001um this bob just text me and let him know he's having a few tech issues and to start without them just a heads up so uh i know just want to remind our our members our board members that spring um you know let us know earlier that she will not be attending this meeting she's away um but i look in front of me and we do have a quorum all righty let's give bob another two minutes or so i just let him know that we're going to wait give him a couple more eyes this is going to cost him good thing i'm able to text him i couldn't help it i just couldn't help it ouch sorry is my cell phone falling down on the floor which i'm now putting down here out of reach
002toby what kind of shirt is that that looks cool uh it's state of colorado um so it's the rocky mountain range and then these are the colors of the flag okay i told him now i got it amy went to colorado for a conference couple years ago and all i got was this t-shirt which i have to really like yeah no kidding that's great it's cheery i think we should go yeah i i do too i moved the agenda that seconds that i said hi hi hi and i have to bring my spectacles here because my screen's really small today for some reason so now we go to public comment and we are going to have some letters read into the record by slade and the school board does not respond to public comment because
003it's not on our agenda this is per covered practices have been in place for several months now yeah well thank you very much board chair welcome everybody to the board meeting um i will start there's three letters this evening i'll start with one from david hackett dear board of directors i'm surprised that the board is continuing to consider adoption of resolution 786 which delegates the board's authority to repeal or suspend policy to the superintendent there are at least three reasons why this resolution must be rejected first the superintendent continues to misrepresent that resolution 7086 as it was the recommended resolution to the contrary the september 4th 2020 policy alert from wazda that originated this resolution lists two other model policies as essential and four more as encouraged where 786 is merely discretionary it is unclear
004why the superintendent would ignore the sixth essential and encourage policy changes to continue with a discretionary policy that vastly increases his power two other community members and i spoke with him about these issues on the phone last thursday he freely admitted that he does not read the proposed resolutions with any detail nor does he fully understand them i find this admission both cavalier and astonishing as the district's chief executive officer and superintendent must have a firm understanding of existing policies and any proposed policies that he submits for its consideration second resolution 76 means poor public policy our model of government relies on checks and balances not blind trust it is often inconvenient to obtain the ascent of legislative bodies like this board but it is a crucial necessary to check on the superintendent's executive power
005because appropriately concerning the superintendent's actions through binding policy as our democratic norm the burden should be on those that propose to abandon this norm by granting the superintendent extraordinary powers at your last board meeting during my call with the superintendent no one has been able to come up with a single example where these emergency powers would be necessary because the board cannot meet in time to decide the question this leads 786 violating norms without a purpose indeed there is no need for the superintendent to decide to waive board policy because state law allows the board to convene immediately in emergency without 24 notice to decide such issues crcw 42.30.080 parentheses four board may call a special meeting without notice in an emergency the fact that the board passed a similar resolution without comment in spring
0062020 does not justify repeating the mistake finally 780 finally resolution plainly violates washington law under rcw 28a 0.150.230 this board is invested with the final responsibility for the setting of policy see also rcw 28a32015 the board holds broad discretionary power to determine and adopt written policies not in conflict with other law that provide for the development and implementation of programs activities services or practices the gist of resolution 786 is delegate the board's plenary authority over policy to the superintendent who would be granted discretion to suspend existing board policies if suspension is necessary to implement the adopted reopening plan or is necessary for ongoing compliance with written guidance from various agencies relating to safely opening schools while containing covet 19. because school districts are special purpose districts with power strictly limited by statute this delegation is
007illegal as noted by our supreme court has been long the law in washington that when a statute confers special functions to school boards those functions may not be delicated to others unless the statute expressly authorizes such delegation a school board may not divest itself with powers and duty specifically placed within its exclusive control by statute a delegation of the school board's powers and duties can only occur if authorized by the legislature link washington school district number 414 versus lake washington education association washington education associates 109 wn period 2d 427-431-1987 emphasis added internal citations of many because there is no statute specifically authorizing school boards to grant emergency power to superintendents to suspend district policy the delegation proposed in resolution 1786 is patently illegal i understand that the board's good faith in considering resolution 8786 but
008the road to hell is always paved with good intentions i would urge you to reject this resolution or at the very least tablet so you can obtain a legal opinion from the district's council thank you for considering these points david hackett read the next comment by barb rhodes weber dear board of directors i write because i am not only disappointed but outraged to learn that you are even considering delegating the board's authority to repeal or suspend district policies to the superintendent see resolution 786 if you are so intent on abdicating your duty and responsibility for setting bash on island school district policies i implore you to simply resign the school district board of directors is elected and accountable to the local communist and its electorate for the proper operation of the district rcw 28a150230 each
009of you was elected the superintendent was not it is the elected official it is the elected school district board of directors ieu that is vested with the power and responsibility to set district policies id if you no longer want to serve and carry out your duties please resign instead of making an illegal attempt to abdicate your duties unless you or the school district's lawyers can point to a statute that expressly authorize authorizes the delegation of your final responsible ability for setting school district policies such delegation is illegal see lake washington school district number 414 versus lake washington education association 109 wn point dot 2d 427 comma 437 1987. the superintendent is neither elected nor accountable to the local community and its electorate the superintendent is an employee hired by the school district to execute the
010policies set by the elected school district board of directors separation of powers is fundamental to our form of government it is disturbing that our elected school district board of directors appears set to wantonly and recklessly abdicate their duties if you cannot point to the statute that specifically authorizes you to delegate your authority to the superintendent to set school district policies you must reject resolution 786. if you cannot articulate a scenario which would be unable to carry out your duties assuming you're willing to carry out your duties then there is no reason to attempt any legal delegation of emergency powers to the unelected superintendent and you should reject 786. i appreciate your willingness to serve and understand that you may no longer wish to continue in your service i urge you to resign instead of legally
011attempting to delegate your responsibility for no apparent reason barb rhodes weaver okay our last comment for the evening this is from community latina de vacion dear visd hold on sorry visd has the opportunity to do better to see our community for their strengths and share the power you have with the community who is the most underrepresented and underserved it is visd responsibility to change the policies procedures and structures that perpetuate the structural racism that is present at bashan island school district the discrepancies that we have brought to your attention since before cobit and at every focus group meeting are a result of institutional racism that is preventing low income and students of color from having the environment opportunities that they need to be educationally successful comunidad latina de vacion is a place a space where
012latino community members turn to be seen heard and centered as we are able to build trusted relationships with families where they can speak freely recognize their resilience and stand in their power we want our community to have that same sense of belonging that they have here at clb at their schools a sense of belonging is part of equity you say you hear us the superintendent has said he wants to work from a stance of co-creation and shared power we see you nodding your heads but what appears to be listening is not followed with action the community is tired of lip service and desires transparency and accountability in regards to how the district is spending its racial equity budget we want to create lasting elements of change in systems but that requires mindfulness of non-white working
013family experiences through an openness to hearing from community and dedication to taking their stories seriously emails survey links or text messages aren't good enough our community does not want surface level efforts and want to assure that initiatives made about us are decided by us visd needs to stop leaving the latino community behind and give space for collaborative efforts with clv clv wants to partner with bas bisd but not in the way that visd has thus far promoted we want bs isd to go beyond focus groups and a one leader model and instead be open to community leaders and co-creation ignoring a community's request to be part of the development and selection of a latino family advocate by posting job descriptions without once reaching out to the community is not co-creation building a bilingual tutoring support
014system without respecting the community's request to be at the forefront of tutor selection and training is not co-creation having an equity plan that was not informed by the community is not creation or co-creation or sharing power building programs and systems without sharing power is not a sustainable approach to equity our youth and adult leaders are ready to participate in action-based change but bisd needs to reflect and challenge their belief of what it means to be generally involved the community and shared decision-making power we asked visd the superintendent school board administration and staff to authentically reflect on what racial equity means not only during covid and online learning but long term when we ask you to collaborate with community latina de vestro we are not asking you to heed the voice of its staff we are
015asking you to to listen to and center clv voice as a megaphone for the voice of bisd latino families we are here to be a resource to visd to build genuinely equitable measures which lead to thriving for latino students and our challenges to you are an invitation to partner in a way that is actually anti-racist and not performative activism it is beyond time to center impact not intention community latina de vashon thank you for those three letters um and that concludes public comment all right that will bring us to the superintendent report and slave will present that now let me kind of re-center here in just a moment okay okay to open my superintendent report this evening i humbly make a land acknowledgement i would like to recognize and acknowledge the indigenous people of this
016land the pueal tribe of indians at this meeting we pay respect to the pure tribe of indians and to their elders past present and emerging i wanted to discuss this evening a wonderful project and partnership that is growing here in the district and here on the island called everyone counts and i met with vashon nature center early in gosh probably august and bianca pearl and maria mettler um we're really building this amazing program for our all of our students and as you know vashon nature center works in all three buildings across all grade levels practically and this was another um opportunity for them to kind of expand on what i had seen a project at the high school so but in in short um they are holding a 12-week course uh on the study of
017salis the salish c bio device a biodiversity network and it's essentially a nature a nature observation course a self-reflection and mindfulness course and we have uh you know course mentors that are going to be engaged in this i just received an email this evening from maria mettler i signed up for this and i would encourage everyone to sign up for everyone counts um hopefully jody is showing yes she is good uh you can see the flyer there you've seen emails from us today you've seen emails from crash on schools foundation we're partnering with them to to raise funds uh there's been seat money that has got the project started but we're not here near our goal yet of five thousand dollars to acknowledge uh windermere realty for a significant gift of 2 500 and essentially
