001okay um so we are really just trying to get through um wrap up with the courageous conversation book and then move on to what do we do with this new found capacity so um i still didn't feel like we really closed out chapter 10 well enough so we're gonna go back to chapter 10 today um the chapter that was on um the sixth condition talking about whiteness and then we will skip over chapter 11 and the next time that we have one of these sessions will be chapter 12. so um staying in martha just disappeared i was like looking at martha okay so uh looking at chapter 10 i am just wondering well first actually i guess i will re-visit where we've been because we have been on break and i think it will be
002good to just get some context so a window this one check um so i think we've talked about this um the last couple sessions including the retreat but we started out we're unpacking this book courageous conversations about race um and it is intended to help to build our capacity give us some tools so that we can engage in deeper conversation um dig for interracial dialogue about race and we started with these four agreements staying engaged experiencing discomfort speaking your truth expecting and accepting non-closure and i feel like we have really been modeling those things in our board meetings our cabinet has been doing the same thing in the cabinet meetings and we're our leadership team meetings are a little more spaced out and sporadic though um but we have talked about these in that space
003and i think that as we continue to have these conversations that leadership team will be really embedded in these agreements as well um we also try to as often as possible start by finding our position on the courageous conversation compass when we're talking about any particular issue this compass is really intended to help us recognize where we're starting from where the people that we are speaking with are starting from so that we can make connections and relate and understand perspective a little bit better by using this as a resource and then we started working our way through each of these um six conditions starting with those first two are really about getting the introduction initial engagement with the topic focusing on ourselves personal local immediate isolating race and then moving on to how do we
004sustain the conversation engaging um multiple perspectives trying to be aware of which voices and perspectives are not present and making sure that we create space to surface those and then monitoring the agreements making sure that we are holding ourselves to the six conditions to the four agreements that we're using the resources that we've learned in order to do this and then we did our fifth condition was where we identified our three c's um to be very clear about what we mean by race and then the last few times that we've met we've been on this um subject of whiteness and with the topic of whiteness where we kind of left off before was on these four aspects of white consciousness um universal perspective individualism avoidance and decontextualization and so what i'd like to do is
005just make sure that we are in the same place about these so starting with just universal perspective which is just this assumption um sometimes that the values cultural experiences of white folks are just the norm um the question that i have for you with regards to that is what's been your experience with interacting with that if you're white how has that impacted your relationships with others if you're a person of color how do you confront that when it when it shows up so remind me what the question is yes how has has universal perspective the way that it's um talked about in this book or the way that it's summarized on this slide how what's been your experience um with that is that something that you have seen in your experience and has it been
006a part of your is it a part of your story at times that sort of thing um i think it is i think um certainly when i was growing up i didn't i didn't pay any attention to um to the issues faced by people of color primarily because there were no people of color in my community and that's i mean that's just how it was i grew up in central new hampshire and it's pretty darn white in central new hampshire um and then i when i moved to southern california um i started i i started to become aware of the [Music] of the inequities faced by persons of color and then as when i moved up here um and got involved in in the schools and with um with the school board i became more
007and more aware that this the systems really are unfair to persons of color they they they are tweet treated inequitably and um there are a lot of systems that are really rigged against people of color and benefit um the the white culture and white people and this training has helped a lot in how to talk about that um i've been aware of it for a while but i didn't know how to talk about it and this has really helped me learn learn the language it was like being dropped into a foreign country and trying to navigate and not knowing the language so i guess that's probably it okay so i'm just gonna put the four of these on the screen and first i just ask um because we may be able to push a little
008bit ahead is there any one of these that folks still have a question about gone i'll just start and ask you is there any one of these that you have a question about or that isn't hasn't really been made clear no i all of it is clear and precise for me no questions about any any any one of these for normal i had to find my mute button um i just the only one i i think i'm just not have firm grounding in is the concept of decontextualization and it probably means i need to go back through and just read through that again and see what does that mean how does it how does that operate in how i live and how we work and how we live so yeah let's let's take a look
009at that one um so i'll pull up the slide that we put together on it um it's really deconstruct decontextualization is really talking about uh reluctance or inability to see race as a factor in a given um situation so uh an example i was meeting with a team of teachers a few weeks ago and one of the staff members i asked them to think about what's your earliest experiences around racemen what's what were some of the early experiences and one of the staff members said well i didn't really think about this as a racial experience at the time but my kindergarten teacher they sent me home with a note and the note said um don't send her back to school until you have given her a name that the teacher can pronounce and so um
010and the dad he did not resist that he just gave another name that was gonna be easier for the teacher to pronounce and she you know came back to school and this was in kindergarten and now she's a staff member at a school and she's looking back on this experience and saying like well maybe it was a racial issue and the staff that i was working with we had a huge discussion about that and there were people on both sides of that who saw it just as well we need names that we can use and it included folks who have asked people for easier names and it included folks who have given up their names so that people can more easily pronounce their names but the question of race had not been for any of
011it seemed like to any of the people that were engaged in that discussion the subject of race had not been an essential aspect of their thinking related to that um particular issue and so um that's what decontextualization does is like we're talking about this subject and we don't consider is race or racism a part of this or not when we remove that then it becomes um that's what it is so it gives those examples of like black lives matter war on drugs education reforms housing loans i had someone say you know well housing that's not that's that's nothing racial about housing loans that's they have a formula for that and they have a system for how they do that but there is right like we know that and we know that his like if there's
012redlining that's taking place then generations later there will still be impacts on the value of homes because of that redlining so to think about housing right now and the costs and home values without considering the lens of race that would be decontextualization where we have just eliminated this as a something that we consider incidents that take place with the police you know there's a tendency of in my community and the black community immediately to bring up race as a subject of what took place there's also a tendency on other parts to try to eliminate race right away it could be you know we don't want to have that and so um this is really saying like that is a part of something we need to consider as a part of whiteness is that tendency to
013take this issue and to look at it without that race race being a lens that's a great explanation that that's helpful i think the concrete examples help a lot yeah thank you um anyone else i asked norm raymond how about you are did the discussion of these four make sense to you in the in the text i'm trying to recall the discussion i know i list i missed the last session so i'm kind of behind i'm just trying to to to remember what those uh individual terms mean so yeah i'm still still trying to do that so okay i'll touch upon the individualism and the avoidance um just just to help out with that so on individualism this sense of you know i earned this people that have people that have more have it because
014of their hard work um people that have less have it because they have not worked as hard and if they worked harder they would be able to access it um lack of recognition of the benefit of the overwhelming presence of other white people in positions of power influence so in the book he's he talks about the fact that when you are in a community where you are highly represented as a lot of especially in education white people who are um educators are participating in a professional community where they are the dominant they there is um there are connections and hidden benefits from being a part of that community that you don't really realize but if you were dropped into a community where you were the the only white person and there were larger people of
015color then you would immediately become aware of the difference so um it's it's just pointing to the fact that white people sometimes don't recognize the sense of comfort that is automatic when you're in a space where you're widely represented um that other folks take they they definitely like i will say for myself when i'm in a space where i'm the only black person i definitely am aware of my being the only black person there and there are certain feelings that my white colleagues don't ever have to experience because they're never in that sort of an environment in a professional setting but then it talks about some of the things that we do that emphasize individualism like tests are individually based we talk about the importance of doing group work and collaboration and those are skills
016that kids need in the future but a lot of the things about the way that we test the way that we call on children those sorts of things still emphasize individualism even when the skill that we're trying to build is much more collective or collaborative and then avoidance i think all of these are really interrelated but this isn't really a problem this isn't a problem or what about ism like what about when this happened to or can we talk about gender or can we talk about something else i'm trying to avoid the initial um discussion so i think avoidance and decontextualization are really similar except for decontextualization is really emphasizing the idea that this is an issue to where race would have a is a lens that will provide some additional insight to really understand
017this situation like when we were talking about the name thing the impact of people giving up their names um ends up being the loss of languages right so we want to make sure and hold that i have um a person that i really admire who is native and he's working very hard to try to reclaim his um language and i think that honoring names is one way that we can help to honor um languages so um those are those four pieces and then i gave you this article um 15 characteristics of white supremacy culture and so i don't know if folks had an opportunity to um look at that or not so let me just check and see did you guys get a chance to look at this so um i guess off of this
018list are there any that particularly stick out or seem like they are a challenge that we face more frequently in educational circles well off the top of my head i would just there's a lot of them that are that are there i think perfectionism defensiveness about being criticized um quantity over quality only one right way to do things i think there's still some paternalism that exists in the educational system though i think that it's more equal nowadays gender wise than than in the past either or thinking fear of open con i mean they're all almost all there to some degree but i also it isn't to me when i was reading this those characteristics they're true very true of white supremacy culture but they're also very true of much of corporate culture in america and
019and i don't want to offend anybody but it is also i know that in this group that's on the screen right now we have a significant number of people that that are part of religious organizations but my own experience is part of organized religion and i'm talking spirituality i'm talking organized religion there's a lot of these are characteristics of organized religion regardless of the religion thank you i i agree with uh norm on those that he read off in one of them that really gets to me is worshiping the written word and not allowing people to do their storytelling of their experiences in in in a lot of this is happening in religious organizations religion incarcerates relationship liberates for me and this is a spiritual about it's a spiritual thing right and and i think
020we are going through that but a lot of these are are happening in suit in school systems across the country and um and my way is the the only way that you know that's that's a big one for me because there are other ways right to to come in to overcome this and and just to come out of your comfort zone and and not not fear don't have no fear of open conflict because you're going to go through conflict every day you but if you go through it with fear then you you already defeated you're not trying to to work through it and uh it's you know in any process it's gonna be is is bigger but it's how you go through the process that makes it smaller it makes it more obtainable for me
021any others and cabinet folks feel free if you have a thought about something on this list as well i think we'll add some insight my dogs are going nuts so try to keep the discussion going martha can give you some hints that's why i have the headphones on i keep my dog is going nuts there's a ups truck outside so martha what about you for anything on this list that really resonates or sticks out as something that we're dealing with more often when i was going i mean i like norm look at this list and i think oh yeah that's i see that and i see this and i see this other thing and um but what really struck me was only one right way i think um i think sometimes we get stuck in
