October 8, 2020 VISD School Board Meeting

001we'll call uh the october eighth uh meeting of the fashion island school district board of directors to order here at seven o'clock and may i have an approval of the agenda i mean uh vote coaching before we do that i would like to uh recommend we amend the agenda to make the vesp cba a discussion item with no action as a first read tonight which we will put on the october 2 if i had 14 and a 22nd meeting for approval yeah so i uh i second that or second the approval of the agenda with that change all right all in favor wow that was awesome look at that he's getting really good at this thank you jody all right all right with that done then we uh now go to public comment and tonight

002we're trying out our new opportunity to have some live comment uh if you signed up by four o'clock for that and we also have some letters so i will let slade go ahead and lead us through this so we get everyone heard great and uh thank you very much for our public for attending this evening for sure and uh we are um changing things uh uh just a little to allow the public an opportunity to offer a live comment um if you're interested in future meetings you can uh jody will send out in the board announcement board meeting announcement that a link to sign up and so we do have three members of the community who use that form that we sent to sign up and this this is our first time using this we'll

003proceed accordingly so we have two uh two people who filled out the english form and one person who filled out the spanish form and the first person i'll call on your name and then if you could just um unmute your button and then say your name and then you'll have three minutes to offer your public comment and so the first public comment is from dominic giovanovich okay i will just offer probably two more times uh dominic jovanovic if you are attending this evening and would like to offer your live public comment please unmute identify and then uh share your public comment with the school board one more this may not be on yet maybe maybe we can give him an opportunity another call at the end just in case he's not on yet sure and

004then uh the next public comment comes from or live public comment comes from kimberly flack if you are attending the meeting please mute and identify and then offer your public comment to the school board this is a big success i know uh kimberly fleck if you're attending the meeting tonight go ahead and unmute and give your public comment okay our third public comment uh obviously uh we need to probably communicate a little bit better what the purpose of this is uh comes from uh beatrice munoz if you are attending the meeting this evening you can unmute and give your public comment one more call for bad fees munoz she indicated she wanted to speak to the board about the opening of schools so okay uh i will move on let's just call for those guys

005yep let's just call for those guys at the end once the letters are done sure absolutely so our next public comment comes from let me get back to the right screen comes from barbara gale i will read the entire letter to the board it's october 8th 2020 dear school board members i am writing after researching how the current plan okay vsd schools november 9th may impact our community my research some of which i will share below leads me to conclude that the vashawn island school bournemouth must vote no on the superintendent's proposal to reopen the elementary school november 9th a no vote will safeguard the well-being and health of our children staff and faculty this morning seattle's mayor talked about the likelihood of reopening schools and period and concluded king county still in phase two

006in the increased copic cases in king county that is unlikely the schools will reopen for face-to-face learning until next year on october 1st pierce county health officials advise the puyallup school district to help halt the plan for in-person learning until the county sees a decline in new coronavirus cases saying we are concerned about the recent upward trend of pierce county's october 19 14 day case rate which is at 68 per 100 000 population including this six day lag today the rate has increased 12 out of the past 14 days if this same pattern continues we expect the rate to go above 75 per 100 000 with the six day data lag sometime next week if we surpass that threshold pierce county will move back into the high category of the cobia 19 activity level per

007the department of health's decision tree for the provision of in-person learning tacoma news repeat because the new york times reported today that the washington state's coveted cases increased 18 and yesterday king county reported infection numbers that increased from 53 100 000 to 72 per 100 000 with transmission numbers increasing to 1.6 we are facing a similar issue as pierce county starting school before there is a decrease in copper cases is irresponsible especially since many epidemiologists predict worse times ahead the washington post reported this week that infectious disease experts are warning of a potential cold weather surge of coronavirus cases a long feared second wave of infections and deaths possibly at a catastrophic scale researchers assumed the crest would come closer to when fall gives way to winter my feeling is that there is a wave

008coming and it's not so much whether it's coming but how big it's going to be to eilee klein an epidemic epidemiologist at johns hopkins university school of medicine a model produced by the university of washington's institute for health metrics and evaluation published friday forecasting most likely death rate total of 1907 by the first part of november roughly double the control under the ihme forecast the numbers would continue to rise into early december peaking at more than two hundred two thousand eight hundred deaths daily king county public health director told the tecuma news tribune that based on the level of covert transmission in our community everybody should be clear they're taking risk for covid and that so much of it is people who are asymptomatic so we can't assume that there's no covid because people look

009happy and healthy around us he argued that we are entering a very challenging time both locally and nationally with respect to covet he said i implore people to step back for a minute to remember what works and to rededicate themselves between everything they can do as individuals and what we can do as a community to minimize the potential for a great degree of illness and suffering this fall and winter i too share this view that we ought to see how the winter months progress before starting school face-to-face and having to cancel it due to illness and outbreaks the facts do not support reopening the vashon elementary schools further questions arise when you look at the kinds of guidelines and plans needed to reopen schools safely the board should ask the following questions to guarantee there

010is a solid plan in place as ed source argues school officials should make decisions about school reopening based on available data including levels of community transmission and their capacity to implement appropriate mitigation measures in schools to protect students teachers administrations and other staff the following are just a few of these questions that must be addressed firmly to ensure the safety and health of our students staff and faculty is there enough personal safety equipment for staff teachers and those families that require it how's the building ventilation hvac system been addressed to meet new cobin 19 standards based on air circulation will extra help on buses ensure seating for the social distancing of students extra staff be available to take temperatures daily upon entering the building and will enough thermometers be available have specific plans been made

011for actions if a child has a temperature a specific plan to be made in case of an outbreak of flu that could compromise what plans for testing students staff and faculty for cobit 19 and the permissions required have been made has specific plans been made in case of a positive test for cobit what plans have been made to address the fact that many children have not received needed vaccines to keep their immunizations current has clean and disinfectant supplies budget been increased what plans have been made to disinfect classrooms between cohorts what plans have been made to monitor restroom disinfecting during the day will hand sanitizer stations be available available in each classroom will water fountains be dismantled and how will water be provided for students is there hot water available for hand washing at all

012in all laboratories have partitions been added at school secretary and other high contact desks will desk be more than six feet apart given new research data and the contagious spread of coping 19 that suggests six feet is inadequate to control the spread of disease has the water system unflushed in each building due to non-use is there a backup staffing plan all these are questions that need to be addressed before reopening should occur to mitigate risk if each of these is not addressed the school board the board should not vote should vote no on the proposal to open schools november 9th according to edsource opening schools for in-person instruction involves taking risks at almost every stage of the process even when schools follow local health guidelines when children's health along with the health of everyone else

013in their social workers is at stake what's on the table now even more clearly is whether it is worth taking those risks i believe the risks during the incoming upcoming months and urges school board members to vote no sincerely barbara phd and she offers her email that is public comment and i appreciate um barbara for offering your comment i will actually share some uh response to you and my superintendent report and i appreciate those three uh members if those other three members uh dominic um uh beatrice or let me get the name right kimberly would like to offer their public comment right now live uh please a mute and the board would welcome your public comment okay so it looks like we'll have to probably um re-communicate our directions and hopefully the intent of the

014live public comment and so that we can ensure that we all understand what we're trying to do here thank you reagan okay thanks very much always a little rough when you try something new but i bet we'll have it figured out next time all right and now we're on to the superintendent report and slade go ahead with that thank you very much uh thank you again community for attending this evening uh once again i'd like to open my board superintendent uh my board report i'm making a land acknowledgement once again i would like to recognize and acknowledge the indigenous people of this land the pure tribe of indians at this meeting we pay respect to the pure tribe of indians and to their elders past present and emerging next i'd like to move on i'm

015going to kind of stand up here and proudly represent bashon island school district uh this i'm wearing our our aunt t-shirt today i felt uh in the spirit of honoring our orcas mustangs and pirates so uh this is a t-shirt that i received when i was when i was invited to be the superintendent and i just love wearing it and um and and and i'm honoring today our ecap kids uh and especially lilia and laura who are true stewards of the vashon spirit that i'm that i'm representing tonight and i had the distinct pleasure of watching lily and laura lead probably five or six students today with you know all they were on a on kind of a rope six feet apart with little handles on it with kind of it looks like they were

016either going outside or coming back from the outside just a lot of crazy kid noise and i absolutely loved it and it was the favorite part of my day so anyway i'm just letting you letting the board know uh getting some vashon spirit out there secondly tonight i would just like to reaffirm or just encourage everybody once again to get out and vote this evening i'm going to bring up some deadlines for folks just to remind myself and others um election day uh starting october 16th will will be the start of the 18 day voting period and so ballots are mailed out and accessible voting units are available at voting centers and this comes from vote.org and on october 26 online and mail registrations must re must be received eight days before election day so

017if you are intending to register you have to register online and mail before that day and if you're in person during business hours anytime before 8 pm on election day and then uh of course november 3rd is the general election where you can deposit your ballots um at the library with their with their voting booth there so i just want to encourage everybody to get out and vote this is very important election and this is our chance to do our civic duty so um next i would like to recognize october as our national principals month and so uh gosh what can i say our vascon principles and assistant principles they create hope for each and every student in their buildings by leading culture systems and learning i would like to draw to everyone's attention that

018principals side by side work tirelessly every day as visionaries assessment experts community builders public relations experts budget analysis facilities managers and guardians of various legal contractual and policy initiatives they work collaboratively collaboratively with all the staff to ensure the students have the gosh the best learning experience possible and a strong sense of belonging in our school district so october is a great month to honor and recognize the contributions of all of our district principals and our assistant principals and i was sharing with a mentor of mine today uh former superintendent uh he asked me how was i doing and the first thing that came to my mind was how fortunate i was to have such a strong leadership team and so i just want to remind our community and our school board the importance of

019our leadership teams at our buildings and uh just to recognize that we're very fortunate to have the success exceptional group of folks that's john hodgson rebecca gertzel at the elementary school greg allison at the middle school and then andrew gus as mr gus and then danny rock at the high school so i thank you very much for those principles and the assistant principles for their leadership uh and our buildings uh the next point on my report this evening is i'd like to welcome and reagan you and i have the opportunity to do an orientation with our two newest student board of representatives and they are ella yarkin and mead gill these are exceptional students ella comes to us with quite a bit of experience um we probably know her maybe most from her cross-country accomplishments

020but she has also participated in the fashion island council and and meet comes to us with lots of experience being on the riptide he is the son of aristigil our elementary school teacher and so i sent them a congratulatory email today welcoming them to the to be our next student board representatives it's always wonderful to hear from our students they will attend the student advisory board to the superintendent which is a monthly meeting and they will report out on that at our board meetings and also they'll be reporting out on kind of what's happening in our schools and so hopefully they'll be able to attend either i know most likely be virtually our day on the hill which bet and i will be attending in olympia in the upcoming legislative session and so i'm looking

021forward to a wonderful partnership with ella and mead and um i just want to say i appreciate both of them for putting putting in their applications and want to step up into this leadership role um and uh lastly not right before my upcoming events i'd like to just uh kind of uh [Music] covet 19 has put some extraordinary pressures on the school district and therefore the school board and so i'd like to give a thank you to our school board members um during clova 19 all of you have been responsible of our school district and the the cadence of communication in a non-pandemic has been probably tripled or quadrupled or even more than that um i i'm very thankful for our one-to-one meetings every week um some of you i'm briefing daily uh and i

