001[Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen welcome to the March 18th uh meeting of the aimama school board we're glad you joined us this evening to begin this evening like to note that we offer Spanish interpretation services from Mary Ivy from a language connection if you need translation assistance in person please check with marave I'm sorry I mispronounced it please translate this information for us thank you good afternoon everybody thank you thank you so much if you wish to make public comment this evening there are two options available for you the first option is for commenting on agenda items only and the second option which comes towards the end of the meeting is for all other topics in order to speak tonight you will need to sign two forms forms the signin form and the guidelines
002form both I think are located in the back of the room Barb would you please take the rule uh director rice here director Walker here president Becket present vice president B NOA and director Raymond Navaro Jr are excused thank you barbar would you please uh join me rise if able and help me with the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic it stand nation under God indivisible withy and justice for all March's character word of the month is collaborative promoting working together effectively to achieve common goals today the schools of the yaka School District rest on ancestral lands of 14 confederated tribes and bands of the yak Nation [Music] the people of the yakim nation inhabited more than 12 million anres across Adams
003Bon Chalan Douglas Franklin Grant K and counties today we honor those native peoples who are tied to the land through history Legends and culture we acknowledge our descendants who live in the world today we thank the caretakers of this land who have lived here and continue to live here since time immemorial an acknowledgement is a simple powerful way to show [Music] respect and a step toward correcting the stories and practices that erase indigenous people's history and culture it also honors the ch [Music] as a school district we will continue to build upon our relations with aak we have two recognitions this evening uh director right or Walker will help us with the first which will be our school retirees Appreciation Week recognition and director rice will help us with the second which will be our
004national board certified teachers recognition so Norm take it away did I did I do them backwards we're reverse there so thank you for being on top of that both of you appreciate that go ahead Mar tonight I am honored to be able to recognize um members of the school retirees Association for yaka County this is retirees School retirees Appreciation Week March 17 to 23 2025 the yima County School retirees Association is one of 28 local units which comprise Washington State School retirees Association Y csba is the largest unit in the state with nearly 1,500 members both active and retired School Employees Washington State School school retirees Association works for the maintenance and Improvement of pension benefits for all School Employees the board of directors urges community members to join them to join us in expressing
005appreciation to school retirees for the dedication and hard work and for their continuing support of education in Yakama County um as I read your names if you're here please come up and run the route and um Shake our hands and then um Stacy has us certificate for you all Yakama County School retirees Association officers Debbie dowy secretary [Applause] thank you for everything D Kathy Fletcher member at [Applause] large Corine foron well welcome committee John oada Health thank you Nick Schultz member at [Applause] large Millie Stone stenin sorry sunshine committee sorry I messed up your name Linda suner member at [Applause] large Kathy Schulz unit contact congratulations thank you Lilia whitmont Treasurer AA I'm [Applause] sorry I'm sorry Carolyn Wilson assistant [Applause] Treasurer Sandy Gavin wish coordinator web [Applause] coordinator Larry Shaw legislative Norma Haney Journal
006liazon Peggy Young [Applause] social Norma Haney Journal Le [Applause] on Jan Saxton [Applause] welcome thank you for Paul schaer retirement [Applause] the retirees have a retirement committee isn't that cute thank you for coming it's good to see you Peggy Campbell [Applause] historian and Patrick Walsh [Applause] membership please join me in a final round of applause for all of these folks who spent hours and hours in our [Applause] district they touch thousands of children's lives during their tenure with us and we thank them for all everything that they've done um we've got picture opportunities so if you want to join us up front if you standing in front of the thing ch will take your picture and if you have family members that you'd like to have join you for a second picture please ask them
007to join you as well what for next up we have a recognition of this year's National board certified teachers the Yakama school district is proud to announce five more teachers have earned certification from the national Board of Professional Teaching Standards to earn this honor these teachers went through an often gruelling year-long rospective process which included creating a portfolio of work to document their performances in the classroom and a series of tests to measure their knowledge in the subjects they teach congratulations to these teachers and please do the same thing when I read your name come through and we'll shake your hand and present you with a certificate Bianca baragan Luna from Martin Luther King [Applause] Jamie Holden Washington Middle School [Applause] Elisa Russell Adams [Applause] Elementary Jacqueline Silva Roosevelt Elementary and finally Paul Vorhees Lewis
008and Clark Middle [Applause] School and again come back up for a group photo please yes we'd love to love to catch a a photo and their work isn't done to maintain that certification they need to continue to gather data and submit data over the next few years as well for thank you Kirsten for helping with the photos we also want to thank everybody from both our school retirees Association group and our national board certified teachers group for being here tonight um we also understand um that it is a Tuesday night and if you have things you would like to do we will completely understand we will take a brief a brief minute here uh before we move on with the agenda if you would like to move on with your evening we won't we won't
009take it personal not this time anyway but again thank you all so much for being here we're really really grateful for your contributions to our community so thank you so much for thank you all again um I uh inadvertently skipped over um a recognition in our recognitions portion um it is a tradition here with our group that when one a member of our uh Workforce or a school district family um passes away uh once we are notified and we see the obituary we do like to make note of it and to let everyone know our board and our community alike uh that the obituary is posted in our board docs um uh online and you can find it as well with the heral but we we have a anit on our agenda this evening for
010Pamela Marie Ford passed away and I would like to ask you all to please join me in a moment of silence honoring her memory thank you we'll begin our reports to the board section this evening and the first uh report this evening will be Francis Guerrero from yea Francis welcome come on up good evening I apologize for my Casual Friday wear I thought I would have time to change and I didn't um tonight for Staffing I would like to speak about the nurses and I'm going to begin with a statement from a former nurse and I want you to know that it was a struggle whether or not to do this I I spoke with the head reps and we discussed it and it's not something that we want to have to bring up but
011I think it's very important that the board be as informed as possible and this is a powerful statement from a former nurse to whom it may concern I worked as a nurse in the district for just under a year based in an elementary school during a halfday shift I stayed until lunchtime to administer insulin since a health assistant couldn't give injectable medications during staff change I had to manage two diabetic fifth graders and a kindergarten student needing an inhaler an inhaler before PE all at the same time the health assistant helped administer the inhaler while I counted carbs and performed calculations for the diabetic patients noisy and overcrowded with lunch trays and five people in a small office the wrong patient scale was used to determine the insulin dose I quickly notified my Superior monitored
012the student contacted the parent and had the student picked up to be monitored closely by the parents at home the next day HR conducted an investigation and I was placed on administrative leave despite being told I was a quote great nurse and the staff had nothing but great things to say about me end quote I was asked to resign due to potential life ability concerns as a school nurse I was responsible for over 500 students handling everything from minor injuries to emergency care and managing a variety of medications in a 2-hour time frame on most days a school nurse will perform numerous evaluations scheduled medications administering insulin Tobe beadings and other routine care the overwhelming demand particularly during lunch recess and PE makes it difficult to provide care without mistakes the lack of Staff support
013and the high pressure environment can lead to errors as the only health care provider in the school the nurse is solely responsible for all medical tasks which can be overwhelming especially when also required to document every student interaction in addition to the high volume of students students nurses must handle those with social emotional or behavioral issues we are responsible for creating health care plans coordinating with doctor's offices and commun communicating with parents often Complicated by lack of participation or missing documentation this requires extensive phone calls emails and meetings School nurses also perform vision and hearing screenings and ensure students are up toate on vaccinations the district faces a serious staffing and support issue not a nursing problem expecting one nurse to manage high-risk medications while also addressing behavioral and emotional challenges is unsustainable penalizing nurses
