Equity Work-Study Session #11 & Monday Board Meeting for April 26, 2021

001so okay thanks everybody for joining um it has been a wonderful wonderfully glorious spring day and i appreciate you all taking time out of that spring day to be with us um we've already had bailey join us um from adams and she'll be back at 4 30. and dawn glad to see you good you're good to have you here i've been here just acting crazy and that would be different how well i signed on about 10 after and it went in and said no one is allowing you in the meeting so i guess y'all don't want me in the meeting so i'll dismiss myself okay well let's get started i'm sure we're going to run out of time um with our study session but marcus we're going to turn it over to you okay um

002so we are moving to chapter 12 in the courageous conversation book i want to um make sure you have access to this link that's in the chat this is a early preview so this is not um really i'm just doing what i want which is giving you a draft of the equity policy that the coalition has been working on um the courageous conversation chapter in it glenn singleton shares a vision of what um a racially equitable school system looks like but our students and staff um and families have been working on a vision of what a racially equitable school system looks like for several months and so i just want to start with their work as opposed to unpacking glenn singleton's vision and there's a great deal of overlap in those two anyway but i

003want you to have this recognizing that we are still meeting with a ton of community groups and so this is not nearly a finished product but this is the current thinking of a coalition of students and families and staff that have been working on this um i'm gonna try to share screen and i know there is a um request for copies of the slides so i'm going to send the copies of the slides afterwards right after this meeting my tendency has been to share materials in advance only if we're expecting you to review it in advance because there's things that change as we're moving closer to the time so if that's not workable then um let's have a chat about that at some point but um that's why you haven't had it before and these

004slides are changing every time i interact with a different group all these slides end up changing so um we want to make sure that we don't nothing's ever really a finished product we're all working in progress but for this conversation we're looking at how do we explore a system a systemic framework for achieving racial equity in schools are you able to see the slide okay and so um one the prompt i wanted to start you with is we've spent kind of the last three to four months engaged in this courageous conversation book study and so i just want to hear from you to what extent has the time been necessary or worthwhile and where should we go from here and if you each kind of respond to that that would be great so i'll start

005with martha who prefers not to be referred to as president or madam yeah especially madam um thank you marcus i think this has been so worthwhile um for me personally and for us as a board and cabinet group [Music] to be able to have these kinds of conversations is is unlike any other they're unlike any other type of conversation we've had as either as a board or as a cabinet board team and quite honestly i don't know where we go from here because i'm learning all along the way thank you don yeah i i'd like i i know this is worthwhile i've been one pushing for for racial equity since i've been on the board in any community uh where do we go from here i say we continue on because uh it's it's it's

006going to open and broaden our input on how to bring change it's uh it's good to see that um the board as well as the administrators are willing to spend time in and look at this racial equity in education and as we look at it in education we can see where's racial inequities in society and to take a stand and to speak up and where we go we continue on with the work because this uh uh ever going it's alive and well every day work that has to be done and yes it may bring some of us out of our comfort zone and in our thinking but eventually we will come to understand the importance of this so i i i'm enjoying it thank you thank you graciela i agree i think that the uh

007last uh three to four months has been um uh really helpful i think it's been um i think helpful for the entire group um here to go through it together and i know that other groups have been participating in uh similar discussions as well i think it's good to have to be able to level set and ensure that everyone understands um the same language essentially the same terms and ideas and in theories that we've talked about so that common understanding i think is going to be really helpful i think it had added for me at least um has the added bonus of really um connecting with everyone on this group even though it's only been via zoom you know there's a a level of um i guess a higher level of comfort that i have

008uh with with this group and i'm hearing everyone's thoughts and and ideas and comments as we've gone through this i think has been really helpful kind of just from a personal relationship building piece um again even though it's been via zoom i think the topics we've talked about have been so um important and necessary um um i think without has been an added benefit i think for probably a lot of people in this group not just me thank you raymond i i really enjoyed our sessions together and learning more about equity and the related topics has been it's been a personal journey for me it's opened my eyes on some things and so i really like where we're going with this i do like that the board like that the board is discussed in this

009and what the intent to to serve all students that help all students succeed um i do have some reservations and i don't know maybe i'm misinterpreting some of the readings especially in chapter 12 when and and i can see now that a lot of what we've read and a study in the last few months is really based on critical race theory and i do i do really um agree with a lot of critical race they read tenets the major ones are the key tenets of rape critical race theory i am however just i'm this is what i'm thinking about it's just i have some reservations on that it and you know even singleton made some statements in the in the earlier chapters that kind of puts people it divides people right and it divides people

010between oppressed and the oppressor and you know i felt oppressed 40 years ago when i was in high school but i don't feel oppressed now i i believe i can go out and do if i want to go further my education i could do that i can if i have the means i could buy a home wherever i want to just about you know i can get a job wherever i want to in any any of the united states in america i could go to the golf course which 40 years ago that was probably not something you saw a person of color but i think you know we made great strides and uh great um i don't know what we call maybe moral changes in the united states with people in united states so we're

011not i tend to disagree that that racism is so prevalent that it's keeping people from achieving their dreams and goals which to me if i were to internalize that that would take away power for me and you know you've heard my story right my my maternal grandfather and my father that they faced i thought a lot of racism in fact you know they weren't allowed into store certain stores or restaurants and restrooms and all those type of things and they then let that stop them from achieving their goals so they took that power despite racism discrimination and despite whatever they faced they continue to to go for their goals and their dreams and make a better life for their families so i i think that i am worried about the message to our students that

012the reason why they are not succeeding succeeding or the reason for these disparities between students of color and white students is all due to racism so i i i'm kind of thinking about that and how we can how i'm processing or how i can if i'm good with with supporting that um again you know i don't think we're the country we were in the pre-60s uh you know not even we made a lot of strides and again i i don't feel oppressed and this approach outlines or divides people into the press and the oppressor and i don't see all white people as oppressors i don't see all white people as trying to keep the people of color or students of color down i don't see teachers in our school district waking up and saying you

013know what i'm gonna go to school and keep all the white kids uh i'm gonna help them be successful and all the students of color that i'm gonna make so difficult for them that they can't achieve on whatever test or graduate and so forth so i i'm just having trouble with that piece as well um and it seems like you know we talked about white privilege and so forth and it seems like white people have it better than people of color i don't i don't see that either i don't see all white people having it better than than people of color and i don't and i mean we're all at different levels in our lives and we've all accomplished different things and so some of us have gone through hard times all of us have

014and some of us are in good times so i i don't see that you know as a and i know i'm taking long but i'll a couple more minutes but i you know i i have certain privileges in my family i'm the eldest i have certain privileges as a veteran i have certain privileges as a board member as you know in my profession but it doesn't have nothing to do with the color of my skin so you know i always go back to what martin luther king said that it's that we need to judge each other on the content of our character and not by the color of our skin and it seems like critical race theory does that division between people of color and white people and it's all based on skin color so

015you know a more would like to figure out the direction i like to go is how can we okay focus on racism right because racism does exist and it has existed for for a long time since whenever right it's a problem it's a human problem and it continues to be a problem um but i think that if we work instead of dividing between people of color and white people i think if we combine forces if we look at our similarities those things that kind of bind us together i think we can make more progress if we do that rather than divide and say you're the oppressor you have privilege and i don't and i'm going to do whatever i can to take away your privilege or or that white people have to confess their sins

016right and be atoned for their sins past sins i i can't wait for white people i have never waited for white people to confess or atone for their sins i'm going to do my thing and i have done and so is my family and we took that example from my father so those are my thoughts when we go forward moving forward is your question i again i think it's better that we all work together we focus on race but we also focus on what's the similarities that is we want all students to achieve when all students to realize their their dreams and goals we want them to be have the best life that they can once they leave the yakima school district and that they're be prepared and so not that they can't achieve because

017there's racism and structural racism and so forth but i'm trying to i i think more if we work together and focus on similarities and help our students achieve then i think that's the direction we should add thank you thank you norm um first of all before i i say anything else i'd like to just compliment my colleagues on this board for the work that we've been doing in this process and i know that a lot of people in the district are doing this work but our colleagues are the only people doing it on camera in front of everybody and i think that's that is a unique risk and i think that's it's it's not always been easy and it's been but i think like graciela has said it's brought us closer together we've learned a

018lot about each other and that's the nature of doing the tough work is that you do as raymond hopes you do end up working together more rather than in silos um and i i think i think we've made a tremendous start and i think we have a lot to to do and i think we're going to get some pushback and i think we're going to need to be ready for that one example would be raymond mentioned critical race theory i don't know if you read the herald republic but in the last there have been two full-page ads in the last couple weeks put out by the washington policy council which makes it sound like they're an independent little uh research group that just does neutral things well the washington policy council is funded by the

019koch brothers and it's funded by the evergreen freedom foundation and it's putting out stuff out there that is they're very sneaky about it so we need to pay attention to that and there make it sound so good that this conversation that we're having is a dangerous and evil thing to do when it's actually a good thing to do but we're going to get some pushback because they're they have a lot of money and they're putting that stuff out there the other thing that worries me is it that it tells me this work isn't done is that we have legislatures all over the country right now actively creating voting processes to deny people of color the right to vote because they know how those people vote they know where they vote and they're systematically trying to

020take those opportunities away and that is that is not um you know that's that's not a problem we can ignore that those freedoms that we've worked so hard to get can are very fragile the other thing is right now another thing that scares me is asking the asian american person if they feel safe walking down the street especially if they're an elderly woman or an elderly man and we can see examples all over the country where because of the the racist um thinking going on that people decide well it's an okay thing now to attack an asian person and blame them for covid so there's all kinds of things that if we're paying attention that are scary and that we have a lot of work to do to continue to to move forward and that's

021not saying we haven't moved forward things are certainly different than they were when i was a little kid but uh we it never it never moves forward without a few steps back along the way and so again we can never i think that the bottom line is we cannot be complacent and even in situations here i taught i hadn't mentioned this but i taught the diversity course for teachers for heritage university and one of the things that we did in that course is we asked people to gather comments you've heard in from teachers what are the things that they say to kids or say to parents and you wouldn't believe some of the things that are still being said out there two kids and two parents and from teachers usually white teachers and i'll just

022tell you one of them and one of them was a teacher in the lower valley was a pe teacher in an elementary school and anytime the kids spoke spanish to each other he would punish them and he would say you do not speak mexican in my class well first of all mexican is not a language so that teacher is an idiot but second of all he's immediately taking away kids ability to communicate with each other and so that kind of i could list off hundreds of examples of those kinds of things that teachers still say to kids and so we do have a lot of work to do and it isn't you know those are still minorities of teachers they're not most of them i think most teachers work really really hard to be fair

023and to be to be open and to be supportive of students of color but not all and we're not there yet and so i again i just say we i think we've done a lot of neat work and i think we just need to keep doing it and we need to stay aware and we need to keep reading and keep thinking and keep paying attention so thank you for listening to my sermon i appreciate you guys are preaching before the meeting started before the live stream i was asked were we going to need breakout groups and i was like well at the very end there's an activity for great breakout groups but i have a feeling that these guys are going to be long-winded today and uh yeah we're right there so um what i

024think which is fine you know process do do your thing so um i would really like to say first i want to echo i think it was norm who said you guys are doing this work on camera and that adds a whole challenging dynamic to that and still pressing through and speaking your truth and doing all of this work i really admire that there are some conversations that i would love to have with some of you one-on-one um not on camera and so if there's an opportunity for us to hang out now that we have shots in our arms i would love to be able to do that on a one to one or one to two basis where we're not having to have these conversations only on camera and in these very structured ways

025because i think we all have stories that we need to share with one another um and that's a part of the real uh part of doing the real work so um i'm gonna not respond to uh what you all had to say there because i want to try to push forward but i think the quotes that i want to bring out from the text there's on page 236 and 237 uh glenn singleton makes these two um statements that i really want to make sure that we don't miss so on 236 he says racial achievement disparities cannot be eliminated without talking about race and specifically talking about the opportunities access and success gaps existing between white students and most students of color and indigenous students and so that quote there has really been the driver of