022know that not this hasn't been easy because each and every one of you have family commitments professional commitments and so i just want to extend the uh a small amount of appreciation while i'm sharing appreciation for our other staff that for all that you've been doing and and and and uh and i'll continue to keep the board informed and updated on a regular basis uh i know this takes more time um during these you know the constant uh shifting uh of guidance and and information that comes in it feels like hourly but i just want to to let you know that i appreciate the time you've been spending with me especially in your volunteer role and uh lastly gosh uh let's just talk about some upcoming events tomorrow i've sent a link to you you

023hopefully you'll be able to attend our teaching learning forum the morning session with dr tanisha brandon felder who will be guiding a racial equity workshop for all of our district i've extended that invitation to our friends and family uh racial equity partners and i'm looking forward to an entire day of just extending our learning on not only racial equity but suicide awareness and prevention and then a special thank you to um are our collaborators and and our staff who are going to be in the afternoon working on extending our learning in the tech environment so um it's going to be a wonderful day of learning and hopefully as many board members pretend i know not always work commitments and and other things come up hopefully you'll be able to attend this morning uh tomorrow morning

024uh on next week on the 13th uh from 5 30 to 8 p.m we'll have our board retreat and then october 22nd we'll have our our next board meeting and then out there in november already we are talking about our wasda conference and so zebeten i uh i believe are scheduled to attend that but i would like to invite others if they would like to join it will be virtual um it's situated in spokane but will be virtual and this is a great experience for any board member to both network with other board members in the state but also uh extend their learning and and kind of understand how districts you know uh are tackling certain challenges and certain problems and um anyway i just want to invite any anybody else who would like to

025attend if you're if you're interested please let me know and jody and i can get you signed up so with that that concludes my board report alrighty i got bounced out of the meeting and now i've returned it's just in time apparently okay so thank heaven so now we're on to board member remarks and toby you're on the top of my view tonight all right hey nice to be here tonight thank you and good to see everyone's faces um i don't have anything particular other than in recognition of uh of um principle month i recognize that everyone really is carrying a big load right now and operating 24 7 and guided by our district values principally focused on the the health and education of the kids and i've seen that despite the stress that focus

026and that care and the love coming through is is powerful and i really appreciate that um it's hard enough i can't imagine if we had strain in that part of the organization really grateful that we we're all together on that that's it hey thank you toby bob you're next i have nothing to report or remark all right uh how about spring i um i just want to say i'm very pleased to hear about the student board reps i think that's really exciting and i'm looking forward to their engagement and contribution um and and i'm really appreciative of every community member and parent who does our surveys who who contacts us and you know takes the time to let us know express what their concerns are what their questions are as we consider the um the

027plans for moving towards hybrid and i really i think that there's no guarantees but i do feel reasonably confident after being really involved in getting to talk to slade and read the c19 safety handbook and just that the detail the level of detail in the safety handbook that i think is slade said is is really sort of like the foundation it's a critical important document and that's going to help us think about every detail possible to ensure the safety of our students and their families and all the teachers and staff and the community at large and that it that we are taking a position of being really cautious and and really um just taking it baby steps so that it'll be um it'll be relatively easier that if anything if there's any indication that we

028have to shift gears and pivot we can do that um with while really minimizing risk as much as as possible and mitigating risks so um it's really tough and i really appreciate that whole team involved um but you know i just i i don't want to offer false reassurance but as being in this position and i can't speak for my fellow board directors i think we're reading that we're following it closely we're paying attention and i really feel as though the team that's involved in making these decisions is being very cautious and very smart and doing everything possible they can to protect the children and the community and the staff so that's what i wanted to say hey thanks so much spring to bet hi um i'm glad to see that there are 44 people

029on this call i kind of wish there were more because i this is a there's going to be a there's going to be a lot of information here that's spring you're kind of alluding to um i just quickly i want to say that um that um hillary emma and i had a very nice little meeting the other day about uh mascots i don't know if everybody on the call knows that there was a quick at the very end of the meeting last year last time um it came up about thinking about um looking at the high school mascot so she and i talked about that um this is a this is not the board hasn't talked about this so no boards for it no boards against it well i'm for it but uh so just

030we're very neutral just want to say that um anyway it was a great conversation if people have um questions about that you can either get a hold of me um reagan slade or um hillary i think um okay so that was good um i'm really looking forward to tomorrow's racial equity conversations so that so i'm excited about that and i'm really glad you sent that out to the friends and family group and also i'm so psyched about ella and me that i'm like oh yes so very exciting really good seniors they're all good seniors i it's a fantastic class but these two are really good so i'm excited that's all i got great thank you sabet so yeah the board is interested in public input on the pirate mascot and the potential of changing that

031yes no options feelings time for timing we're looking for your input on that one so to pirate or not to pirate that is the question all right so from there oh i guess i should remark huh i do have a little remark um first of all i wanted a second what everyone was saying about pushing our fantastic principles they have weathered some storms in the district and this may be the biggest storm we've had to face but they're doing a beautiful job with it and they're very trying and uncertain circumstances and their leadership is greatly appreciated and i also am very excited to meet our two new student board reps i'm always appreciative of hearing the students voices so i'm glad we have some to fill those roles now and i'll look forward to hearing

032what you have to say um and then my last thing is to remind everyone that we're doing the last call for funding everyone count and that's going into its third week now i believe it's a fantastic program involving pretty much anyone on the island who wants to participate but a great number of students are participating some of the teachers are using it as curriculum so it was started with some generous donation but it wasn't fully funded we've had some had matches from windermere and uh the ashland schools foundation has met the windermere match so there's at least 5 000 there but additional funding will ensure that all kids who want to participate are able to participate in this program it goes on for 10 weeks so pretty much right through christmas time and there's a

033different activity every week and the kids are submitting their data to become part of a i think it's a national study is that right on um regional biodiversity so it's an exciting thing to be a part of if you'd like to help make that happen in these weird times and to help support an outdoor learning activity uh go to the vashon schools foundation or washington nate's fish center and think about donating doesn't have to be a lot a little every little bit helps and the kids and the staff there at rashford nation center and the national school district will really appreciate your support so with that reagan i just want to back up in the sorry in the opening items uh i i am reminded that next week pi partners in education start their phone-a-thon

034and so uh i sent out an email to all of our all of our family members in our community but just encourage you to participate in that and so an update on everyone counts uh bianca perla let me know they have over 800 participants right now i know wow i know so cool uh thank you very much to windermere beshon schools foundation and above all bashan nature center are they all on the island all 800 of them i you know i don't know that for a fact [Music] but probably a majority of them if not 80 to 90 of them i'm sure yeah so wow yeah well that's obviously a successful launch for that one that's great to hear right okay now we turn to uh some business items here so i'm having trouble seeing

035that i don't have my glasses on i apologize that says instructional materials committee update stephanie spencer is going to lead us through this buenos noches thank you for having me here tonight um yeah so october is actually a pretty busy month for recognitions and honors we're actually in the final week of latinx heritage month which i'm sure many of you know run runs september 15th through october 15th it's also disability history and awareness month and it's bullying prevention month so a lot going on in october so i'm here tonight to give you updates on the instructional materials work that we are pursuing this school year as well as an update on our english language learning program so jody let's go ahead and start with the first slide um each year i like to put in

036front of you the adoption cycle um you usually see this twice a year once in the fall and once in the spring it's always in draft it's basically a road map that kind of helps us to stagger our adoption cycle so that there's no not a massive amount required in any one year and to do it in a way that it flows for building by building so you start at the elementary then the next year middle school and then the following year high school what i try to do on this document is track when the adoption is made and also give the target date for the next adoption cycle which is typically about seven years um what we're trying to stay on it might float to eight um each adoption's a little bit unique additionally

037i try to track the a rough estimate of what the cost is so that we can be planning when we're going through budget cycle on what that looks like for us so it's there you can review it if you have some questions we can talk about it a little bit later okay the materials that we're looking at for this school year we're looking at at the elementary we're looking at a math adoption we're also involved in that process at the middle school so they're doing a thorough pilot of programs and we will have a recommendation to the board the first part of june so at the high school they're working on writing and they're also working on one of the cte classes a science class and then at middle school what we'll be looking at

038this year are the exploratory world language classes i'm in the process of updating the bias review it was first written by aaron jones at ospi when she worked at ospi um it's probably been about 10 years ago we updated it a couple years ago but i'm just realizing now as we continue our racial equity work and some of the readings i did over the summer that i think that the tool uh the language on the tool just needs to be modernized um more current with the correct terminology and a little bit more pointed on anti-racism so i'm working on that that means that i'll have to update the bob hennessey equity course on bias review as well so we'll be working on that over the next month or so and uh the funding sources that

039we'll be looking at for next year if there are state or federal grants that apply to specific areas so sometimes we tap into highly capable or learning assistance program or title one if the materials if part of the adoption covers those programs as well as general fund so i believe that's it on instructional materials any quick questions on that yeah this is toby uh thanks stephanie the math um instructional material at the elementary school is to support the existing curriculum or are we changing to the curriculum also we will be changing to a new program at the beginning of next year the two programs that we're looking at this year are math expressions and ready classroom math both are super highly rated on the ed reports both have spanish supports and ell supports built into

040the program and both have online components with assessment as well as individualized instruction for enrichment and remediation yeah great thank you stephanie it's bob hi bob hello um can you talk a little bit about you know how are we able to sort of affirmatively proactively integrate equity training in like history and things like that uh in the curriculum side i i'm familiar with and i hear a lot about all the great work we're doing in the professional development side um have we been able to sort of integrate the equity thinking and practices into the material we teach our children and if so how you always ask me these big questions bob um i i know you are uh you know it's complex work um obviously we we started our very intentional focus on racial equity

041in 2016 and didn't really kick it off until um the 2016-17 school year with the teachers but having said that all along um obviously bias review has always been a super important part of any um adoption that we do or any review of the teaching materials that we have so um we have done a lot of professional development you're absolutely correct that's that's the first start one of the most important phases obviously is opening people's eyes and that comes through professional development and a lot of reflection and working with your plc teams having guests come in having people who have been new hires who come in from other districts you know just with a new fresh set of eyes so um it's about having a better awareness about what the holes are and what we've

042been missing we've made a really concerted effort in the last three years to proactively send out information covering lots of different diversity topics in monthly calendars in instructional materials websites for teachers for links training on the native american the adopted curriculum in washington state um since time immemorial um essentially so trying to bring materials in that help support the work while also creating systems for reflection and growth and continued focus on racial equity um i don't know if i fully answered that question i i i have a sports metaphor so you know the the bias review is like playing defense um and um what do we do to play offense here in terms of and maybe the material doesn't mean because i just think of how much we have all learned geez in the last

043year yeah so for example i i don't i can give you a couple examples and i don't again i don't know if i'll fully address your question but um you know let's take the highly capable program we had previously been using the cogat which is a cognitive abilities test and it had four parts to the test we switched that this year to the naegliari um the negoli area is also a cognitive ability test but it's a non-verbal test it takes away all prior knowledge about events language acquisition all of that so that it is a much more equitable assessment for our students another example when we updated the washington state history textbook we made sure that it had native authors and or reviewers of the content so that we knew that the content had been