022thinking that there's only one right way to do something because that's that's how we do it and when in fact there's probably any number of ways to do something and that doesn't mean that one is more right than the other but i think it's just i think it's maybe more human nature to think that there's only one right way yeah i have i have one comment good and it probably would fall into a lot of these um but there's this feeling of anti-laziness like others are lazy whites are not yeah i think that shows up a lot in that individualism thing that we were talking about before this and then definitely in some of the things here around perfectionism or progress is bigger you can't really sit in the situation and let it kind of
023just be you have to be doing and doing and doing anthony raised his hand too it's it's funny i raised my hand for a different thought but person that you said that i need to share with you all that when my ex-wife told her parents that she was bringing me home to be introduced to them and she made a point of letting them know my heritage because she feared that there would be some sort of issue with it and i walked in the door to greet them there was obvious tension and why i'm chuckling when you said that kirsten is because my ex-mother-in-law the first question she asked me was did i intend to work and i i i was floored you know i i was 27 28 years old i had a career what
024do you mean do i intend to work is this is this a question yes typical people your friends or was this something only because she made such a point of stating i'm bringing home my my potential life partner here which was my ex-wife anyway that's sorry it happens the right to comfort marcus you asked the question um several years back i when i was with my former organization i went to detroit to give a training um and it was the very first time in my life where i was the only non-black person in the room not just once but for the entire week and i had never uh felt um uncomfortable before no matter what people are coming in and out of the room um just because you know it just because i mean i
025i grew up in los angeles lots of different races i'm used to uh you know the proverbial mounting pot but after a week of being the only non-black person in the room i got a feeling of what it must be like for you marcus to be the only black person in the room and it was it was different and i did i did not know what that was like until it happened until it happened uh after a long sustained period of time and some of the things that people would come up and say to me like uh why are you here i mean you know going to ihop and having the whole restaurant stop talking the moment i walked in the door and everybody just looking at me it was like well this is this
026is uncomfortable um uh and and then you know literally people saying to me like wow i can't believe you did this and i'm like well why i'm hungry but uh it's those little things that you take for granted and we we take for granted the right to feeling comfortable uh most of our life and i think it's an experience everybody should have to be placed where i really was just such an odd duck no comment driver uh anyway yeah and i think with that right to comfort that's one that really i think with all of these it's important for us to remember that these are not characteristics of white people these are characteristics of a white culture and so some of what uh white supremacy culture and so some of those things that what norm
027was saying is like well it's present in the corporate yeah because that's the culture of the boardroom it's present in the religious because that is the culture um of our places of worship quite a bit um it's present in schools right and people of color internalize and perpetuate these things in the same way that white people internalize and perpetuate these things when i'm in a space to where i don't agree with superintendent green my first thought is don't say anything like because he i want to keep him comfortable and then i have to challenge that in my mind to say really why he asked me to be on this team it's uncomfortable he wants to hear that so i have to be willing to say what's different and even if that's gonna make us face
028uncomfortable um but they internalize you know don't disagree with people in authority don't uh take the blow don't try to do it in the way that's going to be the least disruptive or the least off-putting that's something that we all experience in these spaces for one degree or another raymond um the lens i'm using is more organizational development lens that's kind of my background so i don't know i i know maybe i'm way off but i see this as old school leadership and culture that perhaps continues to exist uh today in 2020 21 i've seen i've been part of organizations where the leaders have been hispanic black white and they practice some of these these these norms i guess so but you know successful organizations and school districts are no longer following this white supremacy
029culture they're changing that and so that's where i kind of see i know our school district we don't practice a lot of these maybe at some levels maybe some lower levels but at the top levels we're not engaged in this culture so you know we're more engaged in the servant leadership more shared leadership you know there's not one right way to do things i i'm quoting i think his name is drucker you know that there's there's all kinds of ways to do things and everybody can share and cooperate or contribute to decision making and coming up with solutions so um i know still practice today but you know if you look at some companies like starbucks harley-davidson and so forth they gotten away from this white supremacy culture and thus have become more successful so
030i'm kind of looking at it through that lens i know some of these things like perfectionism is good as a student right we want to be learn the material especially if you're a doctoral student master's student you have to have kind of that that characteristic or that personality to be perfect because it demands that that that level of education demands it's not just my two cents yeah i think there's definitely attention and there is definitely work that's being done in organizations not to um operate by some of these things i also think there's they show up in ways that we don't often recognize i would suspect that so if i were to say like starbucks as an example they have a lot of things that they're doing that are really forward but i would suspect
031that you could transfer an employee from any starbucks in the country and drop them at another starbucks and they would already be pretty well trained on how starbucks is run because there is only one right way to run a starbucks right um and so and that is a that may be because they believe it's gonna get a certain result that they want but that is an aspect of this that which would show up in that sense right um where there's not a lot of opportunity to you probably can't all kind of reinvent how you're gonna do at your individual places because we want it to be a certain way that people come and can expect and so um using that logic we could say the same thing about a new curriculum that's introduced to teachers
032right there's probably one way to use the curriculum there's only one way to prepare to take the exams and state exams i mean using that logic we can say we can do say a lot of things right so i don't know that's what i'm trying to do is say that this culture shows up in all kinds of spaces in ways that we don't recognize including in school so those are exact those are great examples of how schools say we're moving away from this but we perpetuated like every student taking the same test is exactly an example of what we're um talking about here and something that we would want to be thinking about is this necessary in this particular context it's not to say that it's always bad like i like the fact that if
033i want to stop by and get a starbucks drink i know that wherever i stop it's gonna be the same drink like i you know i depend on that so it's not to say that it's always bad those these elements are always bad but we need to definitely be um questioning them and considering them and and how are they showing up and they show up in ways that we don't um we don't always think about with curriculum that's an example of paternalism when we tell every teacher to do it the exact same way here's the materials to use use them these ways we're going to show up in your class i was in one school where the principal could show up in your class and they expect you to be on the same lesson as
034every other teacher of that subject matter right that is paternalism now maybe there's benefits of why they want to do it that way or maybe there is some room that we need for folks to be able to say like well the kids in my class need something different and i can deviate in these ways but it's just the ways that this kind of thing um shows up or even in we don't want to make a statement to our families about how we're going to do x or y because we want to make sure that we have it exactly perfect the first time that we communicate right these are all things that it shows up in all of our work it shows that's why i started with an example of me it shows up with me
035in spaces where i'm tended to bite my tongue don't say anything because you don't want to make anyone uncomfortable but disagreeing and being uncomfortable is a part of this work together so yeah i think there's great work that's being done to not do this there's also it shows up all the time so dr pepton i'm just kind of thinking about what you said so i know that we that school district has nothing to do with standardized tests and how they're composed and you know there's their state and federal laws that we have to comply with and have to achieve in order to receive funding so would you say that part of that has to do with pressure to meet certain goals or how would you see that if teachers are having to feel the need
036to be on a certain part of the curriculum and then the principal feels pressured that the school needs to have higher test scores because the board is demanding and the superintendent is demanding higher test scores is that racism or is that pressure from the system that might be racist or i i'm just trying to i'm more of a big picture person so i kind of want to understand it from that perspective yeah um so i think when we're talking about characteristics of white supremacy culture when we're talking about how these things show up um we're we need to be asking ourselves how is this playing out how is it serving us is it helping us or is it not serving us well and when we talk about racism again that definition that i'm using is
037is this going to widen disparities between racial groups or is this going to reduce disparities between racial groups and sometimes the thinking about why we're doing a certain thing a certain way is it has an anti-racist intent like the reason that the schools that i've been in where they're like we're going to make sure that our teachers are all teaching the exact same thing is because they want to make sure that every student gets exposed to the curriculum and the content that they're not there's not gaps in what's being taught it's because they want to eliminate disparities between teacher a and teacher b and that sort of thing so it has it's an anti-racist intent a lot of times with why we're doing things the way that we're doing all that i'm saying is we
038need to be questioning why we're doing things the way that we're doing them all the time because we may find that this particular thing that we're doing is not serving us well so i'm not making a statement against a a school that's deciding we want to make sure that our curriculum is all the same i'm not i'm not saying that i'm not making i'm not making a claim about these are this is always harmful and these are all examples of where it's harmful because i don't think it's it's all necessarily always harmful all the time but when you let anything kind of just go and dominate and take over the situation that's where i think that you're running into some trouble and that we need to be asking ourselves about it i had a friend
039over and we were we argue about a lot of different things and every time we argue about something he goes and looks up what other people said about it so he's like on the computer and we're sitting there having a discussion about i'm like well this is what i think and how i feel and blah blah and he's looking up and he's like do you know who so-and-so is i'm like no and but he's using like wanting to quote so and so and point to so-and-so right it's a worship of a written word right and so in cultures where people are not writing a lot of doing as much writing or not availing themselves as that they're not publishing the way that they're thinking about these things they're engaged in the in the work um
040then what's written isn't always reflective of the wide diversity of ideas out there and so it's just i not so i just pointed out to him like you know that's a characteristic of white supremacy culture where you're always trying to look up what someone else said instead of really like that can be useful to you formulating your opinion but it's not necessarily going to be useful when you're when we're discussing something because i know what i think and believe about about this and so the examples of why this person thinks and believes different might be useful but that someone else said x y or z you know maybe not so much and it like i was working with a quincy team and they had like outside of their community somebody put up uh all lives
041matter sign huge all the lives matter sign on the road and they put bible verses underneath it and we were just talking about in a meeting with them a couple weeks ago how like why did they put those bible verses on there because it's this worship of the written word like by making jesus the re the person who supposedly said all lives matter then it gives credibility to um this phrase that's really intended to minimize the voices of folks who are saying we have a problem in our black communities and we need to stand up for um black lives so yeah i don't know that was a roundabout way but all of these things they are present in our systems in all of our systems we're indoctrinated into these things and it's important for us
042to keep looking at them the other one i would point out is objectivity is this idea that okay we're going to go in and have this discussion and we're going to be objective and pretend that we don't have a point of view coming into the conversation and that happens all the time where we're having conversations and we're pretending that we don't already have a point of view that we're bringing and what i would highlight in the in the article is what are some of the antidotes like what are some of the alternatives to this sort of thing and to make sure that those things are um also showing up so when we talk about objectivity as one being clear about where the prejudices that we are bringing to the conversation why we see things the