018matching any dollars uh going you know that will get us to our goal of 5 000 this program is also geared towards our latino families there is a bilingual mentor her name is vole martinez and also one of our islands you know resources for mental health uh andre devote she's been collaborating with bianca and maria um it's gonna and on december 11th this project is going to culminate with a roundtable discussion from with a uh dub professor christopher shell and just a huge shout out and thanks to um you know bsf uh vashon nature center and what's amazing about this program is that one reason why i want to encourage folks to participate in is you're really participating in citizen science the true essence of that and the data that we collect here on the
019island is going to be contributing to a much larger database and i i'm expecting that this project will grow and grow um you know primarily it is focused on our on our students and our families i'm looking forward to starting it tomorrow but really uh anyone that's tuned in tonight if you want to pass this along we're going to put this up again on facebook um if you want you know anyone can participate and so it's free and open to everybody um and so it's it's just a gosh it's it's a it's a very unique opportunity and and and i hear people say it's very vashon so um and it's outdoors right and it's and and it gets and it gets us outdoors and even if even if you're not able to get outdoors bianca
020has talked about this project can work for someone in the city or someone that might be in an apartment or who may not have a large outdoor space to do their sit plot they could use their window and it really is about reflection and observation being still which is which is a skill that many of our students have have trouble with so i just want to i just want to give a shout out to them and recognize them and once again bash on schools foundation for really taking some of the lead on on fundraising and supporting the program and you know schools foundation has been supporting bash on nature center programs in our systems for quite some time so this seemed like a real you know a real natural fit for us so um i
021encourage everybody to get out there and participate any questions about everyone counts just kind of cur you know if you're have you signed up yet okay who's the bet toby have you signed up yet i have not yet stand up yet i have seen the emails come out okay it's easy to sign up yet it's easy to sign up and there's plenty of time okay yeah and it doesn't take it doesn't take a lot of money to fund the program if we just got ten dollars per student that would be enough to fund the program um for everyone to be able to participate so it's a modest goal and we're really hoping people will help us bring in the rest of the budget for it uh i got some last minute information today that i
022applied for a community and for the board in my superintendent meeting recently there was a lot of concern in our region around the lack of availability for sat testing many districts don't have any sites [Music] and some of what we've been hearing from college board or from the state is that well you know most schools are going to kind of waive that sat requirement but as we've learned it's really not as simple as that many scholarships uh require sats some placements require sat scores and so there's the sat is is is very connected still to our you know to many systems for college uh going students and so are those who are you know considering college and and want to take this take this test but i'm just going to share with you part of
023some information that i received today from lisa miller so they they ran the sat yesterday with close to 35 seniors having the opportunity to come on campus and take it after having two tests canceled and as you can imagine the stress that that puts on seniors and their families they did it five students per room you know multiple people involved with uh sarah and elizabeth uh checking to make sure they had the attestations and doing temperature checks and and the assistant principal gus you know the admin on site welcoming the students first thing and spacing them out you know filling in for whatever was needed paul pretty the test coordinator making sure that everything ran smoothly teachers sarah powell jason butler susan swann andy james matt tilden andy sears and tara vanslo uh procterine lisa
024as well and stephanie spencer you know from the district office went over in proctored as well so it was really uh you know also acknowledging custodial and maintenance helped with the setup and food services stayed open late to provide free lunches for the kids when they were finished and so it was really just a all hands on deck experience and i'm just i'm just happy that our seniors were able to have an opportunity to take it i don't know what the next i think january or february maybe the next testing date hopefully we can do the same um you know where you know the restrictions are such that we can do small groups um and bring in bringing kids who who still need to take that exam so um yeah i remember the sat being
025really stressful like one of those things i can remember going and taking the sat and so i can imagine how um challenging it must have been for the students sitting for that and i'm glad that we're able to provide that yeah um slade can you count up how many adults were there there were 35 students but how many adults were there um sure i can do that let's just do 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen sixteen at least so yeah thank you to all those adults yeah yeah and not possible like toby said it it gets even more stressful when you know you don't have unlimited you know opportunities either um so not that students want to take sats uh but we do you know
026that is kind of one of the fallbacks is that you can basically not submit your score if you don't want to and try again um you know kind of upcoming events just to put it on everybody's radar uh i'll go through a couple things that are happening in october october 8th our regular board meeting october 9th is our district uh wide it's a non-student attendance day it's a friday and it's a teaching learning forum and that day is going to be focused on racial equity uh social emotional learning pardon me and tech instructional practices and so i'd really encourage the board if they can to make it to the morning session from 8 30 to 10 that's going to be led by dr tanisha brandon felder who is the director of equity engagement for shoreline
027and so stephanie had an opportunity to attend some of her workshops and felt like she would be a really good fit and dr tanisha brandon felder is is eager and excited to work with us so if you can you know put it on your calendar i'll send some i'll send an email out again but october 9th from 8 30 to 10. uh and then the 13th is our board retreat um amy cast who is the wazdak leadership consultant who's also interestingly enough a um board director as well for lake washington she's going to be joining us for the retreat and and leading us and we should have a a draft agenda soon so um i will i will get that out to you as soon as possible and then uh the final date in october
028is october 22nd our which is our other board meeting so um that at this point in time concludes my superintendent's report notwithstanding everything else that's going to happen later on in the board agenda all right thank you for that that brings us to board remember remarks and i think we'll start with bob tonight no fair you started with me last time um you're right she did uh i don't i don't have anything i i had intended to talk a little bit about um how we get things on the board agenda but i think we can do that under new business so absent that i don't have anything to say all right and then i got toby next hello everyone glad to see you good to be here tonight um as i've been you know reflecting
029on the opening of school and comments people have made uh you know it's really clear to me how traumatic the experience is that we're all going through as individuals and as a community and you know for us to effectively wrestle through uh issues that we have in front of us we're gonna have to be really creative and mindful about how we develop relationships um you know and deeper into the community particularly the you know the letter from uh community latina vacheron tonight highlights that and you know some of the frustrations and lack of trust and calls for transparency and these are all things that uh we need to be mindful about so i'm and the timing is great right this is uh this is work that we have on our plate we have in intentions
030and schedules and agendas lined up in front of us to address this and i'm very excited about that so just recognizing that um it's a hard time and i think it's okay to acknowledge that and i'm interested and excited to to do that hard work so that we can make meaningful progress great thank you toby yeah thank you how about sabbat um hi everyone happy to be here as well um danny and gus i thought did a great job at the high school um welcome when there were times like 205 people on that call which was i thought they did a great job um so thanks to them for that um i had the opportunity to hear um one of lori hennessey's league of education voters the listening session um yesterday that was really interesting
031um it was about you know racial equity and and just listening to these leaders um these very articulate really really interesting people talk about education and being black in education um um and so it was fascinating but there were a couple points i just wanted to share i thought that you know i'm like you know as always like writing all these notes down but um uh dr thelma jackson she said two things that really struck me one was um you know it's all good to have all this money you know if you have money that's great you can get you know well-funded schools but really the most important thing you need is love you need to have that connection with an adult you need to have a connection with whatever it is that like love
032and respect and i just i you know we just i don't know it just really resonated like yes it is very very important to have all the policies and it's important to have all the structure and it's important to have the funding for god's sakes it's crucial to have the funding but let us not forget you know and that's what i feel like those 16 people who showed up to help the 35 seniors take the sat there's a little bit of love in that i think so um that was crucial and then the other thing she said was um what are you willing to do differently and so hearing the letter from the commuter dot latina was vashon it was great um it just was real and i i echo toby what you said like
033this is you know we we can talk all want what all we want but we've got you know we gotta walk the walk and not just talk the talk um i also just quickly wanted to thank you me i don't know if she's on this call i don't think i see her but for her she um people in the public may not uh know that she's brought up an interesting issue about privacy and you know and um with all of this and you know she's not the first person to think of it hopefully and hopefully we can just cross our t's and dot our eyes about that but i just wanted to thank her for bringing that up and i think that is it thank you thanks for tuning in thank you thanks beth and
034again spring had another commitment is not able to be with us tonight and my comments are just short and sweet to again acknowledge all of our educators and peer educators and staff and people helping the remote schooling that's happening be successful and bob and i will talk a little bit more about our virtual tour of chautauqua here in a few minutes but um what i'm seeing there and online in my own home looks like school sounds like school so i think there's a huge amount of gratitude to be expressed to everyone who's been able to help us get up and running in some fashion and be educating and and have a sense of stability and some normal and access to help families and kids who need the help you know some of those districts around
035us are just now starting their first week of classes so i think we can be very proud of how far we've come to this point there's certainly no shortage of things that can be worked on to be improved but i think we should pause and recognize that i think we've been very successful to this point in time and we're going to keep minding the store closely and ensure that that continues but you know good for us you know the people in this district and the families have together to make it happen it is happening and i think it feels pretty good so far so that's all i wanted to say is again a big debt of gratitude to everyone's who's played a part in helping us get off the ground and get this crazy new
