001welcome everybody i call this march 28th business uh or monday meeting uh to order this is our first uh meeting in a school building in two years so we're very very excited to be here today we will kick things off with um a roll call barb if you'll call role please director beckett here director walker here vice president villanueva here and president rice and director navarro jr are absent today thank you first item on the agenda is our pledge of allegiance and we're very lucky to have student emmon gingrich here leading the board in the pledge and principal manson will introduce him and our student will also read the march character word of the month with us for us principal manson please good afternoon and welcome as she said i'm dennis matson the principal here
002at yakima valley technical skills center we like to go by yv tech it's much easier to say leading us today in the pledge of allegiance is emin gingrich he's a senior from eisenhower high school and he's a member of our culinary arts program please rise i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which we stand one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all so uh our march word of the month is grace stands for the quality of state of being considerate or thoughtful disposition to an actor instance of kindness courtesy or clemency thank you so much for being here with us and reading the or leading us in the pledge allegiance and reading the march character word of the month um board members
003might want to ask you a question or share a thought with you uh um briefly um director beckett would you like to kick us off please did i hear that you're in the culinary arts program yes can you just share a few thoughts with us about your experience in that program um very new compared to my previous let's say experience with school because i coveted there's not much been real high school experience but yv tech has helped now that we're here doing stuff new exciting it's it's been a wild ride well i'm glad we're back and i wish you the best of luck thank you emin what's been the best part of being back in school and in class um i'd say personally i struggled with online learning i hated not being there to ask
004the teacher directly and now that i'm here you can ask chef ned i ask him a billion questions a day about anything so it's the direct help is mostly the best part for me good what's the what's your favorite uh meal to cook um i i'm gonna say at the beginning of the year we did a jalapeno corn chowder and so far that one has been i like stuff on a bit of the spicy side so that sounds delicious well thank you so much for being here director walker um i'm going to be moving down to oregon to seaside uh christian culinary university i'll be specializing in seafood well i hope so i've i've uh i've i am working currently so i i can feel that it's been very hard in the culinary a lot
005of places are understaffed and there's a lot of work to be handed out well thank you so much for being here with us emin um and i think principal manson were you going to introduce the the culinary teacher and students who helped today thank you emin really appreciate it yeah i'd just like to take a moment and introduce our culinary arts teacher mr ned walsh and and give him an opportunity to introduce two of his students that helped prepare this evening so with that mr walsh hello everybody my name is lindsay brown for yb tech for culinary's the culinary program i was here last year too and during online it was definitely different watching chefs uh try and do the demos was something interesting but when we came in during the last uh portion of
006last year it was very good to see everybody in the kitchen and actually see the kitchen one thing that i really love about the culinary arts program is that i can be able to see how a functioning commercial kitchen works yv tech has helped me get a job at the yakima state company during the christmas season it was very very busy and we had multiple different dinner services and so i was able to work on time management and learn how to function in a commercial kitchen properly after high school i'm going to be starting at the oregon coast culinary institute in coos bay oregon where i'm going to go and get my a.a in baking and pastry arts and my bachelors in hospitality and tourism i'm trinity uh my favorite thing about culinary is the
007different things we get to learn um and how it helps when you get a job it's actually the reason i have my job right currently um i work as a chef at whistle and jack lodge after high school i'm going to be working for a year and then i'm going to london for business school i'm going to go for my bachelor's awesome well thank you for both for being here and for sharing a little bit about your future it's exciting to hear how the skills you've learned here at yv tag have not only impacted your employment today but it's fun to hear about your future plans as well so thank you so much for for being here uh next on our agenda is the yakima land acknowledgement director walker if you could read that please
008yes sir hopefully my computer will stay going while i'm doing this yakima land acknowledgement today the schools of the yakima school district rest in the ancestral lands of the 14 confederated tribes and bands of the yakama nation the people of yakima nation inhabited more than 12 million acres across adams benton chelan douglas franklin grant kittitas klickitat and yakima counties today we honor those native peoples who are tied to the land through history legends and culture we acknowledge their 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 acknowledgment is a simple powerful way to show respect and a step toward correcting the stories and practices that erase indigenous people's history and culture it also honors the truth as
009a school district we will continue to build upon our relations with the yakima nation thank you thank you and next we have the national assistant principals week proclamation director beckett we have a proclamation regarding national assistant principals week of april 4th through 8th 2022 whereas assistant principals are educational visionaries entrusted with the education and care of young students a most valuable resource and whereas assistant principals work cohesively with their leadership and teaching teams to develop and maintain high standards for education and whereas assistant principals show leadership which is an important role that students can emulate and whereas assistant principals are called upon to do various tasks to discipline coach teach encourage enlighten engage counsel and empower others and whereas the celebration of national assistant principles week would honor p through 12 assistant principals and recognize
010the importance of school leadership in ensuring that every child has access to a high quality education now therefore the board of directors hereby declares our appreciation to the assistant principles of the yakima school district and proclaimed the week of april 4 through 8 2022 to be national assistant principles week and encourage all citizens to join us in recognizing the dedication and hard work of assistant principals in preparing today's students for tomorrow's world thank you director beckett before we move into the next phase of our meeting agenda i want to thank the students again for being here you're certainly welcome to stay if you want to but if you'd like to move on with your day that's that's fine too the next item is our school presentation so invite um uh [Music] okay good afternoon uh
011welcome to yv tech my name is fun fam i'm the dean of students and i'm honored to be part of the presentation team today um hopefully at the end of this presentation you'll have a better understanding of yv tech and the passion that we have and the reason why we're here so i'm going to start out by reading our mission statement which is our mission is to prepare all students with the skills knowledge and attitude to successfully advance to the next educational or career level and our our mission statement represents just one of the core benefits of how and why we should be uh serving our community ybtech is one of only 14 skill centers in the state of washington we offer two sessions a day for two and a half hours a morning and
012afternoon depending on the schedule of the student at their sending school currently we have 21 different programs they range in career pathways from health sciences skilled trades all the way to information technology so what i'd like to do next is show a video that was produced by one of our students in our entertainment media production program [Music] hi my name is taylor jermeau and i'm part of the entertainment media production classroom i realized i wanted to go to yv tech when the flyer came in the mail and since being in this classroom i have learned editing skills i have found the career that i want to get into which is radio broadcasting this classroom has opened a lot of doors to different career paths and i've realized i finally want to go to college which
013was something i didn't want to do before yv tech and since being in this classroom i have learned different communication skills i have learned how to work in a team i have learned how to edit better i've learned cameras audio work learning different skills for the real world like communication and teamwork i've learned quite a bit of stuff yeah five tags pretty cool it's very helpful [Music] i am brianna berry and i chose to take yv tech this year because i like the fact that you are able to take a course based on what kind of career you want and i really like the fact that i am able to learn specifics um about this field and about this career that will then help me down the road hopefully make it easier when the time
014comes to get to college and just so i can know what they're talking about over there i think that this class is really beneficial to me because i am able to learn things that will help me down the road in college and then will help me down the road even more in my career and just so i can get a basis of information in this type of skill in this type of field that can then help me in the future [Music] a student named logan dagadan and he's a senior at uh as in eisenhower high school this is his second year doing that program so you can see kind of the level and the rigor that he is already learned and hopefully is successful when he graduates next up i'd like to introduce our instructional
015leadership team there are 17 instructors here some teach actually teach multiple programs based on their endorsement and their industry background the i truly believe that the instructors are one of the core uh strengths of our building because of not just their expertise that they bring from their field and some of these have um decades of experience in the industry but also the advice and the real life real-life skills that are needed and they teach that and it comes through to the kids every single day when they teach them here is a breakdown of the demographics of our enrollment based on students from each district that we serve so when i referred to a community earlier it extended beyond just the city boundaries of yakima it is county-wide it is schools all the way from kittitas
016ellensburg all the way down south through touching wapito grandview granger all the way down to mount adams so we take pride in not just representing the kids or the students young adults uh in the area surrounding area geographically but also all the way down uh up and down the valley and we truly believe that when we say yb tech we are just really an extension of all these high schools in the form of we represent an opportunity for these kids that many of these districts don't have the resources or the the resources or the equipment that could provide that and we provide that opportunity for them to take advantage of next up is our enrollment broken down by program and um you're you'll notice that year after year we we do fluctuate on enrollment numbers
017based on the programs and the different types and what kids are interested in varies from year to year but historically we do have many programs that are popular consistency cosmetology the automotive programs and the health science programs tend to always load up or fill up early and often so we do however have seen a a decrease this year based on pre-covered numbers however when you are trying to emphasize that we are really strong hands-on skills based programs and you do not allow the kids to actually come in and practice these hands-on skills we we tend to feel that that could be a large contributing factor to why there has been a decrease however this upcoming year we're hopefully looking for our pre-copied numbers where we were always consistently trending in an increase of student enrollment
