001First is the pledge of allegiance. We'll wait for you, Ron. The pledge of allegiance. Okay, that brings us to the additions, deletions, amendments to the agenda. We don't have any, right? I don't think. Is there one? I think it's all on. We didn't change it. But that's later on the agenda, right? Presumably. So I would move that we adopt the agenda as presented. Second. Motion by Director Albright to adopt the agenda as presented and seconded by I didn't hear who it was. Chair. Director Paysinger, if there's no discussion, all those in favor, raise your right hand. Motion passes 7-0. Community comments? There's nobody? Auditor's in the end. There is. You need to find your name first. Oh, got it. We're going to watch a movie. Is there someone that wanted to comment? Yeah, auditor's going
002to jump in in a second. Okay. No yawning, we're just getting started. Hello, go ahead. Hi, I'm Corey from Acuity. Thank you for letting me be remote. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay. Yes. Great. So we're the district's new audit firm. When Deanne reached out about the possibility of doing the 2025 audit, we were thrilled to get to work with her again. So I'm pleased that we were able to get the audit done timely for you. I know it can be stressful in the audit world today to not have financials done. I'll start with we did a what you have what's called a federal compliance audit because you have enough federal funding that the government requires that. We looked at your ESSER grant and at your child nutrition programs, and we didn't have any
003findings related to the federal programs. Things were in really good shape. There was one, a few time cards we needed that were, Jan did a great job of digging through and working with Willamette ESD to find them and she did. So they were related to some ESSER dollars that were spent. And so we ended up not having any findings. So that's a really good thing. I know you have a lot of transition during the year under audit and prior to us arriving. And so that was good to see. We did have a handful of journal entries. The district is... reported cash basis. And both Jan and Deanne that came in to do your accounting work for you, their background is more accrual basis. And so there were some things that were recorded that we just
004didn't need recorded. And so we went ahead and cleaned those up. If that was something that was happening regularly, we would be... I don't have any concerns. It was more just a, oh, we won't do that anymore. And they've clarified a couple of times what we expect to see. And so I don't think we'll have journal entries like that moving forward. We did, given the cleanup that we did have, we did have a finding that was you don't have staff that can draft the financials. That really is related to drafting the disclosures that go along with the financials. If you perused through them, even cash basis financial statements have a lot of disclosures sitting there. And so that's not a ding on the way anyone is doing their job. That's just the state of things.
005Most of our districts, that have your size staff or smaller have that same finding. You did have some over expenditures for June 30 of 25. Again, this is not something that I think will continue. It is also not surprising given the cleanup and the catch up that did have to happen when Deanne and Jan did come in. So not something that we want to see year over year, but like I said, I think it will not be an issue moving forward. And then we had a handful of missing invoices. They were ones that I am certain they were there. We didn't have any concerns that they were. Not for things that the district genuinely needed. It was just more of an opportunity to tighten up some controls. And again, they all happened during the previous
006business manager's time with the district. So once we were testing things that were your current staffing, we had no issue at all. From a financial standpoint, overall for June 30 of 2025, your cash balances, carryover balances went down $1.9 million, leaving you an ending fund balance of about $4 million. That includes all your funds. The general fund itself, I just had that up, had... About $3 million in carryover balance, and it was the majority of the decrease at $1.3 million. So obviously, when we see decreasing fund balance, it's not something you can have for a long period of time. But given the conditions that we know exist right now, it wasn't surprising to see decreasing fund balance. And we know the board's well aware of that. Does anybody have any questions about our process or
007about the numbers, the findings? Yeah. Hi. Should we be going back to an Acura basis instead of cash basis accounting? Right now. But you get the idea. Yeah. Right now, no. is my answer. Until things get settled and you have a new business manager in place that is comfortable with it, the best thing to do right now is cash basis. It is the most simple. And since you're trying to get some permanent staff into that position, I think it's good to wait until they're there. The other wrinkle and the reason I kind of strongly said no, your accounting software is really, it doesn't do accruals great, especially on the receivable side. And so cash basis is simpler with the software that you have that your ESD has chosen. Got it. I have another question. You
008said we had a significant drop in our general fund. Where'd the money go? Staffing mainly. So revenue was down and expenses were pretty stagnant. Okay. So it was, it was personnel. I mean, that's where, you know, out of every dollar that you spend, that's where the majority of it does go. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I have a couple of questions, Corey. Can you hear me? I can. Yeah. I'm Chris. So with respect to the finding you were talking about where we just don't have a lot of expertise in disclosure, like our, our. Disclosure statements? Mm-hmm. Are there some trainings we could provide to our staff to help with that or certifications that you'd recommend? So what they have to be able to do is they have to be able to demonstrate that they can
009do them. So there are trainings out there. The Government Finance Officers Association does do a lot of training. They have an entire series of courses, and then you can do a la carte courses. So there are a lot of trainings out there about governmental financial reporting that specifically address disclosures. Yeah, so there's tools. Is that something you'd be willing to share with Amy? Of course. Absolutely. Yeah. And then you have in here, which seemed pretty significant to me, that we expended in excess of appropriations and two funds. Can you tell me which two those were? I can. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm working on one screen. So I am back and forth here. So in the general fund, instruction was over by $81,000. And that's on $7 million worth of expenditures. So yeah, $81,000 is
010a lot of dollars, but relatively speaking, it's a small piece of it. The general fund also had some enterprise and community services that was $1,700 over. And then debt service in the general fund was $6,700 over. And then also, sorry, the general fund had, it was mostly the general fund had the facilities acquisition line item over, you didn't budget anything for it and you ended up spending a hundred thousand out of it. And then special revenue fund support services was over by 61,000. And that was special revenue is the ebb and flow of grant funding. And so I think it was just some. When you have a business manager who's not necessarily quite on top of the recording, it's hard to make budget adjustments when you need to. And I think that's just what happened.