043way that we do where that comes from that that's an alternative then to pretending that we're being objective about a topic so um i want to say when we're looking at this list not just we're looking at how do we reduce our reliance on these things but what are the alternatives that we can bring in to bear any other thoughts we got about seven minutes left in our conversation trevor can you say something say something absolutely uh marcus uh the one that kind of resonates with me is the fear of open conflict and i i i think that um it's interesting because i think you see that play out in education quite frequently i i remember when i was i was working across the table in hr with another individual who's actually in the room
044right now uh anthony and uh he he would get frustrated when he was engaged in conversation with me as an educator and the perspective of educators of not being able to uh being being polite to the to the extreme and not saying what is meant or not kind of diverging from any any type of conflict or tough conversation and i do see that one perpetuated quite frequently in education where we um we a disagreement with with a kind of rudeness or not not being able to have this have the discussion and i think that was really the first time in my career that i'd really recognize because i you know i've been an educator for for quite a while and this is my you know my profession since my early 20s and then being across
045from a teamster saying why don't you just say what you mean in education why don't you just you know come out and say what the issues are instead of always talking around the issues because you're afraid that people are going to live in this discomfort and you're going to offend somebody and that's causing even more of a greater issue because of the lack of clarity anthony do you want to follow up on that at all or you're good no i i think you i think you know that sometimes being direct is considered being rude when how do we know what to do if you're not clearly laying out the expectation for the employee so avoiding the clear and concise instruction or expectation in my opinion is what creates more conflict than just stating here's what
046we need from you um and and yeah that that was a perfect example i think ongoing perpetuating the conflict as opposed to just addressing it i think i think partly that arises because in in our culture as a whole we have this tendency to attack the person instead of the issue and then even if someone is attempting to attack the issue the person who holds maybe a different viewpoint receives it as being attacked as a person and not as dealing with the ideas or dealing with the concept and so we continually have to work at in our communication is am i addressing the issue or am i am i in some way going after the person either intentionally or unintentionally but i think it's just creating awareness around that and having the courage to deal
047with issues up front yeah thank you norm becky say something oh thank you marcus um i don't necessarily have anything different to add to what's already been discussed from your from that list i think it's all very very relative to um whatever what everybody has already said so i don't i apologize i don't have anything more profound to say for you but i i do agree it's really um all of those words certainly are worth a deeper thought process and understanding yeah on this journey of that we're on so thank you thank you so i will stop there for as i said at the beginning our next conversation we're gonna jump to chapter 12 which talks about what does it look like to be trying to apply these to a strategy for improving schools and
048so we'll talk about kind of the ideas in that particular text also if there's time um hopefully i'll be in a place to be able to share with you um recommendations with regards to an equity audit that we're hoping to do in the fall which is really figuring out if if our notion of equity is about eliminating disparities what are the disparities that we need to address um and those will be very broad ranging not just in um student assessment results which is where we have a tendency to go but um are there disparities in our employment like who who we the diversity of our workforce who's who we retain um those sorts of things those will be things that come up climate issues we talk about uh family and student responses to climate surveys
049and things like that um but looking at perceptions of the school experience all those sorts of things so um we will be talking more about that hopefully in the next session if not the next session will at least be on chapter and then perhaps our first session in may will be um on you know where do we go from here but i really appreciate you all for the dialogue and for not um expecting perfectionism because this is definitely a learning work for me as well i appreciate everyone digging in to the conversation and i think that we are better positioned for some discussion around the results of an equity audit because of the work that we've done up until this point so thank you all thank you marcus this is these these discussions are really
050enlightening and i appreciate everybody giving of their time to go through this process um i think it will only help inform the board and the cabinet on um future direction for the district i'm going to suspend the meeting until 4 30 where we'll pick up and start our our real meeting um and so just what a 10 minute break nine minute break we'll see you guys in a bit okay welcome back everyone i can't tell if everyone's here or not but we'll get started this is the april 12th meeting of the yakima school district board of directors i'm going to ask jennifer to call make a roll call for us please sure donald davis jr here graciala villanueva is absent today martha rice here raymond navarro jr president norm walker here as we has become
051our custom when we start every board meeting we do a land acknowledgement don are you prepared to read the land acknowledgement today yes i am with great honor please proceed with great honor i have the privilege of reading the land acknowledgment today the schools of the yakima school district rest on the accessory lands of the 14 confederate tribes and bands of the yakima nation the people of the yakima nation inhabited more than 12 million acres across adams benton chelan douglas franklin grant kittitas and uh kittitas and kitty cat and yakima counties today we honor those native peoples who are tied to the land through history legends and culture they acknowledge their descendants who live in the in the world today we thank the caretakers of this land who have lived here and continue to live
052here since time immortal and acknowledgement is a simple powerful way to show respect and a step towards correcting the 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 relationship with the yakima nation thank you don thank you next on our agenda is our pledge of allegiance and we have a very special guest with us today ace federer spiel is that how you say your last name yes uh pretty close federer's fuel better spiel it was a 50 50 chance i would hit that right so it's all right but uh yeah it's going to be a tough act to follow mr davis but i'll do my best here if you're willing please rise under your heads for the
053pledge of allegiance ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all you can take your seats now thank you thank you ace that was a great way to start the meeting um is ryan here trevor i do not see him but it looks like we have jewel here from davis okay um jule do you have anything that you'd like to share with us about mr fetterspiel i have not met him in person yet um i'm you know kind of new to davis still but he's a great student i i know that much just by looking at records ace would you like to share with us you're a junior right correct this
054is my junior year so um what are your plans well hopefully i'm going to continue in the ib program graduate with a diploma after that i'm just going to try my best to find a four year degree giving university and get involved there i'm not quite sure yet on which one but we'll get there eventually do you know what field you'd like to pursue well um not really it would be an honor to get involved in business or something to that effect but outside of that not particularly well good i'm going to give our board members an opportunity to thank you for being here today and they may have some questions for you as well oh for sure okay raymond yes my name is raymond i just wanted to thank you ace for being with
055us today and leading us in the pledge of allegiance i really like your your first name ace has a cool name and i might i might suggest a a career for you since you have a great voice i think you would excel in the media anchor news reporting uh those type of things related jobs you just have an awesome voice that um that when you speak i think everybody listens so it's just a suggestion but nice meeting you and thank you for being here today well i really appreciate that thank you i'll definitely consider it don yeah ace thank you for being here today i like that ace of clubs that you put up it goes with your with your uh aura and uh i too would like to see you in in broadcast because
056you do have that voice like mine that gets attention keep it up man and uh keep up the great work in that in the av program i've seen you around davis and uh you're a very sharp young man keep up the good work thank you norm well just congratulations on on your success so far davis and i i have a quick question for you um hopefully we'll be back in school in person next fall um is there anything in particular you look forward to being back in school in person well one thing for sure is gonna be the consistency i think um only going two days a week it's good it's definitely better than nothing um and strictly online for sure but um getting to go to see all of my friends hopefully and not
057just half of them um that's what i look forward to the most well i wish you well thanks for joining us today my pleasure and i would echo their appreciation for you being with us today ace um you represent davis very well and i wish your principal was here so that we could thank him for um submitting your name and being a part of this um i look forward to actually seeing you at graduation next year and maybe you can just stay in touch and let us know how things are going absolutely absolutely it was a pleasure to get to uh to get to participate well you're welcome to stay we do have a bit of business to take care of today but i understand completely if you have other things that are calling you
058and demanding your attention like dinner or homework or something like that so um feel free to stay but if you do feel the need to leave we completely understand well thank you i do have a um a track practice that i'm missing out on right now i get back into that i drove back here to to lead the pledge and um i think i might have to sign off and get back involved okay well make sure that your coach knows where you were no i i just left no i don't know we're all okay well thank you for being here with us ace take care good luck have a good one thank you well that was fun okay um [Music] next on our agenda is an approval of an appraisal agreement trevor do you want
059to kick this off or go straight to bob uh i'll i'll kick it off a little bit and pass it to bob so this does have to do with the appraising of some property and i did ask bob to look into that so we'll find out what he came up with i'll pass it to bob bob thank you good evening board so as you are aware we're looking at potentially getting some properties to expand the healthcare centers that we currently have to provide a broader range of service for students the state law requires that we conduct market value appraisals of any property that we may have an interest in so in order to do that i contacted about six different companies that engage in appraisals most of them were more than 60 days out to
060get an appraisal completed some of them were too busy to even take on additional work so finally i found this this company valbridge property advisors that can do it within 35 to 40 days and because time this is a time sensitive issue i spoke with trevor and we agreed to enter the agreement but the statute al also requires board approval so we're asking that the board ratify the action of entering into the agreement and approve the agreement essentially the agreement is to have two different properties appraised for us at a cost of six thousand four hundred dollars and hopefully we'll have a final product here within 35 days okay um the board has been appraised of this and we have had an opportunity to review the appraisal proposal and attachments and so i would entertain
061emotion well first of all does anyone have any questions of bob [Music] okay seeing none um i would entertain a motion that the board approved the ratification of the appraisal agreement with valbridge properties advisor advisors so move second move by don seconded by norm is there any discussion okay jennifer could you conduct role please donald davis jr hi martha rice hi raymond navarro jr hi norm walker hi thank you thank you jennifer next item on our agenda is a discussion on policy 0-500 profile of a graduate 500 is that what that says i guess it is trevor do you want to kick this off or go straight to bob well we will make this and i uh it's going to be kind of bob's show tonight i know he's presenting a couple other things so
062we'll go right to bob on the profile of a graduate bob thank you uh deborah we recall that the board had requested that we take the profile of a graduate from the strategic plan and incorporate it into a policy that the board could adopt so what we did was we took basically the language out of the out of the the plan and inserted it into policy form the zero series the zero five eight an available number and it seems like a logical place in which to put the policy so really this is for discussion for the board to decide whether to adopt it as is or whether the board would like to make some additional changes at this point thank you thank you bob we have had an opportunity to review this and the board
063will remember that we had a number of discussions with the facilitators when they were here helping us with the strategic plan and the board was asked to develop or create a list of those characteristics of a graduate from the yakima school district and um this policy is it's kind of the drafty draft of a policy that we had talked about putting into place so that so that it has some um consistency with the um with with the work that we do and um aligns the strategic plan in into our policy process um so i'm wondering if board members have any comments or thoughts or questions about what we see in this document raymond do you have anything not at this time i was reviewing them as we as we're speaking so yeah right now let's