018so hopefully again we break that trend now that things the opportunities are opening up again and in ending um i just want to say that when we as yb tech go out and present at all these schools that you see um our message has always been that we provide an opportunity for them to take advantage of because when you're only 14 1 of 14 in the whole state not everybody can take advantage of that opportunity and so when we speak to them our message is pick a career and it's not necessarily pick the career and you have to stick with it for the rest of your life it is pick a career so that you can start one early because the earlier you start that career the the more successful you will be and ready
019career-wise skill-wise when you graduate high school so um that's that's kind of why we exist and why we again are so passionate about what we do here at webvtech so in closing um i would just kind of present it along to mr matson for this presentation thank you mr fong all right good so what i'm going to do is just provide a brief overview of what a skill center is um and for us it's pretty clear we're multifaceted but we do have a clear purpose and one of these is to provide a high demand high-wage programs that enable students to combine their academic knowledge and their technical skills we enable students to obtain industry recognized credent certifications examples of these at yb tech in our nursing program we have the nursing assistant certification or the
020nac and then in our second program they'll give an example of is an automotive we have the automotive service excellent certification or the asc certifications we also need to provide related supplemental instruction and has an education we like acronyms so they're called rsis in these cases it's called internships pre-apprenticeships and apprenticeships and most importantly we need to ensure that all students are post-secondary prepared for college and or career as fung mentioned earlier we do provide services to 13 different high schools or 13 different districts and 15 high schools and so we are very cognizant that they all have their strategic plans but uh yakima is our host district and we support the strategic plan through goals two three and five uh we accomplish this in a variety of ways our curriculum is inherently engaging it's
021hands-on it's completed in collaborative setting and it's through a lab experience our programs are aligned to provide equivalency credits these are core academic credits in english math science physical education and art we also provide dual credit opportunities these are college credits we provide these through yakima valley college spokane community colleges walla wallach college as well as bates technical college among others as mentioned earlier students can earn industry recognized credentials certifications and we also provide experience worksite learning through related supplemental instruction and maybe one of the most important things we do is we provide our students a professional skills assessment this focuses on the development of 21st century skills they need to know what it means to be a valuable employee and a good citizen in our community mr c will share more of this later
022in our presentation our focus this year has been to develop more worksite opportunities for our students this is being accomplished with our career connect washington partners they're called intermediaries you will hear me use partners more often because it's easier to say briefly about career connect washington it's a program that was launched in 2017 it was funded in 2019 this is designed to bring businesses and education together so that students have the opportunity to gain valuable work experience there are three levels of career connect washington versus career explorer this is for the elementary students it's career awareness and these are interest inventories in aptitude tests the second level is career prep this is for middle school and does go into high school as well this is where students have the opportunity for guest speakers field trips
023job shadows the third level is career launch and this is really focused on high school students and mostly for students that are eligible for employment it's a work based learning opportunity in the skills center our focus is with career launch and we do this because there is rsi opportunity there's internships there's pre-apprenticeships there's apprenticeships it's also work site versus classroom what i'm saying is the students have the ability to apply their skills at the work site and then also it's an employee employer relationship which is huge than a teacher student relationship they have the opportunity to take what we've shown them out in the real world learn how to communicate collaborate and do the things that are necessary for them to be successful we're currently at four different stages or four different career launch programs
024and they're all in different stages here at yv tech the first of these that i want to talk about is computer technician we are partnered with computing for all and in this program we hope to launch our first paid internship this june uh in of 2022. a second program that we're currently working on is cyber security again working partnering with computing for all this program uh will launch in the fall of 2022 and we hope to have our first students in i think the summer of 2023 is when we'll have our first students in that program again great opportunities for our students the one that we've had the longest is our automation technician and we partner with aerospace joint apprenticeship committee or ajac and in our first go around with this about three years ago
025we had three students that were employed and worked at yakima chief hops the last two years with the pandemic have been challenging as you know it's hard to get students into facilities and it's obvious for the reasons but we do have a couple three students that potentially could land a position with quick clock in over the next month one of our last programs is the automotive technician and again independent technicians automotive committee or itac we hope to have some students this summer involved we're currently working with a couple organizations but for sure we'll have some in the fall of 2023 additionally like to share one thing we're currently working with osbi to become the first skill center in the state of washington to offer the seal of buy literacy this will allow all students at
026yv tech to sit for the test it's definitely an advantage for some of our students from outside districts where they don't have that opportunity with that i'd like to present mr c okay thank you for having me my name is clem c i'm formerly the aerial systems operation design instructor and now i am moving into the college and career readiness position here in the building doing that about half time this year so um go ahead and forward here i wanted to announce a partnership between esd105 and ourselves in looking at how we can provide the same benefits in career exploration that we do with our in-person students to students that are in districts that can't come the distance that it takes to get here and we're talking about districts up here up toward clielum and
027let's see uh clelem roslin easton uh even even ellensburg and so the the idea here is developing a program that we're going to call the hybrid learning academy in that model we allow we have students meet at a central location for now it may end up being ellensburg high school or their home school district we're going to pilot this with a small number of students and that allows us to reach some of the underserved populations that don't have access to one of the 14 skill centers in the state we're investing in some camera technology that'll allow students to have a more have more vision around the room and be able to track the teacher as the teacher speaks systems that allow for clear communication back and forth those students will actually be part of a
028class that their cohort and our cohort in the building will actually be the same cohort twice a month those students will come into the building and be able to use our full-size equipment here in the building and we'll be supplying them with equipment at their location as well to do some of the training remotely this really cool uh experience we're going to pilot this with four programs the computer tech program the electrical program entertainment media productions and then physical therapy and so so i'm sure i'll be in and out of those rooms helping do some tech support with those but those are going to be some fun programs and depending on how well uh there's there's a lot of excitement around this from superintendents and teachers around around the county in kititas county and so
029we're hoping to be able to open that up even even as to the south if if it works out last two slides here are going to deal with goal setting so in this building of course we have our own building growth goals and we are supporting the yakima compass as well so when mr matson first came into the building he worked with our staff myself included to try and create some building growth goals that made sense to us because of course we're not a s back teaching location but we want to be able to support that and so with the reading initiatives that were in the district at the time we developed a growth goal around students learning their industrial vocabulary so in in looking at our past goals up until our current goal they
030all sound very similar we wanted to be able to compare apples to apples and even next year we will have a almost a very similar goal that will allow us to again kind of see how we're coming out of the situation that we've been in so the goal the growth goal that you see here is from last year this is the uh when we're actually trying to identify for the majority of our students who struggled can we bring those students up and see if they can make 25 growth in their vocabulary tests we of course want 100 of our students to make growth but we really wanted to focus on those ones that had room to make 25 percent growth as you can see the results came in at 32 and we're gonna work on
031that uh and and make sure that we put emphasis on that for this this well it's happening now but of course for this following year one thing that's of interest to us here is that as we start to emphasize these things around the building students coming in into their different industries we want them to be able to talk to talk so they're going into interview situations free pre-apprenticeship or apprenticeship interview situations we want them to be able to to talk like the profession that they're going into so this has kind of helped ground us in the emphasis on industrial vocabulary for their chosen program our second growth goal involves the 21st century skills that we look at every day as a cte centered building and so our growth goal written around this will identify a
03221st century skill of interest and for the past few years the one that we've really identified as the one we need to work on is the one that allows students or enforces that students are here on time every day ready to work that's of course the feedback that we get from employers when they come in and visit our programs that's the feedback we get when they're trying to hire our students that's the feedback we get when we're trying to for uh place people into apprenticeships we we want we don't want to embarrass ourselves we want to we want students that can be here every day be at their their apprenticeship location every day on time ready to learn asking questions and so the growth goal is reflects that we say that we want 80 of
033our school really 100 but 80 of our school of program completers and what i mean by that is and this goes for both growth goals there but but program completers are students that actually finish the year with us i think it's important that we identify that that how are we helping our partner districts and yakima school district how are we helping students reach their graduation requirements and goals so our goal for this one was that we we wanted 80 percent of students to score 75 percent on a chosen 21st century scale again in the next slide here i'll show you which one we chose uh that we've been working on uh pretty pretty hard on your table you're gonna see a printout and the reason i gave you this printout is because it's really difficult