011I don't know, Amy, if you want to agree or disagree. Some of the expenditures where we expected them to be coded as far as the account they came out of were came out of a different account code than we had budgeted for or anticipated. So, and again, moving forward, you could do some adjustments, you know, for that when you, as you get closer to your end, but it's all about having current data to do that with. Right. And that, that is the one place I think that we really, the reason we got new auditors too, is so that we could tighten our internal controls and understand better what wasn't working in our processes with the, inside the district office. And we are. We were sending four of our staff, myself included, to OASBO's finance academy
012training so that we have enough cross-training in the district office that if there is turnover or if there are checks and balances that are needed that many of us understand the financial component, even if we're not doing the day-to-day piece of it. Thank you. That's really helpful. So, you know, we used to get in these findings about controls within the office because we just didn't have a lot of staff. Right. And so when you have somebody making purchases, we didn't have like a second person that was making the entries and then keeping an eye on things, essentially. Right. It was just what it was. This is much more concerning to me, quite honestly. Expenditures in a fund greater than 10 percent are supposed to come back to the board for budget changes. So if this
013is an issue with how things are being coded. I'm slightly less concerned, but I just want to make sure the board is seeing that if we aren't spending things according to our budget, like that is a problem. Right. Well, Chris, you do realize that what she just said is all of these issues were before. That's why I asked. Yeah. That's why I asked. So, yeah. Like, I feel fine. Now they're fixed. That's wonderful. Right. So I just wanted to make sure you got that. Yeah, and we wanted our auditors to catch that because that was something that we internally were recognizing was happening, but wasn't being caught in our previous audits as well. So it's been really helpful working with these new auditors to understand how to change our processes internally so that it comes
014across my desk if something is miscoded. Thank you. So then the third piece of the audit is to, with the Secretary of State, you're required to submit a plan of actions for any of the significant deficiencies. We send that as a template for you to, but it just has to be, they have to report back to the state legislature that the board was made aware of the findings in the audit. So that will be your last piece to do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Of course. Thank you. We need to approve the regular board meeting minutes for 2-10-26, the special board meeting minutes from February 10-26, and approve the special board meeting minutes from January 13-26. I would move we approve the agendas as presented. That's okay. It's been a motion by Director Albright
015to approve the consent agenda as presented and a second by Director Paysinger. There's no discussion. Sorry. There's no discussion. All those in favor, raise your hand. Motion passes 7-0. Okay. Now we'll go to Amy's superintendent report. All right. Speaking of money, and I did want to add, as far as the decreasing ending fund balance, that was something that the budget committee did vote through the last couple years just to increase programs for students, but knowing that could only be sustained if the funding matched the programs that we were running in the future. The district recently received an updated state revenue estimate for the current fiscal year based on this update date and school districts projected revenue for this year has been adjusted downward by approximately 500,000 dollars compared to earlier state projections while fluctuations in
016state revenue forecasts are not uncommon in Oregon school funding system. The change requires us to proceed thoughtfully in the remainder of the fiscal year. At the same time, the district was notified that our PR side accounts will be depleted sooner than originally anticipated. And as the board knows, these side accounts have helped offset employer contribution rates in recent years. Their earlier depletion will increase retirement cost pressures moving forward. So in response, we have implemented a temporary pause on discretionary spending. Purchases are currently being limited to those necessary for operations, student services, safety, and infrastructure. This proactive step allows us to slow expenditures in the short term while protecting our current staffing levels and maintaining. services for students this year and in the years ahead. Administration will continue to monitor expenditures closely and will keep the
017board informed as we move through the remainder of the fiscal year. And just to add to that, if the board wants to have a work session on the various internal controls that we have implemented this year prior to the budget committee meeting, we have a lot that we could show you as to how those internal controls are working. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. On your cost-cutting measures, How much money do you estimate that will save? Well, poor Otto's taken the brunt of a lot of it. I don't know that we have. On the 18th, we're going to pencil it all out with Jan. So we're trying to capture around $800,000 right now. State testing preparation across the district. Teachers and instructional teams are preparing for the upcoming state assessment window. Staff have been
018working intentionally to align instruction to standards and monitor student progress through common assessments and classroom evidence of learning. We remain hopeful that the focused work our teachers have done around literacy, writing, speaking, and critical thinking will translate into measurable gains for students this year. The dedication of our staff to strengthening instructional practice and supporting student growth continues to be evident in classrooms throughout the district. And then calendar and schedule development, which you just were privy to some of that work. I want to acknowledge the significant work several. Staff committees have undertaken in recent months to review and develop potential options for future school calendars and schedules. These committees have spent considerable time studying instructional minutes, student needs, staff needs, and operational considerations. Their work resulted in several thoughtful proposals that were shared with the board
019during our work sessions earlier this evening. And I want to thank staff members who participated in these committees for their time, their thoughtfulness, the professionalism they brought to the process. Their work reflects a shared commitment to ensure. that our district structures support both strong instruction and a positive learning environment for students. And that's it. That brings us to the winter sports report, so Frank can go home. Keep pressing until it turns green. Thanks for having me. Another good, we had a great season. I wanted to preface a couple things. I can't remember if I did one in my fall report. Last year, we had too many ejections from competitions, and I met with coaches in the fall and did it again in the winter about talking about sportsmanship and how we're going to carry ourselves
020on and off the court. and we actually did have one. It was a teaching moment for the young man, but last year we had seven ejections at the end of the winter season, and this year we only have one. So putting a sportsmanship plan in place to help our kids understand what athletics is all about. And actually, I forgot to tell you, in the fall, our volleyball team actually won the sportsmanship state award at the volleyball tournament. We had quite a few kids participating in the winter. This is just a breakdown, 88 junior high students broken down into the different sports, and then 101 participants in a high school. The one highlight. is our girls wrestling. Our numbers are increasing, the sport's growing. One of the things we were trying to do this year is
021try to increase our participation numbers with our young ladies. And so on that end, the sport's growing. The girls basketball numbers, we'd like to see those continue to improve. I think our coaches did a really good job at the junior high with getting more girls out, giving them a good experience. And so we're going to continue to keep growing that with our new sixth graders that are coming in this next year. Uh, wrestling was a real highlight. We had, we had five, uh, athletes that qualified for the state tournament. Um, Mike Alvarez, Sam Walsh, Alejandro Magana, Leah Salceda, and then, um, Kaylin, uh, changed her name. Sorry, Pelletier. Um, And actually watching Sam at the district tournament, it was a grind. And when I saw him on Monday, I asked him because he qualified, he
