001good evening everyone the first thing we have to do before we start the business meeting is i'm going to ask board members for a motion to move us out of executive session we were in executive session prior to this meeting and one of our members was logged on by phone and so it was difficult to try to to get to a place where we needed to make that motion out of executive session so i would entertain a motion to move us out of executive session and into open session so moved second move by norm seconded by graciela oh i hear an echo um just a minute barb could you call the role please mr raymond navarro jr hi thanks barb i just wanted to get that on record so that we can cleanly move into
002the business meeting thank you all for joining us tonight this is the june business meeting for the yakima school district board of directors the end of school is nearly upon us [Music] our agenda tonight we do have interpretation services yes would you like me to offer yes please necessitate no i know that there's nobody here thank you um next on our agenda is the pledge of allegiance we typically have students do that but since um we're so close to the end of school i'm going to have to remember how to do that by myself so if you all could please rise ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank
003you next we have the yakima land acknowledgement and norm walker will be reading that this evening today the schools of the yakima school district rest on the ancestral lands of the 14 confederated tribes and bands of the yakima nation the people of yakima nation inhabited more than 12 million acres across adams benton chelan douglas franklin grant kititas klicitat 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 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
004as a school district we will continue to build upon our relations with the yakima nation also in line in keeping with that many of you may have heard the news about the recent finding of 215 children buried at a school in kamloops british columbia and those children are part of the same nation that these belong to i'd like to take a moment of silence to honor those children thank you norm just a reminder since we are in a school building masks are required while we're in the school building if you do not have a mask there are some available outside of the door that you entered if you wish not to wear a mask we would invite you to join us virtually thank you next on our agenda are um reports from members of the
005board we have any board members that are um have a report that they would like to share okay i do want to um acknowledge that we have typically we we recognize accomplishments during this point in time and while it's not on the agenda i do want to congratulate dr trevor green on receiving his doctorate in the past month so congratulations it's well deserved dr greene superintendents update thank you very much uh uh director rice it's a great honor to be here again in front of you and to be gathered in this session in person we greatly appreciate being able to reunite in this way the first thing i'd like to share with the board and the public is that we have a wonderful news through our stanton school and in accordance with the requirements and
006procedures of the association of educational service districts in the state of washington uh stanton academy under the direction of dave chaplin has received the aesd accreditation approval so they are going to continue to be a an accredited institution uh for the next six years uh they are commended for the following their development of personalized supports uh support actions using relevant tools such as scaffolding improvement science social emotional learning and aces touch points also for incorporating student surveys and building toward their overall path approach moving forward and the passion for student success and if the board will recall when we originally went into uh the shutdown during covid uh dr darling and myself we we visited uh all of the schools and talked with each of the staff members and were very very impressed with the
007flexibility adaptability of our stanton staff and so i think this is just another feather in the cap of dave chaplin and our wonderful staff serving our students to the best of their ability and we're very proud of of their recognition for their accreditation in addition with the board this evening i'd like to share that under uh dr dr darling we have submitted our plan for sr3 funding it was approved by ospi so that actually did happen here in the last week we completed all plan elements provided an attestation and date of school board approval posted the plan on the website and uh named the equity analysis tool used in the development um and that the funding will be uh available to us most likely around uh end of summer yes dr darling wonderful uh thank
008you and then um we had a great session uh today we've been doing a lot of leadership development uh over our multi-tiered systems of support strategies with all of our district leaders uh i think we have shelby here tonight she's not she's been leading a lot of our work so we're we're happy for for her her leadership for the leadership of our teaching learning department thank you dr darling and the last item that i would share before passing this to our assistant superintendent stacy locke is that we had a presentation that happened uh to ospi our office office of superintendent of public instruction uh through uh nob hill the leadership of aaron thomas dr darling would you be able to give us a little bit of information about that presentation certainly so we have um
009eight schools in our well nine schools in our district that are identified as school schools that are school improvement yes so just get i'll get closer so we have a handful of schools in our district that are identified as schools that are in school school improvement nob hill being one of them and they are assigned coaches and school improvement coaches through ospi and the coaches that i've been working with our district have been very impressed uh and they wanted to highlight one school which was nob hill so today they had what they call a convening with local esd and other schools and esds across the state and they featured the work that's going on at nob hill so aaron thomas if you know aaron is never herself she she always brings her team because she
010highlights her teachers and her staff and they presented on the work they're doing around using data to grow students using data to have conversations about teacher practices and so you know it was fun for trevor and i'd sit in his office and watch aaron highlight her team and have them share examples of evidence they've used the way they've made improvements even during um this difficult challenge to fully remote this year so yeah we just wanted to take a a moment we're proud of all of our of our principles our school leadership especially the work happening in nob hill nice that's good to hear thank you thank you dr darling it was uh it was a great thing to see the way that she did present and highlight her staff uh speaking of staff i did
011inform the board but it would be good to tell the public here this evening that we did have a significant change of leadership here in the last uh several days we have a long-standing excellent wonderful principal at davis high school who has done some reassessment of his priorities and what's important to him and he will actually be leaving our district pending board approval in another district uh which i believe is happening this evening or maybe it happened last night but i haven't heard about the announcement yet but internally uh we will be uh moving a principal uh to davis high school uh heather hasty will assume the role of uh principal at davis high school uh only the second woman in the history of davis high school to lead the pirate ship so we're very
012excited about that opportunity she has served there as an assistant principal for the past nine years she has experience at the central office both in the state of washington and in the state of kansas this is her dream job which is great dreams aren't enough to make things happen but fortunately she does have the support of her administrative team i had the opportunity to speak with all of the assistant principals together at davis high school and there was unwavering support for her moving into that role and since then i've received some valuable feedback as well from the davis staff about how pleased they are about the quick appointment we typically don't look at appointing a role such as this uh so quickly but given the fact that we are in june and most of the