036thing up and flying and keeping it in the air and that concludes board member remarks so we'll move now to resolution 786. and slade you want to remind us one more time the scope of this policy sure sure um uh once again uh this policy comes from wazda and has been it's a resolution not a pulse sorry you're right the resolution um i know there's uh b's and r's behind numbers and so this is an r the the resolution uh comes from wazda and also endorsed by psesd and it really is meant to um give the board and myself flexibility if there's a part of reopening schools that we need to adjust according to guidance from spi or l i or the department of health and and we're not uh and we don't know you
037know we're not prepared for that then we're able to um suspend policies related to you know related specifically to that uh clause in the in the resolution wazda gives us uh you know this gives us this resolution uh in order to help districts move forward uh prepare for the end the the the unpreparable um i understand the concerns um and but i'm i'm willing to answer any more questions from the board um but if there's any more questions i'll answer them if there's any more discussion please have it but i would i will be recommending the to the board to the adopt this resolution the duration of time this resolution covers if enacted yeah the resolution reads this will end december 31st uh 2020. this resolution only deals with reopening of schools correct and you
038will immediately notify the board should you feel a need to enact this resolution in any way yes yes and if we knew what we could potentially be using this document for we would write a policy about that issue but the intent is to cover the unforeseeable because we are in an unprecedented situation is that correct yes the uh and uh we did do some um i said we uh bob did some due diligence with wasda and this has been uh maybe i'll just let you speak to that bob rather than me try to put yeah uh for transparency purposes um i had heard of emails i apologize i have not been able to read them i was busy with my day job all day but when i uh i had a discussion with uh the
039bet uh to call you out um about the concern and so i was able to uh i was prepared and i just for transparency for everybody else i was prepared to say let's let's hold off and uh if it's if there are any questions whatsoever about the legality of this then let's hold off but um i was able to reach um who told me uh late this afternoon that it had been reviewed by the state attorney general's office and he assured me that um this has been vetted and hence i uh i am prepared to support it yeah you specifically you talked to um tim garcia who's the ceo or who's the chair the president of foster not just a guy it was like he was actually there's a guy standing out front um no
040i'm sorry for being um yes he is the see the executive director i believe is his title of wasta and he was uh kind enough to take my call late this afternoon while he was preparing for an uh statewide conference so um is there any go ahead toby yeah you know i've kind of gone around on this one um back and forth and um i personally recommend that we table this and or i'm gonna vote no and i think this is the reason why i think that uh for larger districts that aren't as agile this might prove quite useful i can't think of any event where we can't hold a meeting in the course of an hour or two to get a quorum together and review what needs to happen um and so i i'm
041not sure it isn't particularly necessary for us well the event that's my uh presidency i understand i said respect that i guess the thing that comes to mind is if a quorum is um if we're incapacitated by coven what if we all get covered you have bigger problems to deal with probably yeah okay is there any further discussion on this emotion oh go ahead just that uh to reinforce and uh that slade is uh aware of the policies and he is committed to i mean i have gone back and forth just so you know toby um and everybody else the best arguments not to do this are um yes we could convene a board meeting in about 15 minutes notice if we wanted to um true um but also um there's what what are we
042regarding against what are we fearful of this is what i keep coming back to what is the the danger we know the upsides of flexibility i did a little cost benefit and what's what are the downsides and i can't think of any downsides that are uh realistic to be honest um slade could run roughshod over our graduation policies i suppose or something but i just don't feel that there's any great risk i as you all know am very cautious about delegating authority and i am very protective of the board's prerogatives but i'm also sensitive to the fact that we you know i i what's the worst that can happen here so with the amendments that have been changed and had been added since first first reading um respectfully i totally i toby i can't disagree
043with you um it's it's a 5149 for me um but like i said earlier i will be supporting it okay to that do you want to weigh in on anything sorry um uh no i mean i agree i i i think i think that reagan i think that your example while it's really out there of we all get coveted um is sort of the reason why we're doing this it's that kind of like way out there i mean and i think you know i was talking to bob about it um i feel like the chances that we'll actually use this are one in a million please um but it would it would be a bummer not to be you know if three of us were out and we can't get a quorum so i'm i
044mean i'm with bob i agree i mean this is not i'm not this sort of seems like 50 yeah 51.49 i'll i'll i'll support it but you know i actually i actually want to move on to other things like i want to talk about racial equity and i want to talk about you know how kids are getting um you know students are getting i mean i know what i mean i like i don't want to just kind of want to get on to like how the day to day is going and what we can do for our kids right now remember those words i'm with bob's a bit i didn't say that oh damn jody's recording this i'm witty bob all right as we are we done discussing this resolution if so can i have
045a motion to pass resolution 780 um i know second in favor of passing 786. so resolution 76 passes slave you will keep us surprised i think you have to say all opposed oh oh sorry olipos sorry toby i forgot we're gonna pose sorry that's right i'm opposed thank you okay all right so we're still three three yeses and one opposed so uh it does pass all right moving on then obviously don't be surprised if anything happens with that that's right all right so now we come to matt's part of the evening for an update on business and operation hello all uh good to see you thanks reagan um provided to you is our normal monthly financial reports budget status report and enrollment of course we discussed uh enrollment at the september 10th meeting and we
046will be i think sleep will be touching upon it at a school reopening update also that said if we look at the financial dashboard i'll show you pull that up um we're at 99 of the year this is through the end of the year through the end of august and i always put 99 percent up there because as you know whether it be your personal finances or us as a school district invoices bills balancing reconciling of our finances uh are taking place as we speak so if we look at our expenditures they're about 98.6 of budget and our revenues are about 98.7 uh take those with a grain of salt you can take them look at them for the end of august uh for the 12-month period but we're like i said in the process
047of reconciling those financials and we'll present that tidy package our year-end um financial picture at the october 22nd meeting as a whole if we do look at this it looks fairly good it's where we thought we would be about six months ago when covet hit and everything is basically falling into place there are course always ups and downs of percentage of budget if you look at the far right side but as a whole everything is looking really good for fiscal year 19 and 20. um anecdotally as kay and i are reconciling the books uh we look to end the year with a fund balance of right around 1.5 million ish we had estimated that year-end fund balance to be able 1.56 so we should be pretty darn close which is great um if you want
048to touch on the enrollment we can but i know slade is going to touch upon that with the school reopening sorry matt oh sorry go ahead bob bob rudely interrupting uh six and a half uh forgive me i'm i'm rusty on this stuff six and a half percent fund balance what is fund balance these days uh that would be at six six and a half percent with our budget of about what twenty about twenty four point one million i think that is about one point five six but six and a half is the number i yes correct correct okay thank you and and just a quick clarification too bob um i can't remember if when you came on board um the policy states minimum of five percent but a goal of six and a half
049so right just to just be clear with the community it's a it's a goal not a minimum so we're not actually at six and a half we're closer to five though right matt uh we made and we are quite close to six and a half as we reckon as we reconcile our books um we you know i don't want to get too far in front of these type of estimates and predictions uh but we will come pretty darn close which is which is just outstanding for this year considering everything that's been thrown at us i'm sorry for hijacking this but um why that's my want um why a goal as opposed to a minimum that was a back in the day um it was it was it was kind of a heart it was a
050hard number or something we really sought to manage to and it sounds like six and a half is a little softer or more aspirational is that fair yeah i i think you know at the time this is inter it's an interesting time right when we're looking at fiscal uncertainty uh you know dramatic shortfalls in the state and that's our reality now it wasn't our reality back then and so there was concern about if we move too much money into the fund balance then we are you know kind of um which again which is not it some people think it's the rainy day fund it's actually a uh uh a funding mechanism for our payroll on a month-to-month basis that covers you know the different dips and valleys and mountains of our budget during the year
051but back then there was concerns and not wide support for a large balance because of programming you wanted to put more funds into programming and into positions you know and now um you know now the landscape has changed and you know um those districts that have larger fund balances are going to be able to withstand the you know the kind of economic shortfalls that we're going to see probably in the next two or three years um so this is a serious discussion i think i would love to have it when our next budget process starts absolutely absolutely yeah i would second that bob i agree it's a good but it's just a good point to bring up and so let's let's make sure we i would like to add in regard to enrollment and slate
052you may touch upon this in your opening update i don't want to take too much from you i'll go for it um ospi over the last several weeks and probably due to the screams and pleads of the larger districts around us that are also doing distance learning has um i guess like a better term softened how we account for enrollment and we mean specifically but we as in ospi and how we report that for us that means we have added a rough estimate at this point but we're looking at the delta between what uh what fte you know what students leave to what we gain probably around six to eight extra students so as you look at that we're at a minus 14 as of the first of september but of course we will have
053more information obviously the first of october but that is will help us in regard to enrollment hence finances and funding and enrollment counts every month yes correct matt would you or jody would you scroll up just to one more line um sorry yeah um so matt do you want to say what k was saying because i just said the board members are clear do you see where that line about you know the 17 kids and special ed and how that's actually not 17 because of the way the account the the counting now is different what line are we looking at specific where jody has conveniently it has her mouse oh got it right there i'm going to take a look at that why we are off uh 17. oh so well because well from k
054was saying um that it in fact there aren't 17 we aren't down because i was talking about this last board meeting like where have all the special ed children gone we know that they're still there i don't want them to get lost and and in fact the way the state is doing it um she's reporting two numbers and so it's not quite 17 it is more slave do you remember what it was it was like we're down by like i think seven six or seven especially kids and so not 17. anyway a minor point but i just wanted to clarify yeah and as the as the months i think he almost nailed it there's a bed as the months go on also as you notice like running stars uh we won't know those numbers until
055october so just solidify these months moving forward hence that's why the state doesn't also say count our enrollment truly in regard to dollars and cents until january because they're giving us those kind of running up months if you will to make sure they have a solid uh estimate in our enrollment but really good news that we are able to count students until the last day of september so [Music] i would agree yes thank goodness all right does anyone have any more questions for matt thanks matt thank you thanks matt thanks matt okay and now we have racial equity policy 30 to 12 that slade's going to present yeah so it's really um you know kind of the beginning of a discussion and we um just to let you know uh zebette and spring and i