022finished third and qualified to state. And he said, coach, it was the best moment of my life. So it was pretty cool. So these were, they all. Sam and Micah finished third, and then Alejandro finished second. They all qualified, went on to the state tournament. Didn't wrestle as well as we wanted to at the state tournament, but it was still really great for them to be there. Kay Lynn was, I guess, one match away from placing at state. And then Aaliyah finished third and she was awarded third team all state. In wrestling, it's pretty simple. If you win first, you're first team. If you get second, you're second team. If you get third, you're third team. So some of the other sports is there's so many positions. So wrestling, it's pretty cut and dry. But
023it was great to see them. Highlights in our girls. Two of the goals that Coach Moore had going into this year was have a winning record and build off of last year and then make the league playoffs. They finished fifth and their overall record was 13-12. Still wants to grow the program, get more gals out. We had a meeting last week, did some goal setting and how we can try to accomplish some of that, but steps in the right direction on that. Hadley Hughes was the first team, all league. And then Charlie Upmeyer and Bella Lopez were honorable mention. Boys basketball, it was a learning year. Their last game of the year was probably the best game. I watched them play all year. And Coach even agreed if we'd have played like that all year,
024it would have been a totally different season. And a lot of times the teams that don't gel together early, they're the ones that struggle. So not the ideal outcome that Coach Opp wanted. Tanner Gentry was a third team. all-league player. And the good thing about boys basketball is there's a lot of depth. And so there'll be coaches got some ideas on working with the youth programs and how he can continue to build his program and get them back into the playoffs. This is, we're in week two, just kind of heading into the spring. Baseball, softball, track, both at the high school and the junior high. We have competitions starting on this coming Monday. Baseball and softball have opening day. And then track, I think, starts April 2nd is their first icebreaker meet. And we've got
025quite a few. kids out for track. I think junior high isn't going to start for another week or two. And we have over 50 junior high kids that are signed up for track. So thank you. It took me that whole time and an hour and a half to warm up from practice tonight. So thank you. Okay, that brings us to the discussion part of the agenda, the scheduled board events. The next board meeting is, it's on here somewhere. Tuesday, April 14th at 6 o'clock. So that brings us again to the 26-27 calendar preview so we can talk more about it. Stephanie, do you have the paper that has the renewals on it? I bought into everything you said. Except, I mean, I think, I think we, I think, you know, Larry and Greg are right.
026We got to do something, you know? And I, and I think. what you presented. I see a lot of benefits to going to the block schedule and the way we can do it. I have a real issue and not that it's not a good, it's the, it's the reset weeks and not that it's not a good idea. I have problems with the optics and I don't think parents or community are going to like it at all. I just think I'm, I don't want to go down that road. And I just. I don't think people are going to buy. I'm not buying into it. Yeah. So if we can do, I mean, I get the first week in September. where we have the whole in-service and then, you know, maybe teachers start earlier so kids still
027start the day after Labor Day or maybe they go later. I get that. But that one where you had like another one in February, you know, we got a whole week off in Thanksgiving in November and then we get two weeks off in December. The kids go back to school for a month and then they get another week off the first week of February. That's a lot of time off. And I just, I don't think it goes over well. I'm not saying it's not a good idea and that we couldn't use it. I just think it doesn't look good. Yeah, and it does create a different amount of time for learning for different students, depending on their needs. So the reset weeks would be designed to review the student data, determine which students need intensive
028interventions and reteaching, and bring those students in. Granted, that takes a lot of planning and effort and coordination with transportation. But in the end, to utilize the reset weeks would utilize, would, if done well, result in more intentionality and students who need more time learning, getting more time learning than everyone else, which is, in the end, what we're trying to do is design a model that isn't a one-size-fits-all for every student. And then also try to address the child care piece of it so that if it's not specifically an intervention that students need, there would be a way to provide. to provide a place for students to be where they're fed and they're being supervised by adults during the school day. Again, it takes a lot of work and intentionality, but it's differentiating your approach
029depending on student needs. And very rarely are you able to accomplish staff getting the depth and breadth of professional development while kids are getting small group instruction. And if you look at the hours that you... Like if you were to hire a tutor, they equate something like two hours of tutoring to one full week of schooling because the one-on-one instruction or the one-on-two or three instruction helps students learn at a much faster rate than a one-on-30 or one-on-25 model. I agree and understand the concern with that. And I also think part of the effectiveness of a model like that is being able to differentiate the amount of time students get to. learn and recover learning that was lost in the hours that Sean was showing. What you don't see is exponentially how many hours more
030a student who would be getting those interventions would get over their K-12 experience if they were making up for lost time with learning. So I think there's a lot of risk. with reset weeks. And obviously, it wouldn't be something that the board would vote on tonight, I would think. It'd be something you'd have to go out and talk to the community about and see what their perception was and talk exactly about what models would work for the community during those weeks and which ones wouldn't. But I also think not exploring them is you're missing an opportunity for adding up all those hours over the course of 13 years of a student's life that could possibly catch them up. on their academic outcomes whereas otherwise you're fitting them into the same amount of time every other
031student's getting which is part of the struggle obviously you also have to improve instruction to get the outcomes you want so help me understand so a reset week are our students that need focused attention would get that and correct me if i'm wrong that would generally be in core Yes. project or or whatever that is and maybe are more advanced students or something like that you are doing you're doing a paper on something or yeah when we talked with the staff that's exactly what we had in mind is there would be um obviously uh teachers and core instruction would be um looking at who needs intensive intervention working with instructional assistants on what that intervention could entail. So it's also a lot more collaboration time between licensed staff and classified staff, which we currently don't
032have as much of in the schedule. And then teachers would be planning for the next unit or the next chunk of instruction, but you'd also have the elective and CTE teachers oftentimes able to be freed up to run those extension sessions or high engagement sessions with students who sign up or students who are, you know, interning or what have you to come in. Yeah, I just, I see that. I think Terry's on point that sending half of our kids home optics are not great. So how can we occupy and enrich the kids that don't need that focused instructional time by leveraging staff that maybe aren't staffed? Ask, are you, the reset days, there's only two schedules that have the reset days. So there's a rolling, pardon me? There's four. There's four. There's four. You've got
033too many schedules, not two schedules. I think there's four. Okay, five. appropriate set days but the eight the one that i liked the best i mean i haven't reviewed them for long enough certainly but i liked the ab rolling block seemed like it gave um before is not what were we talking about some of these were like 20 days or some yeah yeah four weeks five days a week yeah um so our I guess when you asked the question, it made me think that that's our only option is that we have these reset days. Now we got to explain them. Okay. This is a discussion about like what you want us to keep digging into. So if you wanted us to look at calendars that have the reset weeks, then it would be unpacking exactly