034to see up on the slide and this is a really deep piece of paper and i'm really not going to go incredibly detailed into this we're going to look at this from the 10 000 foot view the text is small but my students have really good vision i i don't and actually this is really meant to be formatted for uh to be done uh digitally so we can of course zoom in and there are multiple formats for this but this is the yv tech performance review the yv tech performance review might look familiar to you if you're familiar with the work that davis and ike have done with mark uh mark perna and and the careertree in that they've created a uh i think it's a five category rating system and we were already in
035the midst of working on this one as a as a school this was something that myself and multiple uh instructors around the building um big ups to to mr holliday for for kind of giving me the idea but we worked really hard to develop this and so we chose to go this direction which may look a little more detailed but there are 25 categories or 25 criteria in five categories those five categories identify and highlight areas of professionalism such as engagement conduct content mastery teamwork and communication in a nutshell the way this works is a student shows up to ybtech on the first day and we're right away starting to tell them this is what this is what we need from you this is how we want uh this is what we consider a a
036professional a student is going to read through this and you'll notice if you can actually read any of these that they are they are student-centered statements i can i will so students can read this and they're thinking of themselves i can do this you'll also notice that everything's written in a pretty positive statement you're not going to see anything that says that you're lacking it just says that you're working toward more growth you're working toward proficiency there is a column that i tell students they need to reach which is our green column the three the 75 percent the proficient so in our previous slide when it mentioned the growth goal of having a 75 this is what i'm saying i need students to be proficient in these areas but of course we have our outstanding
037students and if they can show me that they can mentor or some things where they are leading other people into success then they may actually qualify for some of the four categories uh or in the column of the fours there so this has been really really helpful to me because the really telling part is when i get to meet with a student one on one and we go through all 25 rows one on one the first time is is really painful but you go through every row and a student has to prove to me why they chose what they chose very similar to t-gem t-peb we we have to prove and provide evidence why we are proficient i ask students to do the same thing then later we we combine that with writing resumes now
038you've had experience standing up for yourself 25 different ways in a resume you can write this you can go into an interview and you can repeat that process and you if we want to talk about competitive advantage if a kid can tell a story or draw or bring something back in the experience that they've had here or in the outside world they sound amazing in those interview situations and we do practice interviews this really helps me write letters of recommendation for a student especially students who i haven't seen in a few years and i need a refresher but we aren't going to water this down this is one of those things where you need to prove to me why you're proficient in one area or another and what's also amazing about this for us that
039every program can cater they can mold this to work for them my standards and the needs of my programs might be different than yours the wording and the skills are all the same and the way that that that you achieve this in an electrical world versus a nursing world that's up to you to state for your students so this is a something that we've been working on for for years we continue to it's a living document staff has a lot of input on this and and hopefully we we all have a lot of buy-in as well i know i sure do with that there's a lot to this and before we've had we've had presented this to people there end up being a lot of questions so i'm going to open this up to questions
040as well as anything else that we spoke about and i really appreciate your time thank you any questions or comments from board members i'd just like to i'd like to compliment you on on the work that you're doing i'm impressed by the number of programs we offer and that's uh that's really exciting do you anticipate just kind of being future oriented do you anticipate maybe any other new programs that might be coming down the road that you're looking at i'm glad you asked we've removed that slide now i get to be my bob barker self so we we had a whole nother slide about what future plans we have and some of it i want to keep under wraps until we can identify right candidates for them but yeah there are a handful that we're
041looking at things that are approved things that we'll need to write up in more detail before we approach if you want specifics we one of the ones that we're looking at is potentially an agriculture related program i know that that's that obviously hit the newspaper and when i saw that i said ah because i just thought of that a couple weeks before and had kind of written out our framework for or outlined for that we're also looking at re-emerging some of our other programs from the past the veterinarian type program as well as one of the newest programs upstairs with our pre-medical assisting um kind of fleshing that out for a second year and making that um more beneficial than it already may be am i missing any uh obviously what we have to look
042we have a great automation program however we need a first year program and we're looking at advanced manufacturing it'll be fabrication cnc work where the students then can take that knowledge into that ajac program and better prepare them for their uh internships and their apprenticeships so yeah we're always looking working at a year or two ahead and so we will see some of these programs in the fall of 2023 i know the staff has said mr matson slow down but one of the things is we realize that we have to continue to meet that industry need and so as we're meeting with with legislators we're talking to local businesses uh we see where those opportunities are and so we're going to continue to pursue them with our translation interpretation you know i'm really excited where
043that ultimately can go uh we're out aggressively pursuing and trying to get more students in that program so again those opportunities are there and it's just us being able to present that and getting the students involved but there's there's so many opportunities and that i think was really impressive tonight uh when you heard the students speak they're all still talking about college even though we we do have industry opportunities for those students but they understand there is other opportunities for them and some may go the industry route to begin with but then always go back into education and it gives them those opportunities and that's that multiple pathways that we talk about in education it's that smorgasbord how do i want to be successful thank you i guess my only question would be can you
044tell us a little about community partnerships i mean are there are there industries and trades in the community that are partnering with your program or individual programs yeah there are we have what's called a general advisory council that we're responsible for meeting with three times a year and so we have industry partners on there that work with us i know through the the cyber security through computer tech programs they sit on our meetings and all of our committees have to have advisory and they have to have the industry members that help advise them of what our curriculum should look like what standards we should be teaching to so every program is different i know chef ned works with different ones than than klim does and then electrical we have ibew we have the you know
045with construction trades we have that in there so yeah in trevor knows i'm pretty passionate about the uh providing more opportunities for our students in industry and we're working on that we'll see where we get trevor i don't have a question but just want to thank you for all all of your work um i am especially impressed with the paid internships and apprenticeship programs that you're able to pull together that's such an important tool and resource for for our students you spoke a little bit about the hybrid learning center and i just think that's such a wonderful opportunity to engage students who may not otherwise be able to to attend for distance or of other uh reasons like that um and then on your form here i note this little uh note at the bottom
046that says yv tech offers assistance if you're in need of personal hygiene items laundry or professional where our staff cares about you i think that's just such a neat um a way to let our students know that that you care and if they need extra help that you know and anybody is more than willing to step up and help them so thank you so much for for all of that work really appreciate it i actually do have one question for you um if the school board were to give you a magic wand which you could use to do anything you want to grow programs or increase student achievement what would you do with that magic wand i know what i would do i would i would uh offer more money for people coming out of
047industries that already make twice as much as they would make when they come here as far as helping us recruit the right people into these types of programs that's what i do yeah that is one of the challenges when you know i look at trying to get somebody for cyber security and they're making 150 000 a year and i can say here's what i can offer if you want to come back and we're very fortunate to uh borrow somebody from andy thank you andy uh to teach our cyber security program in our computer tech but that that is a challenge and and for us i wish that we had uh the ability to uh extend our graduation rate for our date for our students and provide them a fifth year opportunity where we could really
048focus on those uh industry certifications in their internships our biggest challenge in here getting those opportunities for kids is age i mean try to get a student out there 17 they can't do anything and so they're really sweeping and pushing brooms and yeah they're job shadowing but the intent for career connect washington and career launch is that students actually apply their skills and their knowledge and it's very very challenging for us so if we could get the school board to wave a wand and say we want to give these students an extra opportunity i think we could really solve a lot of our employment issues in our own belly by doing that especially when you look at electrical and across the board the needs in our valley are tremendous well a career launch year a
049career year whatever that would look like where our students then would have that opportunity and if we have them in a pathway if we truly want to have programs of study and we want to have a pathway career launch is that cap year that's really where they get that opportunity to use it when i look at our students here and then i fleshed out dates in ages we only have about 35 to 40 percent of our students that are 18 by march of this year well how are you going to get them into a prolonged internship or apprenticeship uh the year's over and if they're only six months into our program they don't have those skills and so that's just that opportunity for our students and i think if we could provide that as a
050state or or a nation i think we would really see the opportunities for our students expand at the same time we have every district and every superintendent that is pushing for graduation so it's counter to what we're seeing from the 13 districts that uh are served here and i think that's what you're referring to when if we had an extension if if we weren't so focused on what the graduation rate would be here with our our students at yv tech so that's it's kind of a rob it's it's it's an opposition of what we we're doing right now in k-12 education yeah and just just so you know with career connect washington they expect 60 percent of our graduating students by 2030 to have had a paid work experience that's a daunting challenge and i
051i can't meet that goal right now with the system we're in i'm just going to be honest we'll do the best we can now if they want to sit because the kid went and mowed the lawns for the weekend and were going to call that agriculture or they went down to mcdonald's and in flint burgers for two days that's really not what this is meant to be and so i'm pretty passionate about it i think that uh in education you know we need to take a look a little bit differently if we're really going to have these programs how do we help our students get that success and i think there's opportunity but again it's a different way of thinking and as trevor said it's a double-edged sword you go on one side or the