056have been discussing our artificial equity work they're both part of the district racial equity team and spring also represents on friends and family and i've also been in discussion administration and we feel like there this is a moment where we want to there's been some significant work and uh you know nikken pond from psasd came and did quite some extensive work before i arrived uh our teams have been thriving we now have a new student racial equity team but we're really needing some direction and i think bob brought up our policy last time and i've had some conversation with toby as well and there there are some aspects of the policy that i i do believe could be improved um we are moving in a direction though to um to to bring on another third
057party to really help the district move move the work forward um and i'm interested in doing what is often times called an equity audit really someone that can come in and and make visible what may not be visible and some of the some of the initial data you know that we're just providing the board today are really just starting points for discussions um i'm hopeful um you know right now we have um from the psesd feliciana peralta who is the executive director for equity in education she's reached out to me and we're going to be meeting next week to talk about some initial planning moves that we that we make all this is kind of concurrent to our our own district strategic planning and i feel like we can't wait on this and at the
058same time i would want our strategic planning process to drive and so i'm really just setting us up for some initial conversation this evening i this is not leading to any particular um you know maybe actions uh it's kind of for me laying the landscape and i was interested actually when you know i i initially went out and and looked at the policy and in the policy there is the the bullet that talks about promoting representative diversity of access and participation academic courses activities and school events and so i thought that was a place where i could start to provide the board some data and um you know i worked with with andy sears on the athletic and then sherry mitra and i worked on the on the on the academic courses data and so
059i again i i kind of wanted to know um you know what what what stood out to you in particular or what stands out to you do you have thoughts about our policy and and some of the direction and i'm i'd like to take some notes tonight and and then i think this is going to hopefully be part of our retreat as well but um so that that that's that's i mean i i can go over the data with you but i i know you could you've also read the data and maybe a discussion or just what stands out to you might is actually more interesting to me than me just telling you the numbers and what i would i see i have a comment or a reflection yeah when when we passed this in
0602017 remember there were you know some comments at the time that this was just a fad and kind of you know appeasing the winds the social winds and concerns and i'm glad that we adopted it and it's interesting i hadn't looked at it in a long time and so it was in the board back went back and reflected on it and it um i can i don't have a recommendation of how to change it but it feels a little bit dusty like it needs to be cleaned up a bit and and maybe a little bit more meat added to it particularly in areas where we know we can monitor some of the some of the results and uh you know whether they're what we expect or not if we can start looking at the results
061that uh that we can measure over time then we can know what changes are making a difference so i like that you started providing some of that that data i also realized that you know we might as individuals and as a board and as a school community have the love required uh you that dr thelma jackson recommends or requires but we're not experts at this and so i really think bringing in some third-party leadership to help us reassess the direction and the activities to to make more progress is going to be very helpful can i ask just a quick i mean i know there's some provenances too or some history to it that i don't know do you know if um if our community of color was engaged in the process of writing the policy
062at the time oh yeah uh i so uh we got a uh i think a very good draft and i spring was involved and she was not on the board then so she's much more uh conversant with sort of the development of it but we got a draft that i understood and i think kevin probably uh not to put you on the spot kevin um if you're there um my understanding was there was a lot of input um but that's my understanding and um so anyway that's in answering your question there was and then the draft was just paired back a little bit i did some wordsmithing and and this is what you see it actually may have been concurrent with the formation of the racial equity team or committee about the same time and
063and now that you mentioned bob it may have gone through a cycle in that do you remember zabat the friend and family they they started this basically but then right that that's what you're saying and then the friends and family of racial equity and then the policy started and then it sort of yes and then it morphed into um then we sort of started with the school the school and with nico working with nicom and and it was very small and that's you know that's the thing is that it's this work it's been so slow it's been frustrating it's been so slow um and so it's it's it's time to kind of notch it up that's why i'm i'm i'm looking forward to having this equity this uh you know sort of equity audit and
064see how we're doing and and you know that's why this getting the latina community the latino community involved in this right now because i don't they they were not they were not very involved in it um yeah i recall that the draft wording in the policy itself was borrowed from another district and it was tailored to some degree but at that time there was no program to insert benchmarks or what it was going to look like it was still in the creation stage so i think now three years later we actually have a racial equity program in three buildings we have data which we didn't have in at all and um now we can start setting uh the measures by which we're going to be able to tell if we're effective or not so i
065think this this probably needs to be spruced up with the current program in mind both as it stands announces we'd like to see it expanded uh with the input of the communities that it's meant to most directly represent as our families of color and how they are integrated into the general school experience in an equitable basis so um i think i think that's probably this is sort of like the first draft of the canned language and now it just means it needs to become vashon's language both functionally and aspirationally with uh measures so that we know whether we're achieving or not and who's going to make that call yeah yeah and i'll just kind of remi i'll remind the board um uh you know typically at the beginning of the year well so the last
066two years uh stephanie has presented data to the board on this policy uh on the first bullet um you know this year we're going to be we're a little handicapped because we don't have the sba data um from last year um but but she's we we and and this is what i you know i do remember that we are not seeing improvements and so you know that that's that's the i think there's a bad that's the you know like what you're talking about is i don't know we're in a moment of time where we want we want to see change yeah right right and you know i think that not to get too into it but um you know we were talking about with with spring we were talking about how or somebody we're talking
067about how our numbers um in terms of um um oh god my brain um in terms of um menopause i hate you use your words um discipline thank you discipline um in terms of discipline our numbers are great i don't know but i'm studying but but it's like but then if you peel back you know is it great because we have less kids of color you know and is you know like you know what i mean like we just need to dig in and like why aren't we you know like what's going on and and it's really nice that a bunch of white people are talking about this you know so we need to you know move on well and that's been that's been a part of the the discussion that i that i'm really
068trying to bring in and other superintendents and i share some of these frustrations that um okay so i you know i have some some positive movement in the last you know just this year from last year and students represented in ap classes and you know like so there seems you know from last year this year more students of color participating in our honors classes and some of our our band in riptide and yearbook but the bottom line is that is that actually going to translate to academic opportunities um is it going to translate to to this you know kind of lessening or eliminating this idea that race predicts a student's you know academic outcomes um and so that's um like i i think i think collecting data and monitoring that data is the start i
069i'm it goes deeper than that i'm not like if i if we if we if we change all this and make and make improvements on how students are participating extracurricular activities and events i want to know that's actually going to lead to more opportunities for students when they graduate and go across the stage i'm in complete agreement that over the last two years we've seen you know three years ago we saw the latino graduation rate in the 80s and then the following year it dropped even a little bit further and so um you know we we we but at the same time it feels like we've ramped up racial equity work right and that doesn't something's not making sense and something's not working and i want to i want to make sure that we're that
070we when we look at our policy when we do the strategic planning uh that we're engaging with everybody that needs to be at the table but that we're actually you know and getting a two to three year plan from someone who can you know maybe help guide us in this work but i want us i want to see something different and the year after year after year of smarter balance results that are continuously lower uh terms of color and graduation rates that are better that are now falling so one of the if i if i may hello yes kevin this is kevin uh just just touching base um yes um i think what everyone has said has pretty much been accurate uh we had the group we came to the district uh with racial equity
071um and i think the difference is once the policy was uh invoked it sparked off the activity within the within the buildings themselves um so that was great um but also what happened was um uh true we lost our facilitator um and then um so we technically have not been truly uh doing the walk the way that we have uh with the way it started um and so i think um i don't speak for everyone but i would say that uh one of the things that is missing um is the active conversation the dialogue with the people of color in the community um so sitting at the table and actually having a conversation um i would say that the data um um i know that it we we do a lot of things that are
072driven off the data but um a lot of uh what you're missing flies under the data um and so i think it's important to continue the dialogue i would tell you that being a part of the friends and family we went to those communities and asked them to be a part of our group to join us at the table and so the and that's the truth behind it um for whatever reason they were reluctant to at the time um and so and we still continue uh to push that but just because of the change of direction um um it has uh changed the the change we've changed course uh and so i would say that that would be the one thing i would point out that um is truly uh i thought was very impactful
073um because we with our facilitator at hand we we did some um you know we looked at redlining in seattle what that looked like so it brought it up close and personal um to really give you a good feel and then also for the people that were at the table we could speak our truths uh there whereas now it's almost as though we're on the outside looking in as far as racial equity goes um so uh that's um uh so yes uh the policy kicked that off a lot of good things from that um but then there were some things that were left behind as well that are very important yeah kevin i totally agree that when nikon was there the work that we were doing in those in that room was it was it
074was it was it was impactful i mean for me it was very impactful and it was such a and i would leave those meetings um just with my you know with my eyes open wider every time and um and you know laughs he's doing great things where he is um but it i'm we need we need someone at the helm again uh this is bob when i i in terms of going forward it sounds like there's a great deal of agreement among all of us uh and the word co-create comes to mind and i've heard board members say that co-create it with the communities or kevin said in terms of going forward what what what i one possible way forward is um looking at the six bullet points and start looking at data around them