026every conversation that i've been trying to have with any stakeholders in this district since i got hired is how do we learn how to have a conversation about race and it's not to say that race is the only conversation that we need to have but it is to say that if there are any racial disparities in this school district and we do not have the ability to engage in a conversation that is explicitly focused on centering race then we will not be able to address those disparities effectively the the lesson here has not been races everything and it's the only conversation that we need to have the lesson has been race is something that we need to know how to talk about and here are some tools for how to talk about race effectively condition

027one focusing on the personal local and immediate our stories and i've heard you guys doing that today uh raymond was talking about his story and his history focusing on ourselves that's important for us to be able to do that if we can't talk about our racial journey and our racial story we're not going to be effective in this work isolating race when it's time to isolate race so if there's data that we need to talk about we need to be able to isolate race so that we can see if there is a disparity to me one disparity would be if you're in a district where 80 of the kids are students of color but only 20 of the teachers are teachers of color that's a disparity to me there's advantages to being seeing people who

028look like you in leadership and in teaching roles and so that's one disparity that we would want to be able to talk about and address but if we can't see it and we can't isolate that then we won't be able to engage in that and then condition three is monitoring our agreements that we're talking that monitoring the things that we're working on here so that if we have agreed um we're making sure that we're following the prompts making sure that we're following the agreements making sure that we're holding all these things um together for that we are um i've gotta i'm putting myself on a pop quiz now oh surface and critical perspective i think that actually should have been three but that we're making sure that we are getting all of the voices at

029the table and then condition five is oh where's condition five somebody help me out condition five is what do you mean by race oh yes making sure that we're clear what we mean by race and that's actually one i think i would put it earlier if i wrote the book and then condition six is recognizing the role of whiteness and the presence of whiteness and how it ends up impacting the dialogue that we have and one of the ways this impacts the dialogue that we have by saying don't have this convocation at all right it don't see rape one thing that the king said which i found very interesting was when we were talking about these segregation and i'm getting it actually i'm not sure if someone's still unmuted but you know echo but one

030of the things that martin luther king said when they were originally talking about deserving the schools was that he didn't support desegregation of the schools martin luther king was supportive of desegregation in all other areas but he said in schools it would be dangerous to have people who don't believe in the ability of certain kids trying to teach those kids last year as an administrator in as a principal i had a teacher who said to a group of kids why can't you guys just do this the white way i had a teacher who hid a kid over the head who was on his phone only later to figure out that the kid was using his phone to translate the materials from class because he was new to the country only had been here two months

031and couldn't understand what was going on we didn't have systems for what to do with that we had to work to unpack and have those those teachers had some race work that needed to take place but we hadn't had a system really to do that stuff and there are probably principals who have story after story after story about these kind of things that are happening in our school systems and those teachers are still teaching we don't have a system that says when you do that you're out right away we have to work with you and try to help you to get to the place where you can be successful so these are critical conversations um that we need to have and the but the other quote that glenn singleton put here on page 237 is

032although it is transformative in and of itself simply talking about race effectively is insufficient and that's why i asked you where do you go from here so we're trying to get you some skills to be able to have a conversation about race and just like any skill it's only going to be with you to the degree that you practice it if you're not practicing it other than the times that i'm with you we're not going to it's not going to get you very far but we don't just stop at let's talk about race and racism all the time but now we have to go to what does systemic school transformation look like and so what i put in the chat was the current draft of the equity policy that's come from our students our families

033our staff in the system right now of what they see as needs of the system in terms of equity and so i want to give you an opportunity to take a look at the draft i want to ask you what do you see as their vision of what an equitable school system looks like are they talking only about let's talk about race or are there other things in there that are showing up in terms of what the work should look like because i think that they are presenting a vision of where we should go from here i'll give you maybe five minutes to read it and then just share reflections relative to this that was a very very quick speed read on my part but on the surface i like what it has to say

034i i would have to take a slower read to nitpick anything but i i think we're headed in the right direction yeah and we don't want to nitpick right now we want to just this go away at the 30 000 foot level but what's the vision that the group of people who put this together what's the what's their vision of equity um based on what you what you saw there and without reading a part of it but just what is kind of your sense why the sense is that i have is that they're really interested in uh really looking at the effect that race and our attitudes and perceptions and behaviors around race are a critical part of that plan but it also incorporates other issues that can cause inequities in our system and it's

035looking at all aspects it's looking at allocation of resources it's looking at getting the right personnel in the right places it's looking at training and ongoing development of skills within our staff and um so it's pretty comprehensive go go ahead we'll go ahead i like the fact that it encompasses so many people one in the development of the policy and two in the enactment of the policy it talks about students and staff and communities and families and um it it i love that 30 000 foot level view that i'm reading in this policy draft so thank you marcus it's a great piece of work and i would say i really like how they're the the policies inclusive of all students so we said well the policy says something about race class religion culture doesn't have

036religion citizenship gender ability so that's inclusive inclusive of everybody in that every student even those students the focus will be on them every day and that the ultimate thing is that every student in the yakima school district will thrive and succeed so i really like that piece is that we're going to do whatever we can even you know look at our systems i like the systems approach looking at that and changing whatever we need to do whether it's race or disparities looking at all that and making sure that everybody thrives and succeeds yes i really like this statement i thought it does a really good job of hitting the the key points i like that we specifically called out staff and have a whole section on on on that um i thought it was really

037comprehensive and in fact in in in reading it it was really around kind of a more holistic approach to equity and not um focused solely on race it really talked about a whole bunch of different um aspects of equity so um i thought it was well written i you know like norm it was a quick read but i thought it was pretty comprehensive i did oh uh norm graciela on that it is on a 30 000 foot level and it's all inclusive and it hits each point race inclusion it it involves everything in the part of the teachers and administrators it's all important um that's a great job of uh equity policy draft i'm i'm waiting for the the final version i know it's gonna be something that we will be able to achieve as

038a school board and as a school district so uh my accommodations to the community board and uh the students who came up with this i think we heard from everyone there but i'd want to push you back and say when you read through that what did you read that felt like man we are actively already doing this as a system or this is something that you think we're close to um is a strength of the yakama school district related to what was described there in equity a couple things one is we're having these conversations and we're having them across the district i think that's part of it part of it is it's a key part of the strategic plan and i think that um you know as long as that strategic plan isn't just a

039piece of paper on the wall that it's in something that we're continually using to evaluate what we're doing and where we're going that that it that it keeps it front and center so i think those are two things i don't think we're there yet i think it's a start but i think those are two things that have set us on the right path i agree it is part of the strategic plan and we are doing it as a board as well as the administrative uh the superintendent deputy superintendent's principles and it's in the crews it's a good start but there's more work um if we speak to it and be pinpointing what is needed to be done i can do it i uh that's the two point the two places that i see with the

040board and the administration and school that administrators are are digging into this uh equity policy and racial equity across the board and being inclusive i think something that we've been we've made a lot of progress in is with the new superintendent superintendent green we do have a new different even perhaps an improved style of leadership and i think the critical race theory points out adaptive leadership as being one of the or maybe single 10 i kept i think it may have been singleton in chapter 12 that adaptive leadership has to be part of the courageous conversations and critical race theory and so forth so you know there's a lot of transparency uh there's i know that our superintendent is is uh allowing people with who want to have talent ideas getting feedback from people you

041know he's he's doing a lot of that already and that's laid i think the groundwork for what we're doing now we've made great strides in that area as well so i'm not sure that i have a lot to add i think i really agree with the fact that we know how the fact that we included equity or component of equity in the strategic plan and that we've been talking about it for a couple of years at least and we've slowly been making some edits to our board uh superintendent linkage policies to um even just simply include the word equity in existing policy i think is a step in the right direction um so i think we're doing some things that are moving in a positive direction but certainly still have a long ways to go

042i think one one other thing we're doing well is the graduation rates for students of color which are higher there's no disparity there so that's one area that we're doing i think we're doing a good job in an area that we've really focused on so okay i think we're supposed to be there at 420 am i right martha okay so i'm gonna make this slide i'm gonna send it to a bar to circulate um in the next board dog so that you have it um and then but the next prompt would be where do you see us as being further apart and one of the places where i would argue that we're the furthest apart is in having skills and being able to have the type of conversations that we need to have around race

043we're doing it but until we're in a place to where the leaders in our system are able to have these kind of conversations and facilitate these kind of conversations themselves with their staffs and their schools and to really do that work um it's not because it can't be dependent on one black guy to run around to all the buildings and say let's have a conversation about race right we need to have that be fostered within our leadership team and i can tell you if you met the kids who were working on this policy they are so far beyond where the adults are in being able to have these conversations that i don't know that the adults can teach these kids are pushing their uh we the my work on this has been watering it down

044because the kids are so far ahead of where the adults are in the system and it's like if you say it that way it's just gonna go we gotta and so this has actually been a lot of coming back to try to help the kids to be closer to where the adults in our system really are and so we have this work to do and i appreciate all the feedback that you gave about this and we're meeting with various constituent groups we met with the native ed parents today we're going to meet with the migrant ed parents on thursday i believe this week we have meetings with bargaining groups we're going to be collecting a lot of feedback on this but i think the vision here is comprehensive it is much bigger than just a

045focus on race the message is not you know we are all tied down because of race or racism but the message is there are things in the system that we can do to remove barriers so that everyone has a more um equal opportunity and um i'm really excited about this work and like i said earlier i would really like to have some one-to-one time with each of you so that we can go into that i know that we had talked about doing that um with a couple of you previously but i would really like to have that time with all of you so superintendent green if you can help to um make that happen um because i think there are you know we just need to get to know each other a little bit deeper

046i want to say the last sorry i couldn't hear what you said siri thinks i was telling it to do something um the last thing uh that term critical race theory it's a term that we probably should unpack at some point i've never used it in any of the sessions that we have had because it is so been so politicized and it's so it just comes in with people kind of digging in um what i would say is the idea that race impacts us in ways that we are conscious of and sometimes unconscious of i think that's a reality that i've heard all of you articulate on one level or another and that's what it really is it's examining how is race playing out in all of these different ways um but i try to

047avoid the term because i'm trying to bring allies on to say let's have a conversation and the way that this topic has been portrayed over the last couple years in our media has made it hard for us to be able to um do that but we do need to understand the role of race we do need to engage in ethnic studies work kids should be able to see themselves in the curriculum of a school they should learn their history they should be able to surface their perspectives and i think that's really what that word that phrase is means to me but it's been so politicized it's just something that i try to avoid all all together because i just doctor excuse me what what term is that i think i had to turn off my

048earphones so oh that term critical race there i just think it's become such a you know wedge to where it's like when you hear it you think it it has people have an image of what that means even though it's never been unpacked what that what that means for them most of the time and so i try to avoid that particular phrase and i just say we want to be skilled in understanding how race is showing up in ways that we you know may not be conscious of and um stay there and then i think if we spend some time and unpack with that what that term means we may have a different view but i think you know it's been so politicized and i think raymond you're absolutely right that we have to figure

049out how we work together in this and language is such a powerful way that we have you know that it can be used both to divide and to bring together so um i thank you guys for this time it's i'm a minute over um and i do not have the assignment ready for next month we will probably be looking um at this policy more in depth and try to understand what's going on in there so i'll make sure that you get it after it has been reviewed by the community groups i just think it's important that our community has had all the say on it before um the board takes it and runs with it so this is not a final version but i do agree that it is a good start so thank you

050all thank you marcus um we are going to take a break for a few minutes until probably well we'll start at 4 30. thank you for for joining all us all here today this is the board's um meeting of april 26 2021 i'm wondering what happened to the year we're like closing in on graduation in about two seconds so we have um adams elementary leadership and um a special guest to help us with the pledge of allegiance today mr kaplichy is it you or senor contreras that is introducing our special guest i'll be introducing our special guest and um she is a special guest she is a i would call a lifer here at adams she did go to epic uh somewhere else but um all the other grades she's been here and and um

051i would say she's enjoying it um she shows up smiley every day and um is doing awesome things and this means this class so yeah here for us to do our pledge of allegiance is bailey gonzalez sanderson could you present the flag please and bailey you can start whenever you're ready after the flag is on the screen 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 bailey that was perfect absolutely perfect a plus for you on that pledge i have to give her a shout out to as her teacher because she was really super worried about the word indivisible today she told me that she was really worried and so i just told