052other so what what can you share that metric you shared again by 2030 what was it by 2030 they're expecting 60 of graduating seniors to have uh experienced uh some type of work site learning work where it's a paid work experience good work experience and they haven't clarified because i asked that question i said is that a day is that six months is that three months what does this look like and i think what we're going to see like we do sometimes is we'll evaluate that when we get close but again i think that we have to be very proactive if that's really what we want to do as a nation i was just very fortunate to send a national policy conference and uh percent of the conversation was around apprenticeship and uh opportunities for
053students and worksite and work based learning and uh patty murray's representative was there speaking passionately about what we need to do and provide these opportunities for students so it's at the national level but again right now we don't have the right process in place to make that happen thank you so much any other questions or comments so i just want to thank mr matson and also mr pham who's not here i think at the moment thank you mr c as well and chef uh it's great to have all of you here to share the great things that are happening at yv tech i have four children and one of my children actually went to a tech center for two years and was able to participate in building a computer and software pro programming and and
054ultimately took the college route and it was a great experience for him to figure out what he really wanted to do uh my other two children that are that came through i did not have that experience and i've made lots of mistakes as a parent but i would i have one more coming through and he will be a participant here as well i i think that this is really a hidden gem for a lot of our families and it and we need to do a better job i think in all of the districts that that are served by yv tech and letting our students our children know and and seeing what happens here as parents because it is truly amazing i had a meeting last week with um chief murray our police chief and as
055we were walking through the facility and i think you were out at the moment but we were meeting here and he'd never been to the site before and we were going in and out of classrooms and just seeing the hands-on activities somebody that had one perspective of what school what is happening in school to see what we were doing here he was just in awe and we actually went up upstairs to see uh the the where our police force is is working what are we calling that program law enforcement our law enforcement program and uh they were actually uh going through the hallway sweeping the hallways with shields and and fake guns and rifles as if they were uh responding to an emergency call in a school setting and our police chief was able to
056witness this entire process just by chance happenstance as as we were in the facility and was amazed at the the type of uh hands-on learning that takes place here and i think that's probably what uh many of our our family members would be surprised to see uh how involved our students are in hands-on activity and work which makes it so relevant especially uh if you're somebody that really likes to learn that way and it's a different way of uh counter to what we're we're typically used to but something that we should all strive to do in every classroom so thank you for that and thank you for uh creating such an environment that when we have people stop by uh unscripted that they're just amazed by what's happening here and i would invite our board
057at any time if you were interested in coming at some point during the day to see what's happening in our classrooms i know that you would welcome that opportunity absolutely and just you know fungal touched on enrollment uh uh with uh this year as of today we have over 800 applications uh we didn't have that last year so i think the opportunity to get out there and present in in public again and go to the schools made a big difference so so we're really anxious about the opportunities we have but again thank you so much for allowing us to present and me to get on my soapbox a little bit uh education is a passion for us here and again we thank you thank you so much okay next on our agenda is a study
058session uh we have some equity work with uh consultant aaron jones you want to kick things off superintendent green thank you welcome aaron so it's my pleasure to introduce our facilitator this evening i think every once in a while in probably all of our lives there is somebody that we can't ever remember not knowing uh even though we did not know them all of our lives and aaron for me is that individual i i do not know how far we go back it just seems like we've always been in uh uh just known each other and our paths across multiple times as the board is well aware we began uh extensive equity work over i believe it was a year and a half ago in earnest uh 2020 2021 when we had dr pimpleton leading
059a lot of the work including the formation and development of our equity policy uh with his departure we have been able to maintain uh our work around mainly working with our our students however we have not been able to engage more as fully as a board and i did share with the board that we would be have the opportunity to work together with the wasda training and uh our hope is that aaron will be able to help with that as well we did have to push that out it was intended for this evening however wazda is not yet ready uh and we thought they would be and that we would be able to move forward uh so i've met with aaron and she is going to start our work here today as a board and
060take us through several different types of activities and and conversation and i just want to say to you how grateful we are to have you as somebody that has uh not only served uh in in in many capacities across the state that has been a teacher has been in the classroom has uh worked across the state and across the nation in a variety of of difficult settings to help people reach consensus and understand where missteps occur and we look forward to working with you today so thank you for making time yeah thank you so much for having me here and just it's the old home week because i just keep running into people that i knew from other places that it just feels really good to be here and i love this space too i
061just have to say so two of my kids came through skill centers and i have one about to get a master's degree in computer science because of the skill center so just have to throw up my mom was a culinary arts teacher for 30 years so this feels really good it feels good to be in here having this conversation so i'm glad it came early and got to listen um but thank you so much the board members to the school district officials i have been in your seat before i'm glad i'm not now but you know um just keeping it real um but i'm really excited to be here and you know i've done some work summits work in yakima over the years that it just feels really good to be back here i don't
062know how many of you were here i did my very first keynote speech to open your school district 13 years ago yeah at davis high school and the auditorium was the biggest group of people i had ever seen in my life i was sweating profusely you may not have seen it because i wore suits but um y'all started my keynote speech run i did i did and i was terrified it was probably the scariest speech i'd ever given in my life um but i did get a sting i never forget that and um have come back since then um many times to speak at davis and ike in some of the middle schools so it's just such an honor to be with you today and i love trevor that you mentioned you know i have
063been a classroom teacher and i think a lot of people who know me think of just equity work but the reality is i won the milken teacher of the year award for my instructional practice and so i live to think of myself as a jackie of all trades um i've worked at every place in this system and my heartbeat is really how do we make sure that every young person gets quality instruction that in my in the end that's what i care about most deeply and so i come to you as someone yeah who's done a lot of work around equity but i come to you first as a teacher that is my my my role in the world um i continued to teach online during the pandemic which is also i think really important
064because as a consultant i come to you as someone who knows what it's like to teach on zoom i've logged over 2000 hours on zoom not my favorite and i love being in person now but i come to you as someone who's negotiated that and navigated that and so um it really is an honor to be with you so because we had planned that i was going to take the was the training and try to help you all with that and it's not here i want to offer and adapt and adjust i'm a middle school teacher by train you don't know how to adapt and adjust you die so um i'm going to adopt and adjust and here's what i would like to offer you um there are three postures that i take as i
065think about doing this work and i will say that the last two years talking about equity has been harder than at any point in the 30 years of my work in education it's a hard thing and i want to offer to us as a way to begin that i think we are not good at talking about hard things like race like politics because for my 50 years of life we've been told to not talk about them and so we are unpracticed we're unskilled so that's the posture that i take from the very beginning is not that not that we're bad people not that some people are bad people we have just been told to not practice these this words and talking about these hard things and so we're unskilled so i show up in this
066place with an incredible grace and mercy for i love that grace was the word too oh my gosh i talk about grace all the time and i think in this work i show up with a ton of grace i want to make sure we're lifting all of our students but i think we have to show grace for one another as we fumble and falter and use wrong words um but all with the goal that we're gonna get better we're gonna get practiced because every one of our students of every identity deserves to have a really great education so i just want to share that's my philosophy of this work um but because of that there are three postures that i talk about and we're going to practice that so district folks along with school board
067i'm going to ask you to engage in this i start with gratitude wherever i go so i want you to think about something that you're grateful for and here's why i'm really intentional about this um gratitude actually changes our brain chemistry so it literally if we make gratitude a regular practice and that's not once a week it's every day if you will practice gratitude it literally reforms the dendrites in your brain and so every talk that i do about equity we start with gratitude and so on the count of three i just want you to whisper out we're still covered in y'all whether we're wearing masks or not i don't want you to yell out but just if you could whisper out even in the audience out here one thing that you are grateful for
068today on the count of three we're actually going to practice this because i absolutely believe it's how i can show up and be positive even in the most difficult of circumstances so thing that you're grateful for one two three okay i heard lots of health heard lots of health um and i know we have a board member who's dealing with health stuff right so we got two board members so hello i assume you're watching somewhere but um i happen to be a praying person so you're both in my heart today um but i just want to invite you even as you think about district officials your work and school board as you think about your work whether i'm talking to students or staff government officials we practice gratitude i want you to i want to
069encourage you to make that in these conversations about equity i want to encourage you to make that part of your practice it's not just a nice thing it's a way to shift our brains to get in a more positive frame so that's posture number one posture number two is something i call brave spaces so i want you to think about this question what do you need to be your best and bravest self what attitude do you need what are the circumstances that you need to be your best and braver self i want you to think about that i've spent a lot of time in the last two years thinking about why we have such a hard time engaging one another in effective grace-filled ways and i just want to offer a thought i was not