075there's two pieces here the policy which it sounds like there's a fair amount of uh concurrence that the policy could use a little more rigor and then there's the the look at how we're doing and i would uh for me it makes sense to start maybe um with these six bullets and saying okay how are we doing on these board members can add if there are other data points but i just really want to know how we've been doing it against our aspirational or our goals in 2017 part a figure out how we're doing and then part b have some subset or some group figure out how to improve the policy and they are perhaps i would argue could go on parallel tracks and not sequential tracks slade did you have something to say no
076i was just saying there's five points i agree with bob and that's kind of where where i thought i would start um remember those words no i'm hoping that um that uh feliciana from pscsd can um can join us sooner than later um and i'd also like to get some um just some kind of pragmatic direction because i know we're going to be kind of simultaneously doing strategic planning i don't obviously this is going to be a focus for us i don't see us moving away from this in fact i we want to make it stronger do people agree the parallel tracks again i just kind of pulled that out of my ear and i want to make sure that uh other members i mean that we could operate on parallel tracks one evaluating looking
077at what we've done and the second looking forward how we can improve the policy is that a division of labor that makes sense to people or not i think what i want to share is yes i can start to get the data but if i'm able to invite feliciana to our district and to work with us i want to make sure that if she has um or if there's a direction that we should be going i i don't want to get too far out in front um who is going to come in and help us that's fair enough that's what i'm thinking i think the other thing um i'm hearing there and i guess i'm most interested to hear from from kevin and and the other people who are people of color is is what
078can be done for relationship building to take this out of the realm of an academic exercise um and and and bring that authentic voice back into the work if if kevin is feeling like they're standing on the outside watching all of us participate in this exercise that sounds uncomfortable to me that's certainly not i think what the spirit of the ultimate goal is is we want those people integrated not on the outside watching us do this process so i know there's been many invitations at various periods of time to bring those communities and those families into the work and perhaps unsurprisingly given the history of our nation in terms of social justice there's maybe not a lot of trust about exerting their time and effort in that way so you know how do we make
079that happen on our little island to help convince these families um that it's where it is worth their time to engage and that we we do want to hear their voice and and we can't get better without their voice otherwise we're just still in our our white vacuum and our white world view and as much as we're trying to extend ourselves into their world we really can't we can't do it until we make it our world and that that really requires their participation so kevin if your you or your group can think about what we can do in terms of relationship building to that would make feel people feel comfortable in participating again uh i think that's that's kind of step one um in terms of having a real authentic change and real results start
080to happen because until there's that trust and participation from that sector it's really hard for us to move beyond you know where we're at right now in terms of trying to you know get something up and running now we have to make it work you know and without that input from the families of color we're not we're not going to achieve the desired results frankly um i think that's what the uh it's meant to be go ahead toby i think that's what um the maybe the third party uh support that we can get from pscsd can support us in there oh yeah no doubt also he'll have great ideas but we have a community of people that are living with us and have lived with us for decades and have had their own experiences and
081um yes this person will help probably the the white family side of the bridge you know understand how to cross the bridge better but there's probably a huge component of people of color who already have a pretty good idea of where they'd like to see it go and maybe just don't have the faith that things will really change to get there um and how do we engage them to help them make that leap of faith i think it's best to have that part of the conversation in the in in the exercise related to racial equity as opposed to discussing the policy now i i feel like uh some of um our intent and language is probably not where it needs to be given the the goals that we're trying to achieve yeah well it's all
082part and parcel of the work and i'm not expecting kevin to come up with a list of things to do right now but i'm hoping that please don't please don't call it out to any particular individual who's not volunteered for this i i think that's that's making me very uncomfortable i think though that this is the this is what the the letter that we got you know from the community of vashon is like this is what they're saying exactly like we have ideas we want you know we're here which as kevin said when when we first started the friends and family approached them and they just weren't ready it wasn't they weren't the stars didn't align at that time but the stars are definitely aligning now so it's great it's great we can move forward
083with them in the interest of uh so what can con slade can you uh summarize what i'm interested in next steps and sort of having them right yeah i'm interested in collecting data on on these on these bullets there's four of them that you can collect uh the first academic achievement well i'm i'm going to work my way through collecting data and and again providing the foundation or baseline information from where we are discipline data isn't in here by the way and um however i do want the board to know that i'm going to be collect you know and we're going to be working with sherry um and stephanie and the building you know admin uh to get basically a 2015 to to now point of perspective uh we have that data um at least
084i i think we should and so i want to get i want to see what the trends have been because again i want to know some of the what i want to know is since the district's been doing racial equity work then you know where are the impacts because i see the impacts on individuals and i hear um you know testimonies and i s and i see some things changing but not the way i want to so that's my first step bob and then i want to uh bring that to the board on the eighth and hopefully more perfect partners on psasd perfect that's that's very clear even i understood it great okay and the policy i'm sorry and the policy and the policy that is that's happening too on a timeline that you will
085determine right right um i think there's going to be a larger process that's going to develop the policy okay um so that's what i'm anticipating okay good i'm down uh and just to school your update are you all ready for that sure okay i move into a document so if you have a question or you want to raise you know if you're raising your hand i'm not going to see you right now because i'm looking at um my report um so just an update the king county health info um and so it's the number of of cases per 100 000 in the last 14 days and as you know there's a decision making tree and from the department of health and that indicates you know the the number of cases per hundred thousand and and
086ranges that include high moderate and low ranges right now ours is 51 per 100 000 in the last 14 days which puts us into a moderate range and once the number hit 55 or went below 75 that sparked quite a bit of conversation in the region around hybrid modeling and students coming back and um which i'll speak a little bit more to but i did want to lay the groundwork that that's that is currently where we are in king county and batch on is is is tied to those tied to that metric um so some of the important work that's been happening has been with the focus groups uh i want to give a shout out to josephine hutton and chris peliquin who have been leading the community engagement team and this was kind of
087an interesting notion when um we did some initial feedbacks you know our surveys to community while we were in closure and we were you know we we didn't do it perfectly uh absolutely there was challenges and and just what information did we need and how do we get it but i i envisioned a community engagement team led by the community and i met with josephine and chris and they're wonderful leaders um and they've been very intentional about uh their mission uh and what this group is for but you should see or our family should see a survey moving forward i believe tomorrow around what distance learning has been like um and so uh that those results will be analyzed by this group and recommendations made to the admin and the results of this will also
088go in front of the reopening team the reopening team meets on the 6th of october and so hopefully i'll have some results to share with you around the you know the school year and and how we're you know kind of how our distance learning efforts have been have been received with our community and that team meets uh is actually meeting once a week just to let you know any questions about the community engagement team i'm going to go through this kind of you know i mean it's informational but i don't want to ignore if you have questions go ahead yeah the next one is the outdoor learning team and and this one's been been slow to to to get the ground uh we have definitely members of the community and the reopening team who are
089interested in on the team we're just getting that first meeting set up and i'll probably next week but bash i don't want to ignore the fact that bashan be prepared has been working with some of our staff members including kevin and margie around some outdoor space solutions and the document that we loaded up into here is the results of that work and essentially providing the district a road map of possibilities and options for you know not only you know what what what how many students could be accommodated in any of these options but also the cost of the options and some of the feasibility of that um and so kind of typical of astronomy prepared it's extremely well engineered and rick and and i met with rebecca not too long ago to discuss all the
090options um i make i am making the decision that we are putting some some shelters at each of the buildings for small groups rather than kind of plan out large large um you know kind of transformations of some of our spaces that would inquire some significant you know financial costs i am moving forward in a pretty pretty slow deliberate way to provide options for our staff i think it's still too soon to tell what we really think you know an outdoor space would would be like or whether a teacher would want to be out in the rain or the cold um or the pera you know in the middle of december um so i'm a little reluctant to build out any significant structures but we we are getting thanks to kevin and his team we
091are getting structures up at every building so that small groups can come back and when i say small group five or less so teacher and four students um but if we go ahead sorry interrupt um no go ahead i'm just talking so um so i i i if you can make it clear in my for me that would be great yeah um so we have these options and this is down the road obviously but we have these this potential option for small groups to meet outside and then would this be kids with iep you know this would be the special ed kids this would be the youngest kids this would be ell kids and that would be happening even before we become hybrid that that this is so this is sort of a very short
092term is that what the plan is is that what this is yeah well our our focus right now is on those is on those students with those immediate needs um and um you know we we brought back ecap students this week that's been i i think i mentioned to folks that's been wonderful to hear uh they've had five six students a day uh downstairs in our you know ecap preschool um and so i look down and i see i see students little little kids wearing masks and uh little sparkly boots and sparkles and shirts and sometimes we hear cries and sometimes we hear joys of laughter and um so it's been it's it's it's that's been a real welcome um you know sound to my to both jody and i with the exception of some
093of the the the songs that that can go on and on and on and on um but i i i love it um so zabet you're absolutely right small groups first our most vulnerable students we plan on bringing back some students at mcmurray tomorrow in small groups who receive special services um and so there'll be students who receive ell services and then students who receive like title math and title reading okay so this is not this sort of this is this is what we're doing now this has nothing to do with the hybrid model the whole aba two week level this is just like right now kids who really need extra support right small groups are not um i would not consider them in the hybrid model uh the hybrid model is meant to describe
094you know larger groups of students back um and not the indoors right in right yeah okay okay thank you for just clarifying that yeah that's that's a that's a good point um you know as we kind of work through these discussions about outdoor spaces uh sometimes it feels to me like the conversation um leans towards if you can't do it outside it's you know then our indoor spaces aren't safe and um thanks to kevin and his crew and uh you know kind of all the hard work you know designing you know spaces and the teachers together uh they're you know our the inside of our buildings we can accommodate uh you know small sizes you know small class sizes and that's hence why we see when i get to the hybrid you know we'll be