044reviewed by tribal experts and approved by tribal experts a lot of the other reviews whether it's testing materials or curriculum materials will have commentary usually done by experts that are not related to the companies themselves that will address the diversity and equity issues so it's an ongoing process there's not any one singular approach but by using all these various tools and by widening the lens in which we're looking at the curriculum we can be sure that at least the instructional materials are becoming i would say moving towards an anti-racist structure the teachers themselves you know several years ago we moved to the marzano instructional model for teaching and it talks very heavily in there about addressing students who have typically been underserved and planning and preparing for the needs of all students so really that

045falls on the building leaders working with their teachers very closely to make sure that they're actually implementing those instructional strategies that are laid out in that program so i don't know if that helps further um and we're we're just we're on an ongoing process of improvement um stephanie that that was a great question and stephanie i think that was i i really appreciate the the thoughtfulness you put into it i'm i'm wondering too sort of follow along because it sort of feels like your approach to this is very holistic so it's you're sort of thinking of this of this racial equity um diversity issues in all different points of view i'm wondering just to sort of piggyback off of bob's question is and and not to get too way into the weeds because we've got

046other things to talk about but i'm going into the weeds i'll acknowledge um what about what about like um you know really to having teachers really look at the texts that they're using i'm thinking like english for example in the books that they're reading um really looking at that or even like switching up what histories we're teaching and really like taking a a big like sort of a bigger step like that not just sort of like are we making sure that the textbooks we're using you know are are have a good you know or anti racist but but you know since we can't since we seem to be having a hard time getting uh people of color to come and teach here can we at least be proactive in teaching you know cultural things that

047we may not as a white people be doing the best job that we're doing you know and that's a terrible way i'm asking this question i hope that you're smart enough i think i know where you're going um so so one for example like in english um traditionally like old school we all heard about reading um male white male authors um curriculum mark twain right so i can tell you this that just this year when the high school was reviewing their reading sets their reading novels they've actually added two women of color one at the sophomore year and one at the senior year and i am drawing a complete blank at the moment on which those novels are um but that's one example where they have traded out old uh texts i know for example

048that uh john reese stopped teaching to kill a mockingbird when he was still teaching sophomore english and i can't remember exactly what he replaced it with but i think our our english teachers are constantly looking at ways to broaden um the voice voices that our students are reading um and interacting with the middle school probably three or four years ago did significant work on this creating different units of study and really diversified their authors and it's an ongoing conversation i know last year they engaged in a a pretty thoughtful discussion about who who should they be reading you know maybe it's time to shelf mark twain and look at other authors and look at other books so all i can assure you is that our staff our teachers our administrators our fair educators everyone is

049keeping an eye out for diversifying voices uplifting different points of view trying to start enacting anti-racist practices i'm listening to student voice but it's a process and i'm sure we will always have some blind spots and our goal is to lessen those blind spots and try to have a much more open and diverse curriculum great thank you and then can i just ask one quick question i'm sorry i'm taking up so much time um uh second step um i you you review it annually right yes is it all good with second step things are okay or what's what's the i'm assuming yes so it's interesting because i actually um contacted them i think it's been two years ago now and got in touch with their curriculum developers just about the work we were doing on

050racism because i was saying that i felt like it needed to be called out a little bit more specifically because part of the problem with um the social emotional curriculums is sometimes they're a little generic like they don't really call out what the actual um behavior is what the actual issue is yeah yeah and and so i got a really wonderful um letter back it happened to be turned out to be a a parent of one of our graduates who had is working for the company now and they actually are in the process of doing a major review second step is still in use in the elementary it's a it's a it's a strong program it's just like all programs could be better um you know i think in in specifically calling out behaviors and

051then the middle school actually shifted to using um a new program this year i i can't think of it either i'm sorry i'm tired tonight but they've shifted to a different different program this school year because they felt the second step wasn't quite right for middle school wasn't quite the right at the right age level for their students craig what were you gonna say what it is i can't hear you she said she was she can remember right now but i'm sure she'll let us know by an email i think you're frozen stuff oh no i think i thought she she asked greg yeah no i couldn't couldn't hear greg can't either do i have it um jody can you check that adoption cycle and see if i happen to have updated that with their

052new curriculum can you just see if i put it on there i might not have because it's new this year yeah i still have second step never mind um i know i updated it somewhere probably on the website and i just cannot for the life of me remember what it is sorry okay i don't mean to take up more of your time sorry sorry everybody okay all right so any other adoption cycle instructional materials okay so moving on to english language development program i um this year and hang on on clicking don't click these yet jody i've provided two handouts one is a summary that's kind of the same summary that i give each year and this year i thought you just might like to just see a historical trend so i picked out some

053things that we could look at together um just a couple quick things we are pursuing title iii funds again that really will support professional development for our team and um instructional materials we have to do that in a consortium because we do not generate ten thousand dollars if you don't generate ten thousand dollars you have to team up with other districts um so ording uh manages that for us um and uh we haven't heard yet what our final allocation will be on that um i just learned yesterday today um it's all a blur we're going to be moving away from the elpa 21 which is the test that our students take in that consortium we're joining a new consortium so beginning next year we'll be working with a different assessment and then the funding for

054this program comes from the transitional bilingual instructional program which is a state grant the title three grant which is federal and then general funding and we continuously improve our our program model okay so let's take a look at the summary handout first so this summary handout is based off basically the end of september our current staffing level we have point eight fte assigned for k through eight we have point one fte for the high school plus an additional seventeen and a half hours of para support um i am looking at our numbers right now because this was based on our projected enrollment last year and last year you'll see if you read down there that we actually had 10 students transfer out of our district moved out of state or moved to other school districts

055last year both prior to the covid pandemic and after um so we made projections and that's where the staffing ended based on that projection now that we're up and running this year so far um these are our numbers as of the 29th of september but we've had some movement just learned late this afternoon that we have a family who came to us new this year from california moving back to california and so that'll drop our numbers by three also interestingly this year because we are in a distance learning format right now our state has had us conditionally enroll all of the students that normally would have been screened so right now we have um all of our new newer students which is 13 i think minus the three that are leaving now that still need

056to be screened but they're currently enrolled in the program so um it's a little bit hard to know whether they will once we once if we do end up being in person and have the ability to screen them because we're not allowed to screen them remotely then these numbers may drop a little bit but anyway what i'm hoping to do is add some para support time at the elementary um to help sarah hamill with the with the case load okay let's see let's go to the other handout which is the historical and thank you so much jody for doing this so i left this year kind of shaded in gray because as i said things are still kind of in motion so um just know that we'll make some adjustments as the year goes on

057but this gives you some historical ideas about the program um in 2015-16 you can see that our total was 57 the next year was 64 and then it was in 1718 when we jumped up to 92. um so pretty significant increase for one um school year and then the number has held pretty much around the 80 to 85 mark this year we were anticipating in the 70s so we'll just see how that plays out over time the numbers that are in bold represent the students that are considered current students in the program so they haven't yet met proficiency standards and the numbers that are not bolded the plus numbers there represent students who are considered in transition status what that means is that they met the proficiency standard for their english language development standards but

058they go into like a two-year cycle where we um just monitor their progress and so um they can receive tutoring services or if something doesn't seem to be going right we can actually eventually look at screening them again to see if they need to re-enter the program but they're kept on for an additional two years and our funding formula is based on both the current status students the ones who have not yet met standards and students who are in a two-year transition and so that's what our funding is based on so then i gave you kind of a staffing summary just so you could see how the staffing lines up over time um you'll see there's years where we've um kind of infused staffing into the system so particularly that year where we had the

059big jump we infused a lot of staffing this staffing really depends on the number of emerging students which are are usually our students who are brand new to our system like have been in the system less than a year and have no prior schooling in the us it's not always the case but so if we have a higher load of emerging students they have more significant needs so they typically get more intervention and then we have our progressing students but that gives you an idea so you can kind of see how the staffing has worked over time where we've shifted staffing um and as i said the staffing this year is not totally set yet um we're crunching the numbers now that we've had our september and october counts and looking at the total number

060of students enrolled heritage languages our highest in any given year that are enrolled in the program was 15 but you can see this year we have 14 languages that we're serving i provided percentages if there was more than one student i provided the percentages if the language is listed without a percentage it just means there's one student with that heritage language so you can see that spanish is are our majority language so most the majority of our students in the program do have a heritage language of spanish and if it was at a high of 82 and a half percent and this year it's right around 74 percent and that's kind of been pretty typical for the last several years um there you can see one year in that year that we had that huge

061increase in enrollment um that it dropped down to 60 65 percent or so um so that gives you an idea on the languages that we're serving okay stephanie could you um elaborate that i'm not sure i understand entirely the heritage language is that that means it's a native speaking parent could you elaborate on what that means is native speaking parents and um the child as well or so um there's two ways that students um screen in or or can't screen like they get flagged for screening one is if the first language they learned was a language other than english so that could be you know any of one of these on the list here or if this language is the primary language that the student speaks at home and so right so these these languages

062are um languages that our students first learned or have significant exposure to or speak at home which means that there's usually at least one parent if not both parents who also speak um that language does that help not necessarily um they may be bilingual correct is that what you're saying also the parent if the price would be bilingual as well the parents could be bilingual or multilingual right okay um yes thank you and also i should just say that just because these languages are listed doesn't necessarily mean that's the preferred language to communicate home so the parents have a an option to say which language is their preferred language for communication so sometimes you'll see english or sometimes you'll see the heritage language that's identified for the student if that makes sense okay um so

063then at the bottom this is an important statistic for us to track when i first came to the district office and even before i got there there was a recognition that our english language learners were being over identified for special education services and so at that time there's a a real concerted effort to try to do better to not so quickly designate our english language learners for special education and so we've kind of tracked this we want to make sure that it's not out of alignment with our district average and you can see we're still somewhat high it's a it's a little bit hard to compare it straight to the district average because if you notice if you look at the numbers the majority of our english language learners are served at the elementary school

064which has the highest enrollment the most the most number of grades and the highest number of students of the program so if you look at chautauqua's special education percentage it's around whereas the district average is about 13 might even be 12 now um but it's really important for us to kind of track this and dive more deeply when this number seems to be getting out of alignment and ask the questions and it may be perfectly reasonable to have this depending on the student's needs and students qualifications in those programs but it's something that we track very closely so i'm much happier to see a number around or lower like those previous two years and this year we bumped up back up towards 20 again that can be a function of the number of students enrolled

065in the program at any given time but it's just something that we want to want to track and and dive a little bit more deeply when we see those numbers uh so i think that's it for the historical trends any other questions on those and we'll just finish up with the last few slides or bullet points okay so let's see what else i have on that slider uh yeah so they take the english language proficiency assessment they're required every year this will switch to the wida next year w-i-d-a and they have to pass four domains reading writing listening and speaking and it's a requirement for all of our students who are in the program and so quickly here's a snapshot of last year unfortunately our results are incomplete because we we out of the 76

066students that should have been taking the test six of them were not able to complete the test prior to us closing our schools last spring so our numbers are incomplete um having said that we ended up with three that exited proficient status that number's a little disappointing to me but without having a complete set of data i have to i have to kind of just sit with that 57 are progressing and 10 are emerging that seemed a little bit high so i went back to look at that number and it turns out that out of the 10 9 have been in our school system less than 18 months basically a year and a half including summer months so um that didn't make me as nervous to see that number stay as high as it did