070raised in the united states i was born here but i was raised in another country and i came to america for college just as political correctness became a thing and i just want to offer a thought that i think political correctness has taught us how to lie to one another i speak four languages i also speak body language there is nothing worse than watching someone use the right words but you can tell with their eyes and their body they don't believe those words and so i think we've done a lot of that like saying the right words while not actually believing them but never having the real conversation about why we don't believe them i want to invite us tonight to not do that we've got to be honest we're never going to get to
071truth if we're not able to be honest now on the other side of that it doesn't mean that you're just nasty so i i don't expect you all will be but y'all i've seen some board meetings i don't know if you've been watching board meetings in other states but i have um so i want to offer kindness as well but i i have an attitude that i was a really great classroom teacher not because i created spaces for my students to be safe i created spaces for my students to be brave and modeled making mistakes and getting back up i modeled trying hard things so i want to invite us not to correct and not to safe but to a brave space and here's what i'm going to offer as a coach i coach basketball
072for 10 years and then i also was an instructional coach as a coach one of the things i believe as a leader is leading by example so i'm going to offer to you how i'm going to model brave by the way this is not comfortable me being up here standing this is not i totally feel for those students who were like what do i do i'm six four and i'm right this is not comfortable here so i'm gonna offer first embrace discomfort the conversation tonight may be uncomfortable at some point for you okay that's learning part of the learning process so i want to invite for me i'm going to model pushing through discomfort i'm going to model being vulnerable i'm also going to model something that i think as a culture we're not good
073at right now i do not use nor do i receive shame blame and guilt i think we're doing a lot of that right now and i think it's not useful and i'll just use a school example i taught middle school children most of my career and if you've never been around a 12 year old you might not know but they do dumb things all the time because their brains are not quite connected and fully developed yet and so they do silly dumb things and yet never in my career in 30 years have i ever called a 12 year old because as soon as i did that child would not learn from me but guess what we're no different we're just big 12 year olds none of us wants to be called dumb either and yet
074we're doing that on social media we're doing that um in family gatherings we're doing it all i want to offer tonight let's not do shame blame the guilt it's not useful it's not i feel good in the moment it's not a way to help people get better so i'm gonna invite for me being brave is not shame blame and guilt it also is when i make a mistake saying i'm sorry and i did that last night actually i'm just gonna say be vulnerable i um made a mistake in a meeting yesterday and asked a question and it made somebody there feel ashamed and it wasn't at all my intention and i didn't say well if you were upset by it i apologize i said i am sorry i can tell that you are visibly upset
075by the question i asked and i am sorry i want to invite us tonight if you say something and you can see in someone's body language oh i just stepped in it instead of saying oh i didn't mean it that way to say i am sorry three simple words not i'm sorry if not i was just joking just i am sorry and the last thing i'm going to offer for me how i'm going to show up brave let's get curious about people who vote different from us who believe different from us who grew up in different spaces that is the heart i'll just say for me that's been the hardest thing about the last couple years and it's absolutely necessary in this work we're actually gonna serve all children we have to be willing to
076get curious about people we're really different today i have a friend named john probably one of my best friends in the spokane area who was raised in hayden lake idaho you may know of hayden lake idaho his grandfather was one of the leaders in hayden lake idaho he was raised as a white supremist and he today calls me sister and it's because we chose during my campaign for state superintendent to get to know each other stories we could not have come up more differently from each other we could not look we both have red hair but his hair is like irish red so very different very different red hair um but john is my friend today because i chose to get curious i'm going to invite you tonight to get curious about people whose perspectives
077are really different because we're serving everyone serving everybody's children and i think curiosity is the bridge across which there is hope for unity we don't get curious it's as if we've blown up the brand so board directors i invite you to add is there anything else that as you think about having this conversation tonight that you would add to what will it look like for you to be your best and bravest self tonight anything that i have not said that you would want to add this is weird y'all to teach like this is so weird can i just say it's really weird standing up here as everyone sits and stares at me this is really strange okay anybody else okay i yes it's important [Music] yeah i often one of my phrases lately has been
078assume ignorance not malice um and often what's really interesting is we when it comes to us we know our intentions so we say dumb things we assume oh i'm just ignorant but we assume other people have malice how about this flipping on its head and let's assume that other people also start there at least yeah anything else okay so um last thing we're going to do and this may sound wonky but i just want to offer that this is also science based we're going to do a little ground in strategy that i think is really important how many of you say dumb things when you're tired hungry tired and hungry yeah we're at the end of the day y'all have had a day and i think so often we jump especially those of you that
079are in leadership we jump from one next the next to the next to the next and we don't take time to just pause how many of you have ever said or typed something that you wish five minutes later you had not done anybody ever done that yeah um we're gonna do a little grounding strategy i usually do this for 30 seconds we're just going to do it for 20. and i do this whether i'm working with 5 year olds or 85 year olds there are lots of different ways to do grand and strategies but this is really about getting more oxygen to the brain there's nothing yoga-ish about it it's a lot of people like that sounds woohoo it's about getting oxygen to the brain it's about really getting ourselves settled and so again i
080want to give you postures because often when we do equity we give lots of terminology lots of content and not the containers to hold it in and so it goes into our heads and out of our heads and i am really the way that i'm different from a lot of trainers is i want to give you containers and this is a container so if you have anything in your hands put it down sit up as straight as you're physically able to if you're standing like me stand as straight as you're able to get your feet as planted on the ground i like to imagine that our feet are connecting us around this room in this work if you're able to close your eyes and feel comfortable doing that close your eyes if not find a
081spot on the wall and just focus on that spot we're going to take 20 seconds to just focus all of our attention on the air as it goes in and out of your body i want you to breathe as deeply as you can as thoughts come into your head cast them out 20 seconds tell your brain 20 seconds i'm not thinking about anything i'm focusing all of my attention on my breathing i will count us off take a deep breath in blow it out take a deep breath in load out take one last deep breath in load out open your eyes stretch a little bit what does that have to do with equity to do with saying dumb things when we get frustrated and anxious i want to invite you at any point in this
082conversation or any conversations that you have in the future about hard things whether it's this or anything else to just pause and ground in now you don't have to board director don't don't announce to the whole group i need to ground in right now because things are hard don't that's just weird but pause i think we as leaders often think we need to have responses to things in the moment and we say dumb things in the moment we say things that are not thoughtful and that creates so much conflict that we could avoid if we just paused so i just wanted to offer those three things as postures gratitude brave spaces ground in a little bit of team building i would love for our directors if you would would indulge me and just share maybe
083in 30 seconds why this work and here's i want to explain to you why i'm asking this question i think equity work is some of the hardest work and if our why is not clear when things get hard it's easy to drop that ball it's so easy to drop that ball and so um why you're doing this work and maybe not at equity work but while you're sitting on the board if you'd be willing to indulge me in just 20 to 30 seconds you don't have to give the whole essay it's 20 to 30 seconds why um maybe director villanueva could you start us off there as the chair so the reason i'm on the school board is to um i want to ensure all of our kids have access to an equitable education i
084have a lot of people in my family myself included my mom and dad who had different different experiences in school that were did not align with with equity and equality and i don't like that and i want all of our kids to have um good experience and and um equity and their opportunity thank you let's see director walk are you ready one of the reasons i'm on the board is i grew up in yakima and i had a wonderful education in yakima and went on and did other things in other places but part of being on board is giving back in the equity piece is i it started for me i remember when i went when i was a high school student and i finished junior high and i lived on the border between eisenhower
085and davis and at the time i was this was a long time over 50 years ago at the time i was growing up eisenhower was 100 percent pure white and davis had a mix of what was living in yakima in terms of ethnicities and cultures and i made a conscious decision i don't know where it came from but i said i don't want to be there i want to be where i'm encountering people that have a different life experience with than i did and i did the same thing at college i lived in a house rather than live in a frat of all wealthy white boys and i wasn't wealthy but i lived in a rooming house with people from all over the world and that just for me that just was so rich to
086see and interact with people that had a whole different experience than i did and i just want to continue that i really believe in in learning how and seeing how other people live and that we have more in common than we um than we don't bennett this is always um such a hard question and yet it's such a fundamental thing about why we're here it's so funny to me how difficult this can be but i have an eighth grader in the district this year so of course his education has been one of the driving reasons that i'm curious and want to be involved in the district and a large component of my job in the private sector with with selling homes is working with families and one of the questions everyone asks about is school
087district and the responses i get locally have concerned me over the years so it just it has led me to want to be involved and to know as much about the district to help represent people as i'm serving them in the community thank you superintendent green not everybody has the same opportunity and i think i recognize that from a young age and just knowing that that we have the power within our our district within our board within our community to make sure that everybody not has does not have just the this does not have the same opportunity but has equitable opportunities so that we can achieve the same type of outcomes i i i benefit from several things that have happened in my life and i've seen peers that deserve the same type of opportunities
