foster student and family strengths to build connections between people with resources to information between students and opportunities to increase their relationships and sense of themselves and their potential we are your frontline responders to student mental health concerns as you heard in the previous

086slide we promote the growth of social emotional capacities and we are increasingly working to try to level the playing field for our students individually and in groups through advocacy and equity efforts i for example am really looking forward to strengthening connections with community support systems change in the district so i just wanted to reflect back to the previous board meeting and um express our willingness and openness to that all of those areas promote protective factors that help increase resiliency for coping with the struggle when it arrives as it had has with the ongoing individual and systemic racism that our children and families experience and also of course the coveted pandemic and there is no magic approach but a multifaceted strengthening from many different aspects that help students weather difficulty and decrease their risk for more

087extreme expressions of distress which of course is the ultimate goal but there's many phases beyond that we've been really busy and we're hopeful that funds for schools via the expansion of behavioral health services that the biden administration has referenced and the additional um monies in both schools and behavioral health services will continue to strengthen and hopefully expand um supports in our community for mental health i just just as a little early advance i got a letter in the mail today from one of the students i've been supporting he's not very engaged in school but i've been meeting with him regularly and i got a valentine today um mailed to the school with a picture he drew me um anyways i just wanted to say that this this is a student who looks like on paper

088isn't doing great um but he's still connected and that's the core of what we do it's about relationships so do you want to go to the next slide yeah yeah next all right so um you know as we're at this point in the year and we know that we've almost not been with our students for almost a year we're really thinking about okay what what's ahead of us now like where where is the school counseling team and as a system what are we gonna need to think about um and what we know um is that we're gonna be having students and families returning to us um when we do come back in person eventually with really significantly higher levels of social and emotional mental health needs and when they left us in person um and

089we what we know with this kind of work is it really requires a pretty high level of one-on-one individual support with the student and families to support their success many students have been and not had peer contact since they've left us or minimal peer contact and that's going to be a big deal thing for a lot of our students elementary students are going to need to relearn what it means to be learning in a group that's a long time of their life that they've been out of school and it's a skill that doesn't come natural for everybody so there's going to be a lot of skill rebuilding on just how to be in school and to just be around people again um we know that many of our families and students and staff are really

090still at this moment in survival mode they've experienced significant trauma and hardship um and that this hasn't gone away for many of our staff our excuse me students and families yet and staff it's ongoing um and we're really just beginning to see the tip of the iceberg as far as what the needs and the impact is going to be during this time so we're going to need to be thinking um when we move back into school in person about what's continuing to be needs and what's the continued impact versus what's happened in the past um we also know that we're going to be working through additional stress and anxiety around just being in person with the health health risks and being with others outside of the school and we're having a lot of our students

091voice worry or concern or what is that going to be like for them again because they have been alone for so long um and we also are recognizing the fact that especially at the high school level there's going to be an increased stress for some students around credit retrieval and how that impacts on time graduation and um and many are not even quite aware of yet the the work that is to be done to get them back on track and we're gonna we're really wanting to name and recognize that then that is gonna be in itself another stressful event for them and that's not here yet um so overall what we do know is that one-on-one individual support for students and family is gonna really be needed more than ever um as we see like

092the impact of this last year unfold um and so we we just are you know we're going to be busy and we also um trust in our school system really working and continuing to value the social emotional development and recognizing that for some of our youth learning won't be able to happen at the level that it did when they left us as they're working through a lot of this many of our youth are telling us that their brains feel like they've shut off they just can't focus anymore um their sleep is disrupted and it's we're gonna have to work through that social emotional support so that they can um raise up to the level of academic achievement that they um they were experiencing when they left us in person so yeah we can go to