067and then the one who wasn't is still relatively young but has been in our system for four years um typically i think the next slide covers this jody if you want to move on or maybe not i must missed it in in our program it's probably on that summary sheet our students it's typically about four years that they're in program but of course there are um many who do stay longer and then there are some who are shorter than the four years but four years is roughly um the average for our students in our program before they hit that transition status so stephanie when they jody will you go back down to the um uh or the slide that we were just looking at when they when they hit proficiency is that what's the um

068does that mean that they're they're almost fluent speakers or does that mean they're fluent as their peers and they can read and they can write as well as their peers it means that they've met the english language proficiency standards the alps as they're called um so let's see um jody i'm sorry to have you flip around can you go can you go back to the summary page i'm just you know stephanie whenever you give reports stephanie you know we're always like oh and one more thing stephanie and then one more thing and i i'm not as sharp tonight i'm really i'm very tired i'm sorry um and go to the bottom go to the bottom of the page there uh jody so um i just want to make sure i'm saying this correctly generally it

069takes three to five years to develop what they call oral proficiency so part of the problem in our system and and part of what is difficult to recognize is a lot of times our students who actually qualify for this program um from outward appearances seem um like they totally know english right it's conversational english and they know enough to to get by but what they're lacking is that academic or really deep um understanding of the language or maybe writing or a different area as you know if you've if you've studied a second language you you know the difference between being able to hold a conversation or read in that language um when it's not your your heritage language so it actually takes four to seven years to develop what they call academic proficiency so all

070it means when they're proficient is that they've met those english language uh proficiency standards which puts them kind of on grade level but they're not a perfect correlation to the english language arts standards there's a lot of correlation in some areas but it's not a perfect corollary so if you're proficient on the alpha it doesn't necessarily indicate that you're going to be proficient on the ela smarter balanced assessment does that make sense so part of the reason for having them stay for that two more years of monitoring is to make sure that they continue on that pathway of language acquisition and that academic language development does that help yes thank you that's great thank you very much sure okay jody back to the show sorry i just have to end with my favorite thing to

071do which is the show show our preschool students right um so one of the things i'm really missing is every year for ever since i first showed up the district um i go read the preschool students a story that i wrote about our omps our orcas mustangs and pirates and i guess they'll be formerly named pirates possibly in the future um but when i do that i go i read to them and i give them um a welcome to our school district card and they get their own official oomp shirt and always brings a smile to my face when i look out my window from above and see them running around their playground with with their shirts on so this here's a different year i haven't quite figured out how i'm going to make this

072happen but i figure i can film myself we can deliver it or i have no idea we'll figure it out if we can keep having them come we'll figure out a system for doing it but it's super important for me to welcome our preschool students into our family to really highlight the importance that they bring to our community and kind of give them that sense of where they're heading so the story always ends with them um talking about them being orcas first transitioning to mustangs and then um becoming pirates at the end um so it's it's a it's a highlight and it's always a fun thing to go spend time with our youngest students our three and four-year-olds and and uh five-year-olds in the preschool stephanie this is the best dollar we'll ever spend okay

073is that a fair statement do you think every dollar we spend is the best dollar spent but this one is putting in a plug here for ecap and uh yes obviously obviously preschool yes i you know any opportunity we have for that early childhood um development that opportunity to participate with peers and start to experience the school setting is setting those students up for future success so absolutely our preschool programs both ecap and our am pm preschools are are really super important foundational programs for our district how are we going to do graduation this year i know right we missed it last year we missed it i know so anyway um any other questions for me i feel like i've taken up more than your more than enough of your time um but thank you

074again for giving me the opportunity yeah thank you stephanie thank you so much stephanie oh i do need to just give a shout out to our amazing staff obviously our billing staff teachers pair educators but especially to the the people that work directly in the english language program and that would be sarah hamill sarah sullivan kevin mclaren andrew guess greg allison and rebecca gertzel and then just a shout out to sheri mitra who is a huge help there's plenty of paperwork and letters and notifications and she just does an amazing job helping me get all of that together and sent out to our family so thank you to those staff for all of their work on this program great thank you awesome thank you so much thanks stephanie okay so uh let's see where are

075we now we're on the uh we have been through the bilingual program so we're at the school year update with slavery great that's me uh thank you everybody again uh so jody we're going to kind of co-pilot this i appreciate how you worked with stephanie hopefully will be as seamless as as you were earlier i sent out an email earlier today to staff into our our families uh with our current information regarding how we're making decisions about returning or or not returning to school and there's two distinct when stu two distinguishing characteristics to make is that are the questions that we're asking ourselves is the first question is if we return and the second question is how we return and so hopefully families and staff uh heard today that we are we're focused on making

076decision based upon the data and the data comes from king county uh and it is it is based on the number of cases over the last 14 days per 100 000 uh residents and so mid-september we saw numbers dropping below 75 which is considered in the moderate range and we saw those those numbers at 51 i believe at its lowest rate and then for a couple weeks at 53 and then just recently that number was updated yesterday it's updated every wednesday or they try to update it every wednesday it was updated to 72 and the data uh as barbara gale mentioned is lagging data and so according to many of the superintendents and that i was on a call with on wednesday morning and some public health officials that number could be rising um in

077the next in the next week's kind of report and so if the data goes above 75 then we're back into a high level of disease activity which would then put us in a different posture in terms of how our opening schools are not opening schools many districts in our area have already opened and those districts that have are probably going to have to do some some quick responses to any changes in that and the health data our district has continuously uh taken a kind of a slow careful cautious approach and you know right now we've we've set a date of november 9th but if this data changes next week and we are back into a high a high level disease activity we're going to adjust our timelines and so the what we've done intentionally and

078worked with our our our labor leaders is to provide a buffer a four-week period of time where we can not only plan um [Music] the kind of the endless type of contingencies that we need to be able to to be able to and that kind of endless questions that barbara posed which we've been answering all along but we also want a period of time to to see the stability in the disease activity um i have spoken with rick wallace uh from bachelor be prepared and the the and and and he's called it there's no pandemic perfect and um but we're going to make decisions based upon the data from king county and and the decision-making tree um with a a high level of of consideration for uh student staff and our community safety and so

079i i want i just want to preface this presentation with that information i hope our community received that today in advance of the board meeting and and and i would invite them to if if any of our community have concerns or considerations that we that we should be aware of that they at a minimum let their principals know but also let me know as well um and so i'd like to just to uh we in the last uh three weeks since in mid-september as as the disease activity went to the moderate level and which signaled that districts could begin planning for in-person learning for elementary students we we we began the planning process and the first step of that planning process was to send out surveys regarding particular schedules for for hybrid learning and we

080wanted to get feedback from our staff feedback from our parents and with our older grades as much as as possible feedback from our students as well so this presentation will share with you the the data from the from the surveys and the decisions made from the data from the surveys and then some some frequently asked questions as well so we'll move through these slides if you have questions please don't hesitate to ask we have rebecca and greg and danny with us this evening to answer the questions and answer any questions or be available for questions uh after the presentation um right go ahead before you jump into this i just want to reiterate that regardless there will still be an option for remote learning whether we go to a hybrid learning model or not if

081parents want to keep their children home and participate in a remote learning that option remains on the table throughout it's not accurate absolutely and uh so that that that is something that we learned um we've continually asked parents about that in the last survey we well i believe we end us in one in one survey but didn't ask across all the surveys whether they would prefer to remain in distance learning and so distance learning will continue to be an option for for all families we want to accommodate them we know families have different health needs have different members of their family with different health needs and so it is important to note that this is not a 100 percent everybody has to commit to a hybrid learning schedule uh we and and the youngest students

082who you'll see are are intended in terms of the decision making tree they're intended to bring back our youngest students first um ms garritzel has a submission another survey another information request that will go out to families i believe sometime next week that will ask them if they want to continue with distance learning or participate in the in-person learning that information is extremely important in our in our desire to be able to staff what which particular programs and we have certain staff that may not be able to return because they may be in a high-risk category and we will have to staff programs accordingly to both the number of students who will come back and the number of students who will be cool continuing distance learning so jody let's go ahead and scroll down you

083slay does the um the state or different departments have provided us guidance on when we could begin returning some students into the school but does the state ever provide guidance at what point you must return to school or is that that's a question i haven't heard any answer to okay yeah that's a great question so i mean in other words we're also providing the continuing opportunity for families to choose online learning but at some point as a state can say all right it's all done everyone go back to school uh that's gonna be a probably unanswered question the state thus far has put uh most of those decisions to local control and so uh you know districts right now are are are very similar to how we're doing in providing multiple solutions for different families

084and their different needs um at what point in time would it become you know where distance learning would not become an option uh that's pretty far out there and i'm not sure whether whether i and i doubt that that kind of guidance or rule making would come yeah and i'm not trying to uh promote any particular method at all i was wondering um if that was a conversation that uh has come up no it's a good thought experiment but um but right now it's kind of uh probably probably enough in the distance where we haven't kind of put ourselves in yeah right sorry sorry you decided traffic conversation no no that's that's fine uh so uh judy you can skip the next one uh okay so um i'm gonna be presenting these slides in the

085terms of the survey results a quick survey analysis and then you'll see the decision that that came from from those results and some of the process that was involved in that decision and so uh mcmurray family survey we had 114 responses uh parents and family uh families were basically asked to give their feedback their first choice second choice third choice on three different models the ab two day rotation which is students here two full days monday wednesday tuesday thursday it could be wednesday could be the off day instead of friday uh but essentially a two day for two full day model with students uh and a b cohorts the school split in half an am pm where those cohorts are split between attending the am and the pm once again kind of split in half

086and then an a b week where students have to have the school would attend one week and half the school would attend the second week and so in this particular uh survey with 114 responses the the kind of the the clear majority of folks who wanted their first choice was a was a a b two day model and their last choice was the a b week uh i mean the am pm week and then the a b week was kind of their their second you know overall second choice move the next slide jody and you can see the the high school they offered this survey to students as well so 100 total 138 family responses 94 student responses and a very similar response in terms of the ab two day rotation being the most favorable

087uh selection from our from our high school families and our high school students jody and please at any point in time again you ask questions we have our principles online and so many comments most comments coming from families very few comments coming from students but secondary families uh shared concerns that a half day schedule would be disruptive commuter families overwhelmingly if you saw a comment about the am pm or half day scheduled out working the commuter families absolutely gave a clear referendum on that on that schedule that would not work for them also a clear probably not surprisingly families wanted to see their students siblings on the same daily schedule and and then some families again really showing an interest in continuing with distance learning or 100 remote scheduling uh given their health concerns but

088also uh with that idea that if my my students might come back two days a week but then the other three days you know the basically the trade-off of having five days of live instructions versus that model uh some families are kind of questioning because they're seeing uh success with with their with the current distance learning model and then some students report and then very few again i think i had four students make a comment uh but a couple of them reported that basically any in person would be better than online right now go ahead jody uh and now we get to the staff results uh very similar staff results seventy percent uh 70 responses from mcmurray bashing high school staff with again more of a consensus around the a b two day rotation uh