052her to practice and she did a great job thanks it was awesome that is that that is a hard word even for adults bailey so you showed up a lot of adults that i know can you tell can you um senor contreras or stephanie tell us a little bit about bailey i can tell you what i what i know from just being her teacher in person and all year online um she's always been a very bubbly excited to learn awesome student her mom is also a teacher not in the yacon district but she did her student teaching here at her mom did her student teaching at adams um and so she has a mom that's a teacher her sister her older sister who was also a fourth grade student in my class a long time

053ago she's at davis now so we're keeping it in the family and i think she i i don't know i'd have to ask bailey i think she really likes school she shows that she does she was really excited that i asked her to do this school and i love to learn a lot you have a lot of learning ahead of you bailey so it's good that you like that you're in fourth grade yes i am in fourth grade nice so you get to be the big the big group in school next year huh the big kids nice i'm gonna let the the rest of the board members um tell you thank you for being here and they may have a question or two for you okay so graciela hi bailey my name is graciela thank

054you for being here you did a really good job on the pledge of allegiance and i agree the word indivisible is really hard there's lots of letters and sounds in there that are hard what what is one thing that you like most about your school adams um what was that recess recess is fun i agree well thank you for being here bailey did a really good job thank you raymond hi bailey my name is raymond nice to meet you thank you for being with us today and thank you for your leadership i know it takes courage to to come on to a board meeting and zoom meeting to lead us in the pledge of allegiance and that word indivisible i really like that word right we're we're all one we're all united and there's nothing

055that could break us apart so that's that's awesome so i just have one question is what is your what are your plans or your goals after after you graduate high school um be like my mom a teacher wow that's nice you're going to come back to yakima school district and teach right good good i'm going to we're going to hold you to that so i just also want to thank mr condress for your leadership as well with the work you're doing um and mr kapiki as well i know you're working from afar and of course our my fellow wapato wolf mr alvarado as well i want to thank him for his work and his leadership and adam's elementary good job guys and keep up the good work thank you thank you pastor davis hi bailey

056it was so good to see you doing that pledge of allegiance and uh i'm excited about you wanting to be a school teacher and coming back to yakima school district to teach maybe convince your mother to come back but i i also want to thank jose and doug and my good friend lorenzo for filling in for doug and doing a great work over at adams that's one of the schools that my church adopts and uh it's good to see you doing a great job really keep up the great work thank you and finally norm hi bailey thanks for joining us today i've got a couple questions for you i'm a person that loves to read and i love music so i'm curious who is your favorite musician and what's a good book you've read this

057year a good book that i mostly read this year is um judy moody i like it i read one of the books and my favorite singer is mostly um uh i don't know it's hard to pick a favorite sometimes yeah it's kind of hard because i like a lot of people and i like them i like their songs what's what style of music do you like the best hip-hop mostly you like pop okay does that make you a beyonce fan or a rihanna fan or something like that okay okay well keep enjoying and keep listening and keep reading thank you bailey i want to again thank you for joining us um we have been very lucky to have you with us today and thanks thanks to your family for giving you this time with us

058and thank you stephanie for being here for your student we very much appreciate that we don't we don't always see the teachers here we often do but not always it's a special treat when we can have the classroom teacher here with their student so bailey i'm gonna let you go if you want to go you're welcome to stay but if you have other things to do um we completely understand and um will not be offended if you choose to leave okay thank you for having me honey it was our pleasure thank you so much for being here bye bye-bye well that was fun it's always a treat to have the kids here um next on our agenda is the land acknowledgement we have been doing this for this is the sixth meeting so maybe a

059month and a half we've been doing this the board has um chosen to share the responsibility for reading a land acknowledgement at the beginning of every meeting and so i'm starting the the rotation again with today's land acknowledgment this is a document that we have coordinated with the yakama nation and it is my pleasure to be able to read this today today the schools of the yakima school district rest on the ancestral lands of the 14 confederate 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

060the caretakers of this land who have lived here and continue to live here since time immemorial an acknowledgement is a simple powerful way to show respect and a step toward correcting the stories and practices that erase indigenous people's history and culture it also honors the truth as a school district we will continue to build upon our relations with the yakama nation so that concludes the land acknowledgement next item on the agenda is a school presentation it's always fun to be able to have individual buildings present to us and one thing that i know i have missed greatly is being able to visit the schools during these meetings every month so maybe next year cross our fingers so i'm going to turn this over to senor contreras hi guys thank you i'm gonna present here my

061screen and let's uh everything goes according to plan right um you know uh thank you guys uh so much thank you superintendent green for allowing us to come and share with everybody here on the school board um and everybody else in attendance as well to share with you guys what we've been doing here at adams um often times doug and i chat and now lorenzo we're like what are we doing and we're just kind of doing different things and trying to get things moving and we've just enjoyed our time here i think i mentioned it to somebody um you know i'm having a lot of fun and they're like hey that's great but fun isn't part of your uh evaluation and so um get back you know and so it was fun to hear that

062but also just know that we are enjoying our time here it is uh it isn't always easy but it is a lot of fun as well and i think we're making good win i think in our presentation here today um we hope you see that and so i do want to say you know those of you who are not aware um doug has been out for a couple of months almost at home with some covet-related health issues and so in his absence mr lorenzo alvarado has stepped in and supported as acting principal and that has been a huge help and i'll mention in in the presentation but we're one of the biggest elementary schools here in our population is huge and and so it's just important to have that support and and thank you for

063everybody that helped coordinate that as well and we were able to provide that support for our students our staff and community as a whole and so i'm really excited to be here um i am a i'll let you guys know now i am a fidgeter and i play with my hands a lot and so i'll try to control them as much as i can but you'll start seeing them do magic tricks here soon and so i just want to let you guys know ahead of time um but yeah again we're really excited and i'm with that we'll get started with our presentation here so adams elementary um this is our mission statement one thing that we want to let people know is that we don't only have a mission statement but atoms as a team

064we feel like we are on a mission to support and engage all of our students and i think there is a sense of urgency in that not just having a mission statement but feeling like we are on a mission and um and i'll read it as a thread here it says adams elementary is a family who maximizes potential to inspire excellence in our community we cultivate relationships and school pride we maintain steadfast systems and focus on growth for all bulldogs and i think that is one of the things that we doug and i and lorenzo now have really enjoyed is seeing the staff come together to support our students and so again there's that sense of urgency we oftentimes and and it was said before we got here that there is a sense of family

065the adam's family and we joke a lot and we hum the song from the uh cartoon or the tv show depending on when you watched it and in doing that you know we really started to feel as a family and the things that we do for our community is very important so again our vision here is our adams family provides a safe and supportive environment that fosters a positive growth mindset and promotes success student success helps those in need and builds sustainable relationships and i think that last word there will carry on to the rest of our presentation as we focus on relationships relationships have been huge um and and i'll we'll look at that as we go through the presentation one of the things that we wanted to do again moving forward and looking

066at our work here is to focus it based on our district's compass and there was a lot of people that spent a lot of time and energy and and shared ideas in creating this compass and this compass has five great goals that really outline a great plan for our students moving forward and we're excited to align our planet atoms with that um before we were able to do that we had to take a step back and figure out where we were at um we are the fifth set of principles here at uh or fourth or fifth set of principles here at adams and and we wanted to really build a great foundation and we felt that with the goals there was pillars that were assigned to them the four pillars at the very top of

067that it says our four pillars are the building blocks for accomplishing our goals for student success and that for doug and i really resonated in our work that we did in july and august as well is that there is we need to establish a firm foundation for these goals we're going to be able to build these goals and so we took a step back from the goals not ignoring them but took a step back and and started to focus on our pillars again we wanted to have firm foundation block for our pillars to be built upon um for the rest of our goals and so pillar one teaching and learning pillar two we're in this together pillar three investing in people and pillar four bringing the pieces together and as we reflected again we started

068to figure out where are we at now and where do we want to go and then in that process we realized that again these pillars were crucial and two of them stood out to us three of them really but we focused on two and our plan as we go on next year to focus on the other two but that is where our focus has been uh the last month and so as we or this last year as we look at the work that we've done from july 1st even before then in june all the way to now it is definitely around pillars um two and three so this is a climate survey the cee survey that is done um throughout the year once once a couple times a year and the red and orange areas

069this was done in 2019 a red and orange areas are areas of growth so when we started to look at this we looked at them specifically the top five and bottom five and started to figure out areas that we could really focus and grow several of them are here and and i think if you look at our post data we were able to see that uh some of those we were able to make great gains and a lot of them were able to make great gains and so we were really excited so we looked at this and we started to figure out what do we need to do where do we need to focus our attention what do we need to work on and the biggest thing was again a couple of pillars um pillar

070two which was one this together and pillar three investing in people and we started doing that we started the very first thing the an easy way for us to get out in front of people was doing uh uh the meal distribution we were out here doing meal distribution every wednesday in the mornings and the evenings introducing ourselves to people making sure people know knew who we were we had a lot of questions here you guys and your principals were like yeah that's us we're the new you know principles and being excited for that for our community um you see there's a picture of uh mr don davis here coming out and saying hi to us as well but just supporting the community in the meal distribution as well i will talk about this throughout this

071presentation but partnerships has been huge and we built a lot of partnerships within our community one of those started from us being at the lunch line there was a lady that came through uh her name was maria and she said hey i run a kfc the manager asked if i was able to support somebody locally they want to donate to a school i said my students go to adams can we donate for them and we partner with them we're able to get our staff as a thank you and just show some appreciation i invest in them as well and in their tummies which is always important invest in them and say hey we have a meal for you thank you so much for all the things that you were doing that was just one again

072of many partnerships that i'll share with you guys another one mrs means um i think she's gone and i didn't tell her this but i'm gonna talk about her quite a bit or some here in this um presentation only because she was one of the first staff members we met we were gonna walk around the building and she came back and she had just came back from uh doing a home visit making sure they had books and other things at home food as well and it was just so neat to see um the dedication she has and has had throughout the whole time doug partnered with one of his friends uh and colleagues out in seattle and we were able to get a signed seahawks football for miss means she's a huge fan and so

073that was fun to see we shared that with them um and their students and the students were pretty excited too and so again one of many things that we're doing to let the staff know that we're in this together and we're investing in our staff who in turn invest in our students in the community again here's a picture of doug putting some food in the back of someone's car i wasn't in these because i was taking the pictures but i'll try to get doug to take pictures of me next time so um another one of the things that we did a really big thing that we did was a book study and i think um doug brought this in to our staff and we had over 40 staff members working on this book study some

074in the morning some of the afternoon but it really allowed for us to have great discussions um and sharing of our thoughts and our perspectives on these three ships relationships leadership and partnerships and i would say doug and i have worked on and with the staff have worked on relationships but partnerships have been just closely knit with that as well along with strong leadership and so this books that really allow for that i think crucial conversations to happen with our staff to get us moving forward in the right direction all being on board um and i think that has been a good building block and one of the strategies i would say that we've used to establish that foundation as we build our pillars and then focus on achieving all of the goals that we

075have so we started doing a lot of these different things we've enjoyed again the work this is a survey the survey results so i'll go back one here's the the survey results 2019 um and here's a survey 2020 in the fall um huge i would say huge gains and i'm biased obviously because i am the assistant principal here but bias and i think this is um really great um data to show some of the growth that we've had in our staff the perception data we have the highest number of parents involved as well this in this survey more than the last several years and so it was fun to see the engagement that we're already seeing uh from the the i would say small foods of our labor so far that the parents are engaged

076the students are engaged and as a staff we're engaged in in working on things to make us as a staff more effective to impact the lives of students and so we've enjoyed seeing that a little bit about adams um if you don't know we're 696 students according to ospi um which does not include our preschool classes which we have three of them which is about 54 students our demographic is 95.5 hispanic three point six percent white point four percent american indian point three um biracial multi-racial and then point one african-american um and so huge population hispanic-wise we have a huge population here that we're working on providing equity for but also providing acceptance and and just that welcoming that welcoming feeling um in our campus and so we're excited to implement different things on our

077campus to do that a few more numbers i know sometimes people like numbers but we have a few more numbers english language learners 61 almost no matter that low income 91 percent migrant 16 percent and i believe i'm not wrong sean mcgee said this is one of the higher ones in the district um and again students with disabilities is almost 20 so being the largest elementary school when you convert percentages into numbers it's just an overwhelming amount of numbers um of our students so many of our students are in some of these categories if not multiple categories and so we're working on making sure that we are providing an equitable learning environment for all of our students and in doing that there's a lot of work to be done and and um one of the