093the next slide all right so um that is a lot of really heavy information which is you know not necessarily surprising for people i mean i think everybody is well aware of um you know the impact this is having on our students and on our community but i feel really grateful that i get to um end our presentation with just sharing some good news um so i'm just going to kind of work through this list and talk a little bit about each of these things um starting with the fact that we meaning we as a whole community are resilient um so i just want to start with the obvious um with teachers back in march when you know everyone from brand new teachers to teachers who have been teaching for 40 years were asked to

094do something completely and totally new to them to to pivot on a moment's notice and start teaching remotely and i am just blown away every day and and also every day that goes by they're doing something new and then something new and then something new again that is an example of resilience and i feel super grateful to get to witness it every day um kids are getting through um and families are figuring it out and that doesn't mean that it's easy we not for a minute are we trying to gloss over the struggle that's going on but kids are getting through and seniors are on track to graduate and kids are being creative and they're asking for help and families are figuring it out and this is how we learn to be resilient so we

095learn to be resilient by going through hard things and coming out on the other side which doesn't mean that it's easy um you know getting through hard things is never easy but that is how we build resilience and we are seeing evidence of resilience every day um hope matters so a few years back i could talk about this stuff all day but i'll try to keep this part brief a few years back there were what they call hope scale questions that were added to the healthy you survey which is a survey that we use to kind of gauge how our students are doing the reason those were added is because science has linked hope with overall physical psychological and social well-being so these questions were added to the survey as a way to gauge how

096our students are doing and and hope the questions are based on the idea that hope is the belief that tomorrow will be better than today and that we have the power to make that true so these questions are trying to gauge not if kids have a naive um feeling that oh everything will be all right in the end but really are they able to create goals are they able to see multiple paths to reach those goals and do they believe that they can actually follow those paths and that they can succeed so that's what hope is and so part of why i put that in here tonight is so that we would all just take a minute to pause and reflect on the fact that we as the adults that are working with students are

097really powerful models of hope that we we can model it we can teach it we can build it and we can help kids have experiences that build hope so just it's one of the things that i think we as a counseling staff think about and we try to build in activities that um that build those give kids those experiences um there's still joy um you know again this is really hard work and it's super helpful for us to recognize when good things happen i love the sources of strength uh presentation because um one of the things i didn't know that they were doing that and i was talking about something that we had just done at the high school and they really tied together nicely um so we did send out a survey that was

098very purposeful um with a message to kids that the survey was not um designed to kind of gloss over um the hard things that are going on but to reflect on what they are doing to get through it so the survey had three simple questions uh the first question was what are you doing to survive the second uh survive this time um kovit the second question was have you tried anything new during the covent closure and the third question was what are you most looking forward to when this is all over um so i'm just going to read really quickly i got about 220 responses and i just want to read some of the examples of what kids are doing to stay sane so reading actual books that was one of my favorites playing football

099basketball volleyball soccer cleaning their rooms organizing decorating working out riding bikes keeping a routine setting goals baking hiking walking using my imagination yoga talking to my grandparents on the phone banging on drums creating a podcast learning an instrument so that's i don't know maybe 20 of the 200 responses students are doing cool things and they're what i love about that is that they're learning themselves that these things help them it's not the their parents telling them or their counselor telling them or their teachers telling them they're figuring it out for themselves like what helps the second question was have they tried something new so i'll read a few of those um learning to cook learning guitar piano violin overnight hiking knitting becoming okay with being bored sometimes i love that one pistol squats one-armed push-ups

100training for a half marathon um axe throwing that was a little concerning fundraising and growing plants so i think all those things are just really great examples of kids finding joy doesn't mean that every day and every moment is joyful but there are moments of joy to be had and that ties in really well to the success stories um and that was kind of i was getting at uh the staff end of that um we did ask staff to share some success stories and i'm not going to read those because there's about 10 pages of those but that was another moment of realizing that our staff are also seeing the good right now and and one of the things that stuck out to me about those success stories were um many of them involved some