095talking more about that kind of you know the emerging schedule of an av model at all the buildings so but uh but the end you know the end the insides of our buildings are are safe we don't want to ignore that we have uh the space available for for students even in small groups but we do want to provide options for those educators who want to take students outside and we we're encouraging that but we recognize that it's also sometimes difficult when you don't have all your teaching materials the whiteboard i mean there's a lot of structure that teachers rely on all educators pair educators as well that they rely on that indoor space um so we outdoor space is is better does it mean but it doesn't mean that our indoor spaces is unsafe
096so but so but the outdoor learning team i want you know it needs to really be expanded to um it it does include uh bachelor nature center and bachelor wilderness program um and we we we're inviting other other folks on the island who have experience with with bringing students outdoors and teaching them but it really the outdoor learning needs to be expanded to how can we get students outside in meaningful experiences and we know we may not be teaching you know collaborative classroom which is our literacy curriculum we that may not be possible outside but what is possible and the experts from you know the wilderness program and nature center have have generously jumped in and said you know when when you're ready when these teams come together let's let's let's start you know taking
097advantage of what we have in front of us so the the last group is the latino family advocacy and support and i i i want to recognize this is um this is an opportunity i appreciate what everybody has said um and especially the board members comments i i appreciate what community dot has said in their letter um i i recognize that there that there may have been uh there may be still actions uh that word that we're doing that that are that the impact is not you know matching the intent and and there there it does feel to me like there's a lack of trust there um i've made continuous outreach to community dad especially the last few weeks i've i have emails out to them to meet i have emails out to their leadership
098to meet with their parents and i have not been receiving any response they joined the the outreach and advocacy group um but i want a stronger i want a stronger relationship and um and i i'm i'm eager to learn what it is that i may be that i may not be doing the right way um because i know it's something um because we're not we're not coming together and that's what i want um and so i'm gonna you know when i go back tomorrow and i'm just sharing this with the board when i come back tomorrow um i'm gonna reach out again and and invite uh you know to bring us back to the table to figure out what this you know what how this could look better uh what would the 10 out of
09910 look like from my you know from the district in terms of how we how we collaborate or co-create you know right now um it's true i i have um you know we have a uh i've solicited for a liaison position i reached out to the you know to to the focus group if they had individuals in the community who would like to to join us um i haven't heard anything uh back yet um and so uh but there's that there's there's opportunities that i want to present and and supports that i want to put in i feel like it's hard for me to wait because i have families who need support and so i wanna i wanna make sure that i'm addressing them uh also so um but i'm gonna i'm gonna double down
100on my efforts and and try to and try to you know uh really make this a stronger partnership um but this this particular group um you know consisted of uh community dad it consisted of vashon youth and family services um it's consisted of saint john vianney um i was really excited to see this group come together and for the most part we talked about connections and access for our latino families i'm hoping that that this group in whatever shape it forms because i've invited a co-leader and i haven't um i haven't had a member from you know the community you know this group [Music] to be a co-leader so but i we we need we need this group to move forward not just connecting you know students um but really addressing uh the needs that
101community dot put in front of us but also additional needs that that have been surfaced as well so um we have been making some progress uh it's slow i i think i shared with toby in a conversation that our district wasn't designed to be a bilingual district and so change is really is difficult because we're also not funded uh we don't get it we get funded for title iii and our tbip it's called transitional bilingual but the monies are super small and really only provide for the for the personnel in our district who provide the ell services they're really that there's it doesn't even pay for that i'll be honest with you so um you know we're gonna if the way we want to move forward with this work the way i'm anticipating it we're
102going to be um you know taking a closer look at the budget and earmarking more monies and they're going to be locally funded monies to support home you know students whose home language is in english and stephanie is is also you know one of the first to step up and it's we have many families who don't speak english and they're not are just our latino mandarin syrian arabic so it's this is a this is a really big and complex challenge for small districts who don't receive funds to scale up any type of services for our for our students who don't speak in english where english is a second language for them so but i'm i'm passionate about the work i wanna i wanna move it forward and i'm excited to come together and i think
103what i saw is that i learned a lot more about what supports were in the community and i next time we come together i'm hoping that we can um i don't know what you know i'm gonna i actually want to leave the agenda open for those to put in you know where we feel we need to go but i'm also interested in doing some family training in the short term because we have some new translation services we're just learning technology is moving so fast um that we're we we are able to now i believe you know and i don't know all the the ins and outs yet but there is a solution for teachers who do a google meet that if a parent at home doesn't doesn't speak english they can have that and google
104me does closed captioning and they can use the closed caption as a translation kind of uh subtitles um it's not perfect google me you know translation or closed captions is not perfect by any means nor is translation perfect by any means but it's i feel like it's a start um and so we're and we also see yeah i believe there's some solutions for for seesaw and and i unfortunately got a i got a text from jody at the beginning of our meeting that um the the the interpretation for this meeting is it wasn't working and so i see i i see a member here who i know they identified as an interpreter i'll be interested to find out what was it technology wise or what you know kind of what stopped because now we can
105we can have our board meetings interpreted simultaneously for members who don't speak you know the english language so our community so um so the work is slow i i wanted this is a this is tough times um you know right now we we do have uh all but um you know i think two students right now who who have some type of access i i sent um you know an email to the board and you know in terms of a a complex situation where i mean you know john and rebecca in terms of trying to get this one family uh services you know family has they have internet services but it's through ethernet and not you know not through direct connection and then we they have three hotspots now and there were password issues um
106rebecca did some counseling with the parents because their teenager didn't want to you know doesn't want to go to school and participate in meets and um uh i know i know each of you read that that situation and i and i sent it actually to a couple community members um i don't want to share too much because i don't want to you know put any family at risk of confidentiality but these are really super challenging circumstances and this is just to get students connected i am you know we still have so many families that their kids fall out of meats you know they're the video lags i have issues every once in a while with our internet and um these are just gonna continue to be challenges that we're gonna just kind of take one
107at a time and get moving on them um but uh opening school has been i feel like when i listen to my colleagues has been has been good for the most part but that doesn't mean it's been good for everybody and i can tell you right now that there are families that are struggling and and we have we do have it all hands on deck in terms of teachers and parents and admin wanting you know to reach out i believe tomorrow night they're making more home visits for students that don't have some connectivity rebecca is dropping off you know offline materials but packets basically at homes so there's a lot of a lot of effort to help folks and we can you know we can probably use more um um we could probably use help
108and so what does that help look like and how can we take advantage of that so so that a question um and i i think i've talked about this with many people um we have a pers we have a problem that is a societal geographic problem i.e internet for all um and the school district is uh has limited capabilities to address that broader problem do we have numbers actual data with like um these people flat out have no connectivity these people have spotty and i i don't know enough about it to be able to sort of create categories of of access but two-prong question for you is a could those categories indicators of access be developed and b can we get hard numbers attached to them and track that right well right now we have
109zero students who don't have connectivity okay um but once again you know two of those students i know are using the internet from the lutheran church right and we have hot spots coming in um john is also replacing or upgrading um all the spots uh in the near future they're [Music] they're basically being tracked right now they should come in maybe tomorrow or sometime next week but the families who do have hot spots right now um we're gonna be upgrading them uh so that we can get them better bandwidth um we're also john has with these hot spots if so we we do we we have a plan uh bob i'm glad you talked about we have a it's and it's just a tiered plan our first we needed to get kids you know online
110to make sure that they had access the second is to address the the spotty you know kind of internet services and and our our teachers and our families and that's part of what our um you know some of our survey work is going to do is is identify who those are but we're willing to do you know with our you know with our most vulnerable students a hot spot per student um and that's you know that's where that's that's the extent that we're that we're prepared to go um and john's gonna have the resources to do that we did get um a new grant opened up from the from this from ospi that where i don't know this the actual source of the monies but they they're coming from uh osbi is going to be
111the the funnel through them but they're working with isps uh and and basically providing districts with some funding relief um the grant opened up today and the way stephanie described it to me it's not too specific so we'll we'll see um kind of what relief we're going to get um but you know the next right the next step is to to figure out who the students are who are who are things are dropping off and um you know we believe we have the means to do that and then i don't know what's after that you know simultaneous we're trying to do all the training with you know parents are still trying to learn all the you know the different software and the same thing with the teachers so um it's a pretty big task but
112people are people using the um the helpline um i don't know yeah i don't know i i i i know they are i know they're accessing um you know the the in you know i know the building's getting access from the from the teachers and the staff they're using their help lines i don't know how much the helpline is being used for the community but i know i think allen and carrie work with our community as well i don't know how many folks go kick is working with remember go kick is the um the organization that works with community don because i was noticing in the comments i don't know if you were looking at tracking this the comments at the but the high school um welcome danny and gus thing um were there a
113couple people who were like oh you know my computer doesn't work or you know or yeah and and gus was saying you know come in and swap them out so i i wonder if there's a way to tell people to you know like if you're if you're having issues you don't have to sort of suffer through we're here to help yeah i think the buildings have have put that information out but we can always do better at getting that information out to people yeah because i haven't seen anything from the high school that says you know parents i think i think it just it's been kind of buried in all the yeah i was just gonna say there's so much stuff going out it's really easy to lose track well we're in that age where