078things a couple of things that we are doing either doing currently or getting ready to implement for the following school year are these four areas we believe um we are a school of focus and so we're working with some iss ossi funding but also some support there to improve academically with our students part of that is we're looking at improvement science framework and doing some studying there between those two activities there are those two programs we're looking at 12 to 18 hours that our staff are committing outside of their regular construction time and so it's a huge lift a huge commitment time for our staff members but again i think doug and i and now lorenz are establishing a good strong core foundation these pillars so that we can lift this load together and i

079think we've seen our staff um not just one group but kind of spread out to our staff everybody's willing to help and support in all these different areas and so it's been fun for us to see that it's not just doug and i and lorenzo but as a staff we're coming together and really figuring out ways to better meet the needs of those students another one that we're implementing for the following school year which i would say i'm the most excited about maybe and i'll tell you guys a little bit why but i'm the most excited about is dual language um huge commitment from our staff we're so excited about it we're so excited that four of our first grade teachers are wanting to teach it but we're only doing two strands and so we're

080trying to figure out um his rock paper scissors or flipping a coin on deciding who's teaching in those classes so it's a good problem to have no nobody else can have those teachers they're great and we want to figure out how to incorporate them in our dual language here so another one of those is 21st century and we're excited to be able to start that in the summer as well and so again there's other schools that are doing these different programs and implementing these or working on some of this we're the only school doing all four of them and so again it's a huge lift for our campus for our staff and we've enjoyed seeing the commitment uh from the staff and doing all these different uh programs so one of the very first days

081that doug and i actually the very first day doug and i met i met him out here up front he walked up he walked out of the door i'm walking in and i'm like hey how's it going doug and he's like good and the first thing he says is hey dude you're shorter than i thought you were and i was like hey thanks you're taller than i thought you were i don't know and we started walking around you know kind of joked a little bit came into our offices and kind of talked a little bit about family and who we were and where we're coming from and then doug was like hey you wanna go for a walk and i was like yeah i'll go for a walk that's fine so we go outside we're

082walking around and doug is asking he's like hey what do you see what do you see and being new and this is my first you know job as a assistant principal i'm trying to answer his question like thoughtfully but i don't know what he's trying to get at he's like what do you see what do you notice well there's our building and you know the roof's a little faded but you know it's a good building and there's some toys looks like we got a new toy set and some bark and he's like yeah but what else do you see and i'm getting nervous about something i don't know i don't see anything else this is kind of this we're at the school there's nothing else really to see and he's like think about this you're

083you're a family that lives here we have 95 percent of our families are hispanic they come to school what's what's inviting them what's letting them know like they're welcomed here and i'm looking around and it's like english sign english sign english sign english i'm like well i guess nothing there's nothing he's like dude we gotta figure that out like we need to as soon as people are driving by people are walking up we need to let them know that this is a place that they are welcome and one of the big things that we started to do as far as our community connection which is really focused on that third pillar investing in people and we don't think of people just our staff we think of people as a community people as our students and

084so one of the things we started doing is any time that we well we started to get new science right we got a new adams elementary sign it's called maria the adams we got that up there and that was a lot of fun we got a lot of good feedback from the community they were excited that that was in spanish we also got some window decals again in spanish any signs that we do inside we're making sure that they are in spanish just to make sure that when people come into our building or they're on the outside they feel welcome they don't feel lost um and i and we think that is something neat for our community to have that hasn't had before and so um here at adams we also have these door hangers

085that i like to take credit for but i think we stole the idea from somebody else but all good teachers do that and um we took this idea and again made these door holders so when we were going through our home visits which we did i don't know how many um doug might have a better number we so many home businesses over the summer um trying to connect to families not just introduce ourselves but get them resources um that we were trying to share with them whether they were books for literacy whether it was food or other things we were trying to make that connection and so we wanted to make sure that they knew that we showed up and we weren't just two random guys knocking on people's doors because nobody knew us we

086were new principles to the building and how do they know just you guys showing up and so we thought this was a neat way to kind of get that message out like hey those guys have shut up they were the principals nothing to worry about um one of the things that we also saw while we were walking around is um and unfortunately it was a lot of uh broken windows and i think on the bottom left that you can see some of those windows again doug and i asked ourselves what message is that sending to the community do we really value education enough to make sure that things are taken care of so that our students come to school in a safe environment glass is not on the floor those kinds of things i gotta

087tell you guys we got a hold of manuel orozco he's our new maintenance director he has been awesome he had these things switched and done i mean within a week or two it was just neat to see his commitment to our students and and just saying hey you know we got to make sure that we're we're doing this better for the community you know um and again he had that same desire to make sure that the community felt what we were doing at school was great and it was a safe place for them to come and enjoy and so as we move forward we wanted to make sure that all of our signs the signage anything that we sent home is in english and spanish um any other language that become a part of our

088community here but uh for right now those have been the two that we've seen we have a big project that we'd like to do in the gym converting that a little bit and making it a little bit more inviting once we were able to do assemblies and so that's something again ideas that we have moving forward and trying to get community buy-in for that as well so one of those many projects that i talked about was uh during the summer visits was our books we delivered over 5 000 books to our community here not all adam students but many of the adam students it started out as a program with one teacher was giving out books she wanted to make sure that her students had books and that they each had three books something to

089read throughout the summer and so she got her 26 students three books and that was in june of 2020. doug and i got hired we heard about that we thought it was great um in connecting with grace of christ church with jacob and pastor alex and we believe though we were able to continue to gather books for our students by july the end of july we had 88 families or 88 students that had received books by the end of november we kept doing it until it got a little chilly but by the end of november we were 560 of our students have received a book um now if you do the math you're like hey that doesn't quite add up what's going on uh the reason why it doesn't add up because that's 500 or

090560 of our students um but as we would go out to the community we would see daycares we would see uh neighborhood kids that maybe went to mlk or barge or garfield or other places and we knew that they were just as interested and probably just as needy to have some of these resources so we started to give out any kids that we saw we throw in extra and we go and deliver them to them and so that is one of the partnerships i think we were excited about in the daycares and some of those families to be able to leverage that and i'll mention that as well here in a little bit but um just a neat opportunity for us to connect again with the community um listen to what they were needing and

091try to become kind of a resource manager for those people some people were like we need certain things and we would go and reach out whether it was me publito or grace of christ or stone church or um other community lifegate or other just family members that we know it was fun to make those connections so we're really excited um that we were able to do that right from the get-go and we've continued to do that another one of our partnerships again looking at those two pillars and feel like we're in this together and supporting our community is something that i would say is pretty profound in the hispanic community uh soccer hoover is something that is common amongst many communities we are privileged and honored to be one of a hundred of these to

092be a campus has one of a hundred of these in the u.s u.s youth soccer and target are partnering to provide and make more of these all the time in different communities and we are again one of a hundred of them in the us to be able to have one of these i will tell you guys before the white nets you can see them a little bit before those white um goal posts were put in kids were already playing uh the fence was up it was colored it was painted kids were already playing having a blast enjoying their time with something new in our community was a safe place again schools should be safe all the time and this is a place where kids started showing up playing soccer um pastor don davis and also

093uh superintendent green came by one day and they were they saw the kids out there playing and it was really funny to me because one little guy was taking the soccer ball dribbling dribbling kicked it in from the side and made uh made it through on the side not to the front but to the side and he was just as excited as he would have made it to the front he just was yelling gold and cheering and running around and um it was just fun to see again from day one before the goal posts were in there kids have been using it um our students love it at recess um i was out there the other day blocking goals from the fourth graders but they could only shoot from the middle i was a little

094scared if they got a little bit closer and so they were able to shoot it from the middle and that was it so again we're really excited for this in the fall we're hoping to have software for success which will it'll be between 50 and 60 students that will come and learn good health habits and enjoy and playing soccer as well and learn the sport that they haven't and so it's just fun to see that the honor that we have to have one of these in our community here again one of the big things that we focus on is partnerships partnerships leadership relationships getting out in the community partnering with people um to provide unique opportunities or unique things for our students and um two of these that were very close to each other were

095project 500 and the giving tree project 500 happened first and so normally what they do is they go and partner up so a donor and a student will go and shopping together provide 75 so go shopping together getting clothes anything that they need um because of covert they weren't able to do that and so there was a big i don't want to say disconnect but there was sadness amongst the volunteers that they weren't able to do that because it's a huge joy that you see in the kids face as you partner with them and you're going with them shopping even though it's early in the morning um you're able to go and shop and get things for them and so one of the things that we did we did a little bit different but we

096were still able to provide um warm clothing and gifts for 250 students um i cannot read off all of the partners it was over 40 or 45 people uh companies and groups of people that were supporting this effort there's a picture of some of those there but triumph group i would say was one of the big partners in helping organize all of it i don't have the i would like to tell you guys more about katie mcgee she's one of our slps here the speech language pathologist but her family is very involved and has been doing that project 500 here at them since it started whenever you guys come and visit please come find miss katie mcgee ask her what is your connection and your family's connection to project 500 because their involvement and dedication

097to it has been so neat and uh it was so fun to hear their story um about them so i ask you guys when you guys come and visit please stop by and look for miss katie mcgee and ask her that um a couple weeks later or almost a month later we did another one with which is called the giving tree um and again over 250 families received holiday gifts the generosity of our faith-based partner to provide gifts in a year that has been so hard for so many uh was so moving and so touching um you know covert has been one of those years where the kobe year this last school year i think somebody mentioned earlier but you know what did a year ago you know there was a lot of loss for

098people there was a lot of job loss families many different things that made the year really hard um but to see the generosity in two different projects like this to be able to provide um something for you know more than half of our students um was just sony and so again touching and again it goes back to our pillars that we're focusing on which is we're in this together and invest in people and i think both of these programs and projects really help support that so so one of those things that i mentioned earlier was going out to the community and sharing those books now in those books giving those books to the bakers we were able to connect with them um doug and i did this really crazy crazy thing and we gave out

099our cell phone numbers to everybody and uh when doug first did it i was like yeah dude that's pretty cool you do that and then i'm like well if you're doing that i gotta do it too and so i started giving out my cell phone number to people and at first i was pretty nervous about it and i was like man my wife is gonna be calling me who's calling me all these times and what's going on and really it became something people were calling and asking about specific things um when school started um things on computer stuff i was able to talk to people on computer tech issues um just so many different things and it was so neat to be able to support the community that way um and one of those was

100through our day periods and so we're hoping i think moving forward is to leverage that and be able to again the seeds that we planted and providing them books we want to better support our students when they come into kindergarten so how can we support these daycares to provide them either resources training so that their daycares um maybe are a little bit more focused on academics so when they come to school they know their alphabet they know some numbers they know how to count a little bit and one of the things that we've seen in our in our data is tender readiness and that is one thing that we want to address and we think um in our minds we have a golden ticket in the connection that we started with our daycares and being

101able to reach out to them and support them in this way again we have a huge migrant population again 95 of our students are coming in from the hispanic community but a lot of them the majority of those are bilingual and so how do we support them again one of many partnerships is trillium trillium they are in charge of or they they do a lot of housing here um and one of the things that they've done with us is they supported us in in books um they're i mean i so many different things a project 500 was one of them um so many different things that trillium has supported us in and one of the most recent ones is is buying some books for our first and second graders that we're hoping to give out

102their bilingual books but we're hoping to give them to our first and second graders again to continue that early literacy skills and so we're really excited for those being empowered connected supported resilient and engaged it's what we want for our students again one of those goals and one way that we found to do that for our students is in providing them again partnering with rotary and the rotary club of yakima and providing these desks for students and um if you go online there's a lot of different stories about people providing desks for students this one i would say is very touching to me as a child i was at third and fourth grade and my mother bought me a desk actually she didn't buy it for me it was donated they were gonna trash it

103and she saved it she salvaged it and brought it to our house and she said miko this is your desk when you're sitting here i know that you're working on studying you're working on paying attention for your schooling i am not going to ask you to do any chores i'm not going to ask you anything with your little brothers i'm the oldest of five if you're sitting here i know that you are focused on your education and i want you to do that because i want you to one day graduate i use that desk for studying but i also use it to get out of a lot of homework and a lot of or not homework a lot of chores um and things that i didn't want to do going to places that i didn't