101of our most vulnerable students so a number of teachers talked about being able to work with students with ieps and our second language learners and other vulnerable populations that teachers actually have more time to provide kind of individual care and instruction and one-on-one time with those students which i think is really um inspiring um and then the last thing on the list partnerships are key we've touched on that already but um but again i think our our resiliency as a community is really about the partnerships we form so every day we're working with you know dove and vyfs and teen council and puentes and sisterhood and journeyman the schools foundation varsa team council and then of course teachers admin parents um really it's that's what's getting us through is um being together so um that's

102kind of it from us if you could just go to the next slide um just for reference we put in some resources in case anyone is interested in reading a little bit more about our work or some of the things that we use as resources and then if you could just go to the last slide just want to end with a little quote from desmond tutu that hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness so thank you for letting us present and we're happy to take questions and we didn't manage to hit all the community partners um schools foundation pie there's lots of wonderful things going on out there system if we didn't say you know that we we still appreciate you oh thank you guys that's a

103fantastic report like really you like you hit the lows really hard and then thank you for coming back to the highs because they're both they're both there uh bob did you have a question or was it answered no i had a question i got two and i'll be i'll be brief the um the vhs dnf report do we have those data by uh by race and or income danny do you want to jump in on this one because danny's been pulling together a lot of that um that data danny yeah so we don't have the the free reduced or by income is privileged information so we don't first of all we don't have readily we don't have ready access to that information and even if we did we would never put it into a report

104that we were out on uh necessarily especially if we thought it would reveal anything specific about students but but i also don't have ready access to be able to cross-reference it in terms of students of color we're still also pulling that together but i just looking through the names i can tell you that our students of color continue to be disproportionately represented in our struggling academic performers so you know our students with ieps were about 200 percent of our dnfs compared to the re to the percent that they that they hold across our general population so they represent about 10 percent of our population but about 20 percent of our d's and similarly if we were to compare our students of color i would definitely expect there to be a for them to be over

105represented in our dnf data and there are interventions that you have uh based on those data yeah many many interventions and and our counselors are a big part of our what we call our tier two and tier three teams across all three schools and so whenever we have students who are struggling we when we do our a reporting um our reports really just capture in some respects the um the what happens at the end of a lot of our interventions but they also it also represents the beginning of of more intervention so our teams intervene along the way as we see students struggling um an example of that is we moved um we moved over 100 grades from letter grades to pass fail at the high school in the midst of the semester so while

106those classes were still in motion our counseling team and teachers and admin transition students to pass fail grade marks in order to try and create a more realistic or easily attainable um finish line for them and many of those students still did not pass those classes they still ended up failing classes so yeah lots of mid-stream interventions take place but also we we also look to make some recovery efforts available to students within the school year we're not going to wait until this summer before a lot of these students are given the opportunity to try and recover their credit thank you thank that's uh very reassuring so thank you um second uh yvette you taught me a word to a new word tonight i thought knew that i thought under the mall ideation uh suicidal

107ideation um what could you i think of 33 i saw what what does that mean um could you elaborate on what it means to this is suicidal thoughts i assume is suicidal thinking and it's really a um a range of intensity and it can be as minimal as not not minimal but it can be sometimes i have a fleeting thing thought of i wish i was dead or i wish i wouldn't wake up all the way to um the most significant i have suicidal thinking i want to die i'm actively planning if i get a chance i'm going to do it um so it's a it's a range of intensity and i think that the good information around that is that um we those students have been brought to the counselors through self-referral through referral

108of by friends reaching out to because i'm worried about my friend can you check in on them um or i saw something posted i think an adult should know about that we've had numerous parents reach out to us or like healy said teachers just noticing like whoa there's a real difference in in the student um over the last few weeks i think someone should check in and so um it's an alarming number um and it probably is just the tip of the iceberg of students who've had who've had suicidal thinking um again not all students who are having suicidal thinking are planning to attempt um but but it's something that's um that they're thinking on and um and i do think the fact that we have some people looking and um reaching out for support