034how to pull that off and how to bring students in. And you guys would be hopefully going and holding focus groups to see if that's even a starter or non-starter with the community. But what we heard during the four day week feedback from the board is that you really do like the flexibility of a block schedule and the amount of depth students can go into with their learning, especially with the CTE classes. So whatever schedule we pick, you want to be able to lay a block schedule on top of that, if not next year, at some point in the future. And the four day week was a non-starter because that could just disrupt learning. So then the. You have the traditional or the block schedule that sits in a regular school calendar. And then you
035have the block schedule that has reset weeks. And what I want to be careful of is that reset weeks aren't interpreted as unstructured teacher prep time. That they really are looked at as both personalizing the learning for students, which is. hard to do in the education system in general. But a block schedule, especially a hybrid block, gives more personalization. A reset week adds further personalization because you can do intervention and extension and put the time factor on top of that. But also the rate at which teachers would be learning their craft would be a lot more significant too because of the professional development and the amount of analysis that they'd be able to do. do on their students' progress. So really, that would have to be a very structured time for teachers as well. But
036currently, there's, even with the late start, there's this tug and pull of, do we use the time to look at student data? Do we use the time to design units or lessons? Do we use the time to do professional development? I mean, something's always... giving you no matter what even with that ahead of time um and so it could be a dangerous schedule if not pulled off well and it could be a game-changing schedule if done right in my opinion and it is a risk um can i reckon so i want to just kind of reconcile something here yeah in the reset schedule you talk about Teachers taking time, I think in here they were even working with some SPED counterparts, you know, like identifying the kids that are going to need some individualized work
037during those reset weeks. So when are they doing that? Like during their prep ESD time? That's what we had talked about with the teaching staff because they're like, how do you organize if you're analyzing data on Monday? Because we originally had students coming in Tuesday through Friday then. Like how do you identify that the students need to come and communicate with their families, get them the transportation, get them here? And so we talked about flipping it on its head a little bit and either doing that in ESD sessions the week. prior or that Monday and bringing students in on a Wednesday. So you have another day to have staff make those phone calls and organize the intervention time. So there's a few different ways that you can organize it, but definitely flipping the model so
038that the analysis is happening during ESD would. allow you to bring students in earlier in the week. Which admin would schedule during those prep periods. An admin would have like a small group of teachers in that they're working with to guide teachers and coach teachers on how to analyze their student data or giving them professional development. So instead of 100 staff and time doing PD, they're sitting with five or six of their staff. Okay. So then on the AB rolling block schedule example, we have acceleration days, prep week, and prep days. I mean, those look like reset weeks. It is. That reflects. People didn't like the word reset or prep week or whatever. This is the same thing. Yes. Okay. Thank you. So we don't have an AB block schedule really in front of us
039that runs like the whole year without any reset weeks. It would just be, they would continue into those weeks that are set aside. Technically doesn't need to vote on the schedule. We want you guys to say, yes, go ahead with the schedule, but it's the calendar you're voting on. So we could stick a block schedule in the traditional calendar. Just for the examples we have in front. So then can you, Maybe the other thing I wanted to hear a little more about was that ESD prep and professional, the professional development time in particular. So right now, how it works on Mondays is we've got a couple hours in the morning where you have the whole staff together, whether you get all three schools together or you do it in separate schools or whatever, and they
040work on a topic, maybe have some extra prep time too. department meetings, you know, whatever, right? So if we don't have the reset weeks and we don't have a late start, you basically are down to in-service days for doing all staff work, correct? And embedded staff development, yeah. And then the embedded one would be this, which this is really cool, by the way. And I think you should adopt this no matter what we do somewhere because this plan is so clear to me. And the things you talked about in, I'm going to get the term wrong, but vocabulary and language. It was literacy, sorry, literacy and using literacy no matter what topic or no matter what subject you're teaching, right? This hits that stuff kind of, you know, a little bit further down, but this
041is really cool. Like having a plan like this, I think is phenomenal. But so what does that look like when you're trying to do professional development and everybody's prep periods are different, right? So we can tell you from experience and it's. We've been talking a lot with our admin team about this because we want to prepare them. It's also a non-starter. They don't feel ready and they aren't prepared to do it because... When I was a curriculum assistant principal, and same with Sean, embedded staff development happened every single Wednesday. And your whole day as an administrator is leading PD with different groups of teachers. And you do not get interrupted unless the school's on fire or there's a crisis. And so it's protected time. And your school administrators really need to be instructional leaders first
042and foremost, and then managing the operations of the school secondary. the grade school that becomes harder if you don't end up with two administrators over time like if they're if we have to lose staffing through attrition and we only have one administrator then you've got you know your principal all day once a week working with students but I will say it can be done because we call administrators over here for all-day meetings and it takes some organization you know and I think Frank ends up with a lot on his plate on those days but What you're doing is you're prioritizing instructional improvement over everything else. And it's a shifted mentality because your administrators might have been doing that. And you can play with the schedule a little bit. So like if the strategy was to
043have all ninth grade teachers having the same prep or all English teachers with the same prep, so you can be creative with that, but then don't forget the duty piece as well. So if you're an admin, cause I'm, I'll go ahead and share what I think. To do the flex days or the reset days with the flex hybrid model is a huge, huge lift. And I'd rather do it well with what we start. And I do agree it's a hard selling point. But I also don't care if we as educators, if we feel this is what's needed. But I understand that takes time to. to educate our families and our communities. But I'd love to see us get really good at embedded staff, staff development and have a focus like that. Then if we get
044good, then we can, we have plenty of time to talk about what the flex days could do and so forth. So that's, and that's exactly where I was kind of going. I, it's a little, like I hear the value. I am not convinced yet that we have a good plan to do it right. And then I'm so that I'm hesitant to really jump into that. And I don't think we have the capacity yet because that's because if we're talking about instructions, one thing, but designing assessments that gives you really. a data in order to change your instruction is a whole nother game. Then to make decisions off that, then talk to kids and then set goals. And it's just a lot. And I, for a teacher, I told the admin, it's a heavy lift for
045them, but for a teacher, that could be a lot all at once. But it is a chicken and egg problem. And I like Terry's idea or maybe it was Piper's of the, the week before school starts really diving into. not only the mandatory trainings, but how do you teach within a 90 minute period? Because that is something like, do you have to front load that in order to pull it off? Well, so if you roll out something like just start with the block without the professional development, how do you do that? Well, and so it's, that's where we got in this chicken and egg problem. But if you kind of compromise with, we're going to put more time up front at the start of the school year to dive deep and then use embedded staff