104want to go to i'm studying mom i can't i can't and so uh but in doing that the combination of having that desk my own place at my house that i can go and study at was really important you know um many of you uh and myself included are we're sitting behind the desk right now or maybe it's a makeshift that's like mr pimpleton outside so that's that's kind of nice but we are we are sitting behind a desk or we have a desk at work or we work from a desk and it's a desk is something important for someone that's working hard has goals and is accomplishing different things and and again for me to have a desk at third or fourth grade nine or ten years old and have good teachers a combination

105of my own space at home and good teachers really has made a huge impact on me um and i've seen that in my life and i get so excited to be able to provide again the initial goal was 100 desks um and that's what we asked for rotary depending they changed the materials around what they were going to do and instead of just saying hey we're going to do the 100 desk they were able to double the amount of deaths for our students so now it's 200 and now it's not just third grade now it's second grade and again the combination of a desk supportive awesome teachers made a huge impact on me i could only imagine i could only imagine what 200 desks and 100 staff members at atoms what the impact will have

106on the community here and and i think that to me is is again long-term goals and looking um to the future and making an impact that's going to be beyond just a year beyond just their time in adams but setting them up for success whatever that may be after um college again it's after high school and beyond and so that's one of the things that i'm really excited about if you would like to come and see some of these students be delivered to our second graders this friday from one to two we'll be delivering those to our second graders um and i say delivering but we're not going to be delivering they're going to come pick those up um some families do get asked to have them delivered and we're working on that but the

107majority of them are going to be picking them up on friday between one and two so you're all invited to come and see those students receive their desks one of the goals that we have as as a district is bilingual by literate by education by graduation um through education our team has done again the the people that are in this dual language team have done so much to get ready for this um i gotta give a huge shout out to dr darling um our team when they go to trainings um and they go to pd's where dr darling is presenting at uh whether it for whatever dual language they come back and they're more excited than ever to really begin to implement those pieces implement dual language in our school again we have i would

108say a good uh issue i don't want to call it an issue but it's a good problem to have but we have four first grade teachers that want to see the value in it and want to teach it unfortunately we're only looking at two spots here again don't share that with any other school because i don't want them taking our good staff members but we have an abundance of people on k12 that are very interested in providing um this for our students and so we see the value in it our staff are involved in accocha adtle imagine learning is one of our local programs here that we're using to to support those students um again different glad strategies enhanced core reading instruction or equity um spanish classes some people have enrolled in spanish classes and

109so again we're currently in early exit building but we're transitioning to a one-way dual language in the fall or we'll have two strands preschool will have two classes and kinder will have two classes and then we'll continue adding a grade and two classes every year by 2026 all of our students pre-k to fifth grade should have access to a dual language program if they choose at adams elementary and we are ecstatic about that and so excited to be able to provide that for our students again we're we are viewing our students and what they're coming in with their spanish as an asset as opposed to a hindrance in their education one of the main reasons why i feel very connected to this is because i was a student that started in yakima school district in

110a spanish-only class first grade kindergarten first grade was spanish only by second grade i had transitioned to english but i got to tell you my my transition second third fourth and fifth by fifth grade i didn't transition to english i had only learned english and lost my spanish and that spanish wasn't cultivated and i got to tell you guys that that was hard to figure out what to do then and for me the wake up moment was when i couldn't go and speak to my grandmother okay we hung out with my grandmother a lot but i had lost so much nobody around me was speaking spanish at school that wasn't really um [Music] to be able to speak spanish it wasn't cultivated so i just kind of spoke english because everybody else is speaking english

111and so for us to see spanish as an asset as opposed to a hindrance in our learning education is huge and so i'm just so excited to be able to do that again i started to pick up spanish again when i was in high school because i wasn't able to see my grandma and i was in different sports and the majority of kids were speaking spanish and it was jose contreras not being able to speak spanish and that is that is a hard to get used to and so it was one of those things i was like you know what i need to do something about this i need to change that um i will say i didn't take spanish in high school i wish i would have i took french and i speak french

112that's it that's all i know um but i will say that um being bilingual and by literate is something very close to my heart because i think the struggles that i would say i had in my educational experience from second grade or first grade through high school i think some of those barriers could have been eliminated by having a more profound dual language education i think i'm so excited that we're able to offer a better learning opportunity for our students now especially here at adams and so beyond ecstatic to be able to do that one of the things that we saw in our students was the importance of resilience being resilient since march 13th of 2020 there has been so much change the end of the school year was different summer was different the beginning

113of next school year was different the transition from online to tutoring the transition from online tutoring to in person it has been a huge transition for everybody not just our students not just our staff families day um our tech department i mean everybody and i got to say a huge shout out to our tech department they've been amazing through this whole process um i send uh in our partnership you know process we sent doug and i sent lunch to them early on in the year and thanking them for all the work they've been doing um again one of those focusing on partnership relationships and leadership and in that relationship part was huge but uh and actually today this is random and not part of my presentation but i had one of the tech guys come

114today uh sergio and asked me hey how's it going doing i know he's been gone still and you know we just want to check up and see how he's doing so hey let us know let me know what we're thinking about i'm still and so again from the beginning we've worked on setting up those relationships and again doug and i and lorenzo now have really continued that process with all the people involved anyone that we interact with you know at the end of the day we're here for kids how can we best figure out how to do that um and it's just been neat to see and so resilient has been one of those things that i would say and i thank all of our adam staff for exemplifying that in our community with all

115the changes schedule changes uh learning modalities changes everything has been so different the online pieces of all of that and so it's been so fun to see our staff exemplify that in the community and the community really take um follow that and and and be supportive of that hey you know what i know it's hard but you're doing it we can do it too hey i know that's hard you're doing that we can do it too and i think we've enjoyed and i've enjoyed seeing that we've enjoyed seeing that in our community and our staff huge learning curve for the families okay most of these families um they didn't finish school either in mexico some of them didn't finish school here um a doug and i uh we had a parent night where people were

116coming and asking um about where their group was whether a or b and they said well what you know if you're a through l you're group a if you're um m through z your group b and then you know one of the questions well my last name is gonzalez so they're my a or b and you know some of the things that we i think take for granted and some of the basics like wait it's the alphabet like that is something that some of our families don't know not all of them but some of them and so really taking a step back and trying to figure out where are they at and how can i best support them has been huge and so um i don't take for granted what they might or might not

117know and so it's important for us to be able to share that so i just want to say our staff have really been resilient and shared that with our community and thank you to our staff for all the work they've done rain or shine we're out there supporting our students and welcoming them to our school one of the things i was walking by one of the campuses on the north part of our camp on the south side of campus and i saw this sign outside of our window and i'm kind of closing here in this but it said awesome things happen here i took a picture of it and i just kept thinking i'm like this is a great way to to save um or to summarize the things that i would say are happening

118here again i'm biased because i'm the assistant principal but i think doug and i and lorenzo would agree awesome things are happening here um and we are just so excited to be able to be here and putting in that work so i'd like to show you guys a quick little video um of just a little bit of the the style or taste of the things that we've been doing here that i would say have made a huge impact in our staff [Music] good afternoon uh we're ready to do some bulldog hugs we're super proud of all the kids that have had a chance to get at home.com and thank you for all the hard work the teachers are doing as well mr contreras go ahead all right [Music] hey guys uh we're here again to

119do some more bulldog bugs um i am not a piano player but [Music] second grade camellia martinez salazar [Laughter] everybody welcome back to hold foreign [Music] oh [Music] hey everybody uh we wanted to uh say congratulations for everybody helping getting our school supplies and our food and all the things last week but uh last month we wanted to recognize teachers and peer educators so uh we are every month uh you have an opportunity to kind of nominate somebody in the friday focus and say what great things are doing unsung heroes that are unsung bulldogs and so we just want to say thank you for all your hard work to all the staff [Music] what's up ready first day bulldog house [Music] do [Music] good [Music] hey guys [Music] let's see and i just want to

120close in saying this um the adam's motto again i think from the beginning to the end i think it's one of those things that um we believe it's really ingrained in what we do but i make a difference in the world i learn i lead i lift up others and i'm a bulldog so thank you guys again for letting us come and share a little bit of what we've been doing here at adams thank you jose that was a wonderful presentation it gave us a lot of information as well as being extremely entertaining but i have one question for you have you slept at all this year you know that is a great question um i have yeah i've slept uh how much is the question i think more specifically how much i've slept but

121no we we do you know we go home and at the end of the day obviously long days and sundays are shorter but um you know i will say it's been it's been a lot of good work that's been happening here doug and i at the beginning and lorenzo and i the last several weeks just just working um supporting our staff so they can better support our students and so i think that's been kind of our again our our goal and our pillar when we focus on pillar two and three it's just making sure that we're in this together for our students and so we've enjoyed that well it's it clearly shows that you've enjoyed it i'm gonna let the rest of the board members weigh in and if they have any questions or comments

122that they'd like to share graciela do you have anything looks like graciela is frozen oh that makes me feel better well i i want to thank jose and doug and especially uh lorenzo for uh the great job that you're doing over there i i always feel welcome when i come to visit you guys per the superintendent uh but i really want to uh give a great appreciation to uh lorenzo alvarado who is a vice principal at davis doing scheduling and sharing his time uh when asked did it with pleasure to go and assist while doug was out and i just you know that's love that's appreciation that's love for the students and the families and to see him in action as i pass by in the morning sometimes to see him out there with the

123families and the students and welcoming in all the teachers and the staff over there and adams are doing a great job and you guys keep up the great work and god bless thank you thank you don raymond do you have anything yes i too want to say that i did very much enjoy the presentation um adams does have a near and dear place to me my heart and so we do continue to work with those families and with uh pueblito organization so thank you for that i do want to say i appreciate the approach you're taking because the adams school has always been a hub of the east yakima community and i really really appreciate that it continues to be that you continue to partnership i really like the the your part the pillars you

124know that you're partnering with the grace of christ and the the bethel ame church and countless other partners in the community to raise uh student achievement right and and so i really like that it's and i know it's it's not easy work to do that to balance all that the community and students and families and teachers and so i don't see you mr contreras as being short but i see you as a giant in our community i see all of you as giants right as giant leaders in our community you know that i really like that you're really not not only focusing on the school which is important and you guys are really doing a good job of that but you're also focusing on the welfare and the needs of the surrounding neighborhoods and communities

125so that's why i say you guys are giants in my eyes and for the work that you're doing so thank you mr contreras for your work mr kapiki and i also want to thank mr alvarado for for your work as well and for lending all your years many years of experience and expertise to adam so we appreciate all the work that you're doing just continue the work and we know we're gonna get those kids where they need to be so thank you raymond graciela do you have any questions or comments no questions but just want to thank you mr contreras for all of your work i really uh love the the energy from you and mr caplicky i think it's the video i think really did a great job of showing the energy enthusiasm and

126love you have for the work you do and and and the kids that go to adams elementary so i really appreciate that um i really appreciate all of the efforts that you all have taken to make sure your kids and families are welcome to to to the school i think that's a really really important um uh factor that um helps all uh um folks who might feel uncomfortable um going to school feel a little bit more welcome and like they belong there and so i thought that was really neat and i just love seeing all of the connections that you all make to students and families and all of the extra supports you're providing around meals and gifts and books and different things like that so thank you for all of your work thank you

127so much yeah thank you yeah one of the things that we've talked about too is that every every interaction counts right and you never know what that one interaction might be that makes somebody decide to become a doctor or become a teacher become a superintendent or a school board member or anything and and we have to be aware of that and make sure that every interaction with our students is great and is uplifting um and i thought they're loved and they're appreciated and that they're able to do something and i think you know we're establishing a good foundation on where to build that so thank you i'm glad yeah you guys have noticed man i appreciate that thank you norm do you have any comments or questions no questions at this time i just wanted

128to compliment you on really looking at yeah at the whole child in doing whatever whatever their needs are that you're really focused in on what kids needs are and families needs and i really appreciate that oh i do have one question though with the size of your school and with you have over obviously over 130 special needs students i'm curious to how much support staff you have um so we have a counselor school counselor we have a social emotional um specials i think that's her position we have the mtss position um we have doug and i and two office staff members but yeah we will gladly always take more if more is given so yeah well i think when they ask a school counselor standard there's one counselor for 250 students we're running a little