109when they're worried about someone is a good thing so we don't have a baseline to compare that nice it's 33 here i don't we don't have a baseline to compare that to is that um you know we haven't kept specific data from year to year i think it's a new data point to keep the other component to really know here is that um as school counselors we rely so heavily on in-person um observation and energy of a student that we do not have right now so we actually um we we literally are scanning um students as they're walking about our building as they're walking to the door to kind of know um notice changes or who might be in crisis or need support and we don't have the right that right now we're on peers

110parents and staff um and so we're expecting we're going to see more students who are who are probably at more of a crisis level than we're aware of once we have students walking through the building again thank you good answers thank you can i jump in there too bob and just say this is christina miller to talk about and i just say that we use the columbia um severity um suicide severity rating scale screener don't have the name flew it off the top my head but i use it at the elementary school as well and i would just mirror what a vet said about not getting all the information a lot of times kids say things at school and you know with trusted adults that we then scoop them in so the numbers of reports

111at the elementary school are actually down from last year but two of them have been in the last um three weeks and one of them was a six-year-old and one of them was a ten-year-old and they're just um it's not that they're saying that they have a plan to hurt themselves but the fact that they're thinking those thoughts um is still a flag and we are really on it we have we have procedures and systems that are in you know you know as part of the board you know it's the school district documents that we follow and make sure that we're um we're really on on that we don't take it lightly but it kind of goes back to what i said before there's no magic approach but we're trying to strengthen students and families

112from all sides as much as we can i don't have a question so well i suppose i do have a little bit of a wondering but i just wanted to say um i found that such helpful information i'm so appreciative of that really thorough report and i i just have to say i am so grateful and we i feel like we're so fortunate to have such a superstar team of school counselors i have had personal contact and experience with many of you and not during a pandemic coming to you as an anxious mom and was always met with so much empathy and competence and support and so i can only imagine how you have risen and can tell from this report to support these students and i know how incredibly hard you must all be

113working um to when you're supporting students and families through these extraordinary times it takes a lot and i'm sure you're all taking i hope really good care of yourselves and i loved the mindful minute totally speaking my language um and it's really reassuring to hear you to hear you sharing that you know while we we're we're identifying these students it feels as though we're there's so many there's safeguards in place there's collaboration and and that your sense is while wow would be really probably wonderful to be able to say we feel as though 100 we've reached every student but it seems to me you're darn well close to that and it doesn't i don't get a sense that we're that there's a lot of kids hopefully who are not that they're not falling through the

114cracks you know that somehow um we're we're reaching them and even if i imagine you have to work extra hard to try to to do outreach to those kids so that is just me saying thank you we see you we appreciate all of you so much in addition to our teachers um and all staff but this was a really really helpful report i echo that this is the thing about these reports is i feel like in the agenda it needs to be like an hour or like two hours and then you know i'm thinking oh my god we gotta get we gotta get through it but i have a question i don't that i don't know um so i know that in we'll have some sort of summer opportunities hopefully maybe um for kids to

115make up credits is there any way i i don't even really want to i is there any way to help kids during the summer with with mental health i think so i know i'm asking a big question you know what the students would tell you don't make me go don't make me go to summer school um yeah i i think that i think that the the the double-edged sword of the pandemic is that it simultaneously lowered expectations and then made it difficult to meet those lowered expectations for our students and so a big a big antidote to the mental health challenges our students face is is trying to give them the confidence that they can be successful and so our plan is to build out a very robust program this summer for students that doesn't

116just address even credit recovery but also skill gap and even helping make sure people are are well prepared to take on the challenges next year so we're talking about everything from ap students to failing students to students who just have ongoing regular deficits and so we're really we're really thinking through and slade is kind of leading us through a much different version of our summer programming than than just limiting it to credit retrieval and i think that that hopefully will build out a lot more competence in our students as they prepare for next year yeah it's almost like we need mental health camp hey it's a bet i'll i'll personally take any kid who wants to go on a hike i'll take them on a hike and that'll be good mental health that'll be good