088and same type of supports that did not have that and now being in a position where we can collectively make that happen is something that excites me every day because it means that every student can make it if we're doing what we can to make sure that there is equity in place so for for me equity is about making sure that everything every support is in place for every student no matter what so that they they can they can succeed and that's what drives me awesome thank you so the next question that i wanted to ask is um and because i'm a teacher i'm going to have you do something with your hands so if you could all put your hands out like you're cupping water i don't know if you've ever been to a
089stream and cupped water out of a stream um i grew up on the mountains of switzerland every summer and i love going to the stream and getting fresh water but i want you to imagine in your hands what are the assets that you bring to this work what are the assets that you bring to this work it's your picture in your hands holding those assets what are the things that you bring organizational skills you're a good connector you're a good writer you love numbers you love finance i want you to picture those in your hand right now what are the things that you bring to the table okay i want you to put your hands down i love to talk about assets um when i facilitate leadership meetings i love to have people talk about
090assets when we talk about equity we often only talk about the deficits we don't talk about what students are bringing to the table what their families are bringing to the table think about migrant laborers and i think about immigrants and refugees um i think about students who have learning disabilities my my youngest son is about to have a master's degree from usc he's on the autism spectrum he had two birthday parties where not one child showed up and he's about to get a master's degree from george lucas's program every kid brings assets to the table doesn't matter what the labels are next to them and so i think sometimes we talk about equity we only talk about the deficits i want to invite us to think about what are your most marginalized and minoritized students
091and their fam what do they bring in because they all have assets too so i want to just encourage us and invite us to think about what that might mean i'm going to talk about two terms that are often confused and i've heard both of them i want to read your definition of equity which is really similar to the wasda definition the state level organization says the condition that would be achieved if one's group membership no longer predicted in a statistical sense how one fares equity is the outcome not just access to opportunity so i want to invite us into a conversation tonight about what is the difference then between equity and equality what is the difference between equity and equality and maybe you don't have a good definitional difference but where do you see
092either at the local level at the state level or at the federal level where let's start with first where are we seeing equality played out really well where are we being asked to do things equally and not equitably who can think of an example because i think sometimes when we can get in our heads really practical ways that we see equality it helps us then to juxtapose that next to equity where do we see equality either demanded or playing out in public education right now who has an idea about what is what is equality then what is equality absolutely everyone gets the same thing so where do we see equality play out either at the local level in education at the state level or at the federal level where do we see equality sure go
093ahead yes please i didn't know if i was allowed to ask you but since you're offering core 24 yes so every student has to get so many credits 424 yep who's got another idea what's something else that's equality anybody now now he's opened the floodgates so school district folks too yes pay how we pay people right yeah absolutely and i heard that with the conversation about here right we've got if you want to get teachers to come teach computer science you could go make 150 000 easy microsoft easy but asking somebody to come be a teacher yeah so absolutely what's another thing that we do equality really well rules so can you give us an example give me an example that's a great one just school norms and rules and behavioral expectations and also discipline
094codes are written just for to supposedly be totally neutral but they don't address needs they just address observed behaviors oh that one we could do a whole session on that one so i'm gonna i'm i'm i'm tempted to go into but for the sake of time i'm not gonna do that but i i want to offer that that is a great one discipline the expectations that we have there is one set of norms that operate doesn't matter where i travel in the united states there's a way that we expect students to do school that is very one size fits all and so if you have a disability i have a son with um dysgraphia and add who sings anytime he's not engaged which gets him in trouble all the time now he has auditioned for
095the voice and he sang an operetta at carnegie hall pretty phenomenal but got in trouble in school all the time because the rules didn't align to his needs so that's a great one anybody think of another one think about the pandemic what's something that we did equally at first especially remote learning everybody went home and what did everybody get a laptop but guess what if you don't have wi-fi your electricity is not working maybe your parents don't speak english and you don't know how to access the stuff that's on the computer right when we started we did everything equally give everybody laptop give them all an ipad that doesn't take into consideration what are the needs of students right so i just want to offer that equality is really easy equality is really easy we
096just do the same thing for everybody equity is really hard because it means we need to look at both opportunity and then wow what are the practices and policies in place that may be hindering students from getting to that same outcome and i often don't talk about getting to success because i think success in this country is really um it's driven by things like um whether they're going to college which i would argue i love that the tech centers here there are kids that can do absolutely fine coming out of a tech center i think it's driven by how much money people make i often talk about getting students to thriving or flourishing just that's aaron jones when i talk about equity um but i want to offer that that's really hard it requires a
097lot more conversation and that brings me to something that i want to share i had the opportunity to talk to your i don't know if it's director of equity trevor is that what his his title is i can't anyway um but we had a really great conversation about student boys today i've been doing work across the nation for the last two years probably the greatest gift of the pandemic was i got to connect with students online there are some school boards in the state of washington that have a couple students on them you don't and you're one of only two districts that i know right now that your superintendent has access to a whole group of students and so there is power in listening to the students who are going to be impacted by your
098policy there's incredible and so i just want to lift that up that um the only two superintendents i know are anthony smith riverside and and you here and yakima um but i would ask for you school directors and i had the chance to talk to your your chair about this today um where are you hearing school directors where are you hearing student voice so if you could share a little bit about how are you connecting in your personal life and as you think about doing this work how are you connecting to community to hear from students who are ultimately the ones that are most impacted by your decisions thoughts about where you're hearing and then my next question is going to be how could we better leverage the group that trevor is meeting with and
099staff are meeting with to more effectively help you move along your equity work so thoughts about that you'd be brave be brave where are you hearing from student voice right now the first one i can think of is during the calendar conversations we have some feedback session with the student voice that's it's like being on mute on zoom right right how funny that's exactly the same thing um during the um when when we were campaigning some students put together a student forum and um student-led student or organized and we heard from a lot of students thoughts concerns things that were going on in their heads and that that was really powerful to hear directly from the students in that in that format yeah we also we had students involved in our strategic planning so we
100had not just we had parents community members business members faith-based members and we had students directly involved in the development of the strategic plan and also in the development of our equity policy we had students involved in that the word could you see opportunities in being more intentional as you move forward and thinking about leveraging that student voice how how could you imagine possibly trump you look like you're ready you look ready i'm feeling it well i i think you're you're touching upon the next question is how we take it to the next level when you originally asked that question i was struggling to think of you know it's kind of like oh we're not doing enough we're not we and and i think we can always do more but to hear the examples that
101then came came up and also recognizing that we had student voice extensive student voice in our equity policy work last year um we're doing pretty good but does it mean we can't do better and i think it means you know what you're asking is how could we have this on a more regular basis influence the work that we do and what comes to mind is a phrase i've been thinking about a lot lately and that's nothing about us without us if we have our students and we're here to sue our serve our students what are we doing to make sure that they're involved in the process because it's ultimately going to impact them right and certainly has to be something that's try you know it's real it's true that they can they can influence not
102not a decision that's already made where we're bringing in fake voice but to be authentic with them other thoughts about that from board directors well i was just having a brainstorm thinking back in some of my own experiences if i left a training program or graduate program or something there was always an exit interview and i would like to find a way to do exit interviews with some of our students in a cross-section of students and ask them you know what worked for you in your 12 13 whatever number of years what wasn't working for you what would you suggest and and i think that could be a really powerful thing to just get a cross-section of kids and conduct exit interviews i don't know how we'd set it up but i'll leave the logistics
103to the logisticians yeah i just want to and i love that i'm actually doing they're not exit interviews but i'm doing a listening tour with all of the students at tomwater school district and and that's the whole point what worked well for you what would you change if you could change anything and that's such powerful learning so i just want to encourage you to be thinking about and i appreciate what you said to superintendent green about we need to make sure we're not just listening to students after we've already made a decision because that happens a lot how do we make sure that we're listening to students and allowing them to inform our decisions and and how would students i want you to be thinking about how would students know that you've actually heard them
104so that it doesn't feel like an exercise and just parading students so we can check the box and say we've heard students i want you just to be to be thinking about that um i know that we are late on time but i i want to i want to revisit if we can the school board policy on equity and and really just that high i want to just remind you of some high level points because i know um you haven't looked at this for a while so i want to just read i'm just going to read the opening statement and then remind us of the of the pillars because i think they're really important the yakima school district promises is to ensure a safe equitable inclusive and quality learning environment so that every student thrives