129short for you so hopefully somehow in our our district can find a way to get you another counselor down there sounds good thanks norm mr kaplicky do you want to weigh in on your assistant's uh prowess in presenting to us today yeah thank you so much uh and i appreciate uh members of the board and superintendent greene um i i really do want to weigh in and thank you for the opportunity uh mr contreras really jumped out of his comfort zone and i just appreciate everything that he has done um as a brand new um principal lorenzo and i both have 15 plus years of experience and we've talked about uh what a superstar mr contreras is and the superstars of the staff um i have to say the members of our community and that

130the parents have really been the mvps this year because we've never been closer we've never been closer in those intimate um you know the remote learning hybrid learning and i can't say thank you enough to our parents um and then also um thank you for just for my own personal side of things the district team um and the district uh ysd members that have reached out to me through uh just trying to get out of the hospital and get off oxygen and some of the things um i just i can't say thank you enough um to uh superintendent green and his leadership um and and and all all members of the cabinet that have reached out and so um i just uh thank you and uh mr contreras uh excellent job um i miss i

131miss having fun man i miss having fun with you and uh get off this oxygen and we get some bulldog hugs again and get some high fives or some some virtual high fives with some of our kids and uh just keep the energy going but um thank you for supporting our culture and climate and what we're trying to do in the public relations that we're trying to build um i just again appreciate everybody within the yakima community yeah when i saw bulldog hugs on the presentation in your little video i i wonder to myself what does a bulldog hug look like i've seen bulldogs attacking trash cans and all sorts of things but i've never quite seen a bulldog hug now i know what that looks like so thank you for that visual and doug

132it really is good to see you we are so glad that you're that you're on the road to mend mr super mr superintendent do you have anything to add thank you to the board members for expressing all of your thoughts and gratitude to the staff and leadership at adams uh you put it so eloquently i don't need to add much but of course i will and i want to call to attention uh to the board the great uh change in the culture and uh growth at atoms you notice the slide that was almost all red those are negative indicators or opportunities for improvement and then you saw how that transformed to entirely blue that cannot be understated we know that the center for educational effectiveness reached out thinking that there was something wrong going on

133with their data but only to find out that uh the work that's happening at atoms to set a culture is exceptional uh there's a saying that uh culture eats strategy for breakfast and uh i i think that that has been in play at adams uh with the leadership that we've had i also uh want to restate what uh reverend davis shared and that is the gratitude to lorenzo uh for stepping in i uh trained under lorenzo as an intern uh i was at washington when he was a principal and his leader she's forgotten more about being a principal uh than jose knows currently but jose under the two of lorenzo and working with doug i know you've only been there a short time i'm excited for you and what you're picking up under under lorenzo

134and then under uh and it's not even under those individuals it's working with them so thank you for your continued dedication and growth and lorenzo thank you he you may not know this but he's the first recipient of the stick your neck out award here that we've given to our leadership uh for going beyond his comfort zone coming from davis high school where he has been for so many years and working in the secondary uh level for uh his career uh to enter into the elementary and be with the kiddos there in adams uh personally thank you lorenzo publicly appreciate your leadership appreciate you being such a team player and uh for not only loving the davis community but for loving the yakima community and thank you to you as well jose doug and your

135entire staff you're only as good as your staff and you've really done a great job in building them up and setting some consistency even though you're currently out doug but jose and everyone else chipping in to show that we are committed to having some sustainable leadership at that school so thank you speaking of bulldogs i have a person who walks a bulldog past my house every single day about this time and they're just down the street so if you hear the security team going on alert that's because they're they recognize that the bulldog is just down the street thank you all right before we go is it possible to hear from lorenzo from mr alvarado before absolutely sure lorenzo do you have anything to add of course um so number one it's been a privilege

136and an honor to be able to help i don't know if you guys know this but uh during the summer i was assigned as a mentor for jose and coincidentally i was asked to help at adam so jose and i i had already established a relationship and it was a pretty good relationship and it was easy to say yes when asked by trevor and clint and uh you know doug caplichy has a dad named guy kopliki and guy kaplic and i go way back so when i heard i was getting to help doug this was a no-brainer you know what they've established what they've started there what they have going is a good thing it's easy to get really excited about positive energy and there's nothing but positive energy at atoms now that said it's

137a pretty challenging building it's a building that's been hurting for a number of years that is finally getting to a better place and it's exciting to be part of a team that's helping take that that group to a better place and i know that they miss doug and i know that they're enjoying jose and i know that they're putting up with lorenzo so i'm excited about doug coming back uh i i'm happy to hear that he's getting healthy it's been a a joy working with jose he's a young guy with a lot of energy and with a lot of years ahead of him and uh he does put in endless hours and he's very dedicated to the kids the families and the staff and i think in that order and that's just the way it

138should be this is all about doing what's right for kids and their families in that community and it's it's exciting times at adams elementary and uh it's been a good experience for me to get back in there and be part of this and i'm gonna tell you it's a lot of work but it's the right work so thank you and i enjoyed the opportunity that i'm getting and i'm also excited that doug will be back soon in person so doug can't wait for you to be back my friend thank you thank you lorenzo that was wonderful um we have a little bit more on our agenda you all are welcome to stay but we completely understand if you have other things that are calling your name and um you need to go we won't be

139offended we know how riveting school board meetings are though so you know you're not going to miss you're not talking to the cabinet are you martha because they need to stay no i'm talking to the adam's staff [Laughter] so thank you all have a great afternoon it was a wonderful presentation well that was fun i enjoyed that just the visual of a bulldog hug is going to haunt me for the rest of the night um next on our agenda is a waiver of graduation credit requirement application process robert do you want to weigh in on this before we throw it to rob uh actually we can just move directly to rob thank you okay martha dr darling good evening esteem board members and um super president rice thank you for having me so this is

140more this is um an introductory um portion there's no action to be taken but this is to provide you with the process to which students will be able to receive the additional graduation credits that were awarded for this year and following this um bob noe will present the resolution that goes with it so students to receive graduation credits will have to go through five steps the first one is they have to meet with the academic counselor designee will request a waiver from the principal and they'll present a rationale that details the specific circumstances in which the the warrant that warrants a request and if that if the student believe they should qualify then they meet with their counsel prior to may 17th and so you're aware um every senior that's graduating has been contacted already

141by their school administrators their counselors and the grad specialists around this so this information has already been happening behind the scenes prior to this so they're not waiting for this for tonight to make this stuff put into practice step two the principle will consider the following factors and granting the waiver the academic history of the students the plans put in place by the school to support the student in meeting graduation requirements specific disruption to coursework and assessments based on the school's closure in spring of 2020 and subsequent limited in-person academic access in the format of schooling for the 2020 2021 school year and the level of preparation the student receives for their post-secondary plans and whether or not this level of preparation would be affected with or without the waiver step three if the waiver

142is granted the principal will submit a formal letter to the student that describes the specific credits waived and a copy of this letter will also be placed in the student's qm file step four if the waiver is not granted the principal will submit a formal letter to the student that describes the rationale for declining the waiver and the individual students plans to meet credit requirements the copy will place in the student file in step five if the waiver is not granted the student may request an appeal an appeal board appointed by the building principal will hear the appeal and make a final decision the board this appeal board will consist of at least one counselor and educator with experience in trauma and form of instruction and cultural culturally responsive education and when appropriate a special

143ed or an el teacher or a migrant student advocate now this is just the one page document that the process goes through the actual process itself is about five or six pages and has a series of checklists and if yes go here if no go here and so it's a very in-depth detailed process to make sure that we can that we're able to support students in reaching their graduation requirements as as much as we possibly can what questions do you have thank you rob are there any questions for board members i do have a question but i'm trying to formulate it still in my mind because i had to take a quick break okay in kindergarten any other questions from board members and we can come back to raymond when he's got his his question

144formulated is this the first year that we've taken advantage of the waiver process rob do you know so we had a waiver last year that allowed us to waive um elective credits and this is a and we took advantage of that last year and then this year is the first time we're able to do the elective credits and required credit so this allows us to waive a couple of required credits so we've taken advantage every time it's been available to us and do you know off the top of your head if there were many students last year that took advantage of that you know i don't believe i've ever received that information i will find out get that information to you it's just it was just a wondering on my part yeah raymond have you

145got your question yet sure uh maybe halfway but i'm just gonna go ahead and ask it anyway it just has to do with kids or students be prepared for whatever next steps that they take whether that's college trade school or a job how would this impact them in that manner well i'm glad you asked that because there are there there well there may be some possible negative implications for students waiving credits some students may be accepted for a college contingent upon them passing courses a b and c and if they have one of those courses waived the university may rescind that college application offer and so the the counselors and administrators are very aware of that component of it and so they're working with students to make sure and with universities also to make sure

146that if these courses are waived will it then negate the students opportunities to go on to a different career path or in the secondary education opportunities and so those are some of the tricky components to offering these waivers the universities are aware of these waivers and so they they have been reaching out and communicating with height with public head around this issue but again we're not sure how all the universities are going to respond if some of those core credits are waived that we're contingent upon a student accepting be accepted to that university and i'm also thinking about once they get to even a community college or you know their placement scores in english math how might that affect be affected as well seems like they might start at a lower level have to spend

147more time and in remediation right and and part of the part of what this course is this the wording and the intent of it is saying had this student been giving been given enough time and enough in-person learning the student has the foundation and the and the already has the foundational knowledge and the ability to pass the course and that that thus waiving it which in a sense is a high school's way of saying we know the student has is able to meet the minimal requirements to pass this course so we're going to grant the waiver they're not going to grant a waiver for a student who has not shown up at all has not shown any level of proficiency at all i don't think this is going to be a i don't think it's

148going to apply to uh to the majority of the students i don't think the majority of students are going to be able to have these credits waived because their core requirements for a reason and they and the unit and they have to be able to show that they would be able to reach proficiency does that answer your your question you're formulating yes thank you i'm wondering it go ahead i'm just gonna say raymond and i are in sync so we can finish each other's thoughts i'm wondering if it would be informative to board members to know at some point after graduation how many students waived how many credits absolutely and then and maybe in what whether they were core or electives i would like to know that to see if was core or electives would

149what they what their choices were you know you know we can have that information to you emma uh i would anticipate at the um in by in one of our july meetings okay there's only one meeting in july so you have the almost the whole month to take care of that alrighty i'll do my best any other questions from board members okay thank you rob um next item on the agenda is approval of resolution 11.20.21 emergency waiver of high school graduation credits trevor as i pass this to bob i just want to thank him for his work to prepare items such as these for the board so thank you and thank you to rob for his presentation so without further ado bob would you take over thank you superintendent uh good evening board so this

150is a follow-up to rob darling's presentation this is the resolution that is required for the board to pass in order to implement what rob was talking about the state board of education promulgated whack 180-111 in response to covid and you know taking into account the impacts it had on students especially some of the ones trying to graduate and may have i mean maybe on the bubble for credits so that they provided two additional potential credit waivers in order to do it though the board needs to approve the resolution so that's what's presented to you this evening thank you thank you bob uh would what is the board's preference i know that the there's some technical information in the resolution do you want it read out loud or have you had enough enough opportunity to review

151it i've had enough opportunity to review it i've read it so i'm comfortable moving forward okay and i saw a thumbs up from raymond so um rather than go through what is a pretty dense resolution um are there any questions for bob about the resolution or comments okay seeing none i would sorry i couldn't find i like in the last section it says that students will have let me let me find it again the opportunity to earn credits needed to complete graduation requirements uh through continued enrollment beyond the planned graduation date so i really like that plan so i wanted to mention that i think that's a good plan um and they would do that probably through summer school it's a question for staff [Music] do you have the answer to that rob sorry can

152you repeat the question um students who want to actually um that maybe have waived that credit but want to actually acquire the credit they can do that after graduation through summer school yes correct okay good good good so maybe that answers part of your question raymond about um and and maybe some of the concern that that parents or other or institutions might have as to whether the kids can actually gain the credit or not yes it does thank you thank you so if there are no other questions or comments i would entertain a motion let me get back to it entertain a motion that the board approves resolution 11.20.21 emergency waiver of high school graduation credits second move by don seconded by graciela is there any discussion i just want to extend my appreciation to