064just go ahead excuse me it looks fine to me john do you have any comment uh i i went through it and it looks just great to me uh it just like what you're saying mother we when we did the strategic plan this is one of the things to come up with the policy and i think it hits right there on what we need to do and it has all the steps so i'm thinking i'm trying to remember martha a strategic plan the specific parts of that and i'm seeing that in this document so i'm i'm good with with this version of the policy i'm wondering if um board members would see value in kind of flushing it out a little more so that it's not just a more or less a bulletized list or
065is the list um sufficient to get across the ideas that that we spent all those hours discussing i think the list the way it is is sufficient it hits every point just the thought i'm having martha you know when it comes to our core values the first bullet says diversity equity and inclusion uh because of the focus of the board on equity perhaps equity could just be one bullet and then diversity and inclusion another bullet just a thought just to place more importance or more focus on on equity either that or equity could be first in that list yes that's what i was referring to first first in that or in so equity equity diversity and inclusion oh okay as opposed to equity being standalone i would go along with equity first then that diversity
066and then inclusion so just rearranging the order of the words that sound yes i'm okay with that okay do you think we need to have um definitions i mean i think we know what we were talking about but will will people who weren't in the room with us know what we're talking about i think that would be helpful because we did i think last year year and a half ago or maybe even two years the board did come up with a definition of equity and so we might have to update that version or that definition and perhaps include you know that with this document also what is diversity and inclusion what is what do those mean so i'm for that what about the the the rest of the list under those specific items under profiles
067of a graduate do you think that when someone reads resilient learner think about people who aren't necessarily in in education and steeped in the vernacular of education will they know what that means well i i think the bullet points underneath pretty much clarify that i think i i'm okay with that and i'm i'm not on because the document's about the graduate it's not the equity statement i'm not i'm not sure we need a long statement about equity in this document that's a that's a repeat of the kind of the core values but this document is not the statement of the core values it's the statement of the graduate profile so i'm not sure we need to go into deep detail again in this document for something that's in another document the document about equity equity
068would have a much more detailed explanation about equity well and and you'll note at the end of the document there are references that will need to be included um and i'm all for keeping yeah i'm all for keeping things as simple and straightforward as possible and and not loading them up with long explanations i think that it does it it paints a pretty clear picture and that's that's what it is it's the picture of the graduate i don't think it needs to be a lengthy document like some policy documents need to be but i'm not sure this one needs to be it fits the bill i agree with noah it's it works just as it is written with just those um word switching those words around in that for in that first bullet yeah i'm
069comfortable with equity being the first part of that sequence sure yeah just with equity around to first and diversity and then inclusion we have a number of policies that we'll probably want to include as references with at the end of this one um [Music] and so and i don't know if there would be any legal references bob would know that better than i um if there's anything in the rcws or wax that would need to be included as a reference to this um maybe something maybe something in whack um like some of the some of the rules that the state board has [Music] approved for graduation requirements and such like that um that's what comes to mind immediately but um i i'll defer i'll defer to bob on that i agree i can find those
070references and include those and then in terms of cross references i'll i'll pull those up as well and add those okay there anything else on this agenda item that board members wish to share so we'll let bob go forth and um kind of flesh this out a little bit and bring it back to us at a future meeting for first reading does that sound good sounds good to me i did have i don't know i'm getting caught up in that first part the resilient learner i mean growth mindset and persistence and just you know just the discussions we have been having with dr pippleton in terms of white culture and norms and so forth i'm you know what does persistence mean that you despite whatever you face that you you're gonna continue on you're gonna
071pick yourself up by your bootstrap or you're gonna work harder or i don't know so that um dr pimperton just has me thinking a little bit more on on these terms right that i think he said i'm quoting or i'm misquoting that new policies or what we have written do they expand or narrow the discrepancies between our students so and i know this is not a policy that's more of a profile but the policies will feed into into this profile this is cut this is one of those big overarching policies that we have yeah that you know it's kind of like the big umbrella kind of thing and what does a growth mindset mean i mean you can overcome everything even racism to is that what we're telling our students or if our schools are
072in fact um have institutional racism are they going to persist are they going to overcome are they going to continue with their goals i'm just kind of and those are just my thoughts i'm not trying to change the the the terms here or the writings well we'll have an opportunity um when bob brings us brings us back to it brings this back to us um at first reading to um maybe have a bigger a deeper discussion about the terms and if they are um terms that folks who aren't in the educational world would understand and maybe um include not all not all of the terms need to i don't think certainly all of the terms don't need to be defined but there may be a few that need to be defined so that people will
073understand what we're talking about but we'll have time um when we have it presented for first reading to have that discussion and hopefully graciela will be here with us at that point so um okay bob are you do you need anything more from us on this no i i think i have the direction you know i'll bring back a first draft thank you perfect thank you for pulling this together okay next item on the agenda are um monitoring reports so the first one is the monitoring report for 1000.2.0 global executive constraint and this is the bob no show so not that bob is a no-show but you kind you kind of know what i mean so bob do you want to review the um monitoring report for this one i do i'll see if i
074can share it on the screen trevor did you have anything to add before we start you did great i was just gonna introduce bob i did ask him to go ahead and present on this and uh also 1000.2.9 uh so thank you for introducing bob glad to have him presenting tonight thank you bob okay can everyone see this yes yes we can so this is global executive constraint 1000.2.0 says the superintendent will not cause or allow any practice activity decision or organizational circumstance which is either unlawful imprudent or in violation of commonly accepted business and professional ethics and practices further the superintendent will abide by all negotiated agreements or rectify any violations as expeditiously as possible imprudent means without thought of the consequences and lacking in judgment or caution we deem that the super superintendent
075is in compliance here the interpretation for this is i interpreted this to mean that the district must have appropriate policies practices internal controls i.e supervision evaluation mentoring training legal consultation discipline complaint and grievance procedures investigation protocols external compliance reviews and audits and that it will follow all the rcw and w in wax of the state of washington the purpose is for the superintendent and staff to avoid unlawful and unethical or imprudent behavior by its staff and or volunteers in the performance of their duties it also requires the organization to remediate any and all discovered conditions should they occur as quickly as possible in terms of evidence of compliance for the monitoring period here october 20 20 through april 2021 i certified compliance specifically the superintendent and administrative team have addressed the following items controls internal
076we continue to review update and implement policies and operational procedures as required by law or to effectively operate the district all administrative policies and operational procedures are aligned with the legal requirements of esea title ix idea epa wisha osha rcw and whack violations of policy or operational procedure are appropriately addressed and handled when they occur either in the building or district level harassment intimidation and bullying hiv report for october 1 2020 through march 25 2021 identified three reports of which zero were found to be cases of hiv this report supports district evidence in tracking investigating and preventing future issues the grievance vlog shows there are five grievances for our 2020 21 year with three closed out and two still open we monitor all internal fiscal controls the superintendent slash designee communicates with association leaders on
077either a regular basis or is needed to address issues related to the collective bargaining agreements all known concerns regarding employee con conduct have or are being addressed training of all administrators related to prevention investigation and remediation of unacceptable employee conduct was provided training mentoring of all administrators related to employee evaluation was provided training on harassment intimidation and bullying was provided to all leadership team members public records requests are processed through the district's public record record office employee training occurs annually through the safe school system staff meetings and youtube for safety and mckinney-vento trainings job position specific training occurs for bus drivers food service custodial and maintenance staff ypta para educators and secretaries coaches volunteers and parent trainings occur at the start of each athletic season customer service training was provided to secretarial and counseling staff
078let's talk provides a way for students families community and staff to have their questions or comments addressed we currently have a score of 8.3 out of 10 for service and have processed 4236 dialogues controls external no external audit findings for the seventh consecutive year were reported during may 2020 exit audit for the year september 1 2018 through august 31 2019 and support district confidence in the district's fiscal management the washington state accountability audit report results for september 1 2018 through august 31 2019 published may 4 2020 support the district complied in all material respects with applicable state laws regulations and its own policies and provide adequate controls over the safeguarding of public resources the washington state financial statement looks like there's a typo there washington state financial statement and federal single audit report for september
0791 2018 through august 31 published may 4 2020 support this district confidence in internal controls and financial management we continue to implement the ocr resolution agreement and that's it for that thank you bob are there any questions from board members that was a very complete list so thank you for that um we will submit this to the for the board survey jennifer can you tell us when that will go out and when you need it back yeah all four of the ones for this evening um are going to be due april 30th they're not next up until may 10 so we get a little time okay i would encourage board members um when you get them to fill them out because it's really easy for these things to get buried in our email boxes and
080and [Music] and we lose them so thank you for that next on our agenda is the monitoring report for 1000.2.9 communications and support to the board bob thank you when i tried opening this one earlier it came up as a word document so i'm going to try to open it now and present it now but it may take a little bit of doing on my side hold on one second while i do that yeah that's the way i found it too it wasn't a link it was just a word document that i had to save to my laptop okay i think i think i should be able to present this can you see that yes okay this is a 1000.2.9 communication and support to the board the superintendent shall not fail to appropriately inform and
081support the board in its work and we have deemed that the superintendent is in compliance with this the interpretation here is that the superintendent shall demonstrate a regular pattern of providing essential decision and monitoring information to meet the board's work needs the information is based on a reasonable anticipation of the work needs of the board in cooperation with the superintendent and the operations of the school district because the board's composition and informational needs change over time this work will always be based on a dynamic dynamic set of understandings in terms of evidence of compliance all information and support of board meetings the fulfillment of board legal requirements board decision making information documentation and materials board official documentation and records board website and communications calendars workflow and meeting logistics have been prepared and submitted in accordance
082with the open public meeting act and all washington state codes from laws the superintendent and superintendent's cabinet work together to make sure the board is informed and updated on all matters of the district further without limiting the scope of the foregoing by this enumeration the superintendent will not neglect to submit required monitoring data in a timely accurate understandable and factual fashion directly addressing provisions of board policies being monitored and justifying the superintendent's interpretations see policy monitoring superintendent performance 1000.4.4 the superintendent is in compliance here interpretation is the superintendent shall submit all monitoring reports on time with reasonable allowance for emergencies and unforeseen circumstances further all data information and board materials will be presented in a manner acceptable to the entire board to support the superintendent's interpretation terms of evidence of compliance to date all required