089the amp week uh we feel getting the least favorable response in the a b week kind of getting that kind of second tier response and then some of the staff comments uh you know really around the health and safety of staff that was the most significant thing represented in staff comments indicating wanting to know more about appropriate ppe supplies protective personal equipment supplies appropriate ventilation safety training kind of all critical to bringing students back in person really wanting assurances and that we have that administration and the district has a plan for for students wearing masks and appropriately social distancing um you know for for for our youngest students for all students and then staff in both schools are concerned about having to plan for for in-person learning and then the distance learning at the same

090time um you know deep the the workload on on staff right now is is so significant that any additional planning can really uh kind of bend our staff to the point where they feel like they're about to break and we were very sensitive about that and this and comments in the surveys really kind of validated uh our thinking around that and that we have to be very careful about how we're planning for not only the the in-person learning but you know what what time and supports are we providing staff to provide for that asynchronous learning if you think about it if students are back for two days each staff are teaching for four days with the intent of having that fifth day as as planning for all the asynchronous work that students will be participating

091in when they're not in person but there were some comments uh leading or telling us that there are some structures currently in place with our professional learning community leads and our administration to support their work and that that's been ongoing and that's kind of attributed to the ongoing collaborative conversations between our building leaders and our labor leaders and our plc leads in the buildings and so from that data it was a fairly um you know fairly easy to draw a line between the staff and the family surveys to determine that the a b two day rotation was going to be the the schedule that we're going to to be engaged in i want to comment that and and danny rock has has said this many times in conversations with staff and families that given that

092the disease activity and when you're in the moderate range you're bringing back your elementary students first there really is a long lead time before we would even consider bringing back our secondary students even if we were to stay in the current level or just moderate level of activity it's extremely unlikely that we would bring back secondary students any time before the second semester and i say that with disappointment in my voice but also kind of a realistic and pragmatic view of the future we also want to recognize that in january we want to make a very strong evaluation of the quarter system and our current uh kind of a current system of learning and so again it would be just unlikely that we would be coming back our secondary students will be coming back before

093that before the semester that being said it's important that we still have uh that would participate in this process and and get some indicators from our families and our staff about what would be the preferred schedule and so um that being said there's still lots of details to be worked out would it be friday would be wednesday and we anticipate that if we were in january doing this kind of review work about schedules that we would also be reviewing the elementary schedule as well in you know kind of in conjunction with with the secondary schedule so quite a few details i'm not going to read the slide uh to to everyone um you know but uh there's just a lot of a lot of details that work out but we have a lot of lead

094time to to make these decisions i appreciate the plc leads uh and our labor leaders at every building level uh they've been working overtime attending meeting after meeting to work through these details uh and so it's that kind of collaboration and working together that's going to you know really get us to the the place where we where we want to be if the disease activity if those if the numbers from king county and the decision-making tree uh point us in the direction of bringing you know secondary students back any questions about the secondary schedule or or a b two day rotation uh from the board right now and while we have kind of greg and danny on the line and then i'll just offer it to danny and greg if there's any additional comments you

095want to add about the process i know you know you brought back both uh the mcmurray staff and the vhs staff together in a decision-making team and not separately and i didn't mention that but are there any other details or process that you want to highlight for the board no i i don't think so at this time i think i think you summarized it well and and you have some lead time and lots of uh kind of uh i think some piloting that our teachers are beginning to work on and thinking about you know what technology and what their classroom structure would look like to be able to support both in person and remote learners and so we're beginning that process as well yeah i actually i have a question that didn't come up during

096our other meeting but um but you know i'm sure as many people in this college listen to the news and you can hear about how their districts are handling this and you know the the hurdles that are coming up and one of them is um it sounds like there's a there's like a team of teachers that stay and or that that work with the the on the kids who are coming into school and then there's another team of teachers that are just working with the stay at home online you know so it's like these two groups um and i was listening to something on the radio about how they were talking about yeah you've got to like hire all these you know so i that hadn't come up when i when we were talking about

097this and so i'm wondering is that just i'm asking it sort of open-ended just sort of to sort of address if there are people out who are listening if that if they also are wondering that so i'm really all about clear questions tonight does that make sense were you about to talk rebecca well i think it's a really different situation i think in middle and high school so maybe you want to address it from the middle high school first or sure sure so the remote i mean what you're really talking about is how do we serve students remotely when we're offering in-person learning and um and vice versa and so you know the um um and that and that comes down to how what solution do we arrive at for our asynchronous learning so in

098other words it was clear that our community staff and students and parents want to be in a you know some days at school and some days not at school over the other possibilities but we have not clarified what will learning look like when you're not at school for instance we have not said that it will be a bunch of assigned work by the teacher that that you work on independently we have not said that it will be recorded lessons from teachers that you're watching we have not said that we're going to stream you from your home into the teacher's classroom those are all you know possible solutions and there's others besides those three but we we definitely need to engage our staff more in what that solution looks like um before we make any kind

099of declarations about what that asynchronous learning will will be and for students or staff who who cannot or will not come into the school building for in-person learning when that happens um we will need to build out solutions uh for those folks and at the secondary level there's there is we they have the advantage of students who can access material a little more independently um and who can navigate some content on their own um independent of a teacher leading them through it but there's a lot of limitations there i'd say so it will be a i think an important question for us to look at greg yeah i think that's that's accurate and and the more um and i don't think it's going to be a one size fits all for any classroom or any

100teacher and so we're really that that came up in our plc leads meetings isn't for uh flexible options for teachers um given given their own uh disciplines and teaching methodologies and so we're gonna we're gonna look to create as much flexibility as possible for folks that being said we don't have i mean i don't think we have any kind of budget capacity to be hiring additional teachers at the secondary level that's not there right so yeah any of the planning any of the solutions that we come up with will not include requiring us to hire additional staff in order to make that happen it will have to happen with our current staff say do you want me to talk about the elementary or wait till after you present that info i i think it's a

101good question but let's let's a little bit no i i think it's a good question though um any other questions for secondary or danny and and greg right now all right thank you uh thank you guys happy principles month right please pass that along to john and gus too um i know they're not here this evening or maybe maybe there i thought i saw john maybe is john here maybe not maybe not anymore all right uh moving on to chautauqua okay and so uh family results we had uh exceptional response rates uh for chautauqua uh when we surveyed them we had 245 responses and those parents and families uh had a chance to respond again three different models and the first one two full days in person with three days of distance learning so similar

102to the the two day model at the high school option two was four half days in person and then you know on friday they would that would be divided between am and pm and then friday they would have a live lesson in the morning with with their teacher and then option three is afternoons in person but continuing with the distance learning that they're already engaged in in the morning and these half day lessons in the half day morning would be focused on core instruction english language arts and mathematics and so option three is once again kind of continuing with distance learning and students will come back two half days in the afternoon so you can kind of see from this uh from these graphs right here that families preferred option one with two full days

103of in-person learning and three distance learning but their least preferable was to continue with the continued model of distance learning in the am with two afternoons and you can see a fairly pretty strong response in terms of of half days in terms of their second preference uh and some of that being their first preference and so um you know let's move on to the uh next slide please jody um rebecca did a great job of reading through all the comments and doing summaries of those comments um rebecca please let me know if i don't summarize as well as you did uh 22 families uh you know really mentioned child care being concerned and a full day hybrid uh with fewer transitions working out for them and uh you know someone mentioned that again that continuity

104between six uh between 612 and wanting that their siblings on the same schedule 16 comment wanted to stay in this distance learning uh not probably surprising to to us 16 mentioned anything in person is so important my child is not engaging and this speaks to um you know rebecca mentioned in our opening team and with her staff and myself as well that the data that they're seeing uh is is is in line similarly with the day that they saw in the spring with students who have aces uh ell students struggling uh struggling students are really finding it difficult to engage and i think this you know these comments kind of reflect upon that need of of any and you know this anything in person is going to be very important to them 13 reached out

105to just to say thanks to the school and that's a testimony to our staff to our classified everybody and just pulling in the same direction but that's always nice to see nine mentioned that their students aren't thriving with live learning they want fewer meets um and then eight mentioned liking the half days because they want a consistent in-person teaching the daily contact and then shorter days for uh for less time and mass and um for those of you in our community or in or on this meet if you've worn a mask all day uh that's that's a trying experience and so i appreciate these parents kind of considering what does it mean to be for my child to be in a mask all day and then lastly commuters sharing concerns about travel time for the

106half days and the inconsistency of grades six through 12 and worried about option three and what that means is that if they are um in distance you know in in distance learning in the morning they're actually going to in order to get here in the afternoon they're going to travel during their distance learning to get here in the afternoon and that would be uh that would be a disruption to that to that schedule rebecca thumbs up no yes okay thanks okay jody uh now moving on to staff results and so we had 51 staff respond and and just to note too we sent out two surveys for chautauqua we had an earlier survey probably about three weeks ago and then staff along with kind of just emerging information we had some new information a new

107a new schedule to consider so we sent out the second survey and this and this this survey is reflecting the second survey results but i want our community to know that we had very similar if not stronger responses during the second survey so uh the second survey was probably more informative in terms of offering pros and cons for each of these schedules and so when we scheduled the when we surveyed the search to talk with staff you can see a clear difference between how families responded and how our staff respond staff respond with option three being their preferred model and option one being their least preferable model and then option two being their second preferred model so there's strong consensus amongst the staff around wanting to continue with input distance learning in the morning and

108per and bringing students back uh two days two afternoons and end the week um staff feel strongly about the the instructional advantage that they're seeing and the distance learning and the success of their distance learning model with students go and move to the comments if you just scroll down jody and so um significantly the the the comments centered around staff safety around returning and wanting to delay the return is as much as possible and possibly returning after flu season and rebecca did some research uh kind of october through march or or in january but there is some you know kind of questions about what flu season is but uh definitely concern of what we're hearing in the media and what we're hearing in the news uh and in our community around the flu season um

109what we saw in public comment this evening staff are also concerned about the quality instruction as i was indicating before and the concern around a two-day model and leaving three days of asynchronous learning um really had staff questioning the kind of instructional integrity of of a two-day model with three days being asynchronous and knowing what happened in the spring with uh new kind of engagement and how you know students were watching videos and as i was talking with the staff i had fortunately rebecca and i had the opportunity along with john to spend about an hour hour and 20 minutes with the hybrid planning team at chautauqua and really be getting kind of an in-depth understanding of the concerns but also um kind of reminding me when i used to be a fourth grade teacher

110and what it was like to plan substitute plans and anytime you're away uh teachers will tell you that being away is not easy in fact it's actually much more difficult than actually being in person and liking this asynchronous learning to actually what it must be like to you know like it's almost like preparing three substitute plans per week um while you're also planning your two uh synchronous days your in-person days and so um that didn't not seem didn't seem to be sustainable uh several staff mentioned concerned about continuity for other students who are receiving supports in our mtss or multi-tiered systems of support 2-3 and what that is is reading and math supports pull-out supports or inper you know kind of push-in supports um but you know kind of conversely so i appreciate the daily