014for mistakes in these conditions creates a culture of fear and dishonesty where Staff feel compelled to hide errors to protect their jobs this culture is already causing the district to lose skilled Health Care Professionals and it will persist until Staffing shortages and current Protocols are properly addressed the nurses of yakal school district urge you to support changes that improve students safety this the first is increasing nursing staff especially during peak times like lunch recess and PE the second is implementing a system for safety safely administering high-risk medications such as double nurse checks and verification systems used in hospitals supporting nurses through adequate Staffing and improved system for administering high-risk medications will not only prevent future errors but also retain dedicated Health Care Professionals the health of our students is at risk and without these necessary
015changes the district will continue to lose valuable staff and ultimately compromise student safety I urge you to take immediate action to provide the support needed to create a safer and more effective healthare environment for both students and staff sincerely a former nurse of the yakal school district I was at a training recently and one of the things that came up was an incident where the union had to file against a district on a perk violation and it took took months and the superintendent was clueless about the situation so I apologize that I have not had time to bring this to your attention but I just kind of assumed that our superintendent would know because this has been an issue for years I have been going at it with HR for most of this year our
016nursing staff needs to be higher we have 19 nurses covering over 20 buildings that is not adequate what I keep biting with HR about is allowing my nurses plan time which all of my members are guaranteed in the contract and duty-free lunchtime they contend that our nurses are allowed to delegate but there are certain things that you are not allowed to delegate and that what I just read right there that is one of them insulin injections cannot be delegated it has to be a reg a registered nurse that does that you have to look at each individual student every single day at lunch look at the meal that they're eating calculate the carbs in that meal look at what their dosage should be and then make the calculation for the injection you've got to be
017really skilled to do that we don't have a staffing for our nurses to be doing that to the best of their ability they're doing it under very harried conditions I have asked tnl to have every admin provide me at least the lunch schedule for my nurses like at least show me that you are actually providing a duty-free lunchtime for them and they sent me schedules that supposedly showed who was covering the nurse but you're not really covering the nurse if all you're doing is lining up those students outside my door while I eat my lunch all you've done is back up my work and create a tense and anxious kind of work environment while I'm trying to get through all of these students we have maybe I'm going to read you a bunch of examples
018of of the kinds of things that our nurses have to deal with we have 874 students who suffer from asthma in the district our nurses are dealing with 874 potentially asthmatic incidents um anaphylaxis potentially 203 students are at risk of that seizures 159 students on um very intense medication that can't be delegated you can delegate Tylenol you can delegate these kind of medicines we've got 43 of those we have four students with a Pac maker we have 31 Diabetes Type 1 and 22 Diabetes Type 2 we have 14 students with a I'm going to pronounce this wrong ventric paral shun we have 93 students with cardiac conditions we have 176 students that need daily medication and 47 students who need it like on as needed basis we have 1,637 students with health care plans that
019are managed by the nurse 19 nurses are doing all of that when you look at the number of times that a student has visited the office in 2023 it was 47,4 73 2024 58,000 82 as of February this year we're already at recent years like maybe they only had a couple before but now because we don't have enough Staffing in other areas with counselors or administrators or behavior Specialists a lot of those behavior problems are just being shunted over over to the nurses um if you have issues with a student who has taken medication or recreational things that they shouldn't have the nurses are the ones that have to watch them if parents don't come and immediately pick them up we I remember a situation last year I don't know if you remember it I
020had to cover for Kavanagh while a nurse was brought in um because she had done something incorrectly and I don't even remember what the incident was what I do remember was being absolutely astounded and flawed and speechless because my aunt is a nurse so I know a little about something about how that runs differently than teaching there was no binder in place you know you know how I am about protocols I all about protocols they had nothing there there was no binder explaining how to do X Y or Z in a universal way across all buildings the situation with the statement from the nurse that I read that happened because there was no Universal protocol protocol or training in place explaining how nurses should handle that kind of if you have multiple students that need
021those kinds of injections there should have been a different system in place that would have pres prevented the mistake that happened it's been wild wild west and a director was assigned that's helped to clean up the system a little bit but it's not anywhere near where it needs to be and more importantly Staffing is not where it needs to be you have have several buildings in the district that are designated priority 1 priority 2 priority 3 with Priority One being the most significant with the most kind of impacted students there there's only one nurse in those buildings you can't tell me those nurses are getting their lunch breaks or any other break you can't afford to turn your back for one second when you have that level of medical issues going on in your building
022so as we are discussing Staffing downtown as we are looking at numbers we better not be cutting nurses but we really need to be adding nurses we are we are opening ourselves up to potential lawsuits like the lack of nursing staffing is a lawsuit waiting to happen it's literally endangering our students we need to make sure that our nurses not even adequately staffed like super sufficiently staffed because we're burning them out and we can burn other people out but that doesn't necessarily put lives at risk burning nurses out does develing a reputation for not being a a good place to work keeps other people from wanting to work here and we don't want that we want to attract the right the best and the brightest so we need better work environments to attract them them
023I will make copies of these for you so that you can have this information at your fingertips and I will give you copies of the nurse's statement thank you for helping me to advocate for nurses Branny did I understand you to say that you have not spoken with the superintendent about your issues here this particular issue has been one for years and so my assumption is that he knew but I'm just apologizing Advance after going to that training it came to my attention that superintendant don't always know things that you think they should know especially if it's been an issue for years it might be helpful for the board if those conversations were to happen and I it doesn't matter who initiates the conversation but um and I would wait right and and because we
024are meeting this Friday but Staffing is happening now so I wanted to bring it to your attention now not when it's too late and you have spoken to us about Staffing at I think nearly every meeting for the last few months so um you might want to put that on your agenda for when you talk to the superintendent of course thank you thank you Franny for being here uh sorry yes Dr GRE uh thank you I just uh wanted to acknowledge couple things and uh first and foremost I appreciate uh that pullback on being clueless uh certainly not clueless as to what's happening across the district and uh uh we really do value the Personnel that we have in our district and uh I really appreciate uh Franny uh the effort that she made in
025the end of dece uh end of February so she was part of a oped that actually she submitted to the Yakama Herald it was a joint oped and uh in this or it was an editorial and in this editorial um made the statements that it's inexcusable that state as rich as Washington underfunds education and Ops to determine success by ZIP code and not by adequately funding All Counties districts and schools so this ran in the yakma herald inadequate funding on the part of State based on local uh La based on local is a barrier to students in the form of increased inequities and then another portion was we implore implore State lawmakers to fulfill con uh constitutional obligation to provide the critical resources NE necessary for schools this means increasing State funding levels uh so
026that all have an adequate shot at success and I think it's important to recognize that this is the type of advocacy that is very important to be United in recognizing that we are not fully funded in education so when you're talking about uh needing nurses um I would suppose so I would have to get you the exact numbers but I I'm I would guess that we are fully we are funded for probably under five nurses in our entire district and to have 19 is quite a benefit when you're talking about the size of our district and and the lack of allocation similarly um we're not allocated uh proper funding for Safety and Security and many other areas and as Franny was up here a couple of weeks ago advocating for more more uh administrators uh
027at the building level and now more uh um nurses that is something that we would really love to do and to do that we really need to go back and make sure that we're advocating at the legislature because as you know uh over the course of the last four years if you just take the four categories of transportation and sock which is maintenance supplies and operating costs uh special education and our substitute cost uh we are underfunded by 180 million just over the last four years so all of that is really know not only catching up with the Akama school district and the Akama Community uh but it's certainly resonating across the state as we now see 18 districts in wardening status which is the step right before um going into binding conditions so um