083monitoring courts have been submitted on time in accordance with the board's annual policy governing governance planning calendar exceptions being those times when the school board meetings were cancelled the monetary reports have been accurate understandable and factual additional documentation and measures are now included based upon feedback and input from the board following the board's approval and monitoring report is posted to the district website under board of directors policy governance for easy access by the board and the public second the the superintendent will not fail to report in a timely manner and actual or anticipated non-compliance with any policy of the board we find the superintendent in compliance here the interpretation here is the superintendent's monitoring reports must truthfully and accurately alert the board to any condition of current non-compliance or condition of non-compliance considered likely in
084the future and should include a plan for incremental movement toward compliance in a reasonable time frame evidence of compliance is that based on existing data the superintendent did not fail to report to the board actual or anticipated non-compliance with any policy of the board all the monitoring reports presented thus far in 2020 21 have been accepted and approved third point is the superintendent will not neglect to submit decision information required periodically by the board or fail to inform the board of relevant trends excuse me the interpretation here is that the superintendent shall periodically provide information data and evidence of trends necessary for the board to make informed decision in areas such as the following student achievement data relative to student ends annual district budget and budget projections enrollment projections for annual and long-range planning ballot
085measure measures both levies and bond bond sales and debt restructuring capital projects school boundary adjustment and revision real estate transactions other information is needed or requested by the board class size adjustments legislative impact ospi and state board direction other information as needed or requested by the board the superintendent shall periodically provide information data and evidence of trends regarding student achievement data and educational standards as well as best instructional practices evidence of compliance the majority of these items and matters arise on a cyclical basis school board minutes document information provided in support of the board's work throughout the year applicable state laws rcws and wax are not violated the annual reports to the board provide information regarding student achievement data and best instructional practices many of our monday meetings provide the board an opportunity to be
086informed of the most current programs in district plans to meet the board's district goals and washington state requirements item number four the superintendent will not fail to advise the board of any incidental information it requires including anticipated or pending media coverage lawsuits material internal changes staff initiatives significant changes in district policy policies operational procedures or programs new major contracts or significant contract changes the superintendent is deemed to be in compliance here the interpretation here is the superintendent shall provide incidental information as agreed upon by the board and superintendent so there will be no surprises superintendent will keep the board informed through emails meetings written documents and or telephone calls by the superintendent or designee evidence of compliance includes the superintendent's routine communications monthly meetings emails phone calls etc to the book to the board are
087designed to meet the no surprises standard as it relates to litigation personal matters of a sensitive nature personnel changes matters likely to result in media coverage in student safety and welfare superintendent sends email updates to the board that keeps the board informed of new requirements of this excuse me keeps the board informed of new or ongoing items of interest and information of a non-confidential nature meeting the requirements of this limitation the superintendent is supported by his administrative assistant chief communication officer members of the superintendent cabinet and occasionally members of the leadership team building principals and directors the superintendent provides confidential reports to the board and executive and closed sessions specifically pertaining to topics as outlined in state law rcw and wax updates are communicated the staff and public through the district website ysd app social
088media and more traditional outlets including mass media fifth point the superintendent will not fail to develop an annual calendar of topical areas of presentation to the board to include but not limited to special education highly capable program migrant and bilingual education athletics transportation food services in guidance and counseling superintendents deemed to be in compliance here the interpretation is the superintendent shall provide reports and presentations to the board regarding various programs initiatives and departments throughout the district evidence of the compliance includes the superintendent has coordinated presentations for the 2020-21 school year to include discipline pbis early learning and monthly superintendent updates at business meetings plans to engage in study sessions around these topics were postponed due to coven 19. the poor the board was committed to addressing equity for the 2020-21 school year and study sessions
089from november through may 2021 and has been doing so with the option of infusing or decoupling these topics within the discussions item number six superintendent will not fail to avoid the advise the board if in the superintendent's opinion the board is not in compliance with its own policies particularly in the case of board behavior which is detrimental to the work relationship between the board and superintendent c governance process 1000.3 and the board superintendent link linkage policy 100.4 superintendent is deemed to be in compliance here interpretation the superintendent has a responsibility to bring matters to the board's attention if in his opinion any board behavior is not in compliance with board policies superintendents shall handle all board non-compliance in the same manner complaints are brought to staff and remedied when and if possible with the individual
090board member or members to which it applies as well as bringing it to the attention of the board president if an individual matter or the infraction is of the entire board it shall be brought to the attention of the board as a whole evidence of compliance here is the superintendent discusses all issues related to the board within the board with the board president to seek a guidance and direction all matters were successfully managed board discussions with the superintendent effectively provide dialogue and opportunity for improving policy governance and the role roles of the participants item number seven superintendent will not fail to present information in unnecessary complex or lengthy form or in a form that fails to differentiate among information of three types monitoring decision preparation and other the interpretation here is that superintendent shall submit
091all written and verbal reports or information in a manner which is brief concise and to the point distinguishing betw between reports to be used to oversee operations make decisions or solely for informational purposes more and more information and evidence will be web linked for easier access by the board and community whenever appropriate the evidence of compliance here is the superintendent updates and reports including emails are complete and timely the superintendent and his staff are responsive to the board the superintendent and his staff are continually seeking ways to improve reporting to the more reporting to be more concise and provide greater clarity to date the superintendent has received no board concerns regarding information prepared by staff that was unnecessarily complex or lengthy a particular note is each building's school improvement plans and school presentations to the
092board are tied with the district's strategic plan and compass item number eight the superintendent will not fail to provide a workable mechanism for official board board officer or board committee communications the superintendent is in compliance here interpretation here is that the superintendent will provide systems that will facilitate a reliable flow of information between the board and the superintendent or president or other officers and superintendent i also interpret this to mean that the superintendent shall make available to the school board any requests regarding equipment and or staff to assist in committee communications the evidence of compliance here is that systems are in place including verbal hard copy and electronic mechanisms to assure clear communications between the board and superintendent board president or other officers and the superintendent equipment and staff are readily available to assist the
093board when needed item number nine superintendent will not fail to deal with the board as a whole even when fulfilling individual requests for information or responding to officers or committees duly charged by the board find that the dis the superintendent is in compliance here the interpretation here is that five individual elected board members comprise the board if the superintendent provides information which has been requested by one board member it should be provided to all board members i further interpret this to mean the requests suggestions or direction of one board member shall not be treated as a directive to the entire district but rather redirected to the board as a whole for considerations with new and updated technology mail and information are electronically scanned and delivered via email to board members evidence of compliance board information
094and materials are provided in hard copy and or distributed electronically the same way at the same time to all members board files are kept in the superintendent's office to provide for traditional mailed materials and correspondence superintendent shares with the board opportunities for attendance at conferences that are designed for professional growth item number 10 the superintendent shall not fail to supply the for the board's consent agenda along with applicable monitoring information all decisions delegated to the superintendent but which are required by law regulation or contract to be board approved superintendent is complete in compliance here interpretation superintendent shall advise and include consent agenda items that fulfill the board's legal contractual and regulatory responsibilities i also interpret this to mean that if the superintendent complies with all of the board's executive limitations he is authorized to proceed
095to take actions without prior board approval evidence of compliance all administrative policies personnel actions contracts and other actions requiring board approval are returned routinely placed on the consent agenda for board action background information and executive limitations materials are also provided to inform the board and prepare them for action at this point there are no recommended changes to the policy and that completes my presentation on this thank you bob are there any questions from board members seeing none um thank you bob for that very complete presentation um jennifer has let us know when we will be seeing this and when they have to be returned so um if there are no questions on this one we will move to the next item on the agenda okay next item on the agenda is a policy governance review
096by board members and this first one is for policy 10.3.1 governing style do i have a board member who wishes to lead us through that i've gotten really good at wait time guys you can either volunteer or be voluntold i can volunteer but i just i'm having trouble with the the screen when i pull up the document then i lose everything else so anyway here here goes okay thank you norm okay governing style the board of directors will govern lawfully with an emphasis on a outward vision rather than an internal preoccupation encouragement of diversity in viewpoints strategic leadership more than administrative detail clear distinction of board and superintendent roles compliance with all appropriate and applicable district policies and procedures collective rather than individual decisions future rather than past or present focus i think should be
097in there and pro-activity rather than reactivity okay accordingly the board will cultivate a sense of group responsibility the board not the staff will be responsible for excellence in governing the board will be the initiator of policy not merely a reactor to staff initiatives the board will not use the expertise of individual members to substitute for judgment of the board although the expertise of individual members may be used to enhance the understanding of the board as a body number two the the board uses an agreed-upon policy governance model as the model under which it conducts its govern governance responsibilities the board will direct control and inspire the district through the careful establishment of broad written policies reflecting the board's values and perspectives the board's major policy focus will be on the intended long-term impacts outside the
098staff organization not on the administrative or programmatic means of attaining those effects in other words ends not the goals the board will enforce upon itself whatever discipline is needed to govern with excellence discipline will matter to matters such as attendance preparation for meetings policy making principles respect of our roles ensuring the continuance of governance capability and compliance with board protocols although the board can change its governance process policies at any time it will observe those currently in force scrupulously to ensure that all board meetings are conducted with maximum effectiveness and efficiency members will do their homework and ask questions no policy is kept current and posted on the district website review pertinent materials before meetings ask questions if they do not understand an issue they will listen with an open mind listen to the issues
099and ask questions remember good communication means talking and listening avoid surprises if a board member wishes to bring up a controversial issue discuss it with the board chairperson and superintendent before bringing it up at a board meeting make building trust an important team goal put the team and team goals first during meetings make decisions that support the goals of the district not individual interests follow board protocols be present and avoid distractions unless otherwise directed or approved by the board president secure cell phones and avoid emailing texting unauthorized recording of meetings and discussions and use of social media during meetings display good manners watch your manners your tone of voice and body language show respect for one another support the majority once the board makes a decision support the decision and make work to make it