046development to keep training. That could kind of be a model that would. would not be so drastic as far as a learning curve. And the only, I think the only thing I really want to comment on was I really love the flux model. It just, when you were describing it, we got to kind of see it a little bit visually and where, I mean, you could, you, the only scare that I have is you guys figuring it out because it's what sounded so amazing was every student could have a different schedule, one that worked for them. Right. And that sounds, Amazing. I don't know. Like, yeah, I don't know if that's possible, but it sounds to me like the way to go if we can make it work. I will say that the six through
04712 administrative team has been meeting with each teacher and department to talk about. the master schedule already this year. And so whatever we throw at the 6-12 team, they're going to be ahead of the game as compared to previous years. That's good. Yeah. So just to a question and a comment, do we have staff buy-in to do whatever changes we're going to make? And then I'm... What I'm hearing is this sounds like maybe a little bit of a phased approach that I don't think we can do everything this upcoming school year. But so what is that realistic next step? Sure. I mean, staff have been on the committees that not all staff, obviously. If this is something that we're looking at, I do think, you know, going back out to the community, going back out
048to the staff and saying, here's where we're at now and weigh in so that we have your input before we make a decision is important. I think the hybrid block staff are bought into because you can differentiate for age of student or, you know, you could have a 44 minute. you know, 44 minute classes for sixth graders and 95 minute classes for high schoolers. And you can make that work. And it's really a place where we could also ratchet up the block over time and have more of the mini sessions to start so that staff who need it can kind of get accustomed to a longer class period. And then the CTE courses, you just jump right into the. the block out of the gate or double blocking math and language art so it's longer
049with intervention times. So we could roll, we could even roll out the block schedule in a gradual fashion with the hybrid flex model. I'm in if we get away with it. I think you can. Reset weeks. Yeah. I had a new name for that. Here's what I think about the reset weeks. Here's what I think about the reset weeks. And maybe this would get Terry on board. If it wasn't like only so many kids really had to go to school. all kids still went to school but you just did something different that week so you they would be like in a club that week yeah something i mean something i mean when you go to this is what i thought when only certain kids have to go they get labeled as those special kids that
050need the help and i'm perfect i don't have to go to school i don't want that either And you'd have to be careful that if everybody's still at school, because you'd have some going to their conventions and some going to electives. But yeah. Yeah. My concern is that the kids that are struggling may well be struggling because they're not attending. And if we think then when everyone else is up and they're going to have to attend, that's not going to happen. Well, I know even right now, like a student that has an IEP in. there is struggle with the teacher being able to help them during the class time, right? And I know they have the special times too, but, and this is speaking for grade school level, right? Like, I don't know high school,
051but so for teachers to be able to give that extra time, even during the class time when all the students are together, it just, I don't know. I do think you're gonna have some teachers that are not. I would not be excited about a 90-minute block schedule because it is intimidating. I've been through it as a teacher and as an administrator going from a 50, 60-minute every day to a block schedule, and it can be intimidating. And what I learned from my experience is sometimes you have to walk through the fire. I mean, it's not a good enough reason to not move forward. You just have to acknowledge it's not going to be perfect. Don't sacrifice it for that. That's why I think if we can focus on the ESD part of it and really
052focus on making teachers feel successful, have the hybrid flex so some kids aren't sitting in classes for 90 minutes four times a day if they need a different schedule. I think that is a good step. And when we were dealing with attendance issues right after COVID, the duties. Everyone had were attendance related and communicating with parents. Oh, yeah. And that can move the dial if you've got a 90 minute prep. And when there's one day you're in ESD, the other 45 minutes every day you're communicating with families and trying to do outreach to get kids in school that can just exponentially increase the manpower around communication and family outreach. So what's our next step here? I think like Craig, you tell us which one's the best for us. And like you said, I want what
053our teachers are going to jump on and they're going to be happy with and they're going to put in the work because something needs to go. So I think we could. To the next board meeting, bring our traditional calendar with a seven-figure date. We could bring a hybrid flex block within a traditional calendar, and we could do a little bit of a start-of-school additional PD to try to get... I think that's that ready for it. And if in the meantime, we could send the board some information about all three and presentations. And if the board could just put their feelers out and maybe individually with school admin or alone, whatever you feel comfortable with, we could just host some coffee talks just to. And I already volunteered with that. I think I would love to
054do that. It would help me if it was structured in that way. Would it be helpful for your admin team and teachers to, we don't have to talk about this today necessarily or even at the next meeting, but it would be good to hear from you if you think it's worth trying to implement whatever change maybe we come to for next year or taking next year in your late start Mondays, let's say. To start preparing. And then you'd have like a year of learning how to prepare 90 minute lessons or whatever. Like, what do you do with your ESD time? And that kind of a thing. Just a thought, just a thought that crossed my mind. Have you guys looked at doing it halfway Monday, Wednesday, Friday? I mean, I think maybe the eight periods
055or however. And Tuesday, Thursday block Tuesday, odd numbers block Thursday, even numbers blocked. And then they have a 90-minute period to, let's say, in the CTE. I mean, if they were cooking something, they could literally make it and bake it all in the same day. Or you could do math and you could be reviewing and then having your tests on those 90 days just to kind of, but maybe not every day, be blocked. So the off days would be like seven period days, about an hour each? Yeah. you would do the professional development piece. But you're kind of already doing that in the flex with the 43, 45 minutes, dividing up the blocks into 43 and 45 minute schedules. I mean, it's not the same thing. It's not as much, but you're still- But there's
056some classes that you could, that maybe not every day you really needed the 90 minutes. You just needed it. I mean- There are some models where you go A and B for Monday and Wednesday, for example, or A on Monday, Wednesday, B on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday is all your classes. So there are models that are similar. I'm not aware of one that does that twice a week. When I was in high school, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we had every class. Tuesday, Tuesdays was odd numbered classes. Thursdays was even numbered classes. And it's like they chose tests and, and in chemistry, we had our labs on those long days. And so the T they were able to prepare their schedule where they could do some deeper studies on those days. It just wasn't every day. Was
057it set by the day or was it rolling? No, it was set by the day. All the bad ease in. I'm just, it was kind of an ease into. So I do have a question. If we ease in, how much work and, you know, issues do we create with graduation requirements? Because, you know, now I got seven periods and now I got this, these kids, and then now I got this, these kids. It's a nightmare, right? So you just bump up the amount of elective credits required. Okay. For incoming freshmen. With incoming freshmen, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Nevermind. It's not as big of a nightmare as you think. Okay. I think somebody told me at one of these meetings it was a nightmare. The schedule. Probably because we didn't want you to do something. Yeah.