013hiring across the state is done much earlier we were very fortunate to have such a wonderful leader within our own district and she had actually accepted a position as executive director in our central office but when that davis position opened we had a conversation initiated by her about how excited she would be to take that role so um i'm sure at some later date we will bring her in front of you or we will be at davis and you will feel that excitement uh coming from uh heather hasting we're excited for her uh so to conclude my uh my superintendent's report uh i would pass the baton to uh stacy locke for the update on our covid uh information about what's happening around the district and uh also in our county uh stacy thank you
014very much dr green uh i would like to first start about speaking briefly about the county report i'd like to thank jule bromley assistant principal at davis high school who has provided me with the latest information on yakima county our daily cal count is fairly consistent above 20 and less than 40 over the last week our 14 and seven day rates are at 129 and 73.4 per 100 000 respectively hospitalizations have now dropped as of today below five and our positivity rate is at an all-time low at 5.3 percent so numbers are going in in the right direction in regard to the work in the yakima school district we had 12 investigations last week and since january we've conducted over 1100 investigations related to kovid we had one positive student last week and there was
015no testing of school employees during the last uh seven days so that's kind of it in a nutshell it's uh excellent news moving forward so thank you thank you stacy and back to you president rice any questions any questions from board members excellent thank you for the good report stacey um next we have the monthly financial updates becky um i'm gonna turn it over to dr green thank you so we will tag team this uh we're always it's always wonderful to be able to present the general fund budget and financial status update again in taking us through the executive summary you'll note that may 2021 items of interest there are three uh one is that we did receive the first payment of 1.1 million in transportation stabilization funding uh and uh we're excited about that
016opportunity so there is uh uh funding uh for stabilization being released to the districts uh the second point would be that um we received actually some funding that we were not expecting and i will turn to becky would you like to talk about the uh institutional ed enrollment stabilization funds sure thank you these funds we received 102 thousand dollars and they are to support the ridgeview group home and the juvenile detention center and this is for enrollment stabilization so the comparison back to last year and what we've lost due to the pandemic thank you becky and then the third item in the executive summary is our enrollment and we are down by an additional 30 fte as compared to april so we are at 2.9 below our budgeted fte and our annual total of 468
017under what was originally projected which if i'm correct i'm looking over at becky where we're talking around four million dollars correct yes it's um actually about 2 million just in bea funding 2 million in bea okay thank you as we move uh would you take us through the next uh part of this certainly powerpoint so these are the um these next slides are the enrollment um that you're familiar with the cash flow the revenues the expenditures payroll and materials and supplies there these are trending as normal so unless you have any questions about these we'll move to the pandemic slide so these are the pandemic costs and i'll as a reminder this is started in march of 2020 and through today there's about 10.7 million dollars or over 10.7 million dollars um and you can
018see the different categories there the ppe staff and cost for distance learning and then our child care if you flip to the next slide they see the funding sources and you can see that the cares funding is the bulk of the um funding source and we are just about depleted on that just about nine thousand dollars left and you can see the total at the bottom the 10.7 and then we have a new slide for you and this is our sr2 funding and we will switch now to the thinking of learning recovery expense expenditures and so i'll invite dr greene to talk about the 10 points thank you becky as you look at the slide with the the 10 points of the sr2 funding dr darling led the superintendent group of our district through a
019a very focused exercise to make sure that we were engaging around our spending of what we had done in the past and looking at the percentages across our entire system he collaborated with becky neeson on this work as well so as you look at the 10 categories you can see the percentages to the far right so reopening schools safely for in-person learning 19 physical mental health and well-being supports 11 percent and we're looking at these as opportunities to provide direction on spending of esser funding over the course of the next three years as you know we've gone through our sr1 funding and are currently in our sr2 spending funding and will engage as you heard me say earlier in receiving sr3 funds by the end of the summer dr darling do you have any additional
020insight that you could provide on this list so we did not crea we did not create these 10 points they were provided for us but um through the ccsso which is the chief the con state school yeah chief state school officers consortium and um mary alice you shall who's from the gates foundation was part of writing that this this work and so we as trevor said we took this work and we figured out what are the priorities that we currently spend our funds our bea and our levy funds along with where what do these buckets have the biggest impact on students on student achievement on accelerating student learning on school safety on staff safety and then we figured out how we would allocate these funding so part of it is for our tracking mechanism internally
021to determine where we're where we're spending funding and does it align with our current spending model that being said if we overspend in one area and we understand another there's no harm done there it's merely for us to be able to kind of a guideline for a starting point since nobody in the history of education has ever done this before this is the most amazing plan ever been created for the yakima school district all right thank you so you can see that we have a mount available of 22.6 million as of today we've expended 68 000 and we have encumbered another one and a half million and you can see the categories that we're spending in number three which is address coded learning gaps for students and then number seven explore and implement new education
022delivery models and eight closing the digital divide as we go through spending these each month this will be your new slide to review becky is there a sunset on these funds do you know for the s or 2 it's september of 2023 and the sr3 is 2024 september okay thank you you're welcome any questions from the board on becky's report i i have one additional comment to make one of the things that we also did is we allocated a 20 of this budget to the buildings themselves to identify so they could spend this money for the individual needs of each school for example at martin luther king maria identified 14 kindergartners this last year who did not engage at all so rather than trying to retain the students she's hiring a teacher to work with
023just those 14 students and they will get kindergarten and first grade on next year in their classroom and be ready for second grade the following year so each building is able to take this funding and provide staffing or resources specific to their needs so we're already seeing a lot of creative so we haven't uncovered very much but they just got the money this week and trust me and by next week there will be a significant chunk of it already spent we're encumbered so can i ask a question is it twenty percent across the board or is it um pro rated based on the size of the school so that's a great question so what we did is we took this twenty percent and then we figured out what percentage of the student population is at