100a good one do not sabotage the rest of the board by publicly second guessing the actions of other board members disagree but disagree agreeably no board discussions in public meetings on an item prior to vote including divergent opinions are recorded in the board minutes do not make snap decisions hurriedly past motions usually do not get the consideration they deserve it is better to table a motion until the next meeting than to pass one that the board will regret later do not take action on non-agenda items brought to the microphone or meeting without the superintendent's recommendation or study discuss the issues do not digress repeat argue provoke or reminisce do not engage in side conversations do not play to the audience or monopolize the discussion support the president's efforts to facilitate an orderly meeting value equal
101participation of all members and the perspectives they represent continual board development will conclude orientation of new board members in the board's governance process and periodic board discussion of process improvement the board will allow no officer individual or committee of the board to hinder or be an excuse for not fulfilling group obligations monitoring of executive limitations will be included on the agenda for purpose of monitoring organizational compliance as a rule members will direct any questions or concerns to the superintendent prior to official public presentation throughout the year the board will attend to consent agenda items as expeditiously as possible any item may be removed from the consent agenda by an individual member for discussion or action any board member may request an evaluation of the board's process and performance of a meeting more thorough self-monitoring of
102board performance will be scheduled and conducted according to the board's annual calendar self-monitoring will include comparison of board activity and discipline to policies in the governance process and board to superintendent linkage categories the board by majority vote may revise or amend its policies at any time however as a customary practice a proposed policy revision will be discussed at one session of the board prior to its being approved at a subsequent board meeting and finally the board will observe the confidentiality of closed or executive sessions discussions held in closed or executive sessions are not to be discussed with anyone else other than the board members superintendent and legal counsel thank you norm are there any questions or comments from board members norm do you want to ask jennifer to insert that word focus in the first
103paragraph that you read yeah i believe that was probably a typo that should be part of that statement okay do you know where where we're talking about jennifer okay so um [Music] that will come back to us for first reading we may want to look more specifically at that policy to see if there's anything else that we would like to consider adding or adjusting within that policy when we get it for first reading with that editorial change um thank you norm that i know i know that that's a long one and i appreciate you um stepping up to take care of that but it is one of the more important of our policies the next one is 10.4.0 global governance management connection do i have a volunteer to lead us through that one i'll i
104can do that i'll defer to you don you have it raymond you got it go raymond go for it okay if i must so this is policy 1000.4.0 global governance management connection states that the sole or the only an official connection to the everything that has to do with the district and achievements is through the superintendent also that the team operates in a group and a team manner that involves open communication and none of that communication can be considered to be instructions uh requests uh to or or directions to um let's see two district members and so everything basically needs to go directly to the superintendent so thank you raymond are there any questions or comments on this one from board members okay all four of these will go into the survey um and jennifer
105will coordinate that and just ask that board members um respond within the the identified time frame okay next item on the agenda is the superintendent's update mr superintendent thank you president rice um as far as the update uh just to announce that uh the governor did roll back to phase two and three counties ours was not one of the three counties so certainly wanted to flag that for all of you uh we are not moving back but we will have a report later on about what the actual count is uh second item to share with you is actually that superintendent reichdahl did pay a visit to the district not the friday but the friday right before the break i was headed out of town and dr darling graciously stepped in and facilitated that meeting and
106i would ask him to report on the events also acknowledging that stacy locke was part of that process as well as uh dr pimpleton um dr darling good evening board so yes i was uh superintendent green shared i spent most of friday um hanging out with chris reichdall superintendent of our office of school of public instruction for washington state we start off the morning at hoover elementary which is always a gamble with principal sanchez because you know that principal sanchez has his own agenda despite what he tells us is going to happen but the day ended well with principal sanchez and superintendent reichdall scoring off in a game of soccer out on their pitch with a couple of students um it was actually quite enjoyable to see especially some of our students that are in
107our self-contained student skills program and they really enjoyed it and it was a lot of fun so we visited several classrooms um stacy was there and and he and she discussed some of the covet issues and challenges we faced specific to the district around you know contact tracing and the lack of finding just services to support our needs of the district our size and then after that superintendent reichdel and i headed off to davis high school where he we met with principal mcdaniels and he showed off their student wellness center and answered several questions about the programming the partnership with yakima pediatrics and then we visited the classroom of megan anderson reilly who was our regional teacher of the year and she had asked students several questions throughout her classes and and the class that
108we were in specific to covet some things that they shared with him and it was really interesting some of the data they shared about how many of them are working full-time while still going to school how many of them have parents or family members who have who have experienced who have been in contact with their tested positive for covid are going to be vaccinated and he has had some q a with them and i think it was really telling for him to hear from their perspective on the way they've been impacted and how many of them would choose to never go back to remote learning and given the option because very few of them said they would prefer remote learning they're very clear that they really liked being in person sometimes they like the options
109of being able to flex you know the options of doing both but most of them are pretty clear about their feelings on being in person um after that um director pimpleton and i had uh lunch with superintendent right doll of course we had tamales from down the road because you can't come to yakmo without getting tamales and we talked about a lot of the legislative um focus from the district we talked about more of the concerns that um the struggles we have with remote learning struggles we have with transitioning back some of the some of the challenges we face that our smaller compadres don't face around us around serving meals to students with the six foot social distancing guidelines and i think it was kind of eye-opening for him to see a davis where we
110have about 2 600 students and they have a cafeteria that i believe will serve 600 with zero inches of social distancing and the impact that would be to require six feet social distancing for 2 600 students and the mathematical challenge we would face with trying to serve lunch there we know that the governor has required districts to return to at least 30 in-person learning and our current hybrid schedule falls a little bit short on that and we talked about our schedule the challenges that we face if we were just to increase two hours to meet the nine hour minimum what that impact would be and how that would involve so many different departments so those are some of the conversations that we had um he asked about our plans for spending the esser funds and
111i told him don't worry about it we've got every penny already spent we went into some of the conversations but we also shared some of the challenges we face or even if we did want to increase our teacher workforce we we can hire as many teachers we can we can post as many teacher openings as we want but there aren't that many teachers to be hired and we draw we're very landlocked here in our valley as far as you know bringing the new nursing staff and bringing the new teachers and bringing in then you have to hire new administrators to cover all the new teaching staff that you have on so there's a lot of challenges that we have over here the side of the mountains that are our western washington districts along the i-5
112corridor don't face and those are the ones that he hears a lot from but it was it was a good time after after lunch he spent about half an hour just one-on-one with with megan again talking about some of her um her uh her ideas and some of the proposals that she makes around how to improve our serving our services for our english language learners obviously that's a very passionate area for her one of the reasons why she was nominated for teacher of the year because she's very impactful is serving those students reaching out to their families then following that we met with uh and martha you were on this meeting we met with um dr pempleton and there's is it the superintendent um student advisory council that's the name of it yeah so we
113met with them and um they shared some of their questions they got to hear um they prepared some questions for superintendent right donald he asked him some questions in return and there was a great q a back with them and he got some real candid responses from them around the pros and cons and challenges they face and next steps desires to make things better and so i think he got a very authentic view of the yakima school district that day i gotta bend his ear quite a bit we talked a lot about just our kids and his kids and um the realities of being dads and working in this job and he talked about his frustrations of being middle management and um but all in all uh he he left here with a with a
114very clear understanding i believe of the challenges that we face that are unique to us and the struggles that and challenges that we face that our districts around us do not face and so um yeah i i think i'm grateful that megan had him come and i think it was really beneficial for for him and for us to be able to get our our messages across and have that two-way dialogue thank you dr darling president rice do you have any comments knowing that you were part of the session with dr pimpleton no i think the kids did a great job of um sharing their perspectives with him and he had some hard questions for them and they stepped right up and were not at all shy about answering them so um it was it was
115a good opportunity for her to hit for him to hear from our students well thank you uh dr darling i appreciate that comprehensive report of the visit of superintendent reichdall i did call julio and the only thing i learned was that julio beat him at soccer so i learned much more through your uh report there thank you there was quite a bit of elbowing and uh flopping happening on that pitch and so uh julia learned a yellow card got reprimanded and i moved on thank you and board members if you have not had an opportunity to see the mini pitches that were put in one at hoover and one at adams uh it would be great to take a look and i'm sure that both of our principals would be happy to take you around
116and see those uh wonderful additions to their campus and and the community the final thing that i'll share with you from the superintendent's report comes from ridgeview elementary 16 artworks were acquired by the washington state arts commission in partnership with the yakima school district for ridgeview elementary their curated collection so they are part of the state art collection and the funding for this collection was made possible by ospi k 3 class size reduction grant which funded the construction of additional classrooms at ridgeview elementary as well so we have the the here you see on the screen some examples of the artwork actually this is the actual artwork sent to us today by casey the art selection committee was comprised of uh norae collins a second grade teacher at ridgeview uh trina josephian the assistant principal
117brittany jones pto president uh shelly uh mcdonald hoke uh fourth grade teacher at ridgeview casey mitchell the principal and maria reyes uh kindergarten teacher at ridgeview so as you see can you take us through there maybe one more time we can kind of see the artwork that did go up in the facility very pretty i look forward to seeing it in person wonderful and we do want to thank the art selection committee from ridgeview elementary for their work in selecting uh the artwork and for the support of casey mitchell and his team and also uh facilities for making sure that we're getting everything put up and do it appropriately so we thank everybody for those options and and the success of having that artwork displayed that concludes the superintendent update currently thank you trevor next
118we've got the kovid 19 update thank you i believe it was very uh serendipitous uh the flipping of the agenda today because i uh we had some of the data coming in very late so i'm looking at jules she'll be up first and hopefully can share with us hot off the press the latest information we did add an additional slide thank you for that jewel and she'll talk you through that new slide as well without further ado jewel thank you superintendent green so our daily case count um for for the month of the end of the month of march you see this big peak here where we had um you know 98 cases in one day and then we crashed to six and then we've kind of just stayed up but um not not uh
119spiking as huge as we did that one day at the end of march and so as you see we've kind of gone up and down we're kind of leveling off at about 50 cases on average a day our current 14 day rate as of you know yesterday in the date they go from mondays to sundays for a week so for two weeks it's 286 per hundred thousand so we've gone up there but in the one week case this week this week that ended yesterday um was a little less than the week before when we spiked up with that one day of a lot of cases the zip code rate data remember comes out on wednesdays it actually came out on thursday this week this last week during spring break but we've gone up in most