111core instruction for the half day uh avery a b hybrid and suggestions kind of included maybe we phase in the distance learning with some half day in the afternoon and then eventually moved to the half day a b but then um the conversations turned to well that's a lot of transitions for parents and tran parents like consistency they like to be able to plan around schedules and that could prove difficult and lastly um you know staff mentioned concerns and i shared those concerns about continuing distance learning for those students who are not engaged or completing assignments and um you know i remember esther morrison speaking with john hopps and asking him like what are you thinking john john essentially said you know i'm i'm in this i'm in this profession because i want to be

112with kids and see kids in school and um i worry about our students who are engaged right now john and rebecca have been in classrooms uh where they continuously see two three four five students sometimes who aren't there and those students are our students who are are most vulnerable right now and uh that raised you know that raises a significant concern for for all of us so uh jody um when considering all these concerns because you have kind of the juxtaposition of parents wanting a two-day model and then you have staff wanting a let's stay in distance learning model um it really uh boiled down to for me um what was going to be best for our for our students uh and listening to john and me on myself uh over the last gosh two

113three four weeks knowing the amount of research and commitment that our nursing services uh that our administrative all of our classified staff jillian at the elementary building are putting into the safety uh procedures from l and i and department of health um i just you know i i made the decision because there was not a a clear consensus around that we saw at the secondary i made a decision that we're that we're going to be you know if we if if we're able to move to hybrid um which is certainly questionable right now um and this we're gonna we're gonna listen to the science on that but if we move to hybrid we're gonna move to a four day half day model which brings students you know every day a half day am or pm

114with a with a live lesson on friday we know that this model will first is a compromise between the other two models and the two groups who probably have the most you know kind of influence on myself in terms of the decision making but it's really about seeing our students every day and and the intangibles that it's not so much about the reading instruction or the math instruction it's about being with your peers the socialization the social emotional learning um the feeling like there's a sense of belonging in our district again um and so and and then meeting the needs of our most vulnerable students and so um that's the hybrid a model that uh that i've chosen to move forward with uh for those specific reasons and um you know we we made that

115decision in consideration of all the variables of all the input um even though in as quick as honestly three days now that decision has uh we considered this november ninth timeline around that and now there is certainly the contemplation that that could not happen so um for quite some time so but it's important that uh that our staff and our nursing services plan in the you know in in case we are able to move in that direction um and so i'm super appreciative of of all of our families who participated in the surveys the the careful consideration of the models by our staff and then the thoughtful you know kind of analysis of the data uh with our with our staff and our hybrid learning teams at all three buildings um and then last but

116not least you know kind of our administration who has really paid close attention to every single comment in the circuit and the implications of what those comments may mean to the you know the day-to-day experiences of our of our staff and our students so um this would be a good kind of place to pause and and allow kind of our board and rebecca's prepared to answer questions about the process and any other questions you have for them for us uh this is toby i have a question that um seemed that for commuting families the half-day schedule was was pretty inconvenient and many community families have kids in elementary school and either in mcmurray in high school um maybe you don't have an answer yet but uh are there plans that we can be creative where

117we can address the needs for those families um yeah i sent them an a a separate email this afternoon just to kind of clarify what plans we have in place and so um we are kind of communicating directly with them there's a couple things that aren't established yet where i'm in communication with camp south and bash on kids who are both child care programs in the island that are interested in continuing with providing child care under this model they're quite sure if they would provide an afternoon or a morning program and we would place kids accordingly so they could attend those child care options and so one of the things we'll be looking into is could we could we offer that to our commuter students that they could attend like come in the morning and

118stay for afternoon at bachelor kids and then go to the ferry but i know that's complicated with the ferry monitor and such the other thing i sent to um commuter families and you know they haven't only one had a responder that was positive about it but that doesn't that's not a majority so but the um looking at fairies they would come on an 8 30 ferry and if they came for the morning class and then um they go back on the 12 40 and so end up home around one so i mean also for some of our families they'd be like that sounds great like more child care than you're getting on island so i think except for some of our commuter families they're just like that sounds wonderful four days a week but for

119some families you know if you're once the high school and middle school come back if you're getting multiple kids from a ferry like it definitely has some challenges and so i think being able to utilize on island child care and they were really excited that we're going to be able to still transport and you know figure all that out um i think we can accommodate we also have about 30 commuters at the elementary level so we're not dealing with nearly with the the situation in the middle and high school with just pure numbers and so it allows a little more flexibility so it seems like you're pursuing the right the right ideas yeah you said 30 i'm sorry 30 around 30 yeah wow some as little as kindergarten and some older so they need a

120different amount of care um we'll probably be hiring for a ferry monitor if anyone out there listening would like to do that job keep that in mind careful what you asked for right exactly and then i wanted to address actually zabeth's question because i think a lot of parents our parents have that same question about like how is this distance learning working at elementary because at the elementary level um our teachers are pretty clear like streaming an elementary classroom is just not good for anyone um i know it's happening in some places across the country but it's just it's we really our teachers really want to focus on the kids that are in the classroom when they're there and they want to be able to take them outside and so um when we looked at

121the half-day model we looked at you know what's best for kids and that so the kids at home really the what we're hearing from some parents is that they really want to continue the kids can't come to school but they really want to continue with some live lessons and so we do have what we have we have some teachers that are specialist teachers that have like um art and library and music and spanish and they have taught in the classroom in the past so they're certificated classroom teachers and so what we're kind of what most schools are doing we're doing is kind of matching okay these teachers can't come back and then these teachers can take their place in the classroom and then we can our classroom teachers can integrate the arts into their classroom

122and we just won't have specialists for the arts during that time of distance learning of hybrid learning and so we can hopefully there's this like beautiful match of people that can't come in and people that can go in the classroom and then it's it's a cost neutral but um we are finding you know we have a couple teachers out on maternity leave and so we do we we may have too many people out that we we do in fact need to do some higher and so we'll kind of look at that we're gonna find figure out the hiring would be to cover the in-person classrooms not for distance learners we think we will we will be able to match the distance learners and still provide live lessons and then the also the work in seesaw

123that we've been providing the and the asynchronous the independent work so we think that that will actually be we'll be pretty able to accommodate it and we the way that we're doing it we're also going to be able to accommodate if a child decides to come back into their classroom i know some districts are just like shuffling all their kids and you're getting just you come back you never know what you're coming back to and it's like no it's just splitting class in half and so if if a parent decides to um stay at home and then actually by january they're like actually ready to go to school like the class will be there and the teacher will be there so they can they can come back um unless they have one of the few

124teachers that can't teach in person and so for most kids they'll have their same teacher and um and it'll be will have the flexibility to accommodate people's needs great thank you i mean it is it's so incredibly complicated i mean because then i think i looked at and i see brand and down there and i think wow bussing wow that's right yeah so on the survey that we have going out next week we're asking like do you want to be in person do you want to be distanced do you plan on bringing your kid do you need a bus are you looking at child care i mean those are the three factors that we kind of need to know in order to place students but jillian and i we're just talking about this today it's

125kind of like we're planning for a new school year like we do in august you know but the school year's never happened before so it's a new school year under completely different circumstances and you're doing it while school is going and so it's like the the challenge is big and um if you like problem solving it's like lots of opportunity rebecca would you also you did such a great job um in the um in the in the group that we were meeting last week or this week whenever it was we're talking about this and someone brought up a question about equity and how does this model really sir how is it really serving um our kids um in the best way and you have such a great answer i don't have to put you on

126the spot but if you can remember how you said it because it was again i think it's a good for people to to hear that what you are actually all thinking about that you actually are thinking about everything or as much as you can so we do think this is the best model for equity and so we we want to meet the needs of all kids and there are kids that really need they need to be in school and the and the way that we make sure that they have food that they are protected that their access to learning is by bringing them to school and so by having kids in person four days a week you're going to reach those kids that don't have the supports at home that that help them you know

127access their learning the students that need more experience with the english language the students that have special education needs that really highly benefit from an in-person model it's like all those students will have much greater access to their education by coming in every day we will also look at like are there some students in special education that could stay longer so that they could be maybe the half day with their classroom teacher and then get special services afterwards and so this will enable us to just provide much more access to our students because the thought of even if it's not that many students the thought of some students not really accessing education from march until like the next january is or the next march you know from an educator who like we've dedicated our profession

128to you know closing this achievement gap and opportunity they have to just see this gap widen i think we need to see to take this opportunity to try to close that gap instead of con continuing right now and we're i think we're providing a great distance learning option and the live lessons almost all families really appreciate it and the ones that don't are able to not do the live lessons and just do the the the um assignments and so we're pretty flexible you know we're doing the best we can but there's kids we're missing and that is what really stressed us out is like missing we just we really want to be able to reach every student and we just need them we need them in school yeah thank you thank you for that thanks

129rebecca thank you any other questions for rebecca about should talk about the hybrid learning schedule thank you thanks rebecca great job yeah so i'll move through these uh kind of last frequently asked questions fairly fairly quick i know you've had a chance to review these in the in the board packet but um we really have been intentional about a slow cautious phase in approach and you can kind of you can see right now the the the schedule of students that we would be bringing back uh if the the king county data uh you know indicates that we will continue in a moderate level uh according to the decision making tree so kindergarten uh grades one through three if you're wondering why grades one through three it's because we have multi-age um and so it's not

130as easy as bringing back kind of grade by grade by grade and then grades four through five uh and then uh again as the disease activity allows uh grades six through eight and then nine through twelve because of the you know schedules right now again in all likelihood i we don't we don't anticipate secondary students coming back uh until the semester there we we will be re-evaluating at that time but at least at this point in time we do want the students who are on a similar a b schedule the one two the one the two day a b schedule that we do have the capability to put siblings on on the same schedule uh by working with office managers and understanding who's in skyward and those families um there has been some questions and

131so i thought it's best to to put this out there if you know if we start to improve will we expedite the schedule and the answer is no king county public health and pierce county health or public health seattle king county uh in pierce county uh patty hayes and sara regal and anthony chen the leaders in those organizations do not reckon you know they recommend a longer period of time so that you can see stability and the rates and so um we have no interest in expediting uh but also we we need the time to make sure that all the safety uh standards are met and we have probably come i think a long way um with our safety handbook and all the contributions from our nursing staff and and brandon from you know busing

132and facilities from kevin and uh gosh so many other people but um it takes time to plan it takes time to check double check and triple check all of our plans answer all the questions that barbara gale asked in in our in our opening comments and so i don't anticipate any expediting of any schedules we won't we just won't um you know there are very prescribed protocols for when uh if we have a confirmed case and so uh department of health and psesd have given us those protocols we will follow those protocols to to the t we have sample letter templates that we would be sending out to our to our community and then we obviously have contact tracing protocols and working closely with a department of health in terms of communication and and following

133through with close contacts and who would be who who would then be asked to be quarantined um you know department of health would be then directing us to close schools or not close schools or or isolate or quarantine cohorts or not quarantine cohorts and so we really are are there are no there there is no flexibility or independent decision making in this it's it's fairly well prescribed and guided by the guidance that we've received so far jody some of the big questions that come up um you know our community and labor management is you know how do we enforce social distancing and um you know we we do a great job right now with our positive uh behavior supports in our buildings lots of education lots of opportunities um you know if i asked everybody