024each building for example for early learning it was about 2.1 percent and barge lincoln 3.1 percent so then we give them the that percentage of the 20 so it's equitable across the whole district so based on their student population size that's how much the funding they received so the larger the school the more money they get exactly so um stanton received about probably sixty thousand dollars davis six hundred thousand dollars that's good to know thank you any questions from board members okay i would just make one more comment sure uh just to clarify that the the money that was released to the schools at 20 um it's there are standards and requirements around that spending uh it's around student learning and achievement so it's it's not to be spent on any what people would perceive
025as frivolous items it's uh all going back into assuring that learning continues and that we're focused on uh helping to recover any of the learning loss that it that occurred do their individual plans need to be approved by central office yes rob yeah actually they approved between myself the human resources department and financial and our financial department so actually every at least once a week we have scheduled meetings we've already done our first one where we review each of their proposals to make sure they meet the criteria that's already outlined in these 10 buckets and outlined by the federal government spending guidelines right it keeps us from getting into trouble it does and it also helps us be able to share the creative ideas that these principals are doing with other principles so they can
026kind of replicate each other's work as well excellent thank you rob anything else on this agenda item trevor nothing more okay um next item on the agenda are comments from the public on agenda items barb do we have anyone who has signed in no okay all right then we will just move along next item on the agenda is approval of the consent agenda is comprised of items that are either routine in nature or are items that have been delegated to the superintendent but by law or rule the school board is required to approve any board member can remove any item from the consent agenda for separate action and or discussion tonight's agenda items consist of approval for reverend donald davis jr to attend the national school board association equity symposium which is in july this
027is a virtual attendance next is approval of minutes for may 10th 18th and 24th next is budget status reports for may next we have approval of personnel actions followed by approval of out of endorsement assignments and finally notification of approval of warrants for may 2021. tonight's warrants consist of one group of asb warrants uh one group of capital fund warrants two groups of general fund warrants and one group of payroll warrants does any board member wish to have anything removed from the consent agenda for separate action and or discussion okay i would entertain a motion for approval of the consent agenda as submitted so moved second moved by raymond seconded by norm barb could you call the role please is there any discussion while barb's making her way to a microphone okay mr ray raymond
028navarro jr can't hear you mr raymond navarro jr aye mr norman walker i am president martha rice aye ms graciela via nueva bye motion passes four to zero thank you barb next item on our agenda is the final reading for our equity policy dr green do you want to kick this off yes thank you um our equity policy work uh we're very excited today to have to have a couple of our students here this evening could you stand thank you so as you look out into the audience you will see that we have valeria and connor here this evening very excited to have two of our students with us one from representing our eisenhower school and one from davis it was not planned that way these are students who have really risen to the top
029in providing opportunities for us to address what equity truly means in our in our in our district uh over the course of uh the last year we have worked very diligently with our community our faith-based community our business partners we brought together an equity coalition representative of all of our different groups including a superintendent student advisory council and a writing team which included two students in the eight person group this was led uh by dr pimpleton um uh generously co-led by me as well but uh the line share the work certainly was dr pimpleton along with our community and uh before i turn the reading of the equity policy over to connor and valeria i would just like to state the first sentence which i think is very very important when we're talking about equity
030within our district and it states the yakima school district promised it to ensure a safe equitable inclusive and quality learning environment so that every student thrives and succeeds and i think that is a statement that really clarifies why we are talking about not only talking about equity but putting out goals for us to achieve as a district and start to assess our systems and how we can improve to make sure that we are reaching every student with the appropriate scaffolding and support necessary not equally across our system but equitably across our system because we know that every student is different and has varying needs and different services that are required so i would call upon at this point conor and vaderia would you please share the information about our equity policy with the board our
031vision is for a school system that focuses on every student every day strengthening community through education delivery on these objectives requires us to name confront and disrupt inequitable systems and practices that contribute to predictable disparate outcomes on the basis of group memberships 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 communities and staff because race continues to be a persistent predictor of student academic post-secondary and life 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 reviewed analyzed and assessed through a racial equity lens the generation allocation and management of district
032resources should also be exercised with a focus on expanding access and opportunities for those historically marginalized by school systems this commitment is expressed through the following pillars presented in alphabetical order with no suggestion of hierarchy climate and culture leadership and partnerships talent recruitment and retention teaching and learning climate culture the district honors the diverse communities and populations both past and present that have inhabited this land to ensure safe equitable accessible and inclusive environments for students families and staff we will model a welcoming culture and environment in every school and classroom across the district actively foster and sustain positive relationships and connections with students families and staff provide multiple and varied opportunities and resources and nurture celebrate and support cultural diversity and nurture a culture of advocacy by centering student voice experiences and perspectives leadership and
033partnerships the district recognizes the value of creating and sustaining essential partnerships with students families communities and staff and that leadership for equity and excellence requires working together to disrupt structural inequities and historically unjust systems of power to do this we will promote shared leadership and transparency through equitable collaboration and power sharing staff students families and community members directly impacted by the decisions being made invite and help surface criticals perspectives from historically marginalized communities and engage them in our improvement efforts build relationships with families and community to support improved communication and dialogue partner with individuals groups and organizations who reflect the cultural diversity of our student and community center the voices perspectives knowledges and logics of black indigenous and other peoples of color have a track record of successfully engaging with historically marginalized communities in ways