120of the zip codes except the 90 98901 went down a little but the others all went up last week in number of cases in the zip codes our hospitalizations have gone up um quite a bit over spring break so when we left it was 12 and then 11 and then we stayed 17 21 21 21 26 and then today we're down to 20 with four intubated today our hospitalizations have gone up a lot positivity rate for yakima county we're still kind of hovering around 10 so we're 11.9 uh school age cases from march 28th so right before spring break through spring break um we're still at 15 percent of total cases for the county which is good 35 k 5 38 and 38 and 6 8 and 9 12. it over um right before spring
121break the week before spring break is the way they recorded it 29 new students in the county not in the district and nine new staff got covered the week before spring break this is the overall trend data for each week set of weeks when they report it again if you notice in february when we started there was a 594 rate per hundred thousand we had 17 percent of this county and then we've got dropped down into the 200s and we've kind of stayed at about 14 15 of the new cases in the yakima county being school-aged students um so in february i was really proud that my my predictions were really close to the to the actual account um but march kind of went awry on me so i will recalibrate next week or after
122this week's data but you can see we spiked up a little above where i thought we would you go to the next slide we're gonna blow up oh back up one we're gonna blow up this one area wow okay well look really quick we're gonna blow up this one area in the focus as of the end of you know march to now in the forecast okay now you can go forward i didn't talk fast enough jennifer i'm sorry all right so um from the end of march and where my forecast started at the end of march i had us going down until we started trending up after spring break but we actually trimmed it up right before spring break um i have not recalculated because i need at least two weeks of data to recalculate
123new data to recalculate but i still predict that we will trend up this week because of easter vacation or easter happening right before spring break and families gathering and then also next week because of people getting back from spring break um traveling so i'm a little off on the forecast but i still think we're gonna spike up a little in the next couple of weeks i we just spiked earlier than i thought anyone have any questions all right no questions and we'll move forward to our uh report from uh assistant superintendent stacey lot thank you trevor uh so when we look at the the week before spring break which was uh march 29 through april 4 we did 92 investigations and so you can see for the last three weeks of march we were over
124100 investigations a week and again it's been trending that way as of today for monday following spring break we had 61 investigations for today only coming off of spring break but the interesting part which says that we are communicating with our parents in our school community is that only four of the students out of those um 61 investigations were actually at school and became symptomatic and had to go home the rest of them were parents calling in to the nursing staff at their respective school and reporting the symptoms that the students had and received guidance on on what to do next so kudos goes out to our parent community for helping follow that guidance and to keep everyone safe and so we're really excited that that is a following trend so a positive test for
125last week before last um we were we had eight students and and three staff uh the week of march 29th through april fourth if you take a look at our year-to-date uh weekly trend we were down four uh from the week before um but in jules report she talked about how many students and as you can see we we've got quite a few students that are um testing positive four coding asymptomatic testing during spring break we did again as we did the week before 37 um tested 37 individuals in asymptomatic testing they were all negative today there are many many people interested in getting tested coming off of spring break so again you've seen we've been kind of consistent i look for next week to see this number jump up a little bit any questions
126from board members for either jewel or stacy martha one thing i i would like to to share we we did stay in phase three today um what's interesting is when they do their their when they make their decision there's a lag of 11 days with the positive cases and a lag of eight days with hospitalization rates and so when they were looking at allowing us to stay in phase three they were looking at a hospitalization rate of about 5.2 if they used the data 11 days out the next count is may 3rd that's most likely hospitalization rate is most likely to be in double digits as well as the positive count rate as joule has suggested may be elevated so there there is uh an indication that at that next um next count date on
127i believe it's may 3rd we may be uh moving back into phase two which will have a significant impact on indoor sports which are set to to begin at that point in time and uh so i just want to bring that up moving forward that we're not out of that that that roller coaster ride that uh seems to be occurring and um and again um moving forward with that information so thank you for allowing me to share thank you stacy any questions or comments from board members i was i i appreciate stacey you clarifying what numbers they were looking at to move us to phase two or not because i was watching the numbers and i'm thinking wait a minute how did they justify that so that's helpful that's helpful to know that there is
128that lag time i expect i mean i wouldn't be surprised but what we what we see counties kind of popping in and out of phase two to phase three or phase three back to phase two um given that the weather is improving and people are getting a little cabin fever and wanting to get out and socialize a little bit more so we'll have to wait and see i guess what will that you said that that it may affect our spring sports when does spring sports start do we know well they're they've actually moved the calendar all over the place and so it's actually what we would normally call fall sports which is going to be cross country volleyball it's going to be there you're going to have some sports which will be inside in a
129gymnasium and when we go back to phase 2 that's problematic inside and it also in phase three we're not wearing masks outside but it will also cause us to go back to wearing masks for the outdoor sports as well as participants as well as uh fans and so um that that like i said that bounce back and forth it's hard to stay on top of you know for spectators and stuff to know what is expected what is required and what's not required as well as our students you know families and staff but you're right i i anticipate based on a lag in uh how they calculate the numbers that we may be headed back so will be incumbent upon us to really be focused on uh communicating that to our parents so that they know
130um they know what to expect and to the community as well so that if we have to curtail spectators and things like that we don't have people upset with us because of something that's completely out of our control i can't share with you that sarah cordova did send that phase two information a reminder out to our high school principals today just reminding them in the event that we go back these are the criteria under which we need to operate um so we are trying to stay on top of that i mean mike my concern and um i think people would agree that if we're averaging over 100 investigations a week and we had 61 today as a follow-up from spring break i'm not sure what the end of the week brings to us um out
131of that 61 today with seven positives uh five students and and two staff members and so this week might look kind of scary by the time we get done yeah joel do you have something to add i just um the sports seasons have moved all over uh the middle of may is when we go into winter sports which are the indoor sports basketball girls basketball boys basketball wrestling and if we're in phase two those become very difficult and that's may i think it's may 15 to june 19th is actually fall or winter sports so right now we're in spring and they're mainly outside but it doesn't make a difference whether you have to wear a mask or not if we're in phase 2. because it makes a lot of sense to have winter sports start
132on may 15th okay go ahead yes i just want i just wanted a point of clarification because you know i'm i'm one even though we are in phase three right now and i'm surprised we're still in phase three right from the numbers but understanding how they're using that matrix and i i think you i heard you say even for the indoor sports i thought that the kids would not have to wear masks but the spectators have to wear masses i'm more comfortable with having the spectators wear masses versus not i'm very very right now with this climate i wear masks everywhere i go even you know with with having both shots and and i see people who say with misinformation i got i got both shots i don't need a mess yes you do until
133everybody gets vaccinated and and i'm i just want a point of clarification even if we do stay in in phase three i think the spectators should still wear masses with the vaccination that's just me and that's you know i wanna i want us to open up fully and we can't do it like this if you know with these mis conceptions on what the guidelines are and what the process is you're getting so many different variants of information but that's that's just me thank you guys for listening thanks don jewell um do i have my hand up again still yes oh i'm sorry that that was a mistake okay all right so um i know that you all will keep us apprised of this because if we do go back to phase two it's it will
134have a pretty significant impact on um our student athletes and spectator sports and all of that and um i guess i guess i i just would like some clarification like don if we're in phase three who wears the masks for outdoor sports do we know that they no longer have to wear them outside the spectators or the the um the student athletes that was part of that conversation with the question from that parent that um paul stevens talked with the parent letting them know and we're in phase two they do have to wear those and shortly after that we were we moved everybody the governor moved everybody into phase three and so that's where some of that confusion will lie is if we start bouncing back and forth sorry everybody's gone on alert all of
135a sudden um okay well just keep us surprised and i know that the community will appreciate any information that we can provide to them so that they don't get surprised as well and thank you both stacy and joel for your updates like i've said before and i will continue to say these are critical for um for how we move forward in this really crazy time that we're in right now okay if there's nothing else from board members on this or trevor do you have anything to add on this no nothing dad thank you okay next item on the agenda is fall full entry discussion trevor i expect that you're gonna kick this off uh sure the uh the board uh had mentioned previously that they would like to have a conversation uh about uh what
136the fall could look like um i think we've learned today that there are quite a few unknown factors out there but uh we also uh recognize that we're in a different situation now with uh vaccines widely available uh at the site at the same time we know that there is a variant out there that is causing some havoc uh in other parts of the world so there is still uh significant unknown factors that are in play uh but uh moving forward uh thinking about the fall uh just personally i would recommend moving to a full uh reopening um ex with the exception being uh if there were some uh a great spike in cases or variants uh that we were seeing close to the beginning of school uh in the fall so i'll just kick
137off the conversation and i know that this was more of a board conversation but if you're willing we could also hear from other members of the cabinet as well they're a little bit closer to the monitoring of the case counts we're also going to be dependent on the governor and or ospi and or the state department of health for any rules or rigs that they put into place correct uh that is correct and my personal belief is that uh the continued uh pressure will be political in nature and that uh we will probably see an opportunity to reopen i think that that has been demonstrated across the board that uh things kind of ebb and flow depending on where we're at with covet fatigue and uh you know we we see case counts spiking and
138i still hear many um people talking about how we need to you know go to a full reopener right now when we're seeing what we see in the case counts so i would imagine that by end of summer we will have significant pressure uh throughout the state not we just the school district i think the governor uh our superintendent of public instruction and i could anticipate that we would see uh probably a full reopening approach at that point but again that is speculation but that is a pattern we have kind of seen with the loosening of restrictions uh the longer that this does go on stacy you know thank you uh director rice i i'd just like to share that one of the concerns that that i have is that the variant is is in
139our county and students or kids i should say just kids in general are much more susceptible to that variant and so i'm not sure i i do not have a crystal ball but i'm just not sure how that's going to play out in allowing us to as we go through the summer if students or our children aren't able to get vaccinated and what that impact might be long term for us in the next few months it's kind of like a shell game isn't it you never know you never know under which shell the p exists board members do you have any input on this discussion yes martha i think one of the main issues and this is a discussion that was occurring at the nsba conference as well is learning loss right so i think
140the concern is that a lot of students across the country are i mean they're coming in six months a year behind already and now with the covid for the pandemic they're falling further and further behind special ed students aren't getting receiving the services that they need and on and on and on so i'm just wondering about that as if that's a factor that the board would consider in returning full full opening or returning to school full time with full opening so that's one thing i i think that that weighs heavy now in my mind is that our students you know their their achievement scores test scores and that that's not everything but you know they're had low scores historically and this is just going to perhaps and maybe we can see some data that shows