114everything seems it's important for everybody to know um so it is difficult but we can definitely do better getting that helpline you know that help desk information out again and sometimes it's not as immediate as you know kind of as folks want but um but it is there that service i would agree uh i think with you or bet or both of you uh repetition repetition keep keep plugging people with we're here to help yeah the facebook page for the district has a lot of good tips and connections for those um issues posted so that's always a good place if people don't know that the district has a facebook page that posts all kinds of helpful hints like that it's certainly worth if you have an account it's worth getting connected with in addition to
115the direct you know communication that the district puts out um via email etc um there's all kinds of goodies there too on the facebook page yeah if you can connect to the facebook right right that's sometimes that's that age-old kind of conundrum you know we want to survey the folks if they have internet connectivity right so yeah same for email i guess if they can't if they can't get their facebook page up they probably can't get their email going either unless it's on their phone yeah um but we you know we we do have students and you know administrators would be able to tell you that they still have students that are regardless of connectivity they're not engaging and i think danny shared you know that at the last board meeting and i think that's
116important to know too that access just access doesn't mean you know that all the problems are solved um that all the challenges kind of go away so even the kind of access it's just um but it sure doesn't um if you can't you know if you if you can't they have teams of staff who are working every week to students who aren't participating or you know not participating as they would like or as that they would anticipate them to participate and like danny said i think in the in a really interesting way sometimes you know you can have five different people working with a family or a student and they haven't been able to kind of make headway or make the kind of relationship that brings them back in and where they feel like they
117belong and it's that sixth person for whatever reason they're the ones who are able to break through into that relationship and um and and and get that student to engage so um i i see a lot of dedication towards that and um you know we're gonna we're gonna just continue to to monitor our kids um you know and and we're doing so much of that just one by one right now and i think toby that's why you know when we're smaller like that we can well it feels when i speak with our administrators that they are truly like it is one family by one family by one student by one student counselors it's it's it's a it's a marvel to kind of listen to and teachers are you know trying to do that as well
118as they assess who's showing up for class or who's not participating well actually one tip that i i learned about is the goguardian tool which is a tool that we use to um that enables teachers to see what all the kids are what they have open on their chromebooks they can see all the tabs that are open so if they're watching youtube they can say you know please shut down youtube or the teacher can actually go and close it but it also provides you can you can speak do a video call uh voice or chat through go guardian and i've heard that some students actually prefer that especially ones that are less inclined to speak openly in front of the rest of the class or turn their camera on you know they might be not
119as confident or shy or just have a different learning style and that goguardian has turned into this secret tool or a special tool that has these uh these additional strengths that no one anticipated before but it's been another method to make those connections those interpersonal connections that seemed so hard to do two weeks ago and so i think um to your point that uh it seems like everyone's trying every way possible to find ways to authentically engage with those students who you know aren't engaging in the same way or at the level that we open expect a ton of effort yeah um you know i'm you you may have uh so if i can just touch base on hybrid planning um we are going to i am going to develop a larger presentation and and
120our october 8th board meeting will be um presenting with you know the board with with schedules and and data from the the feedback that buildings collected from students uh staff and and our community and so right now uh you know danny and [Music] um danny's hybrid uh survey for for families is open until monday and uh and then greg's i believe closes tomorrow and rebecca has already completed that cycle of feedback with with with her families and so really the intent is then for the building teams to come the building leader teams to come together and process that information it does feel to us right now that there's kind of an emerging schedule um that's a that's that's a preferred schedule once we do um you know once we're in a position to move to
121hybrid learning um you know we are and that schedule is an ab model um that some folks have heard about or that you know it could be a monday wednesday tuesday thursday or monday tuesday thursday friday with with the day those details are still really you know kind of being talked through with with our teacher teams um it's really important to know too that um you know we're taking a really long lead time on on any kind of major decisions to bring students back you might our community might see other districts in the area who have september dates they or they have early october dates um you know we're really going to make decisions based on the science based on you know the the health and safety of our of our students and staff and
122community that's you know number one um you know in the next you know i think we're gonna be making decisions to bring back our youngest students um you know at such a time when we feel like we when it's safer to do so um but our focus is right now on small groups really monitoring what that you know the results of that um and then um you know bringing in kindergarten you know we're really controlled phase in and then looking at first grade and second grade but we don't have timelines um for that yet i'm i'm beginning to learn uh as soon as you set a timeline you're almost dooming yourself to change it in some way shape or form many districts who have already gone out there's been some questions about the efficacy of
123masks and things and it's just like anything new information can come you know any minute of the day that can also change your plans and and so um i think waiting for the disease activity to continue to drop to see it stabilize uh to work with our staff and our community and our nursing services saturday is awesome um so that when we are able to make decisions about you know uh if we come back we have all the how questions answered and answered fully um we have a and we have a you know a strong schedule and all the details built out around it and so i'm going to you know again bring to the board on october 8th a larger presentation of the data some of the decisions that have been made by the
124teams the buildings and some of the kind of step-by-step you know aspects of that controlled phase in model that we're gonna that we're gonna be putting in place so other than that i don't have i can answer questions right now about what i do know but i you know you will find out more on the eighth as well anybody have more questions on any of this information all right thank you slade all right so the next issue is board member building site visits and bob and i had the pleasure of last tuesday it was already last tuesday of meeting um with rebecca and john and slade and being able to pop into some classrooms at chautauqua remotely when and the miracle was that i was able to figure out how to do that and not
125get lost somewhere inspired today but it was uh it was really cool um we visited some fifth grade math classes and some uh kindergarten classes and uh talked about how things were going and in general and what some of the challenges were and um bob why don't you start with what your impressions and thoughts were and then i'll just i'll back clean it start with the b team here um i i don't really have a whole lot to say and i uh i don't want to be a downer um but i'm going to be a little bit um it was for me very bittersweet um and i think every school board member in the country ought to do what reagan and i did we looked at young young kids were they second and third graders
126um kindergarteners kindergarteners um and it was just beautiful to see these seven-year-olds or whatever they are fidgeting with their hair looking at the ceiling and uh doing what young kids do um that was the sweet part um but you see what the the teaching staff has to do and it's just um it's it's extremely difficult and i um feel like they have been given an impossible task and these young kids what they really need is to be with other young kids you know um learning social skills and this you know things that we can't teach them online and um that's the doubter part but um i'm reminded uh about all the losses from the pandemic uh taking your kid to the first day of school um graduation and having this is just in the education
127realm um people are dying i don't want to minimize that but it was also sort of uh i felt like the optimistic part was that the old human spirit and um the teachers of these young kids and i i've single them out because it's obviously much easier if you're teaching a high school class i would think um but um just how the teaching staff of these young young young children are rising to it and the impossible tasks that they've been given so um kudos to them sadness uh that i feel end of doubt right yeah covet's definitely a downer well no no argument there uh i think part of the the cool thing for me was that we get to actually see the new learning platform of seesaw which i'd heard a lot about but
128it's really kind of hard to understand what students are using without actually walking through some of it and i was really impressed with how it facilitates easy communication with the children who are able to easily upload their photographs or drawings or calculations and get real-time feedback with the teacher during the class i was impressed that that there were you know 15 or you know 17 kids in those classes at the time we were there so it's definitely participation and it looked like school i mean they they were little little guys in the kindergarteners and they were bigger guys in the in the math classes but you know they were answering questions and they were unmuting to communicate with the teacher and they were following along and they weren't just running around their house chaotically they
129were they were actually engaged and one of the things rebecca talked about was it was important for us to dial in at the start of the class session because that's when the highest level of participation would be because they don't expect kids to be on for the entire allotted time and they're really flexible about being able to have off-screen time as well and build that into the curriculum so um that was good to know and uh as bob says it's not certainly not ideal it's not what we'd want and we hope to be able to bring those little guys back soon to be together but um for what's going on and for the teachers who are have got the overhead cameras going and are able to navigate and learn a whole new learning platform over
130the summer and engage it and employ it with the kids i mean i was extremely impressed with that so um like bob said it's the human spirit to persevere and i think our people have done a good job of it and are doing a good job of it and are learning more as time goes on um as far as some of the challenges a lot of them had to deal with some of the connectivity challenges that slade was addressing there and his reopening presentation rebecca talked about going to do the home visits i think when you're when the principal and the director of i.t will make multiple visits to your household to try and get you up and running that shows a dedication that is not common in most public education and we're grateful to
131be able to have that kind of engagement in on the island with our small district doesn't mean they're able to solve every aspect of every problem but there's certainly not for a lack of dedication and effort in that regard so um that was impressive and i've seen several other incidental emails on the district email and describing similar staff peop you know going that extra mile to make the extra phone call make the visit deliver the books whatever it takes to engage especially with the yellow and green school kids who are you know obviously suffering the most from the distance learning model so yeah i think i thought it was great uh is as great as it probably can be for now and you know i think that was uh definitely i just had a good