134to to uh to to un you know kind of put their screens on and to show hands how many of us have exited our car to go into the you know thriftway and then had to go back to our car because we didn't have a mask on um or just you know had to remember that's kind of what we're expecting at the beginning of school and what it does it just takes reinforcement it takes you know lots of teaching we are also uh we have right now a draft kind of pledge a safety pledge that we would like uh that we'll be asking our families and our students who are to sign and participate in board members included as you come onto our scott if you come onto our campus uh agreeing to you know

135the the standards of safety that we know are are needed in order to to you know keep in person learning possible so it won't be a quick easy process but also all early signals from the students that we have in school right now small groups indicate that that we should see a high level of compliance uh early on um and then kind of that question of if you can't if you know if if if if if we get a confirmed case and we can't you know be in person uh we would just pivot back to our distance learning thanks jody um kevin dickerson and matt sullivan and and and sarah they have worked diligently uh and now uh analyzing our hvac systems um you know and improving where we can improve um finding alternative solutions

136uh we continue to research and investigate uh it's difficult for districts who have old older buildings to invest the kind of or you know come up with the kind of significant capital investments that it might take to bring them up to speed to a 2000 you know kind of 21 or 2020 level of air filtration um and it's not suggested that uh that every that every district do that um as a matter of fact and so this is kind of where we have the the system uh of mitigation strategies that we have in our district hvac is just one of those systems and um i congratulate kevin and his staff and and matt to on the work that they've done to improve our systems and find solutions and then continue to find solutions and be

137open to alternatives uh to improving the the filtration in our buildings um and then a kind of in same regards to classrooms clean and prepared for students we have pretty uh explicit protocols and what those expectations are are going to be uh for cleaning and sanitizing sanitization of our of our classrooms there are still questions uh no doubt about it uh as soon as you make a decision about an am pm you know half day model for elementary students all of a sudden that that puts everybody back on the drawing board okay so we're gonna have an hour between uh these cohorts uh let's problem solve what does that mean for our custodial staff what does that mean for our teaching staff what kind of break you know can they you know can they get

138um was what does it mean for if there's any food services being provided or not um so um you know classrooms cleaned and prepared um these are questions that uh once we settle on uh schedules then we can you know kind of buckle down and start to plan out what that might look like jody um and will secondary students be on the quarter system and so i i kind of signaled earlier on that in january we'll be doing a thorough examination of that of the quarter uh versus semester schedule um it'll this examination will probably be in coordination with the elementary school as well um uh if we are able to make any significant in-person learning moves at the semester um i can just be pretty candid with the board that we are not able

139we will be able to do an am pm model at chautauqua and a two day model you know at uh you know at the high school um or at least right now the cost for busing would be fairly prohibitive um to to do that um so um there's gonna be some evaluation happening in january where we're going to be kind of back at the drawing board and that just kind of speaks to the pandemic every week it feels like we're back at the drawing board trying to trying to figure things out but it doesn't mean that the information that we're getting right now is is isn't worthwhile and we're going to continue learning um but the quarter system will be evaluated in january in terms of what our next steps are going to be regardless

140um you know there is the we you know the students will have six classes per semester and be earning you know those those credits uh similar to years uh prior uh we will be providing transportation and then jody the the last questions um so in terms of schedules uh you can as you heard rebecca right now is is busily working with her office staff to get as much information as we can from families we'll use that information and hopes that we can get any schedule information out to families by the end of october for chautauqua we know that secondary students um you know and families would want some information in terms of whether whether they'll be on a or b um it's just too early to say that right now it really is there is

141so much planning to be involved but also as i indicated the disease activities have to fall pretty low and for a significant amount of time for us to consider secondary and um and at this time it's just unlikely that we're going to see secondary students before the semester ends and so kind of last last question is about this kind of idea of this unique identity and and the culture and traditions that we have in our district and i think over and over again we've seen teachers come through in amazing ways administration and our staff come through in amazing ways and if you participated in our in our graduation ceremonies last year um you saw kind of firsthand uh ways in which we kind of transform and innovate to provide students with hopefully the memories and

142traditions that uh kind of former generations have have walked away with so um that's not going to change it's it is more difficult uh you know for sure um but as as as change comes so do uh you know the i think the vashon spirit endures uh that's kind of what i have to say that it's you it's unique it's its own living breathing thing and um i'm excited to see kind of what what comes of this um but i for me i feel like there's a sense of optimism that rests in in this in this question and this idea that creativity abounds um even just seeing uh this you know the vashon nature center now with over 800 participants and they're everyone counts these are the kinds of moments that we might look back

143on and go wow that's that happened during the pandemic um and so and it could only happen on bash on so that's kind of concludes the presentation for the board tonight on on opening but i of course and i see our principles are still in the line and and uh i welcome any questions from the board as well i think my only question is um is this going to be uh is this slide show going to be easily found on the website so people who missed it tonight can see it yes and i sent it out to families great great yes all right thank you let's watch and wait and and prepare and it sounds like there's been a lot of work going into this and just want to thank everyone involved in that work

144again thank you so much so this is a couple more um pieces of the of the report tonight enrollment um jody if you could pull up the enrollment summary there if you remember we were down approximately 14 students at uh for our september count [Music] and over the course we learned that over the course of september we were able to capture any enrollment during that month not just in the first four days we did capture between six and eight students i can't remember completely where that number finally landed but our october count were down uh a little over not a little over 17.7 students i believe uh or 17.35 there we go 17.35 and so we have had students uh exit the district and for various reasons and we are still you know sending them

145the exit survey but rebecca has indicated that four or five of those students at the elementary building left for uh schools that were offering some in-person learning um and just a a kind of a note too uh you know the private schools in the in our both our counties are still accountable to the the department of health guidelines and so um you know once they go to moderate range they probably may have more flexibility and and able to move quicker than larger districts but if the levels do go too high that any private school would have to restrict in-person learning to small groups similar to public schools so but right now we're we were down 14 then we picked up six or eight and then we're back down to 17. so what revenue impact please

146uh well every every student every ft is about ten thousand dollars so if you go from 14 to 17 that's around 30 yeah um and just a quick comment just to the board um you know our wednesday superintendent meetings districts are seeing similar results in terms of students and mostly going to private schools where there are in-person learning so it's you know we just don't know what's gonna happen with enrollment that's a fascinating uh report this morning on npr that highlighted this one of the takeaways was a dramatic decrease in the number of kindergartners enrolling right um and then of course the ongoing challenges that presents to them as lifelong learners yeah it's serious it's not uh you know it's everybody i appreciate that toby right uh and and just a few updates for our

147uh focus groups um the community engagement group which is again led by joe uh huppington and chris peliquin we have the results back from the distance learning survey um let me get to my data here [Music] we had a really strong return rate on the on the survey there we go we had 364 um families respond to the distance learning survey in six of our spanish-speaking families um and so really you know overall um you know the the team hasn't gotten together yet to analyze the results but uh for myself kind of uh and a quick review of the of the of the results i was surprised to see because we asked questions about workload and the adjustment and what was that like in terms of you know how was the adjustment very difficult extremely

148difficult uh how's the workload too heavy um and in each of those scenarios uh across most of schools we saw about 25 percent between 25 and 30 percent of families respond that the adjustment was difficult or the workload is is too much um and i don't know why but that that was pretty optimistic to me i don't you know i don't know what number i set for myself that would make sense um it felt to me that i was kind of aiming for anything if if we had nothing not that 50 is a great number but i just from what i've seen what i hear in and families and and some of the struggles i was i was just surprised to see that um that we had a large number of families indicating that the

149adjustment wasn't um you know difficult uh or or the workload was manageable um you know now it really it comes down to us looking at some of these individual results and and determining kind of what our next steps are but uh the community engagement team hasn't will meet again next tuesday uh to go over those results and come up with some recommendations for our for our admin team and our and our teacher leadership teams um they let the outdoor learning group they met yesterday for the first time i have no update from them uh john and uh john hodgson from the elementary building and brandon case uh who's on tonight uh are leading that group um they met for the first time yesterday yesterday i believe and we'll be able to i'll be able to

150provide you some updates at the at the next board meeting and then the latino focus group met at the beginning of last week it seems like a long time ago it has been um and there was some agreement that we that we needed to better understand what services are being provided by by whom and so um you know as we're as as we're trying to provide tutoring services or byfs or you know communidad um or you know saint john uh bianni they're just a a clear opportunity to to come together and understand who's providing what services and for myself with the kind of the aim to better understand what the needs are because if if districts like ours are going to i mean we we we've always been challenged by providing services but if if

151if let's just say you know as the bet and members of community or the latino community if we're going to go in front of our legislators if we're going to speak with it's you know with fitzgibbons or or or john you know one or or eileen cody we're going to have to have some solid numbers and some solid understanding of what where are the gaps um and if we're gonna you know because right now we're we we're not funded uh um you know a racial equity grant or uh um these aren't sustainable monies we need to we need to think long term about how we're providing services for families whose language is not english um and in order to do that we need to know we need to have some good data in terms of

152what is the need and so uh this team is the team to get that information and so i'm i was appreciative of the collaboration and the and the you know the the conversations that we were having in that team um and so this actually does conclude this part of the report if you don't know if you have other questions it doesn't and i'm more than welcome to answer them as well i i just didn't want to leave those things out well it's a lot to cover any questions anyone all right then slade thank you for running us through all of that material okay now we're going to switch gears to the national on park district barclays amendment i think matt's going to present this hello i'll try to keep it as brief as possible uh

153last week we received an email from elaine rochefell of course is the executive director of the national park district and they have been awarded another state grant for the installation of a concrete walking path with pods which are additional skate features which are depicted in the attachment that jody just pulled up um as with the previous grant application that built the initial pump track at bark which of course is the burton adventure recreation center but also as we know it as the burton elementary school site uh they the park district must demonstrate that the life of the project once completed will be a minimum of 20 years um they anticipate that this project will be completed around and in 2024 so they're requesting an extension to the lease agreement out to december 31st of 2044.