058Personally, I'm bought in. Let's rip the bandaid off and roll. That's where I am, man. I'm just thinking if we come back to what it is we're trying to accomplish and it really is. personalizing the learning as much as possible for each student. I was thinking about your idea, Anne, and I think like the block really, it makes sense to me that it's specific to the course and not the day. Because like in CTE classes, you could really benefit from having that longer period every single day. And then with the like shorter intervention. times you're really putting that slot in for that student every day or every other day during the week too. So it's specific to the need of the kid and the coursework versus the day of the week and then everyone just
059having a turn with the longer class. That still kind of doesn't differentiate the offerings to students as much, but I think there's something to be said for those kind of hybrid options. One just is hybrid based on the day and one is based on the course itself and the student needs. So we're expecting seven more schedules. So we'll bring three schedules. We'll bring three schedules to April's board meeting. One that Terry hates and two that she doesn't. And we'll send you as soon as possible what those are so you can start having conversations. And then for people who want those conversations to be more structured and formal, we can pair you with admin and host some meetings. Okay. Start preparing. Well, I don't like it. Like I said at the beginning, the resets, the reset
060week is, what was it, 15, 17 years ago? It was considered too radical. but it was because of more money and then public perception. But you guys know where I stand now, but I still think we need to keep our eyes and minds open as I think the embed staff, AB, whatever the schedule is, can help, but it's still not the end product. We've got to do a better job. When I was an instructional coach. It was the verbiage of coach was very intentional. And the training that we had to improve instruction was having teachers look at teaching through the model of athletic coaching, which is really in-time feedback. All students know what they're doing well and know what they need to improve on because you're able to observe in real time where their skill
061set is. This reset week model is also based on that notion of everyone being able to like watch a game. tape and analyze really what's working and what's not and redesign the plays that are happening during the games so that students can be more successful. I will tell you, it is really hard for teachers to, anytime in the middle of a school year, change course because you're kind of just, your engine's going and you're not changing your methods. much because you don't really have the opportunity within the school year to stop and say, let's look at the way I was designing my lessons. Let's look at the instructional strategies that I was using. Let's look at which kids it worked for, which kids it didn't. And let's rethink how I'm doing this. So you don't
062often see a lot of teachers radically changing their approach to students. learning, outside of a model that radically alters our approach to how they're analyzing their own craft. So I understand the child care need. I understand the perception need. And I mean, Dana did bring up a good point today, too. Like, as long as you water down the purpose of public education. And you make our role child care and you make our role health care and you make our role all the things that we're not able to provide at home. We're going to be watering down education we give our students as well. And so we're a small enough school district, a small enough community. I do think there's a way to do both where we can work together to figure out how to take
063care of our kids and treat our staff as the professionals they are and give them the time that no other staff member in Oregon has to actually do their job well and take the time to analyze their own craft. Because it really, I mean, it was a little bit ago that I was in the classroom. But really, once you get in that groove, it's really hard to rethink the way you're doing things. I mean, imagine running this board meeting back to back to back to back without more than a half hour to plan the next one. And it's just a board meeting, you know, so it's hard. I don't disagree with you. But when you say watered down, when I look at these. preset weeks, whatever. What comes to my head is those kids who
064are the straight A students, the AB students that are doing great, you just watered down their education by four weeks. They don't have less instructional time in their school year though. So if you did a model like, is it Craig or? And I forget who was saying, find a way to bring all students in, just do something different. Well, that's that. And I'll buy into that. But the buy in where half the kids stay home, you watered down their education. Right. Using your terminology. And I just can't buy into that. I think that, you know, and Amy, you and I talked about if we go to and potentially the Monday, Monday, Wednesday, and then Tuesday, Thursday, and then a Friday where everything gets covered or, you know, something like that. I'm not opposed to that.