034that expand opportunities and reduce disparities engage students as partners in their own education in the work of school and district improvement by routinely accessing the insight and perspective of diverse student voices for promoting student initiative and involvement providing social emotional and enrichment opportunities that strengthen relationships between students and foster a sense of community and camaraderie within schools and discontinue partnerships with organizations who are not making a priority of this work talent recruitment and retention the district will actively strive to recruit support and retain a workforce that reflects the rich diversity of our student body where all employees feel valued and celebrated by actively searching for recruiting and employing racially linguistically diverse and culturally competent personnel at all levels of the organization supporting the establishment of affinity support networks and mentorship opportunities for underrepresented groups engaging
035all schools personnel across culture reflection and dialogue to build awareness of their own identities and privileges and address the impact of biases and microaggressions in the workplace providing relevant professional development to enhance all employees knowledge of and skills eliminating racial ethnic inequities and providing opportunities for staff to safely and openly provide feedback on the work environment and service concerns finally teaching and learning the district is committed to high quality teaching and learning that supports each student without exception in reaching their highest potential this is to be achieved through curriculum educational materials instructional practices and data use routines that reflect and affirm the racial and cultural identities of our students and staff we will foster an adult learning culture that is rooted in the shared vision for student learning high degree of teacher efficacy and effective
036systems and routines that empower creative thinking and problem solving nurture a joy for learning for both students and staff support student growth through guaranteed viable and culturally responsive curriculum inclusive ethnic studies provide opportunities for all students to see themselves reflected in the curriculum utilize evidence-based culturally responsive instructional practices educational materials resources and technology routinely collect display disaggregate and analyze existing and new forms of data to improve student learning and adult practice in the service of educational equity provide multiple pathways for success through an assets-based approach and reduce the over or under-representation of any particular student group intervention enrichment and advanced course offerings such as special education services and accelerated programs by eliminating biased practices the board directs the superintendent to develop and implement a system-wide racial equity plan with clear accountability and metrics which will
037result in measurable improvements in academic social emotional health safety and belonging for ysd students and staff the superintendent shall regularly report progress on the plan and outcomes thank you thank you olydia thank you connor do we have any questions for either connor valderia myself or dr pimpleton any questions from board members okay you want to do that now i could okay you have to kind of get up on that mic i'll do that so yes i just want to thank dr pippleton and our two students that are with us today for guiding us through this process of developing this policy it was personally uh an eye-opening a very significant learning opportunity for me and at times an arduous one it was challenging right to think about some of the philosophies and theories and the writings
038that were presented to the board that i believed that that occurred for me so i wanted to mention that i i believe the board knows and the community knows my stance on on some of the the topics that we talked about that we discuss and i'm not going to go into those today because i believe i've articulated those uh you know i've struggled with this this has been a difficult um been a challenging uh decision in terms of this policy and you know personally just my personality i do tend to focus on kind of the philosophy and the theories that underlie the writings that that we that we studied the last two months so but um and i so i do i also appreciate that dr pippleton's explanation during our last meeting and and how
039some of my my concerns uh may or may not impact the work that we're doing so i do thank you dr pippleton for for explaining that and and making it clear for me so ultimately i have chosen to focus more on the intent and the purpose of this policy and you know that is to address the racism and how it impacts the education of students in the yakima school district you know focusing on closing and then eliminating those disparities that our two students talked about just seconds ago and that exists between students in yakima school district and also ultimately to eliminate racism and oppression in not only in our school district but in our community so i believe that we'll do so by uniting as as a board as our superintendent teachers staff administrators our
040students parents and and ultimately our community and addressing these racism and oppressions so and also to be a board that leads uh or that is trans formative and change and that's that's the one thing that i take from that policy as well that transformative change that that i'm excited about being a part of that we're having an impact in our community and ultimately that all students are successful that all students achieve and reach their full highest potential so that's uh i wanted to thank valeria and connor i really really valued that and appreciate you meeting with me about a month ago and that really helped me to understand from a student's perspective so thank you once again for the work your leadership and helping to develop this policy thank you i would like to make
041a comment before you guys vote if that's okay sure i mean you were a key part of this i guess we could probably let you say a few words me uh another student cleo who unfortunately can't be here and conor we've worked with a bunch of teachers and staff members and a lot of people in our community to develop this and it took i think it started in near december or november where we started and it's been eye-opening and it's helped me see that racism from a different lens i always assumed that racism could be direct and it's you someone telling you off or disrespecting you but it can be racism can affect in microaggressions in small ways in school districts out of school and this policy really reflects a lot especially as me as
042a latina i really appreciate being able to write this and having the opportunity to voice what i have to say about my opinion and my thoughts and ideas on what's going on in the school district especially and the fact that you guys are taking your time to really listen to what we have to say is really important and really special so i just want to say thank you thank you valeria we very much appreciate that this has taken a while and not only were you all students during this period but you also had your own lives and other activities but that you felt strongly enough about this to devote your time which is a precious commodity and you devoted your time and your energy and your thoughts and your wisdom to this and as i
043sat here and let let the readings and the words wash over me it had such a profound effect on me more so than just reading the word silently to myself to hear your voices read those words really was very very powerful and so i want to extend my appreciation to you and connor and cleo who unfortunately couldn't be here tonight and all the other students and staff members and community members who are part of developing this policy this is a foundational policy for our district and will serve us well for many many years to come so thank you very much connor do you have anything you'd like to add just to expand upon uh valeria's thoughts thank you for honoring student voice in this very long process we've gone through a very uh enriching system
044of co-design and uh looking at that the incredible diversity of other perspectives across our district and i'm very grateful to and part of this process among my fellow students and uh very grateful for the attention the district has attuned to this policy and hopefully in passing it very soon thank you thank you connor any other questions or comments from board members i'll go ahead i'll just add um this is policy is a culmination of work the board started maybe two years ago at least um initially having conversations about an equity policy and and what that should include and and not include and so it wasn't until um the the students got involved that really helped pull uh the policy together along with dr pimpleton and the other staff and community members that supported the effort