105and success in there and succeeds our vision is for a school system that focuses on every student every day strengthening community through education and i will say lots of school districts say every child every day lots of them say that not all of them mean that lots of districts say that but i love this next part because i think it really gets under that delivery on these objectives requires us to name confront and disrupt the inequitable systems and practices that contribute to predictable disparate outcomes on the basis of group membership including race class language culture ability gender sexuality and citizenship this policy articulates our commitment to collective action to transform systems that have historically privileged a few towards educational justice for all in partnership with students families community and staff because race continues to be
106a persistent predictor of student success student academic post outcomes the yakima school district is committed to leading as an anti-racist institution new and existing policies programs professional development and procedures are to be regularly renewed analyzed and assessed through a racial equity lens the generation allocation and management of district resources should be also be exercised with a focus on expanding access and opportunities for those historically marginalized bi-school systems and i want to offer because the word anti-racist has gotten a lot of negative play i want to offer to you a definition of anti-racism there is i hear all the time everywhere i go well i'm not a racist and i would offer i believe most people are not racist they're not intentionally walking around calling people names the idea of anti-racism is how do we do
107more than just not be racist how do we make sure when we see an issue we see um disparate outcomes that we're targeting that and making sure with intention that we don't allow harm we may not be causing harm but our responsibility as school leaders and educators is to make sure not only do we not cause harm but we create systems and structures that don't allow harm that's really what anti-racism is about it's not about saying you're you're either racist or not racist we gotta do better than that just not calling people names is not enough it's saying what do we do in hr saying how do we make sure that we have i love that there's the salad buy literacy so i helped to write that bill by the way at the state because
108as a language teacher um but i think about that like you saw a need for students to be able to get credit for some a skill an asset they had right and so that's a great example of an anti-racist policy is let's get out in front of something let's not only not make fun of students or speak in another language let's actually acknowledge that that's an asset they bring and that's really what so all the political hub about anti-racism i just want to offer a really simple understanding it's that we can't afford to just not be racist we have to get out in front of systems and out in front of structures and make sure that we're creating paths for all of our students to be successful and thrive so there are four areas in
109your policy that you address climate and culture is one i want to encourage you all to go back and and look at those later i don't want to take time today because you all have more work to do um so climate and culture is your first then talent recruitment and retention oh sorry leadership in practice sorry i missed that one um and then talent so i love the hr is here and then teaching and learning that's your instructional practice so i'm gonna invite you to take some time to look through that and look at those four blocks and i would offer as i say to every superintendent and every school board you are not going to tackle this entire board policy this year and you shouldn't i would invite you as a board to think
110about how could you help the school district pick two or three priority areas for the rest of the year and then maybe two or three next year scaffold that because what i see districts do and yours is one of the best equity policies i've seen in our state what i see happen though is we write a really great policy and then it's overwhelming and we do nothing right that happens a lot and it ends up sitting on it on a computer somewhere and we've written a really good policy so i want to invite you as a board to think about if you could prioritize what one or two things from your policy could you really support your school district to implement not try to do it all because i think that is an exercise in
111futility um i'm going to end today if i can get my computer to work with me here technology i'm having my own mute button moment here um oh this it really does not like me so my last question for you all is especially for the school directors as you think about this equity work what do you see as your role in moving it forward we've had a short time together but as you think about is there something that rises to the top like you know what this is something that that i can do this is a role that i can play in moving this work forward what is your as a policy board i know that you don't operate in the day-to-day but as you think about your work as school directors what do you
112see as your role in moving this equity work forward and i know this is their first time looking at this correct yeah i mean maybe it's just i gotta learn more right that's a valid reaction to this so i want to invite you to not feel like you have to know everything right now that this is an invitation to get started and get curious i love how you talked about being curious earlier but i would invite you to share what is a way that you see yourself as a board member being able to help the superintendent and the school officials move this work forward a couple things that come to mind for me is one mo modeling um equity in our work as a board in our interactions with each other um and then the
113second thing is is um ensuring that we we create the um environment for the superintendent to move that work forward and hold him accountable to to that work yeah another thing might just be asking the right questions i think as we've done other school visits a lot of our schools have been really good about taking ownership of some of the strategic plan that they want to implement in their school or maybe just adding a piece in all what are you going to do in terms of the equity policy and plan that you want to focus on in your school and maybe you know the school itself can choose kind of what their goal is or what they're paying attention to but just by us asking that question can sometimes spark that kind of work love
114it actually yeah because then there's an expectation that everybody's at least thinking about it right and they can choose where they're gonna tack on yeah superintendent green what are your thoughts how can how can they support you i don't know if you can share that out loud but i i think that um what what's been shared is helpful and i appreciate norm and and what he just shared also i i'd written down earlier um i think when you asked this question originally the support i put down board clarity board support and clarity so just knowing where the board stands and you know i have three of my my five bosses here but no having that clarity and then knowing where the support lies creates that sense of uh i guess you call it bravery makes
115it so that i can do this work because we are doing this work it's not one individual it's all of us collectively and yes i'm in the in the role that i'm in but i know that we have a strategic plan an equity policy and we're being very bold and looking out for every individual even when it gets rough because the community or others may not understand the difference between equity and equality so for me it's that that clarity and um and knowing and having that support awesome well um i don't want to keep you longer but i do want to offer um squasta is rolling out their training next month um i will be attending the training in wenatchee on the 8th of may i believe it's may 10th it will be here in
116yakima at the esd but i'm going to go before um but check it out and i'm hoping that then i can follow up with you all and make sure that whatever training you get aligns with your equity plan your equity policy so that we're all using the same language um but you all are able to reach out to me if you have questions later um want resources please i am an email away um i look forward to working with you over the long term and really thinking about how do we make sure we're serving all students well and not just lip service you have a great equity plan so how can i support you in that work i look forward to doing that remember gratitude brave grounds in really powerful strategies that i think if
117we could all just make part of our daily habit it will change how we all engage unheard things so thank you so much for your time um any questions that you all have before i leave and let you get back to the questions from board members thank you so much for being here i really enjoyed the short session and i found myself wishing it was a longer session so you know we'll have to find an opportunity for you to come back and spend more time with the board and do more work with with the board and uh do some training activities thank you so much for all your today thank you thank you i'd just like to add aaron thank you for being here you're beautiful you're a wonderful teacher you uh you prompted us
118to uh i think i think you said sit up straight and there was something else you i was already doing that you already had me i think that oh you're like sit up straight i'm like i'm already sitting up straight and i looked over and russell was sitting up straight already as well so i think uh you know you bring that sense that aura with you and and and you're somebody that we can certainly trust and work with so thank you for being here today thanks for having me all right um we are just about uh two hours into our meeting so i'm going to call for a five-minute break and we'll come back at 5 17 p.m all right we will jump right back into our meeting here next item on the agenda is
119um items of abort interest and first is reports from members of the board are there any reports from board members i'll review our upcoming meetings with the group on our next meeting uh this december uh april 11 will be a fully virtual meeting and the meeting following on april 19th we'll have a hybrid option we'll be in person at eisenhower auditorium or live streamed and uh the location of future meetings will be finalized during the april 19 meeting next we have the superintendent's update superintendent green uh thank you uh simply have uh two updates uh the first one being a report on the grade reconfiguration for our early learning at the discovery lab site i was able to meet with my team with the staff members at discovery lab i did have a follow-up meeting
120with staff members this last week as well it certainly is difficult and i understand it is an emotional emotional issue but i also recognize that we are moving in accordance with our strategic plan in calling out uh community commitment number one which is 19 of 20 of our students being prepared by kinder in accordance with the wah kids readiness assessment which has six indicators i also shared this with staff and with parents we recognized that kindergarten readiness is an indicator for third grade readiness that there is a correlation between students coming in prepared and where they achieve at the third grade level and there is significant research to show that third grade readiness and preparation as an indicator for future success all the way through high school including graduation uh as uh i've shared um
121with others both at uh the parents and community uh and and staff members and also with the board individually and through certain emails that were responded to that you were privy to we have looked at other options before even approaching the suggestion to reconfigure the discovery lab to call out publicly we were unable to access the old stanton site which would have been a wonderful facility but once students are moved out of a facility and you receive funding through the state for a new facility you can no longer put students back into that old facility which is why the old stanton site has become our tech center for adults and that's where we stage all of our technical support other options that we looked at or another option included a partnership with the bezos foundation
122and we were excited about that possibility but it was uh not deemed to be feasible uh not now or to the magnitude that we would need to address goal number one which is set for 2026. in addition i met with the early learning staff to share with them also the announcement of the reconfiguration at discovery lab so that is moving forward we're again very excited about having our littlest learners in a place where we can certainly address their needs and if you are looking at the strategic plan we know i know you probably have not gone through the 20-page document but we have the community commitments which are on just the compass page which you've seen but if you were to look at our yakima school district strategic plan on page 12 it outlines a