132time yeah kindergarteners even fifth graders were who but the kindergarten especially so i can i just do a quick naming because those teachers if you if you think about this they're already on stage you know they gotta they have to be on you know 24 7 basically when when they're with their kids and there's no down time and then all of a sudden you know four or five people just kind of pop into their meats and so not only are you know and then but they just they just went with it but i'd like to give a shout out to allison reynolds to mrs tanner to mrs jones mrs lindsey to mrs long and mrs stearns for giving us grace to come into their rooms um uh i hopefully it wasn't completely unannounced but it
133was certainly uh a surprise to all of a sudden see all these board members and the superintendent in your room so thank you very much for sharing your work with us well and and the kids could see who are these people coming into our class right and everyone everyone handled it really beautifully and again we're really grateful for your indulgence allowing us to do that makes me reflect on a conversation i think we probably had a year ago or so significantly pre-coded about um learning management tools and i remember i remember some comment i think this lady said that you had they're really expensive they take years to implement the amount of training that you have to do is just hurricane i mean that's essentially a huge strategic shift that requires total dedication which means
134you can't do other stuff that's a priority while doing that and then march bam here we are so the ability to pivot that fast and across the buildings with different tools and you know do the individual reach out to kids and stuff is really astonishing and i know that every school district's going through it with some degree of success or not but um it's really it's pretty cool to hear your experience with a brand new tool and that generally it was it was pretty good and the kids are happy and you know that's required a lot of work do you remember who signed up for the next one just off hand is it toby i think you're right we're going to go to middle school yeah i think so i might be on it too
135october yeah yeah i think it's 22nd or something like that yeah i should you know what's so funny when we looked at the planning of those in my head i still thought we're going to car and drive up and get into school and walk through the buildings i was like right what you know how thinking about work where can i place that in now i'm and now i'm sad that i missed the chautauqua one since it was going to be online anyhow i had that question the morning of toby i'm texting slade wait a minute are we doing this online or yeah i don't know why i thought that because everything i do is online all the time anyhow but oh well um i just learned that this is a bet in spring so okay
136so there you go okay so any other questions for the board site visit for the three of us did you get any interesting questions from from the kids right or main question we got was who are you right right yeah we tried not to disrupt what they were doing two months since we basically just bombing them i'm thinking about um the site visits uh last year i did one at chautauqua and uh there were a panel of fifth graders that were assembled i think five or six of them we did got a little round table yeah and we actually did the same thing at mcmurray last year too yeah um that was fabulous that was great that was really great yeah i think we can actually have a conversation interact and then you know they
137have no filters so then they're going to tell you exactly what they think which is really exciting yeah yeah and we'll we'll plan that for the next time i know it was um for this first visit it was you know let's just kick it off and uh sure but we'll we'll we'll probably see some visit okay all righty with that that could bring us to the consent agenda um i i i apologize i had some questions about the contracts can we um were i here on time i would have asked yes uh done pulled them out of the consent agenda but uh with the board's indulgence can we just look at the contracts okay i i just the uh what where there was a list as i recall right could you click on the the
138link the link there jody so um the what's the 163 000 that's a lot of money i'm just curious uh what's that about and did we how did we budget for that the ecap program is that was that what that is the one the ones the 163 yep that number is a lot higher than i recall it is the ecap program cost that much i didn't know that i thought it was a 30 yes 30 some thousand plus 30 some thousand for the second half in the budget no there's quite a bit of staffing around ecap if you remember is that what it was so okay um and then turning down that's fine turning down to the uh could you scroll down so the uh i'm curious about the two mentoring programs what what are
139the what services are going to be performed there and i mean what are the deliverables and what are the what are the what are you familiar with the journeymen and sisterhood i'm familiar with journeyman uh less so about sisterhood so they provide mentoring services for boys and girls both in school and outside of school and that those monies are donated by bashan schools foundation okay and it was all this did we bid this out or was it sold sourced was source contracts or do we bid them out how did that work no these these are sole source if that's the word for it i don't i'm not familiar with the word but it's not these aren't bidded are we not required to bid the work or to solicit bids no you're sure i'm pretty positive
140yeah anything under twenty five thousand dollars don't we do we have to i thought i thought it was two phone bids or something but hey could you report back i'm just curious if i don't believe there's anyone else to that would provide circles you know these are very uh specific services so but i can follow up with you presumably there are a number of ways to provide i just want to make sure that we're running a clean process that's also if you could just report back to i thought we were supposed to bid this stuff but if that's not correct then my mistake that's all my questions no problem i'll get back to you okay anything else we motion to approve the consent agenda i move that we approve the content agenda second okay all
141in favor all right right i i don't have any pose this time okay all right good then the consent agenda is passed and that brings us to new business does anyone have new business they want to bring up i just wanted to go do you want to go ahead to that i you you oh i see [Music] i would love to piggyback off of what danny was talking about um about late start or you know starting later in the you know and for middle school and high school and this seems to be a perfect moment if and if we ever go back to a schedule that's normal can we start to wrap our heads around that because as he said this has been a great experiment and it's thumbs up all the way around to
142have that start that little st later start so i would really like to follow that up okay so what i can what i'll do then is um reagan i can you know reach out individually to the board members and see who is on the same page and then we can make it we can we you know if we have some consensus around this then we'll put it as a discussion item okay okay thank you you're welcome i agree danny uh bob he opened with that right so this may this may be the time uh okay so mine is um i have had i have this high level desire to have it's probably a uh penchant for seeing the written word uh having a something in writing about our procedures for getting stuff on the board
143to consider whether something gets on the agenda um we talked about this at the last board meeting and uh i think it was said you know you just suggested and we we work it out and the reason i think it should be a written um a written procedure is to get you transparency and it gets you a little more intentionality i had wanted to discuss cell phone policy and was advised today that the board members didn't want to talk about cell phone policy that it was that we had more important things to do and i feel like that's not a process that this this this needs to happen in school board meetings and so if we just made it clear that if if it's two votes or if it's whatever something that's a little more
144concrete i think it would help certainly help me um and i think it would help improve our governance because um just doing things ad hoc uh i think could have forestalled some angst on my part in the last 24 hours and um there are several things that i would like to talk about i think there are opportunities to improve transparency and public participation three or four ideas two or three ideas and i just want to know how we can get them on the agenda to discuss whether or not to act on them and it seems to me if it's not written down it just gets very confusing do you have a proposal in terms of some language that would be great no i'm saying do you have anything oh i could write it i mean
145i i just i would want some direction from the board i mean i i don't think like for example one board member wanting something should be sufficient um maybe it's two maybe it's three maybe it's four um that's a discussion that we would want to have but i think it's important that the rules of the road be written down bob you can use my uh late start as a as your as your guinea pig i'd like us to talk about a late start and if it it for the middle school and high school and changing that start time can i just i want to just clarify for people who are listening that you were specifically talking about cell phone use within the five of us during board meetings that's correct you're not talking about school
146policies your school you're just talking about it could be policy i where it resides is i'm ambivalent i'm not ambulant i think i told boardman i think it should be policy but if it's a board practice proto on our board protocols page um no i'm not i would never never never dive into that one um in the past we've uh kind of talked about the same topic at our annual retreat i don't know if there's room uh in the upcoming one in in october to do that october 13th i you know i and i reagan you can weigh in on a process question but i mean if we wanted to say two board members that's one sentence could be done very easily i don't i don't know that it warrants a whole lot of discussion
147this is not a complicated question it's just we we have to agree on what what the number is in my view is it two is it three is it four is it one or five i don't think we're going to decide here i agree with toby it's been a subject at the at the retreat that's kind of part of what the retreat's for is to establish our norms of communication so i think we should just take it up then and spend five minutes on it okay i'm down yeah that's good all right i have i have a piece of new business as well um we've had some communication from community member who is interested in potentially changing the high school mascot from a pirate to some other mascot in regards of recognition of the current
148period we're in in terms of social justice and understanding that pirates might not have the same connotation for all groups of students in our schools and may in fact have negative commentations for certain groups and so you know i think um that's a pertinent concern to address and i'm not sure the best way to go about addressing it but i think necessarily some community input would be informative about whether there's a similar like-mindedness within the majority of the community about doing that and then if there is we could determine a process or finding a new mascot if that's what we decided we wanted to do so i guess um not so much uh a board new business other than to make us aware of it but an invitation to community members to weigh in on
149that subject to the board and to slayed um hopefully between now and the next meeting so that we can assess whether they're there's a feeling that the time is now to make that change or not thanks for bringing that up reagan i remember uh that email coming out right before we started school i think and uh we got very busy and focused on getting school kicked off and i kind of forgot about that that topic so thanks for can we uh just be transparent that uh the community member was hilary emmer who lettered to us just and and she uh requested that we address it and so i'm i'm just sometimes we we speak anonymity and i don't i don't think she required anybody i just want to make sure that that we are identifying
150kind of we received a letter from hillary and and and yeah let her know that i certainly want to give i want to give her i want to give her credit where her credit is due i should know if we wanted to publicly out her in our board meeting but yes it's definitely hillary's idea and i i committed to her at that time that i would raise the issue in this meeting and so i'm honoring that commitment and i'm also interested in the response i think it's definitely time i've i i think i've been pretty clear on my views about having a white male you know murderer thief as a mascot for a high school um so but i it's it's definitely i mean that's just i'm just one person i and so we've got
151it's got it'll be an interesting conversation there's so much more than that that's right bob hennessey all right let's adjourn this sucker well there's any more there's no more comments and we are going to go ahead and adjourn here at around nine uh eleven or twelve or something like that thanks everybody thank you everyone for thanks for republic for joining us with us and yep thank you all thanks for contributing thanks everyone have a good time out there you