045so i also had uh the privilege to speak directly with valeria connor and cleo and it was really touching and encouraging to hear the thoughts directly from the students the things that the word choices they used the um um their thoughts and infillings in general about the policy and so that was really en encouraging to hear and i'm just so supportive of this policy and i'm so excited to see the district have a really really strong equity policy and statement and that we've been really intentional with using the words that we're using and i'm just very excited to have heard the student voice very loud and clear in this and excited to see this move forward raymond did you oh no go ahead well i think raymond and graciela pretty much summed up my feelings
046i'm i'm thrilled to see this policy um i would say that the the things that are articulated in it or various things in my own career in education for over 40 years have have been pieces that i've worked for and to see it all put in such an articulate document it's just a thrill for me and it's a thrill to have the community and the schools and students creating that policy so that we all own it at this time at this point raymond yes i'm just wondering if dr green or dr pipperton can kind of just briefly kind of talk about the next steps what is the evaluation that kind of stuff just to remind me on that i'd be interested in just just a real brief explanation i i can go ahead uh dr
047pempleton if you'd like to add anything then let me know if not then i will go ahead and respond to the inquiry the last paragraph of the equity policy uh statement lays out the following the board directs the superintendent to develop and implement a system-wide racial equity plan with clear accountability and metrics which will result in measurable improvements in academic social emotional health safety and belonging for ysd students and staff and then the superintendent shall regularly report progress on the plan and outcomes so this first part as we talk about a policy lays out the direction that we need to go as a district or that where we are declaring through the policy now the work begins on coming up with the measurements and implementation of the policy uh if you were not following along
048or do not have this in person uh the four pillars that were mentioned both by conor and valeria have several different bullet points under each category and each of those bullet points in my mind represents a system within our school district that we will then assess against our equity policy and determine measures and outcomes and then the reporting back to the board so at this point um we we this is the uh this is the joyful moment for me because this is the moment between the policy and not having to do any work around the policy uh after tonight and uh hopefully an approval of the policy uh we we are definitely being directed to roll up our sleeves and uh and improve uh what we're doing systemically to uh provide uh equitable opportunities and
049supports uh for all of our students uh through this uh uh equity policy but more importantly through the work and what that will look like at an elementary level middle school level a high school level across our system so unfortunately at this point i cannot tell you what that would look like but uh i'm interested in having a deeper conversation at some point with the board about a proposed timeline because there is a tremendous amount of work and this is not something that we could probably turn around in a month or two there's going to be significant work across our district to make sure that we are addressing this systemically does that answer your question raymond okay good dr pempleton do you have anything to add yeah um my phone's blowing up because i know
050that uh director davis wanted his statement to be read and i have that so i'll share um what director davis uh wanted added and um also respond to that last question so from uh director davis i have had the opportunity to be a part of numerous discussions throughout the development of the equity policy both as a board member and as a participant in the district equity coalition i have read and re-read the most recent draft on multiple occasions this is something that is long overdue for the students and families in yakima and will help to bring focus as we move to implement the district strategic plan it has been particularly special for me to see how throughout this process the voices of our students have been centered they are our future and they are leading
051us in the way we should go having been a part of the civil rights struggle in the 60s the pursuit of equity racial and educational justice is an issue that is close to my heart now is not the time to be timid or to sugarcoat the challenges we face it's time to put our words into action and this policy is the right step in that direction that's from director davis thank you for reading that uh he had a family emergency and that's the reason why he could not be here today and i know this has been something that's very important to him and meeting with him prior to accepting this job even it was his heart for this work that actually was influential in me deciding to come to the yakima school district um hearing
052him and a group of students that we met with initially who were talking about the importance of these sorts of issues with regards to what happens next hopefully there will be a little bit of celebrating i think when we read the policy there's a lot of sense underneath of you know there's things in here that we're not doing or that we're aspiring to do but there's a lot of stuff in the policy that schools are already trying to do and that teachers are already moving in in that direction and so my work with schools is going to be first to say what are the things in here that we're already trying to do that we already have some steps moving forward as superintendent green said the mtss learning that we've been doing over the last
053couple days has highlighted a lot of things that are connected to this policy so i think celebrating the things that we're already doing that are in here will be a nice piece of that and then the development of individual um plans of where do we go from here what do we need to learn in order to be able to begin to do the implementation there is a contract that's being circulated up for an equity audit with the insight education group which will be looking at different documents having interviews with leaders with students observing some instruction in the fall and they will be making some recommendations and identifying some areas and priorities for us based on that and that will help us to be able to develop the plans of how we're going to move forward
054to implement um the policy so we definitely will be moving right away into what are the measures and what does it look like and how are we going to um know what when this is actually taking place but um really having the picture really clear and having our student voices be a part of that um this is a very important um first step and i think this is really the model policy for the state of washington so thank you thank you marcus i would certainly be remiss if i did not extend my appreciation to you for your work with this and for your leadership in helping to bring focus to something that the board has been talking about for a couple of years now and we just weren't sure how to get here and you
055helped us get here so thank you so much for your work your your individual effort your work with the community and the students and all of the stakeholder groups who were part of this process we couldn't have gotten to this point without you that's for sure anything else mr superintendent nothing at this time okay this is on our um agenda for action and then unless there are other questions or comments from board members i would entertain a motion or of policy zero five five zero so moved second moved by norm seconded by graciela barb could you uh call the roll please mr raymond navarro jr aye mr norman walker aye president martha rice aye ms graciela villanueva aye and if we could cast a vote for don in absentia we would and carey's 4-0 thank