065But I think it's I think that we've been teaching the way we're teaching. That's not making any progress for a long time. The sooner we can say, OK, you can't teach the way you've been teaching and do 90 minutes. You can't do it. They have to change. And I think that the ad there's such an advantage to saying we're really switching it up. And then there's a challenge for the teachers to say, OK, well, then how how do I change? Right. And so I think it could be a real opportunity. I'm I've got mixed feelings on the reset days. Somehow I missed how many of them had the reset days, but it felt chaotic as it was being explained. And I thought, well, I do think you're right. I want them to be, I want
066the teachers to have feedback time. I mean, all those things make complete sense to me. And so I guess all I'm saying is I think it's valuable to get to this, at least the A, B block. let's do something different because it's not working and have all the kids in school. However, however that works. And it seems like there'd be some real creative ways that we could do for the kids that are not needing that additional one-on-one training. It seems like great opportunity for, for other kinds of training and experiences and all of that. So it's not about the reset weeks. It's about kids not being on campus. Getting their time in. Opportunity is of some sort rather than just we'll see you in a week. But some sort of semi-structured opportunity. And it could
067be if they have an internship that they intern that entire week. Is it better to write a check or change their tire? All of, yeah. And all of that takes staffing, obviously. And to be, to be, for students to be incentivized to come, if we want them all there, then you have to attach some kind of teeth to it, which comes in the forms of credits for secondary and nothing for elementary. Drop them off. Yeah. But that would require licensed teachers then to offer credit. So now you're back to not having that dedicated time to analyze. You know what I mean? So like it all comes full circle. I mean, that's the rub, right? Something's got to go. I think really, though, the biggest thing is it's going to be the staff. The kids are
068going to adjust. But I think staff members, some of them are not prepared to teach 90 minutes. I don't think four days before school starts is enough to equip them to be able to teach every day, 90 minutes, you know. Yeah, it's a different, a whole different lesson structure. And my only fear is then, so they're teaching their 45 minutes and then they're just giving kind of homework, in-class homework. That's not going to get us where we want to go. No, that's not going to get us where we want to go. But then do certain students get more specialized time then to ask questions or get more one-on-one? Yeah, I mean, that may be. I'm just saying, but, you know. I don't I think there's going to need to be a lot of training for
069the staff to be able to really be prepared for a 90 minute teaching. That's a good point. Four days at the beginning of the year to like, oh, we're doing something totally different. And so tell me about like summer school or summer. What what is it just because that's the way it's always been? Like, where's the what is our approach for students? who need adult supervision, who need opportunities. In summer school, we bring some students in, not all students. And then the ones, I mean, I'm not saying we're not worried about them, but the same thing's happening during the summer. And we're not addressing it as a school board of what homes they're going home to, what experience they're getting. And we use summer school in the way the state intends it to be used,
070where we differentiate the education. By offering it to students who are interested or families who are interested and doing invitations for students who need the energy. And that's the approach. The reason that summer school is funded, even when the state school fund is decreasing, is because of the research around how much learning it leverages to bring in those students and have that differentiated time with smaller groups. You know what I mean? I think it's an acceptance in that everybody expects and has expected for however many years that they get three months off. And then the exception are the kids that go to school. During the school year, everybody's expected to go to school. And so I think that that's how that's different. Can we change that? And I think assuring parents and community that this
071time for the teachers is. necessary and will translate to better scores I mean that that will be quite this quite the sell um yeah I don't know is uh I wonder if even just putting in a day after every six weeks of instruction or four weeks where staff can analyze their students progress you know what I mean like start starting small with the block schedule and starting small with The reset. The reset. Because what I think what was glossed over is a really crucial part of the presentation, which is the difference between summative assessment and formative assessment. And the assessment that we currently have functions more like an autopsy. Well, we can go well. Those are scores. And now we're going to go to next year versus a real in-time diagnosis of what's going on
072and what we need to change. to help learning. So that can happen in ESD, but it's competing with everything else that's happening in ESD. And what is nice structurally about the reset weeks or, or the reset day or whatever would happen is it provides a K-12 buffer day that people can unit design around and it systematizes this analysis of student progress, right? Versus everyone's in different spots and units ending at different times and administrators trying to figure out during ESD, like, is this an appropriate time for this group to analyze their formative assessment data? Whereas when we're working on our RCD units, we can really design them to be four to six weeks long, depending on how long. Those calendar days are before we have a break to analyze student data. And then everyone's learning
073and practicing that data analysis at the same time, because it's not intuitive how to know where your kids are at. That in itself takes professional development. And so having that a little more tight and a little more systematized in terms of calendar days, I do think will help staff pick up on that piece of it without having it be like. Let's throw four weeks in the calendar and hope it goes well. I can buy into a day, but my pushback a little bit also is they're getting 90 minutes of prep every day plus another 45, right? No, they're getting 90 minutes a day. Most people would like... die for 90 minutes and I just get to sit down at my desk and figure out what I'm going to do in the business world. That's like
074a luxury. So I guess I don't, I'm not buying into it. I think they got 90 minutes every day and do the work. It's my take. I think you should come guest teach for a day. No, I have no patience. I mean, I'm really, I'm not trying to, I'm serious though. I do. I mean. But it isn't, wouldn't be 90 minutes a day because it would be closer to 45 minutes because the other 45 minutes they're doing professional development or a duty. Well, that's what we're, yeah, but professional development is what we were. Don't give up the 90 minutes and don't have them do the duty. I mean, for so many days. I mean, OK, Adam, you know, instead of doing duty for four weeks, they get time. They get the extra 45 minutes to
075do their paperwork. I mean, maybe I'm, you know, now it's in the big picture. I just think it's a lot of time. It's my take. And for the staff out there, sorry, it's just what I think. There's a difference between teaching something and being prepared to teach something and having students learn the thing, right? And so 45 minutes might be enough time to plan to teach something. I'd argue it's probably not, especially for a grade school, because you're planning all these different subjects all day long. And I will probably never really have sufficient time to teach with the level of expertise that every teacher would want to. But that's a whole different ballgame from making sure students are learning it. And I think when you have experience just planning to teach and not planning to
076ensure learning, that's a different way to use time. And we can shove as much as we can into that 45 minutes, but it's going to just be as much as we can. Can. And I think it'll start with, like Anne said, teaching them, teaching staff how to lesson design within a 90 minute block schedule. And then the next step will have to be analyzing how our students are doing and how you pivot if they're not doing what you thought you were intending them to do. But what I hear the board saying is longer blocks of time. are something I definitely want to explore. And then some way to kind of ratchet up to intentional PD time that's not such a diving in the deep end that could either fail or be a success with the