028I would again invite uh Franny to uh join me in ADV ating uh and doing what we can at the legislative level to make sure that we certainly have the adequate support uh funding wise to make sure that uh we have all the Personnel that we need across our system thank you um Dr Green those numbers that you cited that's based on the prototypical school model correct yes and and I can tell you those aren't exact I would have to look up those exact numbers which I tried to estimate a little bit high on that so um so that I wouldn't uh create uh a different issue by having such wrong numbers but uh if you'd like to just site quickly you got a couple of maybe the numbers around elementary and middle school so
029the in the current uh prototypical model they have a 0. z 76 basically nurse uh per per one to 1351 students at the elementary school and so it's we know that it's not adequate to support when we had s funding we had an opportunity to really dig in and be able to uh address a lot of those concerns fortunately with the this financial state that we're in it's become difficult without funding sources to be able to continue to support at the level as as Franny Franny she disappear in the back the level back in the corner the level that Franny was talking about and I mean we look at that with nurses we look at it with counselors uh due to the Mental Health crisis our kids are suffering from and uh we're just in
030a really difficult State without the legislature turning loose funding to support our our students and I would add that I'm I have a brief that's going out an email that'll go out to staff this week on the it's a monthly update on where we're at as far as the financial uh update and it will have U all of the attachments of the previous month so that will be to staff this week and then lastly I'd like to just share um that we did have several emails today just around um uh stem positions at the elementary level and we are really early in the process of scheduling so we have our principles working on what their schedules can look like and there's a lot of change that can happen between a staffing date which happened last
031week um and what the actual Staffing would look like once everything's kind of shaken down and and each of our principles has worked to put together the schedule for the year so um in case that comes up this evening so we recognize that there's some angst and some anxiety as the Staffing numbers come out uh but we also have to wait and see exactly where those are going to fall and sometimes things shift and decisions are made uh at the principal level building level and sometimes at the district level and it depends on state funding here that's going to happen within uh the next month so there's a lot of intangibles but certainly that'll all be made known by um for us by the uh mid mid uh uh what is it April meeting is
032what we're planning to make sure that all that information is out thank you I think my frustration that comes up from these Staffing conversations um really always boils back to the fact that we aren't talking about really the root cause and um maybe I'm somewhat pessimistic but I don't anticipate the legislature changing the prototypical model in the very foreseeable future I mean I'm sure at some point in time hopefully that would change uh but we have students in our buildings dayto day that um you know that we are caring for and and teaching along the way and they're the ones that suffer um which is more important to me even than than our staff staff concerns are um you know the bottom line is we live in a world where funding follows the student and
033until our enrollment numbers change that's going to continue to be a very difficult conversation none of none of us at this table enjoy the conversations none of us like to be in this position but we need to be discussing enrollment and increasing the academic success in our district to the point where we can attract students um and become a place where uh families want to bring their kids and enroll their children and help our our numbers rise all the way around that needs to be a critical part of the conversation as well and it isn't uh brought up in in this group uh as often as it should be so hopefully we can dedicate some time to that as we go forward um because this really isn't isn't going to change in the immediate future
034so um thank you Dr Green and and director rice for your thoughts we'll move on to our report from our executive director of teaching and learning Jam Lee who will be addressing us on operating policy 2121 the curriculum adoption of report and the instructional report thank you Jin thank you good evening board president Dr Green esteemed board members and cabinet louder better that's the feedback I get from Mrs walk all right just a reminder that you do have a copy of the full slide deck tonight I'm just going to highlight five slides for you so we will start in presentation mode maybe there we go with our English and Spanish language arts which is in year two of implementation and so you have heard a lot about um our new programs and I have the
035opportunity tonight to highlight a few things for you but I want to start with uh the pre preschool through 12th grade ELA and SLA guaranteed standards you'll hear me speak to guaranteed standards a couple of times tonight the process for guaranteed standard is every grade level has a set of state standards that they're expected to teach through teacher input from each of our schools and refinement process we have narrowed those down to 8 to 10 standards per grade level that teachers are going really in-depth on and we're guaranteeing that 100% of our students will master so how do we meet those State Standards we do that through the use of our highquality instructional materials which for preschool is the integrated program called creative curriculum each one of our curriculum selected has a strong Research Foundation
036creative curriculum actually focuses on four areas which are social emotional development physical development cognitive development and language development through a Hands-On approach our kindergarten through fifth grade actually has two partner curriculum our non-dual language classrooms have core knowledge language arts which you've heard of as CA and their partner curriculum for our dual language classrooms referred to as Caminos both of these curricula focus on the uh foundational reading skills necessary for students to access literature they are ground founded in structured literacy phonics and have a strong knowledge base our sixth through 12th grade curriculum is my perspectives this emphasizes strong um Creative Learning and personalized learning at a um different level for our sixth through 12th graders there's opportunity for for small group learning and for deeper critical thinking this year we have focused on building
037our awareness in these programs through our instruction facilitators the instructional facilitators H have had the opportunity to listen to people at the curriculum level and get training that they're then able to take back and deliver into their buildings so one thing I want to highlight about cka is the pathways that are in the knowledge block so each grade level has topics within what is referred to as a knowledge block that are before you they're really tiny I apologize I tried all kinds of zooming techniques to get these to be bigger and so what you'll see under each grade level is connections to literature science and social studies and those are actually colorcoded so the teal band that you see up there is the literature Focus the purplish band that you see up there is the
038connection to science and then the blue pathway that you see up there or band is the um social studies focus and so next to each topic is a little bar which is colorcoded to show what area of content that's focused on but then the pathways are demonstrating how each one of those topics builds from kindergarten all the way through fifth grade so for example when looking at the science pathway you'll see that in kindergarten it starts with the five senses and then it moves to the human body in grades one two and three which focuses really on different systems within the body so our first graders are learning about the skeletal system and then our second graders begin to learn about other systems like the respiratory system ending all the way with chemical matter in
039in fifth grade and then with our social studies pathway you'll see that it starts in kindergarten um with colonial times and then ending all the way with Native Americans in fifth grade the opportunity for our students to uh receive integrated curriculum like this really builds their background knowledge and allows them to access deep literature a student work highlight that we have in our district is we are in year three of our annual voices contest and I'm happy to announce this year we had 132 submissions which is up from 77 submissions last year so that's a 40ish per increase uh of those 132 submissions over 20 came in in Spanish which demonstrates progress towards our biliteracy goal last week a team two weeks ago a team came together and read all 132 submissions and 37 were
040selected as winners those winners will be officially notified by the end of the month and then they along with their families and each and every one of you will be invited to attend an awards ceremony on Tuesday May 6th from 6:30 to 7:30 at the Davis Performing Arts Center Dr Green has so graciously accepted the invitation to be the MC for that event don't be fool he does know about it um the portrait that you see in uh the corner of the screen is a uh art it's the photography strand of art that was done by one of our ysd students Kalia wheeler from Davis High School and that will be the cover of the Anthology each winner will receive an anthology along with each one of our element uh all of our school libraries
041for the winners and I should have said that the winners are span from grades third third grade all the way through 12th grade and we even have some staff winners in there all right moving on to mathematics although not newly adopted curriculum we are using um the guaranteed standards that I spoke to earlier also exist for Math and we are using our highquality instructional resources in the uica program for elementary and reveal for the middle and high school grades to really meet those guaranteed standards again another smallish picture that you see up there is um an example from what we refer to as unit plannings for the PLC process teams have come together over um some PD opportunities that I'll explain later to really dig deep into their standards we call it unpacking their standards