056you so much thank you all for all of your hard work um i guess you know this part of the work is is beginning and as and now we are looking forward to the next part the next part of our journey with us okay next part of our agenda next item is permission to approve purchase of secondary spanish adoption materials dr darling thank you director rice so um this year whether we look at it we had an opportunity to um we were forced to adopt a new spanish curriculum for our secondary program because the current the curriculum that we were using was being sunsetted and so nothing like a pandemic to make people excited about having to jump into a new curriculum but you also probably could not find a more dedicated group of people
057than the secondary spanish teachers who really saw the need begin to overhaul that program so i also think it's fitting that the person who presents this is dr sean mcgee who is what 14 days away from becoming superintendent mcgee at the white saloon valley school district and so i'm going to turn the time over to him thank you thank you dr darling madam president members of the board i have the distinct honor of a contingency of about a third of our 13 secondary spanish teachers who worked extra effort for a year taught me a ton i am an elementary teacher by trade and so everything i got to do from them i learned from them about this so we're going to hear a lot from them so i have the honor of having maria chavez
058who is our bilingual tosa but also former spanish teacher here at eisenhower high school uh i megan anderson reilly davis high school spanish guie perez davis spanish high school ib and jamie holden washington middle school spanish so there are many more as you know it's summer vacation so i'm honored that they decided to hang out with us on a tuesday night on summer vacation so without further ado good good evening school board members uh the spanish curriculum adoption i'm really pleased to inform you that it aligns to our goal number four and that is to create in our students bilingual by literate by graduation and the goal is that all students will have the opportunity to be culturally competent academically successful and prepared globally for the job market in two or more languages it also
059aligns to goal number five persistence through graduation and beyond and that is that all students will graduate um being career and college ready hello good evening i'm going to talk a little bit about how the process that we went through to gather input for this adoption so first of all expressing our gratitude to dr mcginney for really putting this together he started the process with having us talk about our spanish current spanish classes and and you may be aware but i was not aware that we have actually 54 spanish classes in the yakima school district currently and 20 of those are directed for our native spanish speakers and 80 percent for our students who are not native spanish speakers and so a lot of gratitude went out to him for his leadership we had 13
060secondary spanish teachers involved in this process along with three assistant principals also participated a lot of gratitude to maria chavez who was just like a person who brought us all together really expressed a lot of leadership in this we wanted to also bring in our student voice it was challenging during the time of the pandemic but we were able to administer a student survey to 359 students asking them about their current spanish class that they were in their own linguistic experiences did they grow up in a spanish-speaking household how did they feel about our spanish classes did they feel like they were learning their culture was being represented in the class and some takeaways that they had things that they wanted us to know about their spanish classes and we also had a lot of
061our teachers secondary spanish teachers helped put together some great videos for the community curriculum review website and survey good evening so currently in the yakima school district the secondary students have several pathways to in their pursuit of becoming bilingual and biliterate in the spanish language all four middle schools and eisenhower and davis offer traditional spanish courses of spanish one two and three for students who are learning spanish as a new language of course in our school district we also have many students who come to us from other countries who have received even often formal education in spanish or have grown up here locally in a home where they speak spanish and so they come to us with a stronger foundation in spanish and so for those students we offer heritage and native spanish courses in
062these courses they focus on becoming more literate and formal language to enhance their ability um for their language proficiency and also especially in reading and writing because a lot of them don't come to us with those skills good evening at davis high school we also have two years of honors and two years of iv spanish these classes promote a worldwide multi-cultural curriculum and dev develops cognitive language proficiency from a high school level to a university level i like it it's um ap spanish it's offer it's one year class and it is taken after two years of regular classes this class focuses on cultural and language and the four domains listening speaking reading and writing as a committee we are recommending for spanish one two and three track the identical text um curriculum from the savas
063publisher what a few of the strengths of this curriculum that the committee really appreciated was the authentic approach that the material is represented in even as spanish 1 2 and 3 students the students are learning from authentic resources and these resources are very engaging and this serves as a springboard for the learners to learn their reading writing speaking and listening another advantage of authentico is it is very standards-based on the actful standards that the foreign language teachers use and finally it has a very strong digital site that offers many resources to support the learning that the students get in the classroom for the native spanish or heritage spanish track we are recommending the galleria from vista higher learning and we found some of the strengths from this curriculum to be that it's very flexible many
064of our students come to us um with different levels and each activity in this curriculum has three different levels so right in the classroom we can differentiate instruction for the different levels of the heritage speakers there is also a supersite which the publisher calls it and it's continually updated with relevant and engaging resources so this curriculum will be relevant in the digital platform for many years to come and finally within the curriculum it prepares the students for the ib and ap program so when they are ready they can move on to further their spanish education this committee also recommends diverso for from the mep education and a diversa would be targeted for honors in spanish it's a class that goes from 9 to 12th grade and it it also addresses the iv curriculum it prepares
065is a preparation of two for the students to go into ibe spanish iba spanish it is over in sl which is the standard level in hl which is a higher level and the column there it is um that this um committee recommends its spanish education and uh for the first time we are very extremely happy that we are going to have a book if you approve uh they would address and support that their residence individual development and the ib curriculum on the other hand at ike we have temas which is from visa higher learning for the iep in spanish and we are renewing we recommend to reduce license and upgrade online platform and we keep we have the same curriculum for the ips so the real question how much is it going to cost so
066i think it's important to notice we look at the numbers for costs that it's not just textbooks we're purchasing but one of the requirements i asked them was that there was going to be an e-text component the board knows we went one to one this year we're going to continue that so there's multi-cure licenses on the e-learning side of the house as well it's all enclosed in one sheet you know one package price so on the left-hand side of this slide you can see that the curriculum totals will come to roughly 215 000 uh we spent about 20 000 on professional development this year and then we'll continue doing that next year as well for ongoing support and then one of the pieces that weren't highlighted in the curriculum is that we've been looking at