153the state board for um being so responsive to the requests from school districts and school directors in implementing this this is kind of this is it's not something that is written into permanent language it's an emergency thing and we've been through a year of emergency so um i appreciate their flexibility in allowing for this to happen okay any other discussion barb could you call roll please reverend davis jr hi graciela via nueva hi president rice aye raymond navarro jr hi walker hi pass the vote passes 5-0 thank you so much um next on the agenda is approval of wasda permanent position legislative proposals this that is included in this agenda item is a proposal that i received from the riverview school district which is over in the carnation duvall area some of you may be

154aware that they are um very proactive in their advocacy for students in student voice and they asked if we would consider signing on to this permanent position proposal that will go to the resolutions committee so norm will see this in his work on that committee and i told them i would be happy to share this with you all and get your feedback if you have any or if there is an interest in um taking a a vote for approval i would like to speak we need to take a vote for approval of this right is that a motion don could make an emotion that moved that we vote to approve this uh legislation for was there on st it's a permanent position for student voice for student voice okay all right do i have a

155second second is there any discussion yes i do have a good question i'm just wondering what does this mean does that mean that our board will have a student representative or two because it's very general and even specific in the second paragraph that student voice and advocacy should be considered in all major educational decisions so that's the question it's it doesn't say uh what boards or what groups or anything that will they will be part of so just wondering if you can elaborate on that i'd be happy to i spoke with the author of this lori oviatt which some of you may who some of you may know um and i spoke with her about it because that was my question exactly were they um is this going to be a permanent position where school

156boards would be um maybe not required but encouraged to have student representatives on their board and this is a discussion that our board had had and she assured me that that was not the intent of this proposal that it's more for just engagement of students um and and allowing students to advocate with decision makers and also advocating on their behalf with other decision makers like legislators and so on um and i shared with her our student voice and advocacy what that looks like in yakima with the superintendent student advisory committee of 40 or so kids from all four of our element all four of our middle schools and i think discovery lab i think there's one on there from discovery lab um the middle school at discovery lab as well as all of our high

157school programs are represented in that 40-ish number and she thought that that was an excellent way to um gather student voice and allow for student advocates for students to advocate for themselves with with um decision makers so it doesn't it doesn't place boards in any required position or pressure position to place um student reps on the board but just allow for them to have a voice thank you i i just want to be clear i'm not against having student represent representatives on the board i just wanted clarification on this um proposal so thank you raymond yeah and just another clarification on on permanent positions they're not legislative positions they're statements of belief or statements of value from saying that they they believe that this is a valuable way or to function and operate as a

158school board so again even in this one it doesn't specify the structure in which you receive your student voice or get student input but it just it states that there's a value in having um that we believe there's a value in having student representation in all major decisions that we make as as a board of directors and that we have some kind of vehicle in order to provide that student voice so i think in terms of having a single representative on the board it doesn't mandate that particular structure oh i like our structure i like the idea of having a group of students that that we systematically receive their voice and and go from there but again that's right it's not a legislative proposal it's a it's a it's a position statement john right right

159now that is a permanent position for wisely and several other school uh districts and boards have a group of students that the superintendent meet and they bring information back and that's a good thing uh mother now we've been working on this for how many years martha going forward you know you know that's that's that's the position because there are several big districts on the west side that have a a a student voice and it it it gets from all the students uh and they bring back to the superintendent and superintendent feeds to the to the school board and uh i think that's a this is a great way to do it uh we have a great uh student advisory to the superintendent that's very sharp and have great ideas and on proposals on policies and

160we have used some of it so it's working for us so and again as when this goes to resolutions community again kind of my first reaction was a little bit like raymond's i thought is this a the title of it states student representative to school board or something on that effect and i think as since i get to be on the board or the committee that edits and and rewrites some of these things that we can look at wording so that it's clear that it isn't mandating necessarily a particular structure but that it's that it's advocating for some form of student representation so that's something that can be worked out in in editing and continued process so lucky me i get to help do that graciela did you have a question i did but my

161question was essentially what raymond asked so my question's been answered thank you okay thank you i did work with the author um the original language was the inclusion of the word on in the first sentence after representation so it would have said authentic student representation on an engagement with school boards and i shared with her that the that that word would tend to exclude districts such as mine who don't see them don't see their model in that resolution and so she's pulled that and um i appreciate her flexibility in doing that are there this this will um with our once it goes through the the process and the permanent position process is much like the legislative position process where um the the proposal is submitted the resolutions committee will look at it and review it

162and maybe change some words or not change some words and either approve it reject it or send it back to the originating board for rework and then we'll undoubtedly see this at general assembly in september for the entire delegate body to vote on so um i expect that there will not be any problem getting this position through the resolutions committee um it seems to be like one of those well done don't we have that yet [Music] and i appreciate the riverview school district submitting this is there any other questions or comments martha i just wanted to say that the yakima school district is already doing a lot of this work we know that a student voice is important and an important piece of about what we're trying to do and so i would say that

163this position is really aligns to what we're already doing so i would support this position thank you raymond we do have a motion on the floor to approve the permanent position proposal entitled student voice it was moved by dawn and seconded by graciela if there are no further comments barb could you call the role please reverend davis jr aye ms graciela via nueva hi president rice mr raymond navarro jr aye mr norman walker aye motion passes five to zero thank you barb i'll let laurie know she'll be she'll be very excited to hear this um i did forward to the board this afternoon a draft of um a legislative proposal that i will bring back to you next week and um once i've gotten some maybe some language tweaks done it it is it deals

164with the development of an equity based funding formula for pre-k 12 education to replace the current prototypical school model funding formula if staff or board members have any language changes that they'd like to suggest or tweaking of language that they'd like to suggest i'm open to that i will be forwarding this draft language to a couple of boards that have already asked to see it so that they can approve it or at least review it um it would be it's important to me that we have for this particular type of proposal um some representation from various parts of the state as well as representation from small districts and large districts as well so i will be kind of shopping this around to folks in the next week or so all of these have to be

165turned in by the 14th and um of may so if you have um questions about the draft language that i sent you or if you have some language change suggestions um just get in touch with me okay okay uh next item on the agenda are superintendent updates mr superintendent thank you president rice uh my first comment and members of the board i appreciate all of you and the opportunity to share some information with you today i'm very heartened to see that we're joining forces with the river riverview school district uh dr tony smith has been there for quite a long time a great leader a great friend so i'm excited for that partnership the success of our stu superintendent student advisory council cannot be understated uh and i only bring that up uh because of

166the conversation about what's happening with riverview and the proposals that came before us in fact you may remember but i'll state this again because it's occurring this week the yakima schools foundation is actually recognizing the work of the superintendent student advisory council uh with an award this week so if you did not know that they have their 30th uh annual uh fundraiser their 30th anniversary and they have a featured speaker who is noah alvarez author of spirit run a 6 000 mile marathon through north america's stolen land and alumnus from davis high school so we're excited for that and i believe that dr pimpleton uh is speaking as well so it's going to be quite an event uh in the afternoon on wednesday it is a virtual event and we're excited not only for the

167recognition of our student advisory council but uh the exposure to the great work that they've done especially around the equity policy and i look forward to next year after the completion of the policy to see how they will continue to contribute and give input to the board on matters that affect students as ultimately the people that we serve first and foremost in the district other items of interest for the board today i did meet with our tech director today and there are some items to share with you we are replacing close to 1500 hot spots uh due to significant issues uh defects actually that have become uh exposed and uh it will be at no cost to us but we will start at the end of the week to replace uh 1450 hot spots and

168i'm excited about uh again project gemini because once we have that up completely running we would not be at the mercy of the hot spots like we are currently in some cases in addition um e-rate uh through e-rate we are looking at a potential 2.7 million dollar application for network improvements which we do believe we will be able to secure and once that is formulated we will bring that before the board uh and make sure that you have all of the details about that 2.7 million dollar application that we are committed to achieving in addition one item that i have not shared with the board yet is that there is a planned move for our tech department we are looking at relocating tech from central office to the old stanton site so that is being

169cleaned up and some small renovations made to make sure that it is appropriate for our tech department which will create some more opportunities for some services here in one location for our um community so that's another exciting move that will take place uh in the month of june or early july uh regarding the enrollment for kinder we're currently at 470 students who have enrolled we have over 800 spaces unfilled but that is not a huge concern at this time because we are on par with our pace in previous years at this current moment so 470 signed up 800 spaces currently unfilled not worried about that yet any questions thus far questions from the board okay i'll move on uh to some up sorry i have a slow trigger finger on my i was i was

170looking through my old emails to see if i had the invitation from the school's foundation event i've inadvertently erased it from my email so is there someone who sent me that invitation uh kristen would you be able to post that yep thanks kirsten i are like mind i saw her start typing right away i think she was getting ready to spend that so we'll make sure that's in the chat uh and so that you can attend that event thank you trevor do we know how many of the kinders that have registered so far are kids that would have attended kindergarten last year had it not been for um the parent parent reluctance and getting kids into school no we currently don't have that information but that is something that uh once we have enrollment completed

171we can get for the board that might be informative for the board so thank you for that other questions thus far all right so we are going to have some kind of a fun moment here um i've asked oh not yet barb not this one uh i've asked uh not not that kind of fun yet we're actually we're actually going to share with the board the uh style guide for washington middle school uh the renaming uh and their mascot so there's been a lot of work that has taken place to come up with the appropriate mascot and i've asked kirsten to take us through so she'll take over the screen and share with you the next information great thank you superintendent green so just a reminder we do have up on the screen and i'll

172take you through what the outcome was of policy 4226 school mascots and other identification as trevor indicated maybe about a month ago now uh they did complete the process at washington and they being um the administration team which is principal bill hilton and assistant principal nick mifflin and his assistant principal gonzalo guillen wanted to remind you that gonzalo guillen has supported several years of student leadership at washington middle school even in his previous role where students were inspired to impact the naming and potential mascot change for washington so this has been in the works for years as you know there's legislation now that is suggesting changes to mascots where applicable uh but their interest and proactive uh miss was was far ahead of that law so they they didn't need that to make a change

173in culture and climate for their their school so uh they have an extensive brand style guide and i will take you through this quickly given that it is 6 18 p.m on school board night this is the lion that they have chosen so if you recall they were the colonials now they are the lions uh their style guide takes them through the purpose and this is a great nine-page guide for administrators and for staff and the community that helps them stay on track with the proper use of their logo it expresses the colors that are to be used with their new branding so you can see they they used to have just the black they mainly used black and white now they have black they have a flat silver a metallic silver and then various

174golden colors that they've used with their lion they have a different fonts that are usable along with their logo and what i like as a communications person who has to make sure they use branding appropriately is that it shows what not to do so it gives examples of how not to use their logo so they have that there the logo components are kind of fun and i'll see if i can blow this up a little bit more for you they have the head only but then they also have a standing which is more of their academic and a bit of their activities logo that they use and then for athletics only they chose this jumping version of the logo and with the creativity of our superintendent he brought in if you can see a slight

175w in the main of these fierce lions and so that was a creative feature that was brought in by our superintendent you can see it really nicely here on the head but it's subtle enough that it doesn't really jump out at you unless you know we've also given examples of use of the logo so coincidentally they are printing because it's picture day in the yakima school district this week they are printing new lanyards and new badges for the students next week when they do their launch of this new lions logo but here's um all the different ways that they can use it our brand specialists actually provided different logo files for them to use depending on the the different examples that they have so you can see how they could bring it into water bottles

176into shirts into their their school photos and then this is an addition that we um are doing for them they indicated that they have a spirit campaign that runs um and so it's lion pride that they will have and we've given them some specific logos into how to use their lion pride spirit campaign they can put those on hoodies again on their water bottles you can see this nice one so i'm sure they'll think they need a new scoreboard now right but that looks really nice there and then you can see how the athletic logos run too with that jumping lion you know really looks ferocious and here's some of their athletic uniforms that would be utilized with the the athletic jumping lion there's um this green what might stand out at you what it

177is is just an example of how to use the logo in proper color but you can use it on a if there's a particular program that's happening like we day i remember we had fluorescent t-shirts for we day one year you can still put the logo on top of a color without changing the logo at all so you can see this is an example of a stem camp also an opportunity proud proud jazz choir parent with fonts that are available for different support organizations so that is the new brand style guide um working with washington middle school this week to plan our launch for next week so we can do a launch for their staff and also then of course their students in school community are there any questions thank you kirsten any questions from