042so they learn at a very deep level exactly what students have to do to meet those standards and then they unpack those into learning targets and break them down over the course of the unit and so that's in the small picture that's what you see on the leand side is the identified learning targets and then within the middle of that picture teams identify instructional strategies that they'll use to teach those learning targets and then we have identified assessments that tell us are students Meeting those learning targets that then later leads into Data analysis of those learning targets and do we need to provide more opportunity for students within that Target in the form of interventions or extensions uh one thing that we are embarking on this summer for our professional development is that we will
043bring teams of teachers together to identify common end of unit assessments and this will tell us as a district are our students meeting the guaranteed standards and what does professional learning look like because we are working hard to offer support for each one of our curriculum and how those are delivered in the classroom so one big initiative that we have is our professional Learning Community which is the district and underneath that we have professional learning teams that operate we have given professional learning teams time on Mondays to work through the PLC process really focusing on answering the four PLC questions and then on Wednesdays we have given the district directed early release Wednesdays um to our teams to work on the products so they're moving through analyzing the guaranteed standards breaking them in down into
044learning targets designing their unit plans designing the common Forma of Assessments or common end of unit assessments and really using that time one thing I did want to highlight from these professional development opportunities is February 26 was an early release Wednesday we um initiated a survey and had over 200 responses of which we had some very positive comments so when asked on that survey what did you find most beneficial in supporting your practice from today's PD session I chose three responses that actually captured multiple responses from that survey one teacher reported being able to have time to plan as a team and break down standards into bite-sized pieces for Effective teaching and always having great support from our admin and if another teacher reported we got to really look through our math module 5 and
045focus on standards and how to test student knowledge and a third teacher reported having time for backwards planning provided us with the opportunity to ensure we are meeting the guaranteed standards evaluating assessments Etc we use these survey results to guide how we roll out and plan our next professional development opportunities in addition to those early this clicker does not love me in uh the early release Wednesdays and Mondays we also once a month bring our principles and assistant principles together in PLT where they also engage in the same type of learning our instructional facilitators or instructional coaching model have received support in the unit planning process and how they take that back to their building this year we have also um had Megan Anderson Riley and Tanya Randolph in partnership with human resources and the
046best Grant really lead our coaches through what's called mentoring matters so improving their coaching abilities um with a focus on um new to the profession teachers those occur um once every month so the ifs come together with two meetings a month one is always focused on mentoring additionally our elementary ifs have received math coaching on math foundational skills and designing how they can take that back and Implement that into their building so that they're really building an understanding of math foundational skill delivery in their building and another area of focus that we have had with our instructional coaches is that of our multilingual Learners again Megan Anderson Riley Ashley mandrel and Molly buers have focused on delivering instructional practices and supports for multilingual Learners to our instructional coaches that they can then take back to
047their buildings it's very critical that our students are receiving support in their core classrooms as well as in their English language development classes any questions on all of that Jamie for the benefit of our folks that are watching online or or come in later on to watch the board meeting could you um explain back backwards planning yeah so the unit the unit planning that I spoke to uh so with with unit planning we're asking teacher teams to come together in the collaborative PLT model and work on their guaranteed standards so they'll take an upcoming unit and identify what guaranteed standards are going to be taught in that unit then they read through the standard locating verbs and breaking down what do our students actually have to do in order to meet this standard they break
048that down into learning targets so sizable chunks that they teach to that's when then they'll align their instructional practices how are we going to teach to these standards to ensure our students Master them chunking and checking is a is a common phrase so making sure that we're doing little checks along the way so that we can intervene when students aren't understanding before we get to the end of a unit or the end of a standard which we refer to as common formative assessments and then also common end of unit assessments the common word is common amongst our team and then once that assessment is is given in our unit plan we come back together as a team we look at student work and student data and we analyze that and and focus on what at
049our students do well on and then what what do they need extra time and support in and how are we going to deliver that and that could come in a in a variety of ways is it two students that need extra time and support or extension is it our whole class or is it a small group and and how can we tailor that so that we're meeting our student needs do we need to switch whole classes or can I just pull a group of five kids or can I just work oneon-one and then from that then we move on to our next unit and I I do want to also point out that there are other standards that we refer to as it kind of sounds silly but a butterfly or a rock standard and
050so those are the smaller standards that students also have to be exposed to where we teach a whole bunch of Standards within a grade level and um they they do they are expected to learn those standards but we have not identified them as being necessary to ma Master the critical content in the next grade thank you very much it's an informative presentation thank you okay thank appreciate it very much our third report this evening will be from Cassie Davidson director of Child Nutrition who will present on Child Nutrition Services welcome Cassie green there we go uh thank you president Becket board members Dr Green for having me here this evening uh we just wanted to go over a little bit about what Child Nutrition has been doing um we're working on this year and what
051the next few years look like for us um see if I can if I'm less challenged here no thank you perfect okay thank you so currently uh aligning with the Strategic plan for the district um we the Child Nutrition department continues to work and have working relationships with um students in the district with special needs we currently have um three um alumnist with special needs that graduated in previous years working in our kitchens and we have three that are still in high school like from at Davis High School with special needs who also help in the kitchen which has been um a tremendous support for us and I mean it's just a really good win-win um situation for everyone and we're we're actually got a few more that are um knocking on our door to
052see what we can do for them in the future as well moving on to um a grant that we're working on it's actually it's a oh this is me huh there we per back there perfect okay um the Yakama school district is partnering with um several other school districts around um CA School District West Valley Ellensburg and a potential um continuing um partnership with Northwest Harvest we all of us have put in um a lot of work in the scales Grant which is a USDA Grant and what that Grant could potentially do for us um is develop amongst these um other districts scratch cooking um implementation optimizing uh food ordering systems for Local Foods we be working with with farmers and trying to streamline that that process uh also known as uh uh Farm to
053school uh we uh continuation with Northwest Harvest as a storage facility and distribution center for for our district and currently right now we um this is Vieira Bakery which so this is just I don't know if you know where that is it's just right over the just a throne Stone throw away from here um but they're going to be making bilos for us and um some dinner rolls and they're they're completely compliant they're made with local grain grown here in Washington state um we are actually looking to see if they can do a few other products for us but um those will begin next year we've got the contract in place so and then with this scales Grant as well we will be partnering with local potato and pear Farmers um potentially onions and apples
054as well but uh and then some of the other local uh Farmers or or companies that we're doing using right now is um Washington beef we all of our beef I'm proud to say is 100% beef from uh we get it from raised Meats which is from Washington beef and we don't have any additives or any additional undesirable food added to those patties so this grant will be announced at the end of April in 20125 uh it's a two-year Grant after that so we will hopefully we we'll hear some good news um from that and um we'll take it from there the yaka school district is not ahead of this it'll be seedless School District will'll be in charge of the the funds and everything so we'll just be part of it but we don't
055have the book work to do behind it it's just kind of ni sometimes and then the next slide I'm going to mess this up Barb perfect thank you so um got some ladies here but just yeah hold on one second um so I found out this this last month that there is an award by the United Way of King County which these two lers are up here in front um it is a closing the hunger Gap award and this is what United Way said the United Way of King count would like to recognize yamama School District Child Nutrition department for their outstanding work close to the particip to close the participation and excess gap between school lunch and School breakfast ensuring that every student in your district has the opportunity to access healthy school breakfast