067a supplemental literature piece that's an e component called flangoo which provides uh spanish literature to students with acts like it's lots of books online lots lots abundant amount they can put in more and more so and on the right hand side you can see the breakdown of all five recommended curriculums by price uh for that's quoted so the total comes out to roughly around 243 000 is that the end of your presentation we have one more but if you have questions go ahead now let's go ahead and finish it off okay all right well the committee really wanted to uh leave with you a couple of our next steps because you know like i mentioned or hopefully mentioned we really appreciate this opportunity to come together to be able to collaborate middle school through high
068school across buildings and we really feel this need to continue this collaboration across the district we know that this is part of our strategic plan making sure we have 50 percent of our students receiving the seal of illiteracy fifty percent of our middle school students and world language programs and so we really need to make sure that we have consistency and strong world language programs across our district and so that's something that we believe very strongly we need to continue this collaboration between all of our buildings we also are wanting to look at a district-wide implementation of a placement exam one thing we've noticed as spanish teachers our students come in varying levels of proficiency and we want to make sure that they're in the most appropriate placement for them as i mentioned before twenty
069percent of our classes are designed for spanish speakers heritage speakers and eighty percent for non um but we know many students are coming in a higher percentage of our students have a home language of spanish than 20 in our district and so we need a placement exam to make sure that we're placing those students in classes according to their proficiency level so they can be successful and that will lead us to the next step that it's spending heritage spanish classes offering it in all the schools to reflect our community makeup and to accomplish our goal number four bilingual and violated it by graduation and to end our committee believes in a strong spanish core and to be able to accomplish and for students to attain the seal by literacy and i just want to give
070a little as i know when we first started we had 60 students attain the seal our numbers now are up in the 300 and i know they're going to get a lot better when we start testing students in the middle school and with dual language coming in we want to meet kids where they're at and i know that our students are going to excel because they're going to be even more prepared so we as in the spanish department really need to provide rigorous academic spanish instruction that really supports students need students that are spanish speakers from home and students that come in learning this the language for the first time and thank you thank you very much any questions from board members go ahead not a question but a comment i want to um extend
071my thanks to each of you and to the other committee members that aren't here today i appreciate that you all have included student voice in your a process and solicited feedback from the community as well i especially like that you're honoring excuse me heritage or native spanish speakers i think that's something that is often overlooked and they think back about uh when my dad and his family moved to the united states from mexico who was 13 and was placed in a special ed class simply because he he didn't know the english language and so the fact that we're now um as we implement the curriculum able to honor a native spanish speaker and build upon their skills rather than assume they're deficient in some way i think is really excellent and i'm really encouraged to
072see that so thank you so much for all of your work on this any other questions or comments mr superintendent do you have something to add you know me i'd always add something i i try not to but since you pitched it over to me again i have a special place in my heart for these teachers when i when i started here i started as a spanish teacher at wilson and then eisenhower and uh i remember uh when we started back in the day when i was here i would have native students come into my class in spanish one where they're learning basic vocabulary and it really felt like it was uh criminal to be doing that to our students uh and to pilot at my time here at wilson native spanish courses and then
073have that happen at the high school and see the achievement of our students all the way up at the state level winning state essay contest i know that davis had a long standing tradition of having multiple state winners uh through essay contests but it all starts with the foundation of our our teachers at the uh middle school level and then up through high school so i'm really excited for the opportunity uh that we have in front of us to provide materials resources to elevate the outcomes for all of our students and this is one of the things that we talk about when we're talking about equity and how we can address the needs of all of our students and thank you so much for your work for calling out our strategic plan that that makes
074me happy every time i hear it because the board here this was the board that approved uh the work on the strategic plan and to see that it actually is giving the direction that we we talked about and we worked on with the community uh uh is amazing uh and and then seeing of course the outcomes that will then scaffold together with our equity policy so thank you again for your time this evening and for the wonderful presentation and i would add my congratulations on providing us with a really quality review and recommendation thank you to sean and to your cohort of how many 13 teachers who during a really difficult year took on the challenge of curriculum review and provide bringing to us some excellent recommendations for future spanish curriculum that will really move
075us in the direction that we that we need to move in that the community want us wanted us to move towards so thank you very much ladies for being here with us tonight please extend our congratulations and thank yous to your your your colleagues who were on the committee with you and also congratulations to you sean on your new position we wish you well okay if there's [Applause] if there are no ron go ahead all right so we asked that the board of directors approved the purchase of secondary spanish world language curriculums resources and professional development in the estimated amount of 250 thousand dollars thank you so much second been moved by norm and seconded by graciela that the board of directors approved the purchase of secondary spanish world i can't see world language curriculum
076resources and professional development in the estimated total amount of 250 000 is there any discussion barb could you uh read the role please mr raymond navarro jr aye mr norman walker aye president martha rice aye ms graciela via nueva aye motion passes four to zero thank you barb thank you sean and thank thank you to the team okay next item on our agenda you know you get to a point in your life where bifocals are too far away and the regular glasses are too close uh next item on the agenda is permission to renew the contract with with sipsy wsipc for the 2021-22 school year for the annual cost share and infrastructure service cost share stacey thank you president background information the district data center will contract with with sipsy to provide support maintenance enhancement
077of withsipsy services and develop future services as authorized by rcw28a dot 320.080 parentheses three and rcw28a.10310.180 parenthesis three comma group purchasing and or bidding for data processing services or related services may be part of the activities of a cooperative with sipsy also provides hardware hosting for the yakima school district the contract renewal is in the amount of three hundred and fifty one thousand six hundred and twenty four dollars the twenty twenty twenty one contract was in the amount of three hundred and fifty three thousand eight hundred and eight dollars requested action that the board of the directors grants permission to renew the contract with hussipsi for the 2021 22 school year annual cost share in infrastructure service cost share there any questions from board members i would entertain a motion that the board of directors