141otherwise but if we continue with the online education model then it's just going to further worsen or widen those gaps and and increase the learning loss so that's one issue that i'm kind of thinking about right now thank you raymond jewell thank you director rice and i just want to say that pfizer has submitted to the cdc approval to vaccinate 12 through 16 year olds they expect that approval to come forward in may and maybe start vaccinating 12 to 16 year olds by june 1st that will not help the k5 students who are susceptible to this variant as stacy talked about but i will help um to have at least 12 through 16 year olds well actually 12 through through um seniors vaccinated by the fall hopefully if they do approve that which they think
142they're going to prove in mark in may and they should start vaccinating in june i'm just going to add the what i'm hearing from other superintendents and the conversations that i had with superintendent reichel last week i will not be i would be surprised if they give us the option of returning in a hybrid model i think they'll either tell us you can offer students a remote learning option or you can offer students your normal school day i don't think there's going to be an option for hybrid do you think that they'll require the three foot distancing still i if if they do i think they'll they will need to lessen that distancing requirement for um meals in common areas and i anticipate that will be the next step the there's they're seeing a lot
143of evidence and research showing that this the spread in districts when they follow the guidelines laid out by the health departments are minimizing the spread and so based on that that information that they're they're they're confident in the district's ability to control the spread would would we be able to accommodate a full return days a week if and and still maintain any kind of social dense distancing we probably have the space in our elementary schools um middle school and high school with a three foot distancing i think that would be a challenge because some of those classrooms have 30 bodies in them and they're not small bodies and to require three feet with them it is going to be difficult okay i think i think the whole board shares raymond's concern about learning loss which
144is why i'm very thankful that we insert managed to insert 15 days of intersessions into next year's calendar um we do have in in a meeting coming up i think we've got a presentation on summer school is that correct trevor yes i believe we do have one coming up on that so um that will be an opportunity for some of our kids certainly not probably not all of them but um it's likely that we'll see more kids for summer school this year than we usually do simply because of the struggles that some of them had with remote remote learning jennifer do we know when when that presentation on summer school is coming what meeting i believe that's at the business meeting this month oh so next week oh good okay all right so we'll have
145we'll maybe have um some answers to options for students to address that but i know that i know that each of us are concerned about the loss that our students have suffered over this last year and at this point it's um it's going to be a challenge i think to get them back to where they were um let alone advance them to where they need to be but i think we're i think we're up for that challenge we've got talented staff and talented leaders and parents who want to work with us and kids who want to learn so any other um comments or questions yes but i do have another question sorry okay up all the time but yeah um we've been discussing the vaccinations right the vaccines and become vaccinated so i'm just wondering
146what the superintendent's thoughts are in terms of are we looking at making the vaccine mandatory or voluntary so that's kind of weighing on my mind as well as as other school districts i think are having to look at that i know the the research not research but literature i've seen shows that students of color families of color are a mistrust right and i don't know if that's the vaccine or or just the whole process and they're becoming they're they're not taking the vaccine as as people would hope or at the rates as other other groups so i'm just wondering about vaccinations whether or not we're looking at or having discussions on it being mandatory or voluntary yeah currently uh we're looking at voluntary so there is no recommendation at this point even broached the topic
147of uh forcing um them to be mandatory so we're looking at the option for them to choose i will say that uh you know we we are looking at more children being able to be vaccinated coming up uh but i think for us to move into a mandatory vaccination state that would have to be something done at a greater level perhaps a state level you're also talking about significant barriers that could be faced in negotiation if that were an issue as well so without pulling anybody else into the conversation because we could probably go on for a lot longer hypothesizing around the um nature of the vaccines at this point there are no plans to make those mandatory thank you and i i do support that just want to look at the board any other
148questions or comments from board members well i know that i know the superintendent will keep us surprised of this as we get closer to september sorry i'm going to have to mute for a minute i have a person who walks by my house about this time every day with a great big old bulldog in tow drives all the dogs in the neighborhood crazy including mine okay sorry um if there's nothing else on this we can move to the next agent next and final agenda item which is items of port interest does any board member have anything they'd like to bring to the board's attention i do martha okay so last week i attended uh the virtual nsba conf annual conference and it was a good conference got to listen to some great speakers and some
149great uh presenters in the workshops so you know it is interesting how the message that that we receive from different individuals equity i think equity and skill security were the two top i believe issues that they were discussing in addition to the covet uh pandemic as well so but we got to listen to leslie odom jr who's an actor and a musician he talked about his life and how he experienced racism growing up but he also talked about you know his parents having high expectations for for him lots of discipline and direction and he took advantage of the music and arts programs at his local at his high school and that helped them to be successful we talked also let me see i got some notes here listen to sonia nazaria who's a journalist soledad
150o'brien who's also a journalist so they talked about the current influx of migrants from south america they're entering schools across the country and they did talk about racism but they focused more on you know the traumatic experience that the that that this group of students are currently facing and actually sonia actually disguised herself as a migrant and was dropped off somewhere in south america and was jumping trains and making the the the path or the making the journey to united states and she she said that she was almost beaten up raped and so forth and so on during her experience so she talked about and so did soledad they talked about traumatic experience of migrant instincts coming to the us talked about poverty talked about family structures i didn't realize this but oftentimes families living
151in south america mexico south america will leave their children come to the united states and live here for years and years and then their children grow to be teenagers or older and then the kids are now coming to united states and when they do reach their parents there's they don't have a relationship and so it's it's a struggle for them it's uh it's really challenging for them they're um they talked about these children not having any type of education in their country's origin not knowing how school works in the united states there's a lot of culture shock and so you know like in honduras and i forget the other country was a lot of gang violence a lot of crime so they really talked a lot about the trauma and and being part of their
152ex that experience and being a barrier to education and so then there was also let me see an actor by the name of tony plana lana he came to united states from cuba and they happened to move right next door to a major hollywood studio so i guess he talked about being at the right place at the right time right because he's a famous actor been in countless countless movies for the last 20 30 years so he talked about about that and then there was a positive site positive psychology researcher sean paker he talked about how positive psychology has been used to increase test scores and the experience of education for students and i all i went to all i attended were the equity workshops and i think it was mary fatakis was in one
153was what presenter and one of those so it's good information they talked about dismantling racism and i i'm still thinking about some of the things i said in terms of you know that our our current school system has been developed over the course of the last 100 200 years and they were created to oppress students of color i i there's some truth to that i think but that's worthy of a discussion and so she's they said that all policies are were created to oppress our students all students in the united states so and that we have to do this deep dive so dismantling was a key word deep dives were another key word or a phrase and they're suggesting that we look at examine all the policies not only the board policies but the policies
154for that the superintendent is uh responsible for looking at all policies procedures uh the district in essence examining or looking at the district from the bottom up to the top down so that's quite a test that they're suggesting so i just wanted to mention that that and i believe it was a great conference and i indeed learned a lot about some of the current issues that other school districts are facing now i did have a sense of pride because our superintendent and the superintendent team is doing an awesome job in dealing with a pandemic we still there's still school districts in the united states that don't have where their students don't have connection to the internet they don't have laptops and you know they're not being fed they're going they're starving and and i just
155you know i just thought throughout that presentation that you know the muscle school district is doing an awesome job in those areas and really providing all the support for our students so and uh so i just wanted to mention that thank you [Music] yeah martha the donald davis in houston ghost me i had so much trouble getting on you remember that martha at the marriott he did it again they did it again with nasma but uh i talked with jennifer and we're gonna i i was getting a lot of information like raymond was saying from the readings from soledad and all those presenters and i looked through it and and a lot of it was on equity and it was some great information i just couldn't enter in i couldn't sign in they had us
156mixed up but uh jennifer and i are working on it but uh i know it was a good uh good uh conference you know i'm upset about that that's the second time donald davis and houston have messed me up and i know him [Laughter] but uh i also want to say uh that i will be running for re-election for uh my position on position two you know hopefully i can make the uh announcement again at our business meeting but i wanted you guys to know that i will be running again for my position and uh raymond i know it was a great uh session because i was getting calls of people asking me where are you we don't see you but they would they i even got to listen to several of the uh guest
157speakers over the phone but uh yeah it was it it was a great conference too bad we wasn't there in new orleans where it was supposed to be held but uh it was good thank you guys well thank you both for those reports um it it's encouraging that nsba was able to pull off a virtual conference and perhaps if there are materials that you were able to get in connection with any of the classes that you went to we can share those with the rest of the board [Music] they usually do have pretty fantastic keynote speakers all right um i do have one thing to share um last wednesday i got an email from or a phone call from senator cantwell's legislate central washington legislative aide asking if i would be available for a conference
158call panel discussion with the senator and and folks from around the state uh last friday and so i was able to make that happen and there were 10 or 12 of us from around the state teachers parents school board members school staff and [Music] we were talking about the effects of the effects of the pen and there was a student a seventh grade student from freeman um the effects of this past year and what districts have done to um to minimize those effects and so i was able to share with the senator um information about our one-to-one program and project gemini and our feeding program and um a couple of suggestions for that she if she wanted to she could put forward for adjusting the rules for e-rate so um i do have i do
159have my comments typed out and i'd be happy to share those with the rest of the board if you're interested um she did ask for comment any written comments that we had to be forwarded to her so i've done that as well and then the only other thing i have is um the end of the legislative session is just around the corner i think the 22nd i think is the sunny die date and we'll see if they can get through a budget between now and then um the senate budget contains things that that we like the house budget contains things that we like and usually there's not too much agreement between them so we'll see what we'll see what comes of that um mr superintendent do you have anything to add uh nothing new to
160share other than what was added in the superintendent's report just grateful to be back here after spring break and have our students back in session hearing raymond talk about where our colleagues are in other parts of the country makes me feel grateful for all of the people here in this room and our community uh the service that we're able to provide even though we know that we're continuing to evolve uh during this challenging time so thank you for your support your continued support and for the service of every individual in this room i would echo that as well um we don't have a need for executive session that is correct there is no need for executive session this evening okay is there anything else for the good of the order okay i see a lot
161of head head shakes not head nods so thank you everyone have a wonderful evening a rest a wonderful rest of the week our next meeting is next tuesday night we'll be at eisenhower correct in the auditorium again that is correct okay