056to start each day you have all launched and sustained such an impactful program and we would like to present you with our first annual closing the hunger Gap award and there's a award of $5,000 and we're really proud of that this this this stems from the uh program of breakfast after the Bell um and all of our elementary schools with the exception of two um we serve breakfast in the classroom our numbers have greatly increased um because of that and then we do a grab and go type model in the middle schools and what's called Second Chance breakfast uh at the high schools where they get to eat they can have they can eat prior to school starting and then right after first period they have another opportunity to grab breakfast then and our numbers
057have increased tremendously since we started this program which has been it's been great been busy but great moving on thank you Barb the next exciting news that our department is taking on is we are partnering with um a nonprofit called e.org and eal is is an organization that's dedicated to school districts to help Child Nutrition programs with um making cleaner healthier food choices for our students helping us with Farm to school contracts to to um close those gaps um this month in March is our assessment month so we've given all the information to them about every single food item that we have in our menus right now and so they will be assessing that we'll get the results mid June sometime um all of these the standards that e reel um has are above and
058beyond what USDA requires of us now so we'll be we'll be ahead of the game when next year comes along and some of those new uh um standards are in place so um we have already begun to eliminate process the process of eliminating undesirable food additives we were given a list of I think it's four or five pages long of food added Ives that none of us really need um like nitrates sulfites phosphates are the are some of the big ones but they're just most of them are just for either color enhancement or um preserving the food or making the texture you know a little bit better one way or the other so uh and they we just don't need them there's just no reason for our students to be able to to cons or
059have to consume that so and then it also goes on we'll be reducing sugars like I said way ahead of the USDA regulations and then they help us with structure um training staff and we're going to be doing a lot more scratch cooking than we used to we went we kind of have taken a a roller coaster on scratch cooking when I first started 20 years ago um scratch cooking was probably about 50% and then um and we had a food service management company come in a lot of those Foods were frozen just freezer to table freezer oven to table and now we're starting to go back to more scratch cooking this process will take uh about 23 or 24 months so um it's not going to happen overnight um I will tell you for
060those who that don't know this one of the uh ways that we're going to be able to reduce added sugars is drum roll um we probably going to um no chocolate milk which um that's I mean it's mixed you just heard every child in the district go boo yeah there's potential we may do it one time a week but with the added sugar um um restrictions starting next year we're assuming that our Dairy is is already taking steps to reduce sugars there but as of right now our chocolate milk has 22 grams I believe of sugar added sugar um and we cannot have any more than 12 grams of added sugar per meal so it makes it really really hard to even put the chocolate milk in there anyway we had actually made our mind
061up to eliminate it except for one day a week at lunch but now we're not even sure 100% if we'll be able to do that but um you know we start our kids out um in preschool they they start with white milk and so why do we start giving them chocolate milk in kindergarten I don't know but um there will be I'm sure tons of controversy on that we're going to get information out through parents square and and as soon as we can it should be shortly yeah um we're going to be getting information out about the program so come September or August September the kids aren't just going to be completely shocked but um I'm really uh h i I love chocolate I love milk I don't like chocolate milk but doesn't make any
062sense but uh I think it'll be a good thing for our kids and it may take a few years for them to get used to it but you know whatever it takes um so can you go to the next slide please thank you so e real certification that goes above and beyond federal guidelines um they have 10 evidence-based standards that they measure by um 34 key performance indicators covering nutrition sustainability and over overall transparency and to become certified the district must meet at least this meet each standard minimum required and earn an overall score of a minimum of 60% or higher next slide please these are the standards um that they they go by um reducing sugar we've talked about whole grain carbohydrates we're already there um we serve very very few refined carbohydrates um
063we'll occasionally stick in a white pasta or a white rice um it's more palatable for the students but we will eventually get to complete whole grains we we're really close right now we're probably about 80 80% 80% yeah um fresh produce we will be we will now serve a fresh produce fresh fruit at every breakfast sometimes we will do like uh we have currently and have in the past um they'll get a either a CED fruit or frozen fruit um processed in some way and so all breakfast will have um fresh fruit every single day at lunch they will have a fresh fruit and a fresh vegetable every single day as well um sometimes we we will be able to get in a few Frozen fruits and vegetables that way but we were going away
064from canned products except for potentially applesauce will probably be the only canned fruit that we do but we um will be probably about 90% fresh produce for our for our kiddos um healthy fats then you know using olive oil instead of um canola oil or Butters minimal processing that's where our um our menus will be more from scratch cooking and so it's amazing to see how many Foods um are highly processed we're I just been researching probably six to eight months now and um it's unbelievable the the products that are in Foods today so sustainable resourcing uh or sourcing we'll get to that in just a little bit with one of my My Wish lists that I I'm going to bring to your attention um responsible protein so uh um we've just signed a contract
065recently with a chicken company um it's not local but it's in California um but they serve um whole muscle meat chicken with uh no some of them were completely no antibiotics but they don't have any added preservatives that we that we don't need it's one of the cleanest labels of chicken products that you can purchase we're really really excited we actually had a taste testing today with other districts here um In This Very Room and they went over quite well it's a it's a product I know that the students are going to just love um our our menu will have more variet iety um Our Hope too is then to minimize food waste we actually are going to start a program hopefully at Garfield um I'm talking with Steve here shortly in the next week
066or two um on a waste study so we'll start with one school and and go on from there um and then we're going to just educate our families with we we want to have cooking classes um with our families to teach them how to cook healthier and um educate our students at the same time what what foods are good for them and what foods are not so really excited about this program um I think our meal counts are going to go up and if we turn to the next slide thank you um this shows what um in the last four years are breakfast and lunch numbers um 2021 22 that was when we were coming off of Co and there were still we were still able to serve um the summer meals program that way
067and any student from anywhere any child under the age of 18 could eat that's why those numbers are elevated and then they dropped um but if you notice um 24 25 currently we're about 20,000 up at lunches from last year and nearly 20,000 up from from breakfast last year so we're really pleased about that that our numbers even though sometimes enrollment goes down our numbers are still going up which is a good thing and next this is my little wish list here it's a big wish list but um uh we I had the opportunity to take a look at one of the eat real school districts that were desertified down in California and one of the um project that they had taken on was a vertical Freight farm and these are amazing it's just the
068size of a it's the size of a semi TR and it has a vertical Farm inside of it um it only takes a 5x10 concrete pad it's only 40 by 8 by 9 and 1/2 ft High uh it um it only needs about 5 gallons of water a day and then there's the the kilowatts I'm not an electrician so I can tell you what it is but I don't know what it means um 171 to 268 K kilowatts um average power daily and it operates in any climate from 40 degrees below zero up to 120 degrees so you could be in any part of the country anywhere and be able to grow fresh produce in this in this container here um one container will will hold up to 8,800 plant sites in their little plugs
069at a single time if you're completely full uh so there's 36,960 linear growing space inside this little container um it can produce two to six tons depending on what kind of uh products that you grow but two to six tons of produce um can be harvested annually one Freight farm would feed um most of the salad greens for the High School a high school so I mean I've talked with um principles and and CTE where want we want to get them involved and and uh when I bring this up they all wanted at their they wanted I wanted at my school I wanted my school I want my school so um the average cost is about 225,000 that is completely um that is delivered and completely set up with education for 10 people uh and
070we're currently looking for Grants to fully fund that product I would love before I retire to have four of them on site somewhere but we're going to try to shoot for one to start then it would help the it would all there and there's a picture of it here this actually someone had asked me if this and I first asked to if this picture was crooked or or upside down or sideways and it's not it's actually the way it's supposed to be so on the right uh and on the lower right the silver part that's the FL and then the um the plants are are growing vertically it's and it's really cool we're going to actually hopefully go down to Heritage University I think C when go visit that but we do have a team