078grant permission to renew the contract with was sipsy for the 2021-22 annual cost share and infrastructure service cost share so moved second moved by raymond seconded by norm is there any discussion this is a renewal of an existing contract barb could you read the role please mr raymond navarro jr aye mr norman walker aye president martha rice aye ms graciela via nueva aye motion passes four to zero thank you next item on the agenda is the permission to award a bid for the east side schools restoration project stacy yes this was um presented last week and um assistant superintendent anthony moreto stated that we would resubmit it for this week with adjusted we went back out for bid so in the background this is for adams elementary school hoover elementary school martin luther king junior
079elementary school and ridgeview elementary school for phase one of redoing the the parking lots so the background information rcw 28a.335 requires the board of directors to solicit bids for items or work that exceeds 75 thousand dollars four elementary school parking lots are in need of repair adams hoover ridgeview and martin luther king jr these repairs are needed to restore the parking lots and other walking areas before deterioration causes more issues the engineer's estimated cost of the project is two million seven hundred and fifty one thousand eight dollars and sixty-five cents the following vendors submitted bids in savanni construction incorporated one million four hundred and two thousand five hundred and fourteen dollars and twenty four cents in central paving llc two million four hundred and two thousand three hundred and sixty three dollars and fourteen cents
080the winning bid will be m sevany construction incorporated they were the lowest bidder and met all the requirements are there any questions from board members the only question the only question i might have is it's obviously the low bidder but there are a lot of degrees of quality in paving work and it's interesting to me that they're able to do it for so much less than the engineer's estimate and one of the questions that comes up is sometimes that cost can be reduced by not doing the under work you know the foundational work you can do a an asphalt surface and it'll look nice for a year or two but if you haven't done a quality job of the base work of the gravel and the land and all the buildup to a quality service
081in two years that work's not going to look real good and so i i'm assuming that we've done due diligence on the quality of the work that they're going to do on that i just it's nice to have a good deal but it makes me a little nervous when it's too much of a good deal i can say that um that um i'm i just texted jay balcom since anthony's not in in the state at this point in time who told me if you did have any questions director um norm that uh he would respond to that so i just did ask him if they're doing the underwork as you described i've recently just had my driveway re-asphalted so i know what you're talking about when it comes to the underlayment in the gravel and
082if it's not being done appropriately yes it work looks nice for a year and then it falls apart so trevor did you want to respond to that yeah i'll go ahead and add something here norm i i know that anthony murietta who's who's leading this uh charge is not here with us and i think you bring up a very good question uh i i know that he has been very aware of preventative measures that will benefit the district in the long run i do not know the details around uh what you know what the intricacies are in looking at these parking lots it very well could be a situation where we do not have to address the under part of the uh uh asphalt because it's we're doing preventative measures uh but i can't speak
083to that at this time with him uh not here this evening so i would just submit that i don't i don't subscribe to the trust me approach either so if the board would like greater detail we can certainly bring those back at a later time norm are you asking that we delay decisions i think if we can delay to get a little more knowledge of what's happening without putting it off so that we're not you know we want this done obviously before september but you know i don't wanna i i just it just makes me a little nervous to see those those figures be so far off we do have another meeting next monday do you think we could get answers to these questions by then yeah i do i i do he's back on
084saturday uh i know that what you brought up uh director walker was brought up by anthony if you recall last meeting where he was actually surprised at the low construction costs my suspicion would be that it's back here because it was verified but without having the conversation with him at this point i would i would actually recommend that we put that off until next week it's only one more week and that won't have a negative effect on schedule or anything like that i i can't answer that question it would at least push it back a week i don't know beyond that well we have until september right right okay um we are going to pull this agenda item then and uh revisit it on monday at our monday afternoon meeting okay all right um we've
085reached the second opportunity for comments from members of the public barb has anyone submitted to speak to the board i can't hear you no okay all right mr superintendent do we have a need for executive session uh we do not have a need for executive session i would mention one item of potential interest okay and uh not potentially not for discussion tonight but i did want to bring up that we had some very successful graduations we did uh we had great feedback from the davis and eisenhower specifically and the outside graduation and i would just put it out there that if the board ever wanted to entertain a conversation about uh what it could look like in the future we could maybe do that at a later date fortunately graduation wasn't yesterday you were wise
086beyond your years oh i don't know about that okay that was just like to comment on the graduations and that they went very smoothly and and i mean the students were behaved really appropriately the crowds behaved appropriately the they went off without an obvious hitch so i know sometimes they're little things that don't happen well but they just went really really well and it was it was a delight to meet the students the beautiful part of it was that this was the first time in this year that all of the students in the graduating class were together all in the same place at the same time which when you stop to think about it's just a little bit odd but it was they were wonderful graduation ceremonies sarah did a wonderful job working with the
087high school staff at each school and i heard wonderful things from each of those high school staffs commending her for the work that she did um she it was she made it seamless for us i'll make sure i pass that on to her thank you i told her um at the end of one of them and they've kind of all run together now but um [Music] i'm i would i i said i would imagine that doing coordinating all of these graduations is a lot like running a three-ring circus and the elephants have just escaped she agreed so please extend our appreciation to sarah trevor please extend our appreciation and congratulations to the high school staffs and the alternative staffs as well they were wonderful ceremonies they each were unique in their own right and um
088i i only heard good things around people who came up to me afterward and said how much they appreciated the venue how much they appreciated the ceremony and i think the kids had a good time too if if i may have a comment um we'd be remiss if we didn't mention john pleasants who worked hand-in-hand with sarah to help get everything ready to go and he did an outstanding job also john did a wonderful job with with the whole setup and and all of the audio oh my goodness you know like i know how difficult it is to try to set up a room like this i mean i think i know but to try to do that in a stadium with an overflow seating area it was just yeoman's work though i know he
089didn't do that on his own he had a whole cadre of students that helped him but it was it went off flawlessly anything else from board members okay anything else for the good of the order mr superintendent no okay then we are adjourned thank you all for joining us tonight have a safe drive home our next business meeting is july 27th we can understand if you have other plans but um we would invite you to join us if you're so inclined