123page that that aligns our four pillars um with the different components or sub goals to reach uh to help reach that 2026 commitment and of those 12 goals uh i will share with you that at least i can say the reconfiguration of grades at discovery lab by doing that we are addressing at least six of those sub goals to reach that goal of 2026 and i could elaborate that if the board would like it another time but my main purpose was simply to just share with you that we are progressing again with that reconfiguration and we're doing it for the right reasons and it's going to make a long-standing difference for our preschool kids who then enter kinder and are eventually distributed throughout our entire system and will graduate from the yakima school district the
124any questions before i proceed okay the other uh item that i wanted to flag for the school board is that we actually at this point i think the announcement has gone forth and i've asked dr darling to share a little bit more information but we are anticipating that there will be some community frustration with the rebalancing of the two traditional high schools an announcement went forth today to all of our students and parents and uh to tell you a little bit more about that i'll have dr darling uh fill in the details and then i'll pick it up afterwards dr darling thank you dr green so at 5 15 about 11 minutes ago email went out to all of our current eighth graders and then um their high school staff and their middle school staff
125and counselors to let them know what their high school placement will be for next year the process was completed so as you remember we were trying to find the best way to balance the attendance at our two comprehensive high schools without disrupting the choice as minimal as minimally as possible and so students made their first choice in their second choice and then we strategically place students based on some some specific categories special education programming um migrant students homeless and students that are homeless or experiencing mckinney mental issues and then after that we um had a cut number for how many students we were going to be able to enroll into davis this year to help balance those numbers and then the other students received their second choice and so that information went live to our
126students in our high schools our union gap incoming eighth graders and then a handful of students at st joe's who are in district students i will be here next year so dr darling could you let us know the percentage of students that we believe may not get their first choice the eighth graders coming in yes thank you so we we looked at our enrollment and our choices for the last five years to kind of determine how many students we thought were going to be interested in choosing the davis high school or eisenhower high school as their first choice and then we made a cab based on that number so when we shared with you we anticipated 15 to 12 to 15 of students this year would not get their first school of choice what as
127it were when you tell students when you tell students that they might not be able to get their first choice our numbers of students that wanted davis to be their first choice increased significantly this year and so rather than a typical year where we had around 625 students wanting that school to be their first choice we had over 700 and something students making at their first choice so what we projected would be about 15 12 to 15 ended up being about 20 percent so this year 20 of the students who wanted to get their first choice of high school will get their second choice on on the flip side we anticipate next year that number will be significantly lower because rather than capping it at 5 25 like this year we'll probably be able to
128cut it in half for the next year so we'll be half of one school half of the other school which will which will probably be closer to about five percent students next year will not get their school of choice dr darling how many eighth graders do you have the number of how many eighth graders we have currently in the district we have oh we have 1 285 incoming 9th graders so we're we're looking at roughly around probably 220 uh families that will not get that first choice so that's something of which we just need to be aware because if i were one of those 220 families and we had a long-standing option in the yakima school district of having choice which is what we're trying to maintain uh i would likely show up to a
129future board meeting and share my displeasure um the reason the rationale i've i've have emailed uh to each of you uh some q a talking points uh that will hopefully be helpful and if there are any further if there's any further information that you need i would be happy to share that for the public i would just call out that it's important for us to balance the enrollment at the two high schools because we are seeing uh an in an inability to equitably serve both schools and provide like supports when we have 12 i think teachers or more i'm looking at jewel that are on carts which are going from room to room to teach during other teachers prep periods and disrupting uh the ability for them to plan during that time it impacts uh
130the way that our our staff is able to deliver instruction when we have outside organizations that are willing to donate tens of thousands of dollars and work around social emotional issues and health mental health issues but they can't because of lack of space in a facility then we have one facility that is able to provide those services and another that is not so uh the rationale and the reason that we are are looking at this balancing of high schools for the first time ever is because we are not able to serve both in a way that is meeting the needs of of our staff but mainly our students so that that is the rationale and of course the options were to do a boundary option or a choice option and given the uh again long-standing
131uh culture of having choice in the yakima school district we opted to stay with the choice selection the irony of that is of course now we will have 20 of eighth graders this year that do not get that first option that first choice and also some of those students may actually live closer to one school than the other and therefore the boundary you know we're not going with boundaries so it would still be uh going to the school that you were assigned so are there any questions uh about uh that i could clarify or expound upon uh based on the rebalancing of the two traditional high schools so i have a couple questions and i think these questions were addressed in the the faqs that you sent us but i think it would be good
132for the the community to hear whoever's watching the meeting can can you remind me the the number of students that each high school should be able to hold comfortably and then the number of students there today i'm going gonna have to defer to so both schools are designed to have 2 400. and to start the school year last year davis was about 2700 and ike was at 2100. and then with what we know today the 700 students i think you said 700 who selected davis if we allowed 100 choice what that would mean that davis had it would be about 3 000 okay yeah so as it stands for next year davis will have 530 freshmen and eisenhower will have 697 freshmen there'll be a significant shift towards eisenhower to balance those numbers any other
133questions board members that's all i have for my report thank you next item on the agenda are two approvals the first is a request for approval to increase current the current contract with stepping stones group for the 2021-2022 school year and dr darlene is leading that discussion thank you let me pull it up here all right we are requesting that the board of directors grant approval to increase current contract with the stepping stones group from 320 000 as initially requested to 400 540 000 this additional 220 000 will provide the district classified paraeducator staffing support essentially we have not been able to hire enough people and we need more support questions or comments from board members i will entertain a motion that the board of directors grants approval to increase the current contract with the
134stepping stones group from 320 000 to 540 thousand dollars so move moved by norm sutton by ryan is there any discussion all those in favor say hi all right motion carries 3-0 next item is request for approval to increase the current contract with asl for the 2021 at 2022 school year dr darling thank you this is a very similar request we are asking that the board grant permission to increase current contract with asl which ironically is the name of the company that also provides asl services from 300 four hundred twenty thousand dollars this should this additional hundred and twenty thousand dollars will provide the district classified american sign language staffing support any questions or comments from board members i will entertain a motion that the board of directors grants approval to increase the current contract
135with asl from three hundred thousand dollars to four hundred twenty thousand dollars so moved second moved by ryan segment by norm is there any discussion no all those in favor say aye aye aye motion carries 3-0 the next item is pre-approval discussion of board rating reports we have policy 1000.3.5 board members code of conduct we evaluated this reviewed and evaluated this board policy three board members responded there was on one of the questions a response of making that the board is not in compliance and that is let me go back to the notes here um 5.2 um supporting decisions of full board board is not in compliance with that um and that was my rating and i've made comments throughout this board rating report some board members have not supported decisions of the board and
136as we scroll through further if the board is not in strict compliance with policies as stated what evidence evidence demonstrates the board is not in compliance and the evidence i provided here is one board member does not want to read the land acknowledgment another board member continues to question the board's decisions regarding the board's work on equity and the equity policy adopted last year and my thoughts on what we can do to move to full compliance committing to understanding decisions made by the board this may mean reading past meeting minutes additional meeting time as a board scheduling additional meeting time as a board or meeting with a superintendent to ensure clear understanding and then what does the board need to learn or discuss to comply with policies more completely the board needs to continue the
137equity work that started last the last year we know that work is already planned i also recommend that the board learn more about effective board governance and its direct link to student achievement and outcomes and perhaps we can find a trainer or consultant to provide a presentation on this topic at a monday study session or for at our next board retreat and then also recommend that we talk about this further at our next board retreat to really have the opportunity to dive into the differences that we're seeing here any other thoughts comments so we can let's see this is i'm trying to remember the process so um we can move forward in approving the board rating uh policy um as submitted for 1000.3.5 or we can push approve full is this the third instance i'm
138trying to this is the third instance okay so we are approving today so i will entertain a motion that the board of directors approves the rating for policy 1000.3 board members code of conduct so moved second moved by norms seconded by ryan any discussion all those in favor say aye aye motion carries 3-0 and that brings us to the end of our board meeting uh superintendent green do we have a need for executive session we do have need for of an executive session uh for the purpose of uh performance of an employee uh i suggest five minutes okay um i will in and where are we meeting uh we'll meet uh in a conference room in the main office okay so entertain a motion to move into executive session for uh purposes of discussing performance
139of a public employee for five minutes beginning at i guess we'll give people a few minutes to get there so beginning at 5 p.m um nevermotion so moved moved by ryan second by norm any discussion all those in favor aye motion carries 3-0 normal open session any of any other anything else for the good of the order all right meeting adjourned