071of collaborators who are we meet um about once every three weeks to keep plugging away we're hoping within the next couple of years this is something that we can get funded and get going and get this and get the kids uh CTE kids would be involved and in keeping this up and running and growing and um the identified stakeholders um oh we going okay here we go so upcoming opportunity so um we do have our work cut out for us especially with um the eat real project but we were excited and since we're in food and we love to research food anyway it's kind of just makes it easier but um identifying clean labels and minimally processed foods is is um it has been a little challenging but the more you the more you research
072it the more you know where to go to find like products so um it's just a matter of taking the time to do that um we've already got uh the menu set up for the fall all menus some menu Elementary menus Elementary menus are set up for the fall to to fall into the the eat real category um the rest of them will come really shortly I've already um I've been contacting farmers uh we actually went to a um Summit last Thursday Friday in Spokane where we had the opportunity to meet with um um farmers and local local Growers around local daies to try to get contracts with them and and let them let the farmers understand what school district's needs are uh in order to be able to bring Farm to school and again
073we're uh working on funding resources um and searching for Grants I actually have a grant watch I check every morning to make sure there's there's something out there that we that we can uh take advantage of or to work with and um we're working with a nonprofit out of the freight Farm there is a nonprofit um Live Oak Solutions who actually goes out and looks for grants for Freight farming or vertical farming so we are working with them as well there's no cost to us they just go out and help us find some money and that's what we're hoping that is the end and if you have any questions I would love to answer them for you no questions but just a comment I'm excited about some of the things you're talking about I hope
074we could make them happen it will happen it will happen I promise that they will happen or I'm not going to retire so thank you Cassie this was very informative and I appreciate you taken the time to pull this together for us it's been a while since we've had a presentation from nutrition services um given the chaos I guess I'm going to use that word going on back East with um all of the federal stuff um do you have you heard anything about the grants from USDA or or any any other funding that we get from the federal government being impacted for School meals um at this moment in time no um well I'll rephrase that yes I have heard about it no I believe at this time we're going to be impacted with some
075of the cuts that may be coming um we are our our our district is at a high enough free reduced percentage that I really don't see anything happening um we we are way above where the norm is um other districts surrounding districts maybe who just have one or two schools they potentially could be um have some type of impact but I do not see an impact at all here I think we'll continue to do c which is the community eligibility Community eligibility provision program and I don't see that going away anytime soon which is great that's 100% free for free meals for breakfast and lunch for all of our children thank you seeing no other questions have a comment if I could please please do so I I just want to acknowledge Cassie's work to
076to put as much thought energy and initiative into Child Nutrition for our kids I mean she's always been dedicated but what I so appreciate is her continued efforts to improve what we feed our kids each and every day I mean she is unique in my experience working with Child Nutrition directors in different school districts I mean she's one of a kind and I think Trevor's got a couple things he needs to say I think we're ready for the United Way to take come up here and is it Sarah seeler and you have somebody with you all right the time is yours I will be bre um my name is Sarah seare and I'm with United Way of King County just on the other side of the mountains um but we work with no kid hungry
077which is a National Organization to support um school districts and other Community Partners in addressing childhood hunger across Washington State and I don't know how I feel about the chocolate milk news but we are thrilled um to be recognizing Yakama school district for their bold and decisive steps to ensure that every student starts their day with the nutrition they need to learn grow and Thrive by implementing breakfast after the Bell by making breakfast a seamless part of the school day they have removed barriers that often prevent students from eating in the morning whether that's the stigma of eating in an empty cafeteria or the tough choices between joining before school activities and having a healthy meal this program has really supported the entire School Community providing students with the opportunity to start their mornings together
078in the classroom over a shared meal fostering connection and setting a positive tone for the day I also par particularly want to recognize the leadership of Cassie and superintendent green uh for really setting an example for schools and school districts across the state in how to prioritize Equity Innovation and student- centered solutions to ensure that no child starts the day hungry that is something that should be commended and celebrated every day that you all are doing this and so it is our privilege to present the closing the hunger Gap award to Yakama school district for their dedication leadership and impact in closing the hunger gap for their students thank you so [Applause] much thank you oh okay while we're doing that I just want to um extend my appreciation to the staff in the various
079school buildings that help support the breakfast after the Bell um program without their support none of this would be possible thank you again [Applause] cassine and thank you to our friends from the United Way of King County we appreciate you very very much that brings us to section c our updates section for the board agenda this evening we'll begin with u updates from members of the board do either you have anything to add tonight not at this time I just have a couple of things um we are at the point in the legislative session where bills have crossed over to their the opposite house from which they originated so house bills have moved to the senate senate bills have moved to the house and that resulted in a whole lot of bills going away as
080usually happens um this week there will be a couple of important hearings um we've got the Senate Bill 5041 which is deals with um unemployment benefits for striking workers Senate bill 5192 which is the MSO bill that's still um in in play and Senate Bill 5263 which is the special education bill that is still in play both of those um the hearing the hearings are on Thursday I believe so if you wanted to um if you wanted to log in you can register for those hearings and log in um to watch the hearing or even um sign up to have testimony if there is something that you really feel strongly about um this is also oh no that was that was last week Senate the legislature are doing um town halls and our Representatives the
081House of Representatives that town hall was last week um I don't know that I had seen this information prior um in the Senate see the I don't see the Senate schedule on here but um you could probably find it on the legislative website or on the the web pages for our legislators thank you very much uh my only inquiry I guess it isn't really a report as a board member but an inquiry Dr Green I'm curious if we either have our board member attendance already factored into board do somewhere or if that is something that could be factored for a report for our board I could certainly provide the the board with a report on that um we would have to go through the documents from each board meeting and but we do have that
082capability and Barb would she's anxious excited if it was already in something or if that needed to be manually done so please Barb forgive me for asking she thrilled she's like yes she's really excited um if we could have that for our next uh board retreat I think that would be absolutely discussion thank you thank you for that um oh nothing just one other informational thing for board members if you haven't been watching your emails we're getting reminders your F1 is due by April 15th which is your financial report to the state so uh okay then Dr GRE I'm sorry superintend update please uh yes uh thank you um I'm going to leave uh everything in public con uh content so it can be accessible to the public um but I only have one item
083uh given how much we have this evening that I'd really like to share with the board and this is a uh just a quick note from uh Jeff Snell who is the um superintendent of the Vancouver School District he's also served as the uh president of the superintendent Association previously in his tenure and it's uh it says Dear Dr Green and the yamama school transportation team so you remember that art ruy has presented here our last board meeting did such a wonderful job but this just adds to the impact of some of the things that are happening and the way that um people reach out and support one another says on behalf of the Vancouver School District I want to extend a heartfelt gratitude for the incredible support and generosity of your transportation team which
084they provided for a bus bro that broke down during the State basketball tournament in Yakama uh when we received word from our driver about the breakdown Transportation supervisor Art Rodriguez and his team stepped up in an extraordinary way Art's quick response coordination with his shop and effort to arrange overnight delivery of the necessary Parts made all the difference in the meantime uh his willingness to loan us a bus going as far as to check if it had time to clean it before handing it over was a true act of kindness this kind of support exemplifies the best of what it means to be part of the greater Washington education Community it wasn't long ago that Vancouver Public Schools had the opportunity to support Pasco students in a similar fashion and we are reminded once again
085how important it is to look out for one another your team's generosity not only ensured that our students could continue their experience at the state tournament but also demonstrate the Deep commitment yaka school district has to serving others we are grateful to return the loan bus with a mostly full tank though no though no amount of fuel can truly Express how thankful we are for your help please pass along our sincere appreciation to Art Rodriguez and everyone involved in making this happen their kindness and professionalism did not go unnoticed thank you for embodying the spirit of service in community we are honored to call you our partners in education with gratitude Jeff [Applause] Snell thank you for that I think that takes us to our calendar updates Kiren welcome how are you tonight well I'm