077community or just with our pulling it off. And we can bring something like that that's a little more of an incremental step in that direction. Yeah, I just don't want to age Sean another 20 years. He's working on it. He does. Another 20? Is that from the beginning of this year? Thanks. Thank you, Veronica. But I just want to add, like, it's so cool to me just being a part of discussions like this. And this hopefully being on the school board feels meaningful because it's not just a rubber stamp. Like, these are big decisions. And I appreciate that you're entertaining them with the discussion. You're taking the time on them. It really is complicated. I don't know that either of us know the right answer. But that's the work and it's exciting work. It's the
078right conversation to be had right now. We don't have to worry about breaking it because it's already broken. You know, and I think part of the, you know, depending on where we land on what schedule, part of the problem with selling the idea. I think if, you know, the entire community could be in on this part where they're really listening to why. But I think part of the fear is that whenever you have a prep day or a reset day, that it's going to feel like an off day. Therefore, the work that potentially could get done might not get done. That it could be a time of, shoo, kids are gone and I can do, you know, whatever. It's so critical that it isn't that. And I think that you've done a great job in,
079you know, your first years of really making those, what do you call them, training? Or in-service? professional development. You've made that so critically important, but that, that has, that would have to happen on any of these prep reset days. It just cannot be a free day. And I think grade school teachers in particular don't have planning time. It's in their schedule. I don't think they ever get it. And I would. believe that they need it more than anybody. I think junior high and high school, there's, there's ways, there's ways to get time. There is no way to get time as a grade school teacher. And I have thought that, you know, since when my kids were in school, I was like, how do they do it? At the prep time, they're walking kids down the
080hall. Yeah, absolutely. And just management. Yeah. Yeah. Parenting and prep covering other classes. I'm all for whatever you need to do for those gray school teachers. I mean, I think we've got a good start and it's exciting to think that there are options that will be able to give staff more professional development time as well as students more individualized and personalized education to meet their needs. Either way you slice it, I think it's going to be good for kids, what we land on. And I think it is late in the game. It's March and we're not making a decision until April. So it would be a heavy lift to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum with all the reset days. But I think if you're willing to keep the idea
081on the table, the extent to which, you know, we have reset days, like Anne said, maybe stacking some at the beginning of the year might be beneficial so we can bring some of those ideas. Brings us to the business part of the agenda, the budget committee calendar for fiscal year 2026-27. We just need a motion to approve it. I make a motion to approve the budget calendar presented. I'll second. There's been a motion to approve the budget committee calendar for fiscal year 26-27 by Director Paysinger and seconded by Director Sweeney. If there's no discussion, all those in favor raise your hand. That just puts the budget committee meetings before the board meetings, right? We accidentally had them on Sundays at the last vote. Motion passes. It was 7-0. Mother's Day, too. Okay, we have an
082overnight request submitted by Reed Rainey for March 20th through 25th in Grand Pass. Overnight request by Frank for the softball team. We're going to Palm Springs March 26th through 26th. Overnight request submitted to Dave Fluke. He's in government April 2nd at the board in Salem. Move we approve all three overnight requests. There's been a motion by Director Wytowski to approve all three overnight requests. So second by Director Coleman. So there's no discussion. All those in favor, raise your hand. It's supposed to be 80 in Palm Springs. I'm happy for that. Confirmation and disposition of license, classified, confidential, and administrative employment contracts. So you have all three of these with you. Just a reminder that approval of this doesn't reflect any potential reduction of force if that were something that needed to happen due to budget
083constraints, temporary positions. Maybe you're posted pending budget discussions regarding staffing needs and then the building assignments you see here are just informational based on their current assignments, but those are subject to change if needed as well. And there is one retirement and no non-renewals. Is that correct? Correct. One licensed retirement, one classified, one administrative, I believe. Warren Beers, then? Yeah. Warren Beer, Dana, and who? Yeah. Two classified. Lisa Willard's going to retire now. Yep. I make a motion to approve, accept. I'm not really sure what the right word. I thought potential. Confirmation and disposition of license classified confidential. Yeah, what you said. Go on, try. License classified admin confidential. Got it eventually. Bit of motion. That's a good one. Bit of motion by Director Pasinger to approve the confirmation and disposition of license classified confidential
084and administrative employment contracts. And a second by Director Albright. If there's no discussion, all those in favor, raise your right hand. Yes. And motion passes 7-0. OK. That brings us to the executive session. The school board will now meet in executive session pursuant to ORS 192.6602I, which allows the board to meet in executive session. For the following purposes, to review and evaluate the employment-related performance of chief executive officer of any public body, a public officer, employee, or staff member who does not request an open hearing, ORS 192.6602I, representatives of the news media and designated staff shall be allowed to attend the executive session. All other members of the audience are asked to leave the meeting. Representatives of the news media are specifically directed not to report on otherwise disclose any of the deliberations or anything
085said about these subjects during the executive session, except to state the general subject of the session as previously announced. No decision may be made in the executive session. At the end of the executive session, we will return to open session, welcome the audience back into the meeting. So we're going to close the public meeting at 826. Okay. I'll reopen the public session at 8.52. In a motion? Yep. I would move that we accept the superintendent evaluation for FAST. Okay. I've got a motion to accept the superintendent evaluation for Dr. FAST by Director Albright. I'll second. I'll second by Director Sweeney. If there's no discussion, all those in favor, raise your right hand. I should pass the 7-0. That brings us to board reflection. Chris, do you have anything? I love it when culinary brings us
086food. Yeah. I think we request that at every meeting. And I just want to say thank you for bringing any conversations to us. Likewise. I thought we had some really good discussions tonight. Veronica? Did open up. I got to talk. So, so Terry doesn't know. Thank you. Culinary club. That was really, really good. I want to see some more. And when we purchase food from our own programs, money goes back into our own system. So. You're like a ribeye. Wouldn't be bad. The request. Greg? I just, I really appreciate that as a board that we are challenging the status quo and accepting that some of the things, some of the systems and things we have aren't working and being willing to stick our necks out a little bit and find a solution for it. And
087then just as a board, being able to disagree in a healthy manner and talk through these things and come to consensus. Piper? I am excited at the change that we're going to make to get us going. It seems crazy to me that, you know, we could see the numbers all across not only our state, but the country being so low. And I do think that I would be willing to go out and sell it if we've got something good to sell, like what we really could do with this. So I'm encouraged by our discussion. I'm encouraged by the possibility that a schedule change could be much more than that. Yeah, I think Craig can attest to this as a coach. I have 11 direct pipelines about what's going on in the school from 11 young
088ladies. And Craig probably gets it straight from football players. They're excited about what's going on. They've asked about changes, and I said, we're working on things. What would you like to see? The other day I said, if there was a language you wanted to learn, what would it be? Our smartass was Russian. I was like, whatever. But they all said French. They'd love to have a French class. Okay, that's an idea. So I get things like that. I get, you know, this teacher's great, this teacher's... I love this class. So it's good to hear from them. So things in the school are going good, I think, in certain spots. I appreciate the hard work that the admin team is doing to get there. So that brings us, you know, any comments? So we're going to
089join the meeting at 8.58.