178board members you're on mute martha that's probably the most extensive branding package i've ever seen out of a middle school mr superintendent do you have anything else before we move to the covid response presence yes i do have a few more items and if you've ever taught or worked at a middle school you know that you need extensive guidance so that's probably good that they have the nine pages uh i'll expedite the finalization of my superintendent's report i did want to bring attention to uh the board and the community that the spring 2021 needs assessment survey opens today uh monday april 26 and it closes on monday may 10th and the purpose of the survey is to gather information to help the yakima school district identify understand and prioritize the needs of our parents guardians

179students and staff and there are separate surveys for each of those groups and that can be found at www.y on the main page where you can connect so that starts today and runs through may 10th also the equity policy is on pace uh to be presented to the board in mid june i'm excited for the multiple presentations that have taken place or are scheduled to take place over the next week a week and weeks we are presenting uh dr pimpleton and i uh presented to our native american parent group today we are presenting to the migrant pac group on wednesday i am taking our equity policy to the uh seattle area i am presenting uh uh to uh for leadership tomorrow which is an organization in seattle and uh to leaders uh across the seattle

180area to get some insight about how our policy lands uh on people that are not from this area and then also we are presenting to all of our union leadership on friday to have their input as well on the equity policy thus far uh and i command as well the students who uh engaged in the process and have really contributed wonderfully to the development of the uh pro of the equity policy and then we'll bring that to the board uh on june 1st uh it'll come for uploading for presentation uh to the board uh again for finalization on the 15th and then lastly i would share that you know we did recognize uh lorenzo and all of the work that uh he put forth in transitioning over to uh adams uh if i could go

181back which i can't so i'm mentioning this now for the record uh i'm grateful to principal mcdaniel and being able to uh tighten up the supports at davis and allow the flexibility for lorenzo to uh go over to adams and help out where needed uh so kudos to uh ryan mcdaniel for his uh selflessness in that and working to make uh the supports uh available for uh jose and the adams family the last items that i would share is that uh we've seen some great um leadership uh from the uh the district in the uh upper levels with our executive directors and our directors and our principals and uh we know that uh uh clint endicott has been named uh the superintendent of the tanino school district or i hope you know that uh so

182kudos to to clint he's not here but also we had uh uh another executive director interview for the white salmon superintendent position and that's dr sean mcgee who was selected a couple of days ago or last week and uh that announcement is forthcoming so kudos to to sean mcgee and then the latest is uh amanda jewell who will be joining clint endicott in tenino as the assistant superintendent so we have some executive director positions that are opening and it's a great thing because we are seeing people uh advance to positions where they can pursue uh greater opportunities for leadership and they're leaving because of the success that we've had here and the opportunities that that has presented and afforded them in advancing their careers so we're looking forward to celebrating all of those individuals but

183also then in filling those positions and what that means to our organization as new people enter and provide different ideas and opportunities and hopefully those individuals will come from within our organization so it's always wonderful where we see the advancements from uh from within and at that i conclude my superintendent update thank you trevor well congratulations to clint who i think we've known about but also to sean and amanda for their new positions um i don't know that yakima is quite used to growing them up so that they can go somewhere else and this is a good thing this is a good thing okay next we have the coven 19 response reports correct yes thank you and i will turn that over to stacy uh stacy so just a couple things to to note here

184and i i cannot see you only have one screen at this point but just to share uh our contact tracing uh is not as high as it was the week coming off of uh spring break but we are still averaging uh way over 100 cases per week 106 this last week for a total of uh 878 so far since uh january 4th our weekly positive tests diminished uh drastically they uh we ended up having seven students and two staff total of nine positive cases uh this last week i can already tell you though this this monday we're seeing kind of an epic flow because this monday it was already back up into three or four already on a monday in the investigation so we're just kind of seeing it and up and down our weekly

185positive tests again you can see the graph carrying forward from january 4th we've we've kind of been all over the place but the last few weeks fairly significant growth asymptomatic testing was was way down this week down to only 13 tests were administered i know that more people were turning those in today as we were having a meeting as they were turning them in so we should see more than 13 asymptomatic test administered this coming week but thus far we've administered 619 tests in the works last week i mentioned our mobile vaccine clinics we have confirmed that today here are the schools that will be receiving those clinics um the dates that are scheduled the phone number of the point of contact at each school and they will be on site from 10 10 a.m

186to 6 p.m each day you can see we have the the double site at davis and at ike bowl so that we get uh both the a and b cohorts um having opportunities to to receive that vaccine it will be the pfizer vaccine if anybody is interested and a reminder that this is available for anybody uh in the area and as you can see we uh with the coded response team we thoughtfully examined where would be the best place to put these clinics and to provide that support to our school families and in community so that is kind of it there uh there will be outside clinics and um we had our first uh preliminary planning go on today over at uh hoover elementary so any any questions for me questions for stacy i'm presuming

187that that list is going to be posted on the website yes as soon as we're waiting for links that uh each individual school can can plan how they want to send that information out to their families they they all do it a little bit differently and then kirsten is working with jessica post once we have all the scheduling links for all the different schools for go ahead and get that posted on the website perfect i did notice that neither jules nor stacy's presentation has been loaded to board docs yet could we make sure that that happens doesn't have to happen right this second but maybe sometime this week i i apologize for that i thought we were just using it for the meeting last week so that's that's my fault i didn't get it uploaded

188i apologize i don't know it's we we've not i don't know that we specifically asked to have them updated uh uploaded to this point but i responded to an email from i know she's a parent or just a citizen um and fortunately was able to provide the link for the reports from last week but it occurred to me that if if we have to respond to someone who asks a question or if we want to go back and review it might be helpful to have those presentations loaded up into board docs absolutely and and that information is also listed weekly on our website uh it's on the district website for uh community to take a look at so okay thank you any other questions for stacey jewell would you like to go ahead and present

189we'll see if barb's presentation is settled down a little bit it was a strobe light effect there we go okay so just so you know uh martha my data is always up to date the day of so i don't know that it gets in the board docs right away because like today it was well the meeting went long so i had plenty of time to update but sometimes i'm really scrambling to update for the day of yeah it doesn't have to be it doesn't necessarily have to be the day of the board meeting just if we could get it uploaded sometime that week so that we can have it for reference if we need it all right thank you um so this is looking at daily cases again we're kind of all over up and

190down for today the days cases were 90 for today but we only had 22 yesterday so it kind of evens out but go on to the next one oh too fast can't talk that fast so today there we go today um 425 you see is at 22 but then 426 which isn't on there the the data is on there but not the date um is at 90 today and that's it's one of our highs um so like like stacy said today was a pretty much an uptick right next uh we have 257 per hundred thousand for our 14 day rate as of yesterday they go monday through sunday so that's yesterday's rate the seven day rate per hundred thousand is 116.8 um remember the cdc recommended under for for seven days our zip code data

191it's all kind of an uptick there except for the 98902 went down a little but every other one went up from last week or stayed the same um but we haven't hit the peak um that we did a couple weeks ago hospitalizations went down this week which was nice we kind of stayed at 14 for a while and we went down to nine today so that was that was a good thing our positivity rate has always stayed right around 10 um 10.9 for as of saturday those are always a little delayed and then our school age cases um stacy talked about this last week that we had many more students in yakima school district that were up to date but remember this is county so up until yesterday 19 percent of the total cases um

192we had 21 new students and six new staff as of yesterday and then our school-aged data for the trend data it's gone down like stacy said from last week but um it's still still up there a little ways um our the if you look at the percentages and the rate per hundred thousand over there in the legend um our rate per hundred thousand has gone down with the school-age cases but the percentage of school-age cases has gone up a little bit we were averaging at 15 we had 119 in there but now we're at two weeks in a row of 18 and 19 percent and then this is the forecast and then the focus area for the forecast i'm happy to say my forecast is off even though we had 90 today um i plotted

193in last week's cases and notice the plot the orange pot plot there is going down and my forecast went up this week um so i might be off by a week on what the case load is but i'm i'm glad to see it trended down instead of up we'll see what the rest of the week holds since we had 90 today anyone have any questions thank you you're welcome questions for um jewel okay next we have items of board interest are there any items that board members wish to bring to the attention of other the rest of the board martha i do just have a couple comments i'd like to make okay go ahead yeah i want to take us back to the equity policy so i'm just wondering i was thinking about this before

194when we were having that discussion is how will we measure how we're doing on this in our progress of equity will it be an annual report it does state in in the policy there'll be a regular updates from the superintendent so i'm just wondering about that whole process do we have to incorporate that into our board policies as well so that's one of the items that we see on a annual or whatever basis so you know and other things too i know we could excuse me we can measure the progress or success and equity in regards to closing the achievement gaps or this disparities but i personally would like to see more i mean how are we transforming systems um you know i think i wrote some things down you know the climate and culture

195i think we have some of this information how are we implementing a shared leadership model uh how are we receiving critical perspectives from the diverse stakeholders and how do we determine high quality teaching there's a lot in there to really to look at and if we're going to measure progress and so i'm just kind of thinking about that i'm not trying to uh spur a discussion here just something that i like to put out there for the superintendent and the team to think about and dr pimpleton so that's one thing then the other thing is um again i'm not i'm not trying to ask for a discussion or debate or anything here but i do need to say these things um you know that there are a lot of topics that the board faces and

196education faces across the country and there's a lot of different viewpoints and the topic of equity is is no different right and so you know there's i believe that that the board is a strong board and while we are influenced by outside um thinking or opinions i believe that the board that maybe asked me for myself that that we are engaging in the work we are learning and we're under the tutelage of dr pimpleton where i think we're getting a good solid foundation in terms of equity and so i just wanted to make mention of that that um while there's a political wave going on out there with terms of equity i think our board is solid and strong and we're making the right decisions based on what we believe what the board believes is

197best for the students of the yakima school district so you know i know the critical race theory is a big big thing out there and there's a lot of disagreement and there's a lot of a lot of writings a lot of articles a lot of there's a legislation in right there's legislation they're considering right now in terms of requiring critical race theory in public education so i just want to mention that that i think that while all these influencers are going on i think the board is doing its homework and it's making decisions based on what's best for our students so just wanted to make those two comments thank you thank you raymond anyone else want to share anything with the rest of the board i did want to let you know in case you

198have been under the covers for the past day or so um the legislature completed its work and went signy die saturday night we do have a new budget for the next biennium as well as a new capital budget for the next biennium our friends at wazda are busy busy unpacking that and they will um get that information out to us um probably this week sometimes so i expect that most of the thirst much of the thursday call was to call may be taken up with um discussion about the budget but watch your email for information from wazda so that you can stay informed about [Music] the implications from this year's budget there will be new programs that will have to enact new requirements that we'll have to um comply with and then understanding of course

199you know where the money where the money is and where it's going so um i don't i don't know that they're going to be calling a special session and not heard anything about that yet but time time will tell i suppose anything else from board members under item support interest trevor do you have anything else for us uh nothing further and there is no need for executive session okay good all right if there's nothing else for the good of the order then i'm going to adjourn this meeting and we'll see i was just going to chime in and just say that i did ask barb to add the equity policy the draft and the slides from today to the board docs so you guys will have those it still is a work in progress like

200most policies it's intended to live at the 30 thousand foot level and then there will be specific plans and things that are developed underneath that one of the things that i've talked about in previous meetings is the desire to do an equity audit and the equity audit will tell us how close and how far we are in many of the areas that are outlined in that and then that's where we develop the um specific plans and the measures in response to what turns out in that so all of this is kind of connected in that pace but we definitely are aware of those um the need for that specificity that director navarro is mentioning but it's just a part of that kind of rollout is first the policy is the expectation then the audit of

201how far we are from the the expectation and then the actual um plans with the measures of how you're going to move from where you are to where you want to be perfect thank you marcus i know that probably most of us are going to want to spend a little bit of time with that equity equity that draft equity policy it was it's some good work and your team is to be congratulated on how how it looks so far anything else okay i'm going to do this before the team goes on alert again thank you all for being here with us tonight um sorry for the length of the meeting but i think we got some good information and some good work done today so have a wonderful week supposed to be glorious weather this

202week and we'll see you all next week take care