086actually a little um controversial about the chocolate milk thing but I was thinking back to Gilbert Elementary of which I'm a graduate and I think we got chocolate milk like once maybe twice a week I've been conferring with my sister I twice a month so they'll survive they'll survive um also in lie of time I'm going to to just mention a couple of things that are on the calendar um one is your next meeting which is March 31st at 4 pm that will be at Discovery Early Learning Center and it will also include a presentation from K8 virtual and then wanted to bring to our community's attention that it is time for our spring musical at Eisenhower the music man that starts this Thursday the 20th and has quite a run including two Saturdays with
087shows at 2 and 7 and the evening shows then are at 7:00 and then just wanted to mention to everybody that it is Staff award season so if you do have a nomination for a classified or certificated staff those are online at ysd 7.org forsta awards and they are due April 13th thank you thank you very much thank you for your update is Mr Cooper with us virtually I am excellent thank you for being here Jake I'll turn it over to you for the monthly Financial update you bet um thank you president Becket members of the board and Community apologies um my in-laws came to town all the way from Australia so I'm married to an Australian so when they arrive they arrive every every decade or so so I had to go get them
088in the airport and that's why I'm remote this evening so enough with my personal issues and concerns I'll get right into it um first off let's at the executive summary the highlights uh cash flow as you will see is slightly above projection for February which is much much place where I'd like it to be rather than below and then as we continue to track month to month you'll see that five out of the last six months is beginning the data um at or below our budgeted spending levels Barb you want to the next slide our enrollment is actually flattened out again um as I T talked about before I overprojected secondary enrollment um slightly but uh our year-over-year has begun to flatten out and just a reminder uh for next budget year the current enroll
089projections has us down about 200 40 FTE predominantly um the lower kindergarten class sizes in the graduation uh on the top side out so um this is the the previous slide but showing a by um grade span see the K5 budget to actual the 68 very close the 912 again the over projection part of that again was the AL numbers as you can see those are continuing to grow throughout the year so uh my H half off to our staff at K8 and yaka online those numbers continue to go up um some of those numbers come from our brick and mortar schools but some are out of District which are provide a net increase to enrollment and you can see our running start is running right close to budget versus actual and an Open Door
090slightly above projection so any questions sorry I I I do uh remote rem remote uh presentations are one-sided and I you know I mean I do like to interact so just feel free to stop me I I assume president Becka will let me know I will happily interrupt you if the need arises thank you just like my family um so again uh you month after month I let you know cash is King and so U green line is projected C projected cash blue line is the actual you'll note for the month of February we're in that trough we often talk about the Peaks between uh your fall tax collection and your spring ta tax collection you can see in the two uh humps or spikes in the cash flow and then the trough we're in
091that trough period right now and we are about a million or so million and a half above projection just for those watching at home or in the audience please remember that the district did borrow about $4 million to ensure liquidity throughout the fiscal year to note that if right now even with the borrowed funds we are still above our uh zero line which is important um we would be about $8 million so our our trough is looking better than it did last spring and we we've stabilized our our current spending levels and we'll continue to monor cash um this is a revenue uh general fund Revenue budget versus actual our expenditures as I noted are uh at or less um than budgeted but our our revenues are Al also slightly uh less correspondingly though when
092you look at the relationship between the two our expenditures are about a million and a half to the better than our Revenue when you take into account less revenue and less expenditures so um both positive at this point in time bar next slide um again this is the the uh slide that is highlighted in the executive summary blue or teal bar actuals and the budget um are is in Black so um again stable finances which is the goal and predictability um which has been why we're continuing to build our staffing and human resource systems to be able to allow us to actively project Staffing cost our expenditures going forward okay um and then um real quick I guess is a present pres presenter's privilege um Cassie I do a directly supervised I'm not sure if
093I'm 100% on the chocolate milk boat yet either myself so just thought for the good of the order I'd bring that up um Cassie we might have to talk about how many times chocolate milk occurs um but on a serious note we are making good progress on the eat front um and then um president beckin I wanted to talk the at the head of the meeting there was some testimony about nursing and um in particular I did want to make sure that I did pull the data when it when it came to spending for health related services and um we spend about 5.2% of our budget on health related Services um which puts us about 39 out of 295 districts now health related services in the accounting side includes Sykes slps but a huge chunk
094of nursing staff so the data currently and we can do a little more analysis shows that we spend um near the top of uh all the districts in the state when it comes to health and health related Services just just as a a point of privilege in that regard any questions any questions from the board okay comments I I do have one question when you mentioned the health some of some of our health expenditures I believe some of our special ed students benefit from Medicaid services is that correct yes sir they do and uh are those services at risk with the current uh federal budget that's showing $880 million reduction in Medicaid um not not that I'm aware of currently and um just as was spoken about earlier in the meeting most of what we're
095hearing at the federal level is um at least conjecture for my colleagues at this point we're hearing most most likely the concept of block grants and flow through our Medicaid reimbursement currently is about under is still under about $250,000 a year so um we have work to do on our end to get to increase enrollment and then accurately bill um those are our bigger issues more than the the federal allotment but um it it could be an issue going forward Norm but currently that's that's not something that's uh dragging on our finances okay just want to be thinking ahead bet okay thank you Mr Cooper thank you and was wonderful to see you this evening thank you much that brings us to our first opportunity for public comment this evening the first opportunity for public
096comment is in regards only to items that are on the agenda and Barb has handed me a list I'm Miss assuming all of these from Top are the red thank you she's colorcoded for me she she NOS that going slow is sometimes helpful for me I believe our first Speaker tonight is Don faet if I'm pronouncing that correctly Don welcome please come on up and just a reminder for all of our speakers there is a time limit so please don't be offended if you hear the little chime in the background it's simply to keep everybody on the same agenda thank you for being here hello oh okay okay so I'm here to advocate for the nurses and the lunches we're not getting our lunches in the district um so part of the problem is we're
097intersecting Health Care with education so part of the Washington Revise Code which is the laws of our of Washington state that um we have nurses okay let me stop that nurses can't they they stay what nurses can and cannot do and no labor contract job description or human resource directive can supersede what Washington legislation says what nurses can do so our health rooms are busy we have to be there we can't just shut the door and if the district says you need to take your lunch it's in your contract L and I says you have to take your lunch well there's certain things we cannot delegate there's certain students that require a nurse on site so part of those um wax and rcws I'm going to pick out two particular violations that we can lose
098our license for one is um under the Washington administrative code is a violation of the St the standards of nursing code conduct and practice willfully abandoning clients by leaving nursing assignments when continued nursing care is required by the condition of the client without transferring the care to appropriate personnel for a lot of our students including all the diabetics and many of the others there are no other appropriate personnel therefore a nurse can't leave the building therefore she can't have uh a an a lunch that is completely off duty and even if she does get to go into the lunchroom she's she half of them or I would say actually almost everybody except myself carries a radio with them and half the time they get called for something else we can't just shut our door like
099everybody else another one that's brought up by Administration and human resource we just delegate that care you you need to delegate that care that's your that's what you have to do and we're going to provide this person and that's who you're going to delegate to well and in addition to another violation of the nursing code of of conduct which we can lose our license for States delegating nursing care function or responsibilities to a person the nurse knows lacks the ability or knowledge to perform the functions and responsibilities so we can't just delegate to anybody and we get to decide who we delegate to based on our assessment of that person and the knowledge that they possess so we aren't getting our lunches legally you're legally required to give us our lunches and we want them