154that is the size of it okay anyone have questions for matt on this matt what are the policy considerations the board should be thinking about in approving this right um i think there was an email and i i agree with you on that bob in regard to um the possible uh dissolution of the park district i know there is some concern out there whether it be uh taxation around the hospital or health district along with increase of roads levy etc and library uh will we be kind of on the hook if you will for any monies uh that if this does not you know run out the lease of 20 years i think that's what you're asking correct bob was i too obtuse [Laughter] um i i don't think we will be throughout the original

155uh agreement uh item seven in that school property lease is dissolution of the park district and of course there's item 11 which is a different vacation harmless of us in particular the school district um i i don't see that as an issue for us um and what is the possibility of disillusion the park district i i really can't speak to that at this point so but i just i'm maybe i was too cute um i believe we would be on the hook for the amortized value of any remaining asset if the board were to if if we were to have to recover the property i just want to make sure everyone's aware of that yep exactly does everybody understand that i believe i see some we do okay thank you for pointing that out yeah

156yeah we had a similar conversation okay i want to say about two years ago when this first came up and uh went through a lot of questions yeah it's i remember it from that time period as well so we have a pretty good grasp on it yeah i mean you know would the state come back and ask us for that money that's one question and or should we insert into this uh amendment language that would you know release us if you will hold harmless us from owing those those buddies that certainly is attractive if we can make that fly i'm looking for direction from you as the board if this is something you'd like to pursue i could speak with elaine on that side and probably insert a couple of sentences that would do that

157for us is it possible that the contract between the state and the public is it possible that's already in part of their contract what would happen in the event of disillusion yeah toby that's an excellent question i have not seen that contract between obviously the park district and the state and that's what i could speak to elaine about um and what's the timeline on making this decision is that a reasonable request to review whether that's language we could add or i think i think it's it's definitely reasonable we have the time yeah i think it sounds like it's like there's two questions to ask and is is it already covered in the park district contract and if it is not or if it is and it's not satisfactory is there any room to negotiate so

158yes please matt if you would have those conversations with elaine that would be great i will and then of course on october 22nd i'll come back with information perfect thank you thank you thank you any other questions for matt on the uh the the barclays amendment uh i had uh i think i had asked a question via email but it's probably worth um you know repeating them for the public's interest which was what's the what's the out right you know if down the road we wanted to reclaim the property uh what's our ability to do that and uh i believe it was an annual renewal that was my point toby that we would we would owe them the value yeah um but i mean the idea is that the the land is actually a valuable

159asset to the school district correct and so we don't want to encumber it you know forever if for some reason we needed to you know tap into that resource so i mean i was just hoping to make that clear we are agreeing i believe matt quick if i'm wrong that if we were to say for 10 in 10 years decide we wanted to reclaim it we would owe the park district for 50 of the value of the asset or the state is that correct correct that's the recapture clause if you will in the contract so a matter i'll marslaid i i i have some interest in talking about this offline dude i like toby like you're saying excuse me didn't i mean that all they're saying is this was my understanding of it i'm clearly

160probably was wrong but they're just asking for a two-year extension right haven't we haven't we basically in essence said yes to this already and now they're just wanting to do your extension right yeah that's that's the immediate issue and it'll be surfacing is is kind of already baked into it but you know since there's an opportunity to have this conversation it's something that we can uh see if it may might need adjustment at this time or as well two years and the value and and the financial cost of the improvements they make is that that's the risk we are assuming and i i i'm agnostic on that i just want us to all be clear that we are assuming that risk yeah i mean it's worth asking the questions i feel like we've already we've

161already said yes it seems like yeah yeah we've presently assumed that risk now we're extending it and adding to it because the additional assets they're adding the financial cost of the improvement yeah correct yeah the improvements would be the new piece that would make the dollar value obviously a cent and thus the calculation higher right so matt's going to look into that and we'll hear from him next time thanks right and then we correct i can reach out uh individually to you all as well okay all right thank you thanks matt thanks man matt so now we're going to a board policy updates yeah we're going to get back into our rhythm of uh jody and i as you've seen in an email to y'all um we have quite a few policies to now kind

162of work through um it's been our typical rhythm of doing kind of three to five each meeting we might bump that up a little bit uh to to make it through because we in closure we we we did kind of backlog a few so before the board tonight is policy 3122 4200 and 52 31 and so 3122 again most of these are kind of recommended men revisions from from wasda um 3122 is related basically to covet related absences um and then kind of ensuring at the at the end of this policy that we are um that we have kind of uh that were using multi-tiered systems of support to support uh students who are notably absent from school policy 4200 is the i'm sorry joey i'm just blowing through the safe and orderly learning environment

163um just kind of revisions in terms of words wordsmithing but we also have the addition at the end of the drug and alcohol language and the prohibitions of those on our campuses and then policy 5231 on the length of the work day and so wazda had some language put forth that they wanted to revise and then we've also made additional revisions significant work was done with vea in negotiations last year around the idea of salary professionals [Music] um one uh one thing is for looking at making these changes and this is something we do from time to time have a cadence of refreshing them but uh i would hate to see us make a bunch of changes to accommodate sort of the new learning environment with covid and then you know some time for now

164have to go back and and undo all that i assuming that's not the direction we're going through and i did i read through these but not with that uh not with that thinking until just now you know toby i was thinking the same thing and i was wondering if it's mostly the um policies that are most affected by kovid [Music] can we go back to this educator i i was just reading this for the first uh first time i'm sorry the educators are salaried professionals etc uh i guess it was on a previous page obviously that's just a statement and you say so what what what's the what's to one to conclude from that statement that second paragraph under certificated staff is there a so well why is that statement in there i guess is

165what i would you we need to finish it it feels like yeah i'm not i'm not clear on whether these are specifically cloved related i think they are not i think they're more correct but my my point remains generalized but what would it slade what's the purpose of that statement he he dropped off okay yeah nobody wait for him i think he's having some technical issues we're all familiar with this he'll be back i'm sure he's probably running around trying to find a cord or something like that take his kid off the internet i don't know there he is he's muted though he's been what is that um there's like three computers in the office and they keep taking the plugs out to plug in the adapters and i thought i've been plugged in the

166entire time there's a different computer right but but but the other end wasn't plugged in that happened to me in the school board meeting um because when zoom goes full screen you can't see your battery indicator right right exactly on battery and all of a sudden it was done yeah yeah so welcome back yeah right i'm watching mine walk down okay so we were having a little chat about this while you were gone so maybe bob should re-ask your question i mean this isn't a concern i'm just wondering so in the second graph under certificated staff educators with salary professionals what what's the purpose of that is that intended to to mitigate against the pre previous paragraph or i i just don't know what it feels like to say i'm glad you asked actually uh

167and i see lisa's on online tonight this is what i think one of the most significant achievements um in the collaboration that we that we did together with labor management and we we began to move away from this idea where you have to detail out every single responsibility of our certificated staff and recognize that that there are salaried professionals um and that uh the work that gets done is is done um i i think there was a commission it it gets done not as you know on an hourly basis but teachers are using weekends and the evenings to get the work done and it's not about trying to outline uh all the parameters and no i get that i just i okay i guess the second paragraph is not intended to mitigate against the first

168paragraph right the first paragraph is binding right and the second paragraph does not in any way under you know uh alter that no no okay second paragraph yeah okay i'm good so this is a again the first reading of the of these three policies uh we we would have brought uh two of these policies to us during closure but here we are kind of picking up where we left off so any any questions so these are pre-date yeah i just want to clarify these pre-date anything to do with closure or covet these were just um no 3122 is it just just came from mazda and we put that at the top and then um picking up the other two because they're they're the leftovers okay yep yeah 3122 is definitely related to like okay so

169what's an absence in remote learning gotcha okay with you yeah thank you okay and if we're ready to move on then we need to look at the um the best cda yeah streaming absolutely changed in our agenda i'll kind of again hit the hit the highlights here i'm gonna list the negotiating team we had a great negotiations with the esp uh rena paul elizabeth parish marina paul if you know is the unicef rep elizabeth parish heather baldwin colby gateman kathy hall from vesp and then also thanks to greg allison and lisa sarah and catherine coleman we started uh gosh back in april on april 16th and we met 11 times 11 negotiating meetings online so 11 i'm gonna say 11 times uh two three four hour sessions we ratified on uh the week of august

17024th it was ratified uh by vsp on the third of of september and kind of the highlights uh in this in this negotiation in terms of contract language we we did a lot of work around job descriptions and clarifying job classifications a lot of work around layoff and seniority we did a lot of work on professional development opportunities for our vdsp staff that was that was critical and that work continues to go forward um you know catherine coleman has been working extensively with vsp leadership on really designing professional development comparable to classified staff and really meant to bring their voice in and what are the needs and and then trying to provide for those needs in terms of compensation there was a desire on both of our parties to bring all members of esp into

171the top three um in terms of our comparable districts and that means tacoma franklin pierce granite falls uh south kitsap san juan island and coupeville and and this bargain did just that brought them into the top three uh and many of our positions are in the top very top of the category and so i'm very very proud of the work we've done with them uh we continue to i believe provide compensation that uh recognizes the value and contributions of our classified staff and is really in line with all of our other staffing groups in terms of and recruiting the best the best app possible because we feel that that is actually going to provide the best supports for kids so compensation resulted in a 2.1 well first of all it brought in uh the office

172managers secretaries and registrars uh up into the top three all over all other um salaries were already top three so office managers secretaries and registrars were brought up to the top three uh and then after that an additional 2.1 percent was provided to all vdsp members and for year one and then a 2.3 uh for all members in year two it's a two-year contract and um you kind of overall once again i believe the collaboration was was really strong uh during it in the time closure um you know we're all juggling many many balls and um i'm just uh glad to say that uh we we had a great collaboration that collaboration continues even as we as we open schools um our our board probably knows this but our our classified members support students in

173many many different ways um and so it's uh it'd be interesting to to just kind of spend a day in the life of so um i i would like to take this moment right now i i elizabeth is here and i i think you know a couple other members of this team are here if if any of you would like to speak up and say any words that would be totally appropriate and would love to see hear from you as well i know i'm putting you on the spot because i didn't say i i didn't i didn't know i saw that elizabeth you were unmuted so i didn't know if you wanted to speak or not no i didn't but um yeah um i just thanks to your team and our team and um we're

174happy it's over right honestly it was it was a long haul and i bargaining by zoom is very very difficult so um but we've done it that's right right one for the record books for sure yeah all right thank you i would also like to dive in briefly and just say that one of the reasons number one yes doing it by zoom definitely lengthens the process but i also think that we as a as a team as a whole we're willing to dive into just some of the niggling things that had been out there that had created confusion or conflict in years past to kind of dig down deep and do the language work that had been put off for a number of years and that does take time and it does take commitment and

175it takes a lot of energy and i think this is a group that really collaborated well on coming to solutions around those kinds of problems that seem so small at the time and can actually result in bigger problems down the road so i want to applaud everybody for that wait what's the size of the bargain unit and the increment cost increment to the district i don't uh amy what's the size the first year cost is 52 000 i think the second year cost is 54.55 and i don't have it directly in front of me you're putting me on the spot and elizabeth correct me if i'm wrong but i want to say 47 members 42 members we have 46 members ah i was close nice thank you kathy you're welcome thank you everyone who worked

176on that thanks to our our best members are a critical part of what's happening with our kids whether we're in remote or in person so we appreciate you for sure all right that will bring us to the consent agenda i moved approval second man wait wait yeah i'll say yes but blade what's invest ed they gave a donation sorry doesn't know it's late but i'm just curious do you see where it is jody it's down the bottom go down attachment dirt attachment there it is [Music] i remember getting the email and the letter it's great thank you right 590. i don't remember craig greg has the answer 590 yeah this is a an organization that is uh they they get funding from lots of different uh private donors and uh they donate money to schools

177from around the state to support um students on free and reduced lunch for needs that come around and so uh if they they provide some sorts of matches that that happen and so i believe that's what this is a matching fund uh that has come around and it's basically to support our most at-risk students great wow how cool oh okay i have i have a plan i always have that free money draft all right are we done with this one did we vote we didn't vote on are we ready to vote now yeah i thought it was going to say something else in there so looking at slade okay all right all in favor aye [Music] all aye and we have any new business tonight i just really want to give a shout out to

178our interpreter stacy who i've been going back and forth and listening to the spanish this is awesome thank you so much yeah thank you and thanks to jody for helping us get that all worked out for this meeting it's really fantastic jody thanks again for piloting so expertly as you always do we couldn't do this without you like literally thank you thank you so much and with that we're going to go ahead and adjourn at 9 46 p.m thanks everyone who joined us if you have any questions you know where to find us thank you thanks board members thanks directors thanks principals thank you community um