117mental health therapy there are 42 people who just heard you say that i'm all i'm good for my offer you're so proud of really amazing community organizations too i know sisterhood and journeymen are both holding a lot of our most at-risk and vulnerable student right now and their mentors are just amazing at staying connected i know they're both planning for i don't know what camps are going to look like this summer but i know they're both actively planning for what opportunities we might be able to help students stay engaged with their mentors that way too yeah okay um anybody else have questions before we move on uh no okay um thank you thank you for the report thank you counselors while you're doing everything else thank you for your like shifting to talk to us

118but it's so important for everybody to hear what you're doing because you're doing so it's such such such important work so thank you thank you thank you yeah um you're welcome to stay uh of course but you're also welcome to uh give back to your family or cats or home all right so moving right along here uh we have the black lives matter resolution uh number 788 for a second read um so uh what i'll do is i'll call for a vote and then we can discuss or i will call for a motion and then we'll discuss it and then we can vote on it bob with me okay i'll take this yes so do i have a motion thank you do i have a motion um on the floor to pass resolution uh 789

119oh no sorry yeah sorry i can't see my glasses uh uh 788 okay wait okay um all those i know sorry you need dog kisses i have that at that moment that's what i needed apparently um okay so do we have discussion about this any discussion all right um call for i don't yep i just i just wanted to say i think that this is uh resolution is a is a great first step but it's it's only a first step and i think um all of my colleagues have kind of already acknowledged that at first reading um and that's i also agree that symbolism has a purpose um but i would like to know how this well i don't need to know but i would like us to have sort of a broader strategy a

120board strategy that is both intentional and comprehensive and this um i'd like to know how this fits into it um leadership i know that we're doing lots of wonderful things in our schools i hear from slade and many conversations with parents and um even kids about the amazing learning and difficult conversations that are uh happening in our schools and it really instills pride i think in the community that we live but it's my s excuse me my sense that this is all happening due to the leadership um of you know some administrators and uh teacher leaders frankly um and that the leadership is not occurring at the board level um the action tonight this action tonight is easy and i feel like um to use a basketball metaphor it's a layup and i know that

121yes symbols are important but the real work is is uncomfortable right now we don't have uh an equity toolkit for decision making and a decision-making lens for board members and staff so that we can sort of rigorously and systematically look at the impacts of our decisions large and small and you know that's something we could work on right away um we have a racial equity racial equity policy that whatever value it had when it was approved three years ago um really it has no goals or no accountability and that's something we could work on right now um i understand that our future actions are going to be guided by the hiring of a consultant that will be uh and that this will all be swept up into our strategic planning process and i know slade

122you mentioned for for the public and all of us that we have a workshop ahead on racial equity but forgive me if i sound impatient but this sounds like you know many months of delay before we get meaningful action that's not action that's not just symbolic so i just want to put it out there that i'm i'm impatient and i'm wanting to get to things that are truly impactful for the education of bipac students and that we get to it sooner rather than later so i'm happily support this this resolution tonight but um i hope we get on to some really impactful steps soon i think um i think that bob your words are um i i think that we all agree and i that you are right that this is symbolic and there's a

123time and place for symbolism and then there's a time and place to actually get going and we have not gone as quickly as we should have in the past and we're moving forward now so okay any other comments okay all those in favor say aye aye all right hi all right thanks bob for your comments the resolute houses um so next up is the um board protocols which we also second read right uh this was again drafted last time by greg and zebette and i was some input by myself um really clarifying again how uh you know a bill becomes a lot or uh a board interest becomes placed on the agenda so uh without any further discussion i would recommend that this board adopt the board meeting agenda protocol and then this would be

124placed uh into our other set of protocols that are available on the visd board webpage okay so do i bob you stretching your mouth there getting ready i just wanted to thank slade and zabet and everybody for making this happen i don't know if you actually did anything's about but i'm giving you credit so yeah it was great it was craig it was not me i don't know why he gave me credit on that one i withdraw [Music] a motion to approve uh this operating uh protocols no moved have a second second beat jeff very close very close okay any discussion well only that the title on this page says first reading but i think we recognize that it's not so just a point of order yeah okay so all those in favor of passing

125this protocol i all right okay um i'm looking down because i have my agenda here so sorry um okay so next up is the um healthy start resolution 789 that toby and i will present thanks jody um so with this resolution the board is agreeing that we have reviewed the safe opening plan and we agree that it meets our criteria for providing safe effective and efficient uh district operations we leave that we're leaving the details of the plan to the superintendent and to the building principles um we really appreciate the work that has gone into this plan with the union leadership and the administration um this has been this is all hands on deck and we really want to acknowledge that um and as always the board will continue to monitor the plan in light

126of any changes that come up um uh from that department of health or ospi if we've learned anything from this kovid experience it is that one you know things change so we will keep an eye on this plan um but i think that it would um in light of hopefully things are moving we would like to get this passed in one reading so um any discussion first about this okay actually um i yes i do feel i need to uh sorry guys um my board colleagues know that uh i'm well self-characterized as perhaps the most jealous the board member who most jealously guards the prerogatives of the board i think that probably is an accurate statement and um that um to the comment that we are uh inappropriately delegating um authority to the superintendent um

127i know this is an imperfect analogy but legislative bodies delegate uh authority lots of times the washington legislature delegated to the governor authority to handle initially the work during the emergency declaration of the pandemic so um this is uh i view it as an absolutely appropriate delegation of authority um within strict parameters that um are included in the resolution um and secondly you know the the what the board can bestow the board can unbestow at any time so um if anybody's worried about um you know if we should trust the administration or that they can do something that isn't based on science um you can rest assured that your school board um is here to provide oversight but this is um we have to trust people the people that work with this organization and um

128i would never um very i would only in the rarest of circumstances um completely delegate my my vote and my support for um or my obligation to represent the people's community so i am absolutely comfortable with this delegation and because slave needs the ability to be nimble great thanks thanks bob for that um any other comments okay happy hearing no other comments uh do i have a motion to pass resolution 789 so moved uh i think you need to suspend the rule the the policy first and then oh thank you thank you that's the uh board parliamentarian zach thank you thank you that's a good catch so uh we will suspend the previous uh resolution first so do i have a motion to suspend the previous in a second okay do i have a motion

129to uh for uh to pass resolution 789 so all right resolution 79 passes okay um getting the award well first uh for hanging in there uh jenny johnson coming in with via the yfs and the school district lease renewal uh this is matt this is you elizabeth thank you um i'll give a brief intro and start to run late um and then i will turn it over to jenny johnson uh basically what you have before you is a renewal extension of the lease agreement between obviously us the national school district and fashion youth and family services this is for uh 15 years uh running from this coming december to november of 2036. uh in particular this is similar to uh the extension we gave to the park district this past fall where they had received

130a grant from the state of washington i think the parks commission and in order to uh you know see proof of that uh the department of commerce to provide that uh i'm sorry the parks commission to provide that to the parks district they need to see 15-year 20-year lease in this case a 15-year lease for fashion youth and family services as they've received a community projects grant from the washington state department of commerce there's nothing really new to this aside from the term but there is more detail more meat if you will in the in lieu of services section of number six and i will let jenny go into more detail that in a second i want to let the board know this has also gone through legal review legal counsel and they've given this

131the green light and it should be good to go that said it's been a pleasure to work with jenny johnson on this and get to know her as the relatively new at the time executive director of fashion youth and family services and i will uh briefly turn it over to jenny thank you so much matt um yes it's been really great to work with you hello everybody thank you for your time tonight um it was such a treat to get to hear the presentation from the counseling team my goodness um that was that was wonderful um so yeah to um the the uh in lieu of services has changed the least like matt said um it's very similar to the to the previous 20-year lease this lease with the in lieu of services we're actually

132increasing um the number of counseling hours um provided from uh we've gone up from per year to 1500 we're actually already doing and have been doing for a while at least 1500 in 2020 we did 1600 counseling hours to school-age students and we did about 100 and 155 students over the course of the year that doesn't include summer we were just tracking for the school year but we do continue to see of course students over the summer we're expanding the services to include not just counseling hours but potentially collaborating with school staff on behavioral health maybe education opportunities doing something with students along those lines and then incre including on concrete case management support we get a lot of referrals for case management support for for families bisd families in need of support with rental

133vouchers medical vouchers ferry passes that kind of thing so really beefing up that support um what can i tell you about our demographics um so our we do track or we have started to track more closely um the ages of the students that we see um so in this last year the majority of the students that we saw were younger at the start of the year and then by the end of the year we were kind of bumping up into more the teen area and um you know we can try to analyze that and look at what that might mean in terms of of covid and a lot of what we're hearing from the counseling team but um it's i don't want to overread do you have any questions i just i have a comment

134that i'm feel particularly uh pleased with the partnership that we have and the services that you provide and support uh that are not um available available to all communities so thank you for for your partnership in that in terms of the nitty-gritty of the actual lease agreement i read it pretty carefully and i was really happy with what i saw and didn't see any gotchas or things that needed to be i always love these loose agreements uh toby one thing i want to add i think you had asked this back in the fall with the parks district but the same thing applies here as a school district required by the rcw specifically that 28a four zero under 335040 you know if we were to ever need the land for educational purposes that is kind of

135an automatic via the state law i can't imagine we ever would but that is in there just in case awesome thank you i just want to also just note um jenny is leading uh the organization uh you know in in some equity work and developing their own uh racial equity policy and so it's been um you know a real pleasure to uh to see her leadership and you know kind of really take off from where carroll left off keira getzel uh and so i just i just know that you've been a a great addition not only to the organization but to the island because you know i see you on rotary and i i see jenny everywhere basically [Laughter] so i thank you so much mutual thank you thank you yup thank you we just

136we celebrate and value this partnership with visd it's it's it's really remarkable and i look forward to uh building on it and um continuing to to find new and different ways to collaborate that um serve our families and students yeah yeah you're here yeah exactly um okay so any other buddy okay jenny thank you i really it's it's a great collaboration and um i'll just echo that we're lucky to have it have you there glad you're at the helm um okay zipping right along matt and slade and hi kay i we see you um as a part of our budget planning process as you know as we follow our calendar as best we can um over the last month or so myself and kay have been meeting with our school principals and our director of

137link course thomas elliot and trying to square away what our projections for enrollment look like for next year in those meetings we provide kind of the science side with our five-year cohort projections and ten-year averages and then we meet obviously with our principals and kind of figure out what they know what applications are in the queue and try to really nail down what exactly our room would look like for in this case 21 and 20 22. the document you see before you once been provided uh has at the bottom as a good reference i've included this year which i have in past years but i have current enrollment and i also have the 2021 budgeted enrollment as as like i said a point of reference um as you'll notice uh chautauqua we're looking at 470

138fte for next year in comparison to their current enrollment of 465 course our 2021 budget was 496 but no one saw the pandemic coming mcmurray is about 340. the high school about 474 and in total our links would be about all in and that gives us 14 15. this is not a surprise number i think we've been seeing this of course with our actual enrollment we kind of knew next year would be around that same or similar number the fascinating thing to me and and k is that when we run our cohorts and our averages i think we came around 14 21 so we backed off a little bit of that because we met with the principals and we see a projection of 14 15 for the next school year any questions uh uh matt

139does this i'm sorry for jumping in everyone um does this give us more capacity for off island students what can you explain to me i'm talking about the high school mainly um could you elaborate a little bit on the thinking that goes around that off island enrollment or at the high school yeah if i could i know i see greg is on the call and i think he'd be ideal to answer i'm not trying to assuage the answer but uh i think greg would be ideal yeah um we do have capacity i know at the middle school um you know talking with matt and kay and and our non-non-resident application process was just happening in in the month of january and uh we were curious about how that would look this year just given the

140the nature of the system and uh the pandemic and so forth but uh we started a little slower but we ended up getting about 27 non-resident applications all in the sixth grade and we were able to accept all of those we still do have some capacity uh really in all three grades uh and i i can't speak to the high school but but i think looking at at those numbers i think there's capacity at the high school as well and bob our our off island or commuter student if you are non-residential has actually grown we're at 251 this year currently and last year we ended at 246 and has played played stayed pretty steady over the years it'll be interesting to see if uh other districts continue to drop around us the way they have

141the last year or so correct [Music] any other questions on enrollment yeah uh there is a couple other documents here as always you know is how i like to develop and and present the budget over the course about five or six months these are all pages that are in and will be a part of the budget in particular um jody if you could pull up uh those pages perfect thank you obviously we have the enrollment uh projection that'll be i think page roughly 3334 of the budget summary and kind of the fun stuff for me is these informational uh charts and tables where we have the historical and projected student enrollment right below uh next year's projection and you can see i'm just continuing to add to it um i would kind of ignore the

142bottom four uh rows as the state requires us to do like a finger in the wind estimate and you know well as well as i do that kind of who knows year to year where will be but they do require us to put those numbers in there but it is a fascinating look at from 2006 to 2007 to current where we stand uh the kind of growth increase decrease over the years and the next page provided to you is as i mentioned earlier our historic off island commuter student enrollment you can see that that kind of a growth increase decrease and it goes by school and then the table below that is the historical running start student enrollment and how that grows and i just keep adding to those and you can see the trends

143and and where we go any questions on those thanks matt uh that leaves us with the budget assumptions and priorities and i would like just to recommend to the board that we uh tabled this particular piece of the budget to our march 11th meeting um i just want to recognize that it's 9 10 we've all been two hours and 10 minutes in the meeting and this is a fairly significant and important part of this budget document and i'd like to give it the time that it deserves so i'm going to speak on behalf of matt and i that we believe that we can probably uh push this particular you know part of the budget planning to the march 11th meeting okay are we just are we just getting warmed up here right yeah slade i

144had an unrelated budget question could you give us the quick uh food service near and dear to my heart could you uh we've been talking about food service could you update the board on where we are on the financials around our food service provision yeah i don't know if we have that prepared for you tonight bob but i can certainly get that to you and i can yep um i don't mind moving this part of the conversation to the next meeting does that present a problem from the timing of building the budget okay okay then if everybody's okay with that we will uh table that discussion for now everybody okay with that thumbs up casually reagan you okay with that okay all right um so then moving on to the consent agenda do i have

145a motion to approve the consent agenda moved second all those in favor all right all right we'll quickly recognize that we do have some uh resignations and retirements and once again we'll be um celebrating them in our end of year uh staff recognition yep yeah sometimes no it's always a little heartbreaking to read these but i really i personally appreciate reading the letters that are sent in yeah because it gives a flavor or insight in some of the dynamics that lead people in their decision making some of the things that we're not in control of like the west seattle bridge gosh darn it yeah yeah what the heck shawn hoogan doing coaching volleyball i i can't answer that question that is i just love him and i i thought he was i didn't know he

146was that adept okay with that insightful comment uh uh toby are we a journey no you're missing any new business right oh sorry it's late any new any new business anybody nope okay we are adjourning at 9 13 and uh thank you very much thanks everybody to right who wrote in and who stayed to the ver to the bitter end and thank you judy you got new links is that correct slave new links are in my mailbox my email box yes okay