100thank you thank you Don thank you for being here tonight next uh speaker on my list is Tara Gaston am I pronouncing that right sorry welcome please come on and down and from Garfield is that correct yes excellent hello everybody I'm the school nurse for Garfield Elementary I'm gonna keep it as short as I can I have reading it off of things I hate public speaking um on any given day we take a great deal of liability nurses take care of anywhere from 300 to 1,200 plus students that job doesn't pause just because we are mandated to take a dutyfree lunch the potential liability is what keeps us from feeling safe delegating our duties to untrained non-medical staff and asking non-med Personnel to cover a health room it's Reckless considering it can potentially come and
101for anything that can potentially come through the door at any minute uh the letter from the former nurse was powerful she was asked to resign as a result of an error that she made in an overworked busy health room and it could happen to any of us we don't just put on Band-Aids we take responsibility for all-encompassing health and wellness of an entire District that includes staff as well for almost all other positions within this district there are people with similar similar credentials to take over those duties for others so that they may take their duty free lunch we don't have that I think that we can all agree that we are not going to have that anytime soon um nurses deserve to be paid for their lunches I would i' also like to add
102and I don't mean this disrespectfully uh most of us put forth the effort to be the best team members that we can and are constantly working on how we can advance our practices and skills to benefit all district members just like the teachers that were recognized here tonight for their efforts and becoming board certified 12 out of 19 of us have completed the rigorous testing that is required to become board certified School nurses there's no recognition for our efforts yet the effort was great this certification is not required it is a choice for us one that we make so that we can ensure that we are providing the very best care for our students and staff all that we are asking is that for the district to choose to be fair supportive and legal when
103it comes to us taking our lunches our lunches are never uninterrupted and because of that according to the Washington State Department of Labor and industries we should be paid thank you [Applause] thank you Don and Tera both for being here tonight that uh takes us to the approval of our consent agenda the consent agenda in board documents tonight includes the approval of minutes for February of 2025 notification of approval of the warrants for 20 20 February of 2025 approval of personnel actions the budget status reports for February 2025 and the interlocal agreement with ysd and Northeast Washington estd 101 would any member like to have any item from this consent agenda removed from the consent agenda and discussed and full this evening I move to accept the or I move to approve the consent agenda
104second it's been moved to second is there any discussion during none all in favor of approving the consent agenda please say I I I me oppos motion carries thank you very much we are now at our second opportunity for comments from the public on all other agenda or non-agenda items is Barb buiness list still accurate I believe the first person on this portion is Kelly Clift Kelly would you like to come on us please good evening I am Ro I'm as I am writing and talking with you today to ask you to help us preserve Gilbert steam program since the steam program was brought to Gilbert in 2022 we have seen dramatic increases in our SBA scores true these scores were the result of a lot of intentional planning within the classroom teacher SL principal
105slts to adjust our practices to help our postco students to close the achievement Gap but a thread that runs through the grade level PT plts is the steam program our steam teacher came to every team and listen to what we needed from her to support student learning and then she took that information and developed the most amazing and engaging lessons that helped our students develop their skills and interests the success of the steam program in conjunction with classroom teachers intentional uses of best practices and our plts helped our Ela scores to improve by six points our math scores to double and our science scores to improve by 22 percentage points yes steam has made a huge difference at Gilbert and is one of the key components to Our Success decimating the program to a 0.2
106position effectively ruins the impact that steam can have on all Gilbert students from our students who are in the self-contained autism program to our regular classrooms to the highly capable population I implore you to look at your budget and see if there is any way to save this program data has shown that it it affected positive outcomes for our Gilbert students having steam programs have enhanced grade level teachers work and has created a culture where students are beginning to become more critical thinkers while developing their curiosity and their creativity having a successful steam program at Gilbert is also good for the district's bottom line other neighboring districts use steam as a way to entice families to enroll their child in the other districts the Yakama School District could use the steam program to keep our
107families and students here and if we develop it even further we too could Market this program as a reason why families should be sending their kids to ysd I realize that budget cuts are hard and that every cut has consequences my ask is that you take a close look at every building and its programs to figure out which each building needs to flourish and fund accordingly for Gilbert it's keeping our steam program thank you thank you Kelly next on the list is I believe Annie Blake from McKinley Annie come on down you're welcome okay so Casey left I was gonna say chocolate milk go I'm allergic to chocolate so I don't care um my address is to the board so I've been sitting on this for a year as a teacher for third grade I've
108seen the effect of the budget cuts as a family member as a School employee as a union member as a parent in the school district to the point where I almost pulled my kids last year because I didn't want them to be in a school district that didn't put the children first to you my board members Miss correct me if I'm wrong but we elect you is that correct the public elects you we choose you to represent us you have made decisions that benefit Dr Green our superintendent when do you who make decisions that benefit the parents the teachers the par Educators our custodians our cooks and everybody else that you deem is too little and not worthy of being respected and having a voice I just sat on we're trying to build a family
109engagement when do teachers get to have a voice in that when do our par Educators who've been cut to the bare minimum get ofo when do our custodians who've been cut to the bare minimum get a voice speaking on behalf of the nurses thank you Franny for sharing that because now that makes me realize and not Dr Green I'll be happy to send you my bill I will now be getting a Life Alert bracelet so that my staff know that I have a pacemaker because I would not want my overworked nurse to not realize and I by the way we have a staff that rotates our nurses like crazy to give me aib or ar you know Shock Me and kill me because I have a pacemaker start listening you told us I think Jay
110Cooper told us at the beginning when we were doing the ly none of the cuts would affect the children it's done nothing but impact our children larger class sizes is what we're looking at for next year because you want to continue to cut teachers we don't have proper supervision to cover breakfast after the belt in a class outside of the classroom we don't have custodians to clean our classroom as a teacher I'm spending 20 instructional minutes every every day feeding my children but then cleaning up my classroom my Clorox wipes comes out of my personal funds my swifter mop till I can clean my floor because there's a spill of juice or applesauce comes from my personal budget that comes out of from my children's food mouths that I have to feed them I barely
111make cost of living I'm a single mom of three kids and I'm about to look elsewhere because you're not paying us enough and Jake Cooper keeps telling us over and over again we're in a budget crisis because we keep trying to raise cost of living for our teachers so that we can live and survive remember you work for uses too it's not just Dr [Applause] Green next on the list is Steve McKenna is Steve here tonight there he is come on down Steve welcome they heard you were speaking off okay my name is Steve McKenna um I'm a retired teacher former yaa president and I'm also a taxpayer in the aimama school district um in examining the superintendent's new agreement that was approved at the last board meeting it begins July 1st 2025 I'm dismayed
112as a taxpayer in the yakam school district the base salary for the superintendent increases from 235,000 to 266,000 this is a raise of $ 31,600 but that's not all of the increase our super superintendent's contract has fewer work days than nearly all superintendant in the state the state average work of work days for superintendant is 249 days for their base contracts our superintendent Works 218 days that's a back door way to give an even larger raise the base raise also increases his daily rate for his extra work days that will add at least 10,000 to his additional $85,000 compensation for extra work days this will bring the superintendent toal compensation next year to over 360,000 without working the average number of days that most superintendant work the governor of the state of Washington makes 28,749
113the superintendent will make more than twice what the state superintendent of Public Instruction makes 171,50 the superintendent led the district to the brink of financial Calamity and the board response is to increase his compensation by over $440,000 which is about a 12% increase does that inate indicate to the public that the district has a lack of Financial Resources I'm asking the board to explain why the community of kakwa needs to pay our school superintended substantially more than the governor of our entire State the board has a full fiduciary duty to the community and I'm concerned that this duty is not being upheld our property taxes are increasing yearly to bear this burden something needs to change thank you thank you thank you Steve is there a need for executive session this evening we have no
114need for executive session this evening so our next board meeting will be on March 31st at 4 p.m. and